Page 118 of Deceptive Vows

One look at the transactions he’s found tells me something’s off. There’s a host of transactions going to an offshore account in Russia listed under the name of a recipient I don’t know. The only assumption there is Ivan’s stealing from the company or paying somebody for something. I’m inclined to believe the latter because a billionaire has no reason to steal from his own family business.

I spend a few hours going over the transactions and adding what I can to my compilation I want to take to my father.

He’ll be choosing the new leader in two weeks, so the clock is ticking. If I don’t find solid evidence against my brother to link him to my mother and sister’s murders, I want to find what I can to back up my suspicion.

I get home just before midnight, and instead of heading to the room I’ve been using attached to my office, I decide to check on the princess.

She’s sleeping, but she fell asleep on the floor by the window. Her head is resting on the wall, and she’s curled up against it at an awkward angle. I’d leave her to sleep, but I’d feel guilty for leaving her like that. So, I find myself picking her up off the floor and laying her on our bed.

Our bed.

It’s the first time I’ve thought of the bed as ours.

I expect her to stir, but she doesn’t. She barely even moves when I set her down on the stack of pillows. The dark circles under her eyes suggest she hasn’t slept properly in days.

That was the first thing I thought when I saw her earlier, right after I marveled at how beautiful she is.

The lack of sleep, bad temper, and confliction are because of me.

I’ve been going through the same thing. I torture myself further by lying next to her, and I think of what I should have done differently on the day I married her.

I should have taken her away on an actual honeymoon. Maybe flown her somewhere exotic. Or since she’s probably used to exotic from living in Mexico, I could have taken her to Russia, or somewhere else, like the Seychelles or Bora Bora.

I can imagine her walking across the white sandy beach in Bora Bora.

I think she would have liked to go there even if she is used to exotic.

I should have done anything more than the nothing I did.

I run my gaze over her body and think of her as a work of art again. She’s the kind of woman you paint to preserve the memories of feelings and emotions.

The way my father used to paint my mother.

Christ.

Listen to me.

I lie there for a while, just for a little longer, to satisfy my need to be near her before I leave.

* * *

The next day, my father is the first person on my agenda to meet before I head out to Dmitriyev Ltd.

He wanted to talk to me first thing in the morning at nine sharp, at the lake house.

Situated on the bank of Lamoka Lake and built of wood, the house looks more like a cottage than the other neighboring homes and has always reminded me of something from a fairytale.

It wasn’t somewhere I went often because my parents wanted to keep it for themselves and away from everyone else.

No one would guess that a multi-billionaire owned it for its quaintness and simplicity, but my father opted for such to remind himself of the people he’d come from. Back in Russia in the old, old days of my great-great-grandfather, it would have been a cottage like this they would have lived in back in Saratov.

Saratov is one of the poorest cities in Russia, and they would have had to travel for days to get to western Siberia to work in the mines we now own.

My father’s guards’ car is parked out front on the drive. They aren’t inside it, a sign he probably spent the night here.

The front door of the house is open, waiting for me to walk in.

I park my bike beside the car and make my way into the house.