Page 77 of His Darkest Obsession

“She did it to me as well on the first day I came to this place. Broke skin and made me bleed.” She points to the row of four evenly spaced dots running down the right side of her chin that I noticed the first day I met her. “I don’t see the same on you.”

“Only because her son’s the pakhan.”

“Nonsense,” she breathes. “She’s never cared about that. Take it from me, Indigo Malcolmovna, if she held back her claws, it’s because there’s something aboutyouthat she’s afraid of.”

I look at Svetlana, not sure if she’s lying just to make me feel better, and then decide that I don’t really care if she is.

"Why is she like this?" I ask, sitting on the edge of my bed. "I get that she hates me, but she seems to hate everything about her own life. Even her own sons."

Svetlana's lips twitch, like she's debating whether to share a secret. "You really want to know?"

"I'm married to her son," I say. "There are no secrets, remember?"

The smile on Svetlana’s face widens. But there’s no amusement there. And when she closes her eyes for a moment, I can see a carefully masked sadness on her face.

Then, she opens them, and something glimmers in her blue eyes. “Valentina’s husband Stepan was many things. And the most offensive to her was the fact that he was unfaithful to her in the most egregious ways.”

“Like what?”

“Typically, the home is the domain of the pakhan’s wife, but Stepan would override Valentina’s choices in staff.” Now it’s her turn to look away. “And I’m sure you can guess why that is.”

“Oh.”

“One year, he got a poor girl pregnant in the same bed where Valentina conceived three sons with him.”

“That’s terrible!”

“Yes, I suppose it was.” Svetlana’s eyes stare off into space. “And once Valentina found out, she had her personal guards beat the poor girl so savagely that the entire household thought for sure that the girl would lose either her life or the baby. Or maybe even both.”

She stops and takes a long shuddering breath.

“It was only by sheer luck that Stepan stumbled upon the beating and put a stop to it. Not out of the kindness of his heart, but because he thought that onlyheshould have decision over life and death in this house.”

"What happened after?"

“Stepan sent the poor girl away, and for fifteen years, the entire house pretended like what happened was just a bad dream,” she says. “But one day, Tolya found out that not only did the guards not kill the baby in the girl’s womb, but that the baby had been born and given up for adoption shortly after birth. In an act that sealed both his father’s fate and his own, Tolya insisted to Stepan that he owes this child a debt of honor. That this child—a bastard it may be—should still be allowed a seat at his table, a bed in his home, and a place next to his legitimate children.”

“And Stepan just… agreed?” Somehow that’s the hardest part for me to believe.

“He did.” She nods. “I suspect Stepan agreed not because Tolya made any convincing arguments, but because he wanted just another way to humiliate Valentina for trying to take away a favorite toy of his.”

I shake my head in disbelief. These people are awful in the way that they treat human beings like property!

“Now Valentina…” Svetlana shakes her head, laughing softly. “She wasfurious. There was no way she would allow such a disrespect to go unpunished. And a few years after the child was brought here, a hit was placed on Stepan. He was shot dead in his office.”

I gasp. “On Valentina’s orders?”

“Who else could’ve authorized such a hit?” Svetlana shrugs. “She couldn’t stand the idea that she had to stare at this child who had Stepan’s eyes. A child who should not have lived if she got her way. A child that reminded her of the control Stepan took from her.”

“And Anatoly didn’t do anything about it?”

“There was nothing hecoulddo. Valentina kept her hands clean. And even though we all knew it could only be her, there was no way any of us could prove it.”

“And she’s still bitter about it?”

“Yes. And over the years, she’s nursed that bitterness like an infant at her breast. So believe me when I say: that old bitch hates everyone.”

“She didn’t seem to hate Vassily.” I wrap my arms around myself and recall how she rushed over to him and cradled his bloodied face after Anatoly ripped the door open.