Page 13 of Her Rustanov Husband (Ruthless Bullies #2)

Alexei’s expression softened. “This is the only plan for a Rustanov who has brought the loss upon himself. You know, Tyoma, I feared you were too young for this marriage business. I even prepared a prenup for her to sign.”

“You gave me that prenup,” Yom pointed out between clenched teeth.

“But I did not threaten to disown you if you let her refuse to sign it,” Alexei shot back. “For me, this is most true indication of approval. Because when I saw you two at the engagement party, the way you looked at each other… it was the same as my kotenok and I, when our love was in first bloom.”

His hand pressed heavy on Yom’s shoulder, holding him down in the water. “True love is a perennial flower, Tyoma. It withers in winter, looks dead—but spring always comes. Sometimes it takes many seasons for a blighted field to bloom again.”

Yom shook his head. “I cannot wait . My heart only beats for her. And she…” He choked. “She hates me now.”

“Time will erase her hate,” Alexei promised gravely. “It is like childbirth. The body must forget before it can endure again.”

“I cannot,” Yom whispered.

“You can ,” Nikolai insisted.

“You must believe ,” Alexei pressed. “Believe she will return. You are an American Rustanov now. This is the American Rustanov way.”

Yom felt weaker than ever—even weaker than the boy his mother abandoned on his father’s doorstep. “There is no way to know she will come back.”

“She will,” Alexei said with quiet conviction, finally lifting his hand.

“And when she does,” Nikolai added, holding out a towel, “you will not want her to see this boy, so pitiful his uncles must bathe him. You will want her to see a man standing strong. One worthy of her forgiveness.”

“Use grief as I did when my mother died so terribly,” Nikolai said. “Become a wraith on the ice.”

Alexei nodded. “Make hockey your life until something greater returns to you.”

Perhaps they were right.

Perhaps not.

But Yom had no choice. He could either wallow in hell—or become the hell others feared on the ice.

So he became the hell.

And he waited.

For months, then years. Even when his emails to her started bouncing back—because she’d closed the account. Even after it became clear she’d gone no-contact with her parents.

At first, there were excuses: an extension of her apprenticeship, a busy time in Canada. Paul, he heard, slunk back into his family fold for holidays, if not the games he was banned from as long as Yom played for the Raptors.

But Lydia never returned. Eventually, the excuses stopped, and Joseph Carrington—embittered after his landslide loss in the governor’s race—grumbled, “Guess nobody appreciates me. Including my own daughter.”

By then, Yom was three years and one Stanley Cup win into his contract. And like any heartless businessman, he used Carrington Sr.’s bitterness as leverage to negotiate the purchase of the team alongside his brother Cheslav, Lukas Brandt of Weiss Beer, and Geoff Latham of AudioNation.

But by the fourth year, Yom began to fear the worst.

Lydia had never been great with social media—it overwhelmed her, she’d said. But now she was a ghost. Her words of recrimination floated through his head.

“I was willing to give up that apprenticeship in Canada. To set aside my plans for a quiet life outside the spotlight to be your hockey wife.”

Had she embraced that quiet life? Married some equally quiet man?

If so, perhaps he should have that male killed in a tragic accident before she became too attached—or had children. Yom would be the best husband to her when she returned, and he did not want competition or complications.

But when he ordered Stepan—grudgingly rehired after his truck was returned—to look into it, his guard hedged. “Strict orders from the Second Gentleman not to help you in that regard.”

Soon after Yom fired Stepan a second time, Alexei appeared in person. “You are performing the Waiting Plan well, Tyoma. Do not add more years to it by doing something rash. Stay away. Let her be delivered to you by whatever forgiving god smiles down upon us Rustanovs.”

“What if she has children by then?” Yom demanded.

Alexei only shrugged. “Then you will decide. Will you throw away your second chance?”

“ Nyet . Her child will become my child,” Yom growled before he could stop himself. “She belongs to me. Whoever comes out of her belongs to me, too.”

Alexei’s lips curved. “Good, Tyoma. Then wait. Do not dig. Bide your time.”

So he did. He bided. He waited.

Even when his older brother, Cheslav, retired early to marry a Miss South Carolina beauty queen and start a family. Yom seethed with jealousy, but still—he waited.

Six years passed in this half-life.

Until one night, sitting with Geoff Latham and Lukas Brandt, she appeared out of nowhere.

Threw a drink in his face.

And vanished.

“Sooo… friend of yours?” Geoff clapped him on the back as Yom took a hand towel that Stepan (who, yes, he’d rehired at his uncle’s insistence) had fetched from the bartender.

Yom slid an angry look at Stepan, who he noted made no effort to chase after Lydia—probably also at his uncle’s instruction.

Then he frowned at Geoff, the AudioNation COO and fellow investor in his bid to buy the Minnesota Raptors. Over years of knowing each other through the Weiss Beer scion, Lukas Brandt, Geoff had become the closest thing Yom allowed anyone to be—someone who dared call himself his friend.

Yom did not believe in friends. There was family. And there was the dark, consuming thing he felt for Lydia. Friends did not factor. Which was why Geoff had no idea who had just thrown that drink in his face.

Lukas, however, was not so ignorant. “Was that Lydia Carrington?” he asked. “I haven’t seen her in forever.”

He eyed Yom with suspicion. “She was one of the genuinely nice ones. Hard to find in my circle. What the hell did you do to make her that pissed six years after breaking off your engagement?”

Six years. To the day tomorrow . Yom glowered, but gave no answer.

Geoff’s eyebrows shot up. “Holy shit. That’s Lydia Carrington? The one you proposed to in front of a whole stadium? I always wondered what happened to her after you two…”

He trailed off when Yom’s look promised murder if he finished that sentence.

“Alright, then.” Geoff clapped his hands. “Who’s ready for sasha x kasha?”

Not Yom. Not after six years of waiting.

He left them and returned to his booth with an entire bottle of VIP Bai3 Baijiu. He poured glass after glass of the scalding liquor down his throat.

Thanks to his Russian constitution, his tolerance for liquor was fairly high, even though he rarely indulged. Wraith status on the ice and regular alcohol abuse did not mix.

But maybe his body was betraying him now that he was in his late twenties. Because before he’d even reached the halfway point of the bottle, an apparition appeared in front of him.

It looked exactly like Lydia.

“You’re still here?” Perhaps-made-up Lydia asked, her voice hushed and tremoring.

“I am still here,” he confirmed, because even talking to a hallucination was better than the six-year silence.

She stared at him, her eyes brimming with tears so real it made his chest ache.

“You ruined everything,” she whispered. “Why did you do that?”

Strange. He had waited so long. But he’d never rehearsed this part, never planned what to say if she—or her ghost ever returned to him.

So he told her the words he wished he had said almost exactly six years ago. “I am sorry for hurting you. For not keeping my promise.”

She kept looking at him, those big brown eyes filled with reproach. And the same kind of missing-vital-organ pain he’d endured for the last six years. Seconds stretched into minutes in their stare-off.

But maybe he had actually become good at waiting.

He didn’t reach for her baijiu-induced ghost. Didn’t try to fill the silence. Didn’t blink in case she dissolved into the air.

It was enough just to have her in front of him again, even if it was only in his head.

“Sorry isn’t good enough,” she told him, echoing his own words from their last rough conversation.

And then, something impossible happened.

She climbed into his lap. And her mouth crashed down on his. Kissing him with the ferocity of something uncaged—and desperate to burn away the last six years.