Gilded Cage: A Russian Mafia Romance (Kovalyov Bratva Book 1) Nicole Fox (people reading books TXT) 📖

think he’s going to just ignore me, until…

“I heard you screaming,” Artem says softly. “I thought someone had broken in, but you were just having a nightmare.”

I nod. “You calmed me down.”

“I tried,” he says. “You settled after a while.”

“What did you do?”

“What?”

“I asked what you did to settle me.”

His eyes flicker to my face again. My body heats up. I remember the feel of him suddenly. How his arms wrapped around my body like a blanket. I remember feeling safe, protected… content.

“I held you, Esme.”

My lip is trembling for some reason. I rest my chin against my folded knees to stop it.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

He nods. Silence laps over us for a few minutes and there’s only the sound of waves before us and birds flapping around in the sky above us. The wind nips lightly at my hair.

It’s a beautiful day.

“How long have you had night terrors?” Artem asks, breaking the silence.

“It started after my brother’s death,” I reply carefully, amazed that I’m okay sharing this with him. “I had them for about six months after this funeral and then… they kind of stopped.”

He reaches for the bottle beside him and lifts it straight to his lips. He takes a swig and sets it back down in the same place. The smell hits my nose a second later: whiskey.

“Until now.”

“I dreamed he was trying to hurt me again,” I tell him, trying not to stare at the bottle.

He stiffens instantly, his biceps flexing under the white t-shirt he’s wearing. “The fucker from the club?” he asks.

I glance down at my hands. “No,” I answer. “Not him.”

“Then who?” Artem asks, as his knuckles go white.

My voice is soft and pitiful, even to my ears. But there’s anger in it too. So much anger. A lifetime of anger.

“My father.”

One corner of his mouth goes up but he doesn’t allow himself to smile. I continue as though he hadn’t interrupted me.

I don’t know why I’m even telling him this, but there’s a strange unspoken truce that exists between us this morning and it makes me feel brave.

“Right before we… uh, met,” I tell Artem, “Papa caught me sneaking off the compound. He didn’t like that. He slapped me. Told me what I meant to him, what he was going to do with me now that I was old enough to whore out. It wasn’t nice, in case you were wondering. I think he got skipped when they were handing out textbooks on how to be a good father.”

I have to pause, swallow, and steady my suddenly trembling hands before I keep going.

“And then he hurt someone I cared about. He hurt them really, really badly. That was worse than the slap, I think.”

The anger is back in Artem’s eyes. He’s like still water, except I know that no matter how tranquil he appears to be on the surface, there’s something lurking beneath the calm.

“I wish I’d known,” he says, in a low, dangerous voice.

“Why?” I ask. “What could you possibly do? You already killed him.”

For the first time, he meets my gaze and holds it, direct and piercing as ever. “I would have made sure his death was slow and painful.”

I wish that answer didn’t make my heart hurt in a completely different way.

“Why does it always have to end with death?” I whisper.

He frowns and tilts his head to the side. Like he didn’t expect me to say that.

“You hate it, don’t you?” he asks.

“Of course I hate it,” I snap. “It’s all just death and pain and loss. Violence followed by more violence. How can you experience anything real, anything pure, anything beautiful, if you’re surrounded by so much ugliness all the time?”

His brow furrows deeper as he considers my words. It hits me that this is the first time we’re really talking to each other. This is the first real conversation we’ve had that’s not combative or manipulative.

“Beauty can exist,” he says at last.

“How?”

“Didn’t you say you loved your brother?” he asks.

“I still do,” I tell him. “Love doesn’t stop when you lose the person.”

I see sadness flood across his eyes. I wonder who he has lost. It’s clear there’s a void inside him, a pain he’s trying to cover.

But I can see it now. Clear as day.

There’s a broken heart inside this beast.

“That love you feel for your brother,” he says softly. “That’s the beauty that exists in our world.”

“It’s not my world,” I correct quickly. “I want no part of it.”

“I used to feel that way, too.”

“Really?”

“You look surprised,” he observes.

“I am,” I nod. “I just… you… um…”

He smiles this time. “Yes?”

I sigh. “I guess it just seems to me like you were made for this life. My brother wasn’t. He had to try very hard to be the man my father wanted him to be. But it didn’t come naturally to him.”

“And you think it comes naturally to me?”

“Well… yes.”

His answer is a smile. I can’t quite read it.

“Am I wrong?”

“Maybe I’m just that good an actor.”

I frown. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. You just have a natural authority. The night you stormed the compound and took me, you looked like you were in your element.”

His face clouds over only for a moment. “I wasn’t aware you were taking in much that night.”

“I wasn’t,” I admit. “But when I look back on my memories, I realize I’ve noticed more than I thought I did.”

“You started crying when I walked in and found you,” he says suddenly, as though the question has been nagging him since that day.

I nod.

“Why?”

I close my eyes, thinking of that horrific moment before I laid eyes on Artem and realized he was the man from The Siren.

“I thought I was dreaming at first. Or hallucinating,” I say slowly. “And then… I just felt… relieved.”

“Relieved?”

I nod. “I thought I was free.” A deep sigh ripples through me. “I was wrong.”

At that, I can feel a gulf open up between us again.

Yes, we have a temporary truce going at the moment. But