Page 113 of Ruthless Rustanovs

HE could hear her singing as soon as he stepped out of the car. A dark Bentley that looked out of place in front of her mother’s humble house.

That threw him off from the start. He hadn’t expected to find her singing, and without conscious thought, instead of going to the front door, he followed the sound of her voice around the red brick house. Once again a sailor led astray.

Behind the house, he discovered an unexpectedly pastoral scene: a colonial mansion on a hill, looking down on a small river. On the north side of the river a picnic reception was taking place, with several people, including a black bride and a white groom dancing beneath a willow tree.

Dancing to the song Sirena was singing with a band at her back.

The sight of her propelled him forward. He stormed through the dead field. Over the little footbridge. Until he came to a stop at the edge of the reception.

By the time he got there, Sirena had stopped singing. She stared at him openly on the other side of the sea of blankets, as if she were trying to figure out if he were real or nightmare.

Both, he answered silently with a dead-eyed stare as he took in all the changes six years had wrought.

Her hair was much shorter now. Her curls, which she’d kept slicked back into a bun at his behest, now flew freely. A brown storm that stopped just below her ears with a flower tucked into the mess that did absolutely nothing to hold it back.

She wore a shimmering gold dress, one that clung to her generous hips and matched her champagne colored eyes. However, the dress’s bodice also accentuated an asset she hadn’t had before. A large set of breasts.

His nose flared, incited beyond all reason by the sight of them. Not just because he knew another man must have bought them for her, but because it had been the one gift he’d refused her when she’d been his pet.

She’d asked him for the surgery as a Christmas gift during the second year of their arrangement, but he’d insisted she keep her breasts exactly as they were. Small handfuls he liked to suck and/or manipulate with his large hands as he fucked her.

But now here she stood in open defiance of what he’d specifically told her she could not do.

“Who’s that?” a child’s voice said inside the space separating him from Sirena.

“That’s Mr. Rustanov, dear, Thel’s husband…” another voice answered the boy. “He’s been looking all over for her. And now he’s finally found her.”

Yes, he’d found her, Bair thought to himself, his heart a stone inside his chest as he drank in the sight of his long missing wife. The horrified expression on her face enraged him beyond all reason. Made him want to punish her even more than what he already had planned.

For moments on end they stood there. Completely frozen in anger and time. But then Sirena suddenly re-animated, running toward him across the picnic blankets with her arms braced in front of her.

Like he was a truck and she was the only thing standing between him and the crowd.

“Why are you here?” she demanded harshly. “What do you want?”

“You have to ask?” He sneered down at her and then his eyes flickered over her shoulder to the people behind her.

The tall, dark-skinned bride he’d been told was her half-sister, but who looked nothing like her, continued to stare wide-eyed at him.

Her groom’s eyes were also on Bair, but he looked as if he were trying to decide whether to get his wife out of harm’s way or go get a gun.

Former armed forces. Bair would have known that even if it hadn’t been in the investigator’s initial report.

The only two people at the reception who weren’t looking at him like some kind of wild animal had just entered the midst were the owl-like black lady, and the little toasted brown boy sitting beside her.

In fact they both smiled up at him as if they thought he’d been sent here to provide further wedding entertainment.

Her mother and Sirena’s nephew, Bair discerned.

Two more members of the family she’d kept secret from him.

He’d found her living like a dog in Greece, but she had a family. One that obviously loved her. And she’d kept their existence hidden from him the entire five years they’d been together.

Fuck this bitch, he thought, the Darkness rising inside him. Fuck this cunt. This user of men.

“Bair,” he heard her say somewhere in the distance of his rage, voice as quiet as she could make it. “If I come with you now, will you leave my family out of this? Pretend like you never saw them?”

His eyes flickered from them back down to her. “You are in no position to bargain with me,” he snarled.

“You’re right, I’m not,” she admitted, meeting his ruthless gaze with a pleading one of her own. “But I’m asking. I’m begging. Please.”

He’d always liked when she begged him. Begged him to let her finish. Begged him to stop. But this…this desperate woman standing in front of him. Pleading for her family’s lives. He hated this. Hated her.

“You are ready to come now?” he asked.

Her shoulders sagged with relief. “Yeah. At least I can be. I just need ten minutes to get my things together.”

“Then come,” he said.

“Okay, okay, just let me…” She pasted on a relaxed smile and turned to face the wedding crowd.

“Sorry about this everybody,” she said, her voice suddenly full of good humor. “Obviously Mr. Rustanov and I have a lot of catching up to do. But ya’ll keep on with the party. The band’s still here, the sun’s setting, and you know there ain’t nothing better than dancing under a moon!”

She’d been so tremulous just a few moments before, but she exuded good ease now. It was all an act, he realized then. The laughing girl he’d met in the Greek basement, a facade she put on like any other when she took the stage.

He stared down at her. Not understanding. How could he have not seen through it before? How had he let her wreck his entire life before he understood who, no…what she really was?

He turned and walked back toward the house. He didn’t trust himself to touch her in that moment, but he knew she’d follow as he crossed back over the bridge. Follow or else.

“Thel! Thel!” a plaintive voice called from behind her, as she turned to follow Bair across the foot bridge.

Thel didn’t answer. Tried to pretend like she couldn’t hear Willa calling after her as she walked away from her beautiful family to follow Bair into what she knew would be an ugly punishment.

But Willa, bless her brave heart, wouldn’t be put off. Her sister caught up with her on the other side of the bridge, and grabbed her arm.

“Thel! Thel! What are you doing?”

“It’s okay,” Thel assured her.

“No, it isn’t. Who is that guy? Is he really your husband like Mama said?

Is he the reason the SoCal Opera rescinded your invitation to join their program?

Is he…?” Willa glanced at the man now walking across their grandfather’s field and lowered her voice.

“Is he who you were running away from in Germany? Because if he is—”

Nothing, Thel thought miserably. There was nothing she or her sister could do about it. Not now that he’d found her.

“It’s okay,” she lied to Willa nonetheless. “I’m okay. I’m just going to go talk to him for a bit.”

“Really? You’re just going to talk to him?” Willa countered, her eyes wide with disbelief. “Because that guy is a total beast. I’m half afraid he’s going to eat you up!”

Thel let out a weak chuckle. Wow, less than a minute of knowing Bair and her sister had inadvertently landed on his nickname. She glanced at his retreating back, remembering how scared everyone used to be of him. Everyone but her.

“He’s not going to…” Thel couldn’t quite bring herself to lie that baldly. So instead she tried to tug her arm out of her sister’s death grip. “It’s going to be all right. Just let me go, Willa. Remember what Mama said about me. I’ll be fine.”

But Willa kept holding on to her, a world of hurt in her eyes. “No, Thel, please don’t run away again. I can’t lose you. Please.”

Oh, God. She’d put her sister through so much over the last decade plus. First disappearing on her after their brother’s death. And then the cancer. And now this.

She gently took Willa by the arms. “I’m not running away, I promise you. But I have to go with him,” she told her younger sister. “I’ll text you tonight. As soon as I’m settled, okay?”

Not okay, she knew from the look on her sister’s face. But Thel turned and walked away from her sister anyway. She loved Willa, but nothing—not even her sister’s hurt feelings—was worth letting Bair into this part of her life.

She had to go with him back into his life. Or else he’d invade hers.

Still, Thel could feel her sister’s forlorn gaze on her as she ran to catch up with her estranged husband.

“Willa. She is the ‘W’ from your diary,” he asked when she fell into step beside him. As if he were finally putting something important together.

She blinked up at him. “You read my diary?”

“Da,” he answered, voice as cold as a Berlin winter. “What do you think I would do after you disappeared and left everything behind? Of course I read it. I read many times how you truly felt about me.”

Her heart twisted as they arrived at her back door. Torn between guilt and defiance. On one hand, she’d never meant for him to see what she’d written there. On the other, hadn’t he driven her to every one of those feelings with his controlling ways?

“Okay, well, I have to go inside and grab my purse,” she told him, setting her confusing emotions aside. “You can wait out here if you want.”

Apparently he didn’t want. He followed her into the house, filling up their small front room like a Minotaur. Inside, he took in the space with one dark sweep of his coal black eyes.

“What is this place?” he asked her, nostrils flaring on the question. “Why do you have so many books?”