Page 23 of Broken Vows (Marital Privileges #4)

Emerson

I ’m lost as to what just happened. We were flirting and getting along, and then Mikhail took my swipe at his inability to communicate with cold-heartedness.

I was trying to be playful, hoping some humor would stop me from acting like he’s my personal sex slave.

It seems to have had the opposite effect.

Back is the moody, leave-me-the-fuck-alone man I only dealt with once. It was after we visited his father’s palatial mansion to announce our upcoming nuptials.

Our plan to woo the heads of the Dokovic realm with a whirlwind yet stable romance story worthy of a romance novel was snuffed out in less than a minute.

Mikhail’s father laughed when I told him how Mikhail had proposed in a field of my favorite flowers he had a farmer plant instead of wheat, and his grandfather shook his head.

“They’ll never approve,” his father said while eyeing me up and down. “You don’t have the lineage for the Dokovic name.”

“Nor the wealth,” his grandfather added.

I won’t lie. Their rejection stung like a thousand bee stings, but an hour later, the pain was minimal when Mikhail embraced my suggestion that we elope. He said, as plain as day, that it was me or no one, that I was the only woman he would ever marry.

I fell in love with him then more than I thought possible.

I’ve held on to those words for the past decade and secretly hoped that was why his grandfather picked me out of all the women in the world to marry his grandson.

He knew Mikhail was stubborn and that he wouldn’t marry despite the heftiness of his inheritance, but I’m clueless as to why that would place me at the top of his ledger of approved wives.

My confusion is evident in my unusually lenient words.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur, even with the words tasting bitter.

I’m not an apologetic person, but I am standing firm on the boundary I set last night. Wynne needs tests, and my mother needs treatment. I also haven’t dismissed my theory that his grandfather chose me for this project for a reason.

Furthermore, our next goodbye could be permanent.

That hurts even to admit, and it isn’t something I am ready to face just yet. Our banter isn’t as playful as it was years ago, but I’d rather fight with Mikhail than not have him in my life for another ten years.

Remembrance of that has me adding more to my apology.

“My snarkiness was unwarranted. I just…” My words trail off when I struggle to explain myself.

My snappy attitude attracted Mikhail to me.

I was shooting down the advances of a preppy trust-fund boy who struggled to take no for an answer, when Mikhail stepped forward to help.

I told him I was fine before I popped my knee into the future rapist’s groin and had him tossed out of the bar by a burly bouncer.

Mikhail didn’t move his hands from his crotch once over the next three weeks. Not even when I finally accepted his invitation to dance.

You can imagine how awkward that made his dance moves.

The fact that he was up to the challenge of taming a wild woman who didn’t need a man made him that much more endearing.

I guess we’ve done more than age during our time apart.

Mikhail’s expression doesn’t alter, but he lifts his chin before lowering his eyes to the spread of food in front of us.

Tension runs rife for the next ten minutes. I squirm more than I did the prior ten, and I’m not the only one noticing.

Mikhail watches me under hooded lids before he eventually murmurs, “Need something firmer to rock against, Ember?”

An I-have-no-clue-what-you’re-talking-about lie sits on the tip of my tongue, but no matter how hard I try to fire it off, it refuses to relinquish it.

Fibs haven’t gotten me anywhere fast, so I switch tactics.

Mikhail sucks in a quick breath when I dip my chin.

His shock makes me smile.

“That’s why you called me Ember, wasn’t it? I was forever sparked.”

“That... and…” I die a thousand deaths waiting for him to answer. The near coronary is worthwhile when he murmurs, “Because you were the only thing capable of making me burn again.”

My heart launches into my throat when I recall a famous Russian saying. To make the ember burn again is a metaphor for bringing someone back from near death.

Mikhail called me Ember the first time I told him I loved him. I jokingly referred to him as Coal because it takes longer to heat, but once it reaches its desired temperature, it can maintain it longer than anything else.

I assumed that was how our love was. Unfading.

I’d never been more wrong.

I take advantage of Chef’s return to the kitchen by tilting my head back and peering at Mikhail. He watches me with so much heat in his eyes, and his gaze speaks words I don’t expect to fall from his mouth anytime in the next century.

I’m still the ember capable of making him burn again. I just have to earn the right.

My last sentence leaves our conversation in limbo for several uncomfortable minutes. I can’t deny the hurt I felt when he left me, but I also can’t deny that it would hurt more to live without him.

As I stab at the eggs to ensure the runny yolk smothers the ghastly steamed spinach leaves, I try to shift my focus off my heartache and move it to something that matters. “Do you really have a sister?”

Mikhail meets my eyes and smirks before blasting my veins with envy. “Yeah.”

I have no right to be jealous. He’s speaking about his sister, for crying out loud. But I’d be a liar if I said jealousy wasn’t obliterating my understanding.

I get a moment of reprieve when he confesses, “She was whom I was speaking with yesterday.”

An ugly green head has me snapping out a reply before my brain can remind me that I’ve given my little sister many nicknames over the years, so how can I be so judgmental? “You call your sister sweetheart?”

Smirking, he shakes his head. “Not since she hooked up with Andrik.”

His smirk slips as his cheeks whiten. I understand why. How the hell are Andrik and his sister hooking up? I thought inbreeding ended with Tsar Nicholas II’s execution. Also, Andrik is in his late thirties and has not once shown an interest in pedophilia.

This storyline gets more intricate the more I consider it.

When Mikhail spots my bewilderment, his smirk shifts to a full-blown smile. “You look how I felt when I found out Zoya was my sister.”

“Zoya, as in Andrik’s wife?”

Damn, they really brought Tsar Nicholas II’s practices into the modern world, didn’t they?

My head won’t stop swirling with information, so Mikhail sets out everything in bullet-point format.

He tells me how Zoya is the sister his mother was pregnant with when she went missing twenty-eight years ago, and that she and Andrik aren’t related because Andrik’s mother went outside of the marriage for fertility assistance, which resulted in her conceiving a child with her fertility doctor.

His brief rundown of events that only occurred months ago answers a lot of questions, but it also encourages more. “Your mother is alive?”

He looks torn about how to reply, equally gutted and relieved.

He briefly nods while saying, “Though she has a long way to go before she will ever feel that way.” My sympathetic look keeps communication lines open.

“They shipped her from one side of the globe to the next for decades, and she has birthed many children.” His smile is back, though weak.

“I have another full sibling I know of. The rest are half or no relation whatsoever.”

I peer at him as if to say, How can that be?

Mercifully, he is still as skilled at reading me as he was last night when he made my dream a reality.

“They used in vitro fertilization to impregnate her.” He scrubs at his jaw, the prickles filling my shocked silence with a rough, abrasive noise. “She was nothing but a fucking incubator for them.”

I don’t balk at his outburst. He’s expressed similar views previously. Although they were only rumors, for months, people circulated the story that his mother’s disappearance was staged because she had conceived a daughter instead of the preferred male heir the Dokovics desire.

Year after year, Mikhail’s hope of finding her, though fervent, diminished as the likelihood of her being alive lessened.

Last I heard, he was preparing a plaque for the memorial wall of a local cemetery. It was a small token compared to how much love he displayed for his mother during his formative years, but it was better than the nothing she had.

Needing to be closer to him, even knowing it will inevitably hurt me, I scoot to his side of the booth. He watches me under heavy lids, but he doesn’t sound a protest, freeing me from the panic that I’m making a mistake.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” My offer would seem worthless to anyone else, but to Mikhail, who was raised in a very bigamist, male-driven world, it is the equivalent of a pot of gold under the rainbow.

I’m highly skeptical he knew women had rights before he met my opinionated and extremely vocal family. My mother, like her mother before her, raised me alone, and my aunts speak of matrimony with disgust.

Mikhail considers my offer for three heart-throbbing seconds before he shakes his head. I’m disappointed until he adds words to the mix. “Though I’m sure my mother would love to meet you. Her face lights up every time I talk about you.”

He talks about me?

Still.

Even after all these years.

The sob in the back of my throat chops up my words when I say, “I would love to meet her.”

When I scoot to the unblocked side of the booth, a deep rumble courses through my body before settling between my thighs.

“Not now.” Mikhail’s laughter dies. “She’s in rehab…

and will be for some time.” He aligns his eyes with mine, the admiration for my eagerness still obvious even past the cloud of hurt.

“But the instant she’s given the all-clear, I’ll take you to see her. ”

“Okay.” I breathe out slowly, nodding.

I suck back in the air I just released when he mutters, “After you’ve eaten breakfast, of course.”

Tingles return when I pout like a teenage girl while saying, “If skipping breakfast is the worst thing I achieve today, I’m not torturing you right.”