Page 10 of Axel (Belles & Bratva Beasts #2)

CHAPTER SIX

AXEL

Relief and dread barrel through me.

I’m relieved I found Ruby’s bugging device and turned it off. She won’t be able to hear my conversation with Alena.

I was about to make Ruby beg, on her knees, for way more than her job, but then we were interrupted … and now I dread this.

Not that I don’t love Alena. I do. But it’s a complicated love, only Alena and I understand.

Once I close my office door, she falls into my arms, crying. “I have to tell him. Please, I love Loch so much and I can’t lie to him. I can’t celebrate our engagement tonight and feel like such a liar.”

“You’re not lying.” I hold her. “You’re protecting him. The truth will only hurt him. It’ll hurt everyone.”

“How can I regret something,” Alena sighs, “but still be glad we did it?”

“I don’t know.” The weight of it crushes me, too. “But I understand.”

“Just let me tell Loch,” she begs. “That’s it. Never my dad. No one. I promise. But I just can’t lie to my future husband. Please, Michael, I need to tell him about us.”

If someone could die from guilt and lies, I would right now. In many ways, I want to. Alena asked me to take her virginity, and she didn’t even know my real name.

She still doesn’t.

To her, I’m Michael Cummings. I’m best friends with her father, Nash Allen. He’s an accountant, I’m a lawyer, and Nash and I are so close; I’m her godfather, too.

Alena has no idea who I really am, who my family is, what we do, or how her father is family with us, too, and we do it all to protect her.

Nash was sixteen when he became a father and eighteen when he joined us. I was fourteen then, and we became best friends. I’ve known Alena for years, and all I’ve ever felt is protective over her.

So when Alena was twenty-one and cried to me on her birthday, sharing how she didn’t feel like a real woman.

How boys teased her about her weight. How no one had ever kissed her or asked her out.

How she was about to graduate from college, still a virgin, and she felt so powerless, ugly, and unwanted, I couldn’t fucking stand it.

Her tears were killing me.

I hugged her, but then…

She kissed my neck and sighed, “Help me.”

And in a split moment, the kind that changes lives forever, I had to decide.

Make this about myself, how I felt betraying Nash, and push his daughter away, making her feel even more unloved, and breaking her fragile heart?

Or make it about Alena and, for one night, make her feel safe and taken care of?

Make her feel like the woman she was? Like she’s very beautiful because she is, and in some odd way, I loved her. I’ll always love her.

It wasn’t an impulse .

It was a decision.

Alena is one of our queens. Our first queen. Really, our princess. As Nash’s daughter, a king’s daughter, she was one of us, but she wasn’t my daughter, and she deserved to be worshipped. She deserved my love and protection, and I gave it to her.

She asked me to be her first, and I did it as tenderly and carefully as I could. I went slow. I showed her how a man should always make her feel, and she was a changed woman.

Alena never pined for me. She wasn’t in love with me. But she trusted me. She needed me. She asked for me, and I answered.

After that night, it was like she was free. Alena said she felt beautiful, powerful, and she was. She didn’t cling. She didn’t look back. She didn’t even call me. Well, not all the time. Just once in a while, she’d tell me how happy she was with her new job.

Did she use me?

Sure, and we didn’t regret it.

But then we’d see each other, always with her father around, and the guilt became suffocating.

It still is.

But now, it’s worse.

Alena has no idea she’s marrying my little brother. Nash arranged it. Loch was supposed to protect our queen, acting like a stranger and her co-worker when, really, he was her secret bodyguard until he fell in love with her. Until he wanted Alena as his queen.

Does he know about me and Alena? No.

Did I beat the shit out of Loch to make sure he really loved her? Yes. Because he fought back for her. Nash had to pull us apart. They thought I was being a protective godfather, and I was .

So, Nash and I insisted Loch had to marry her. We wouldn’t let him break her heart, and it’s not like he will.

Loch is madly in love with Alena, and she’s madly in love with him. They’re a perfect match.

But now?

If Nash finds out. If Loch finds out. If my mother ever finds out. This secret is so damning it will kill my family.

And why, more than anyone, do I suddenly care if Ruby ever finds out? Why is it her judgment I fear the most?

“Come on.” I guide Alena to the sofa. “Let’s sit down.”

We sit with our knees brushing, but desire escapes me. It’s not that Alena isn’t a stunning young woman; she is.

But she was never mine; she’s Loch’s.

And the more I’m honest with myself, my cold heart belongs to someone else. It has for a year, and she’s sitting right outside my office door.

“No offense,” Alena wrings her hands, “but please don’t come to our engagement party tonight. Okay?”

My smile is soft. “No offense taken, and I’m happy for you. Your fiancé is a lucky man.”

“But it’s so hard lying to him, and my dad will be there, too.” She stresses. “I’m used to hiding it from my dad. It’s easy. It’s my body and my business. Fathers don’t have a right to say?—”

“But I’m his best friend, Alena, and if he ever finds out, he will have something to say about it. He’ll want to kill me, and I won’t blame him. I won’t stop him.”

She laughs. “My dad won’t kill you.”

She doesn’t know her father like I do. Nash has already murdered for love, for Vale—Alena’s best friend—and I helped him.

Yes, this is an ocean of secrets and lies, and I’m drowning.

“What about your fiancé?” I try another tactic. “I can be a very threatening man, and I know he’ll be angry if he finds out about us.”

She laughs again, and it’s bittersweet. At the mention of Loch, Alena’s brown eyes sparkle, innocent and in love. But he’s my baby brother. She has no idea how he’ll feel betrayed by us.

“But it’s not like he was a virgin, either,” she says. “He knows what he’s doing in bed and?—”

“Does he think you were?”

My tone is gentle. I’m not rough with Alena. Never. But I need to know how bad this is as her glance darts to the floor.

“ Alena ,” my tone drops, “did you lie to Loch? Does he think he was your first? Because, to men?—”

“No, he’s not like that.” She confronts my stare.

“Loch respects women. It’s what I love most about him.

I haven’t met his mom yet, but she raised him right because he doesn’t objectify me.

He loves me. He didn’t ask about my past because he only cares about our future.

Besides,” she shrugs, “I told him the truth, that I’ve never been in love. ” She winces. “No offense.”

Softly, I laugh. “Alena, I’m okay. You can’t ever offend me. You don’t love me that way, and I don’t love you that way. We know that. But no one else will see it that way. That’s why no one can ever know.”

“But Michael,” I wince when she uses my fake name, “I worry about our secret and you . You’ve been an ass since your wife left you.”

I bristle.

“I know you don’t like talking about her,” she says, “but Katya was beautiful. Your wedding was like a fairytale, and I don’t know what happened, but you’ve been an asshole since she left. Even to me.”

I drag in a deep breath because Alena’s just skimming the surface of my pain .

If I thought Alena kissing me was a shock, Katya coming on to me was a bomb.

If someone had to write a perfect woman on paper for me, it would supposedly be Katya. Russian. Blonde. Breathtaking. Cultured. Demure and subservient. We met in an art museum, where she hung on my every word about the eighteenth-century paintings.

The only time she wasn’t passive was in bed. I thought it was love, all the times she wanted to fuck me. We were so busy having sex, I didn’t have time to realize … it wasn’t love.

But I felt so guilty after Alena, so worried I’d lose Nash, that I’d lose all of my brothers and our bond, that I made Katya my first queen. I hoped the bonds we built as kings and queens with our tradition would give us the strength to survive all the secrets and lies.

I still hope that.

And I still have no idea why Katya really left me.

I just came home one day to a note on my bed. She said I was a cruel man with a cold heart, and she couldn’t take it anymore. She even made fun of my socks, how I always wear them, and how she never saw my feet. She wrote that she was going home to Moscow, the last place I’d ever go to find her.

And honestly?

I didn’t want her back. I wasn’t brokenhearted; I was betrayed. I was so fucking good to her. I spoiled her. I was a devoted husband, but once Katya left, I decided to be the exact man she said I was.

Cruel and cold-hearted.

“I’m sorry.” I cup my hand over Alena’s. “If I’ve been an asshole, it’s not because of you. You know I’m happy for you.”

“I just want you to be happy, too,” she sighs. “It’s hard getting married, but seeing you and my dad so lonely. No wonder you’re miserable, best friends together.”

“But Alena, we won’t be best friends if Nash finds out.

It’s the same for Loch. He’ll be angry with you.

It’s like you said, it was your decision and your body.

I was honored you shared it with me, and you owe no man an explanation about it, so please.

” I squeeze her hand. “Keep our secret. Don’t ever tell anyone. ”

Her face falls, not sadly, but convinced. “Okay, I won’t tell?—”

“Mr. Cummings,” Ruby’s voice calls outside my door, “your caviar is getting cold.”

My caviar is served on a bed of crushed ice, we all know it, and she makes Alena giggle. “She’s funny.”

“She’s a pain in my ass but the smartest woman I know.” I wink. “No offense.”

Alena grins, arching a brow.

“Don’t,” I tell her. “Don’t focus on me. Go have your engagement party and be happy.” I kiss her hair.

“Promise you’re not mad about not coming?”

“I’m fine,” I answer honestly.

Because I have far more to worry about.

I have a sexy wildfire of an employee spying on me, hating me. A woman who’ll be my queen one day, but for now … I need her to leave.

Tonight is our private, sacred ritual, and yes, it’s quite taboo, too, so I need to clear my office for the next queen’s initiation.