Page 114 of Ruthless Rustanovs

“Because my mom’s crazy,” she answered simply. She glanced all around, taking in the small, overstuffed living room and seeing what he must be seeing for the first time. No one outside Sawyer had ever been inside this place, never saw how they lived. Until now. When she’d been given no choice.

But she could see how insane their home must look to an outsider.

With every single wall overflowing with bookshelves.

So many that there was barely any room for regular things like a couch.

Or pictures, much less the kind of sophisticated works of fine art that had graced the walls of their apartment in Berlin.

“This is how it’s always been,” she admitted to him now. “I barely even see the books anymore. You ready?”

She grabbed her purse from the little wooden table.

The one Trevor had made with a felled tree he’d found in the woods.

Her brother may have been mentally disabled, but he’d been a genius when it came to working wood with his hands.

Just like all of Marian’s children, he’d had magical gifts others outside their family couldn’t quite understand.

She hated having Bair here. Looking at Trevor’s shelves and all the wooden furniture he’d left behind. Judging the overstuffed space with those black diamonds he called eyes.

“Is that all you have?” he asked, nodding at her purse.

She hugged it to her chest. “Do I need anything else?”

He answered with one angry swipe of his chin. But then he once again looked around their manic wood fairy-library space and said, “I understand why you were living like dog when I found you if this is where you grew up.”

She bit back a retort. He didn’t understand shit about her, and she could barely stand to have him in her home, judging her and her family.

But he had all the power here, and he was the kind of dude to use it—that much she remembered all too well.

If she tried to push him out of her family home, he’d stay just to spite her.

Fight or fuck, Sirena. That is only choice you will ever have with me.

So she bit her tongue and settled on simply leaving through the front door of the house. Outside she found exactly what she expected to find. A black Bentley waiting on the road with a large man in the front seat.

Dark car. Hulking man. Yes, she’d definitely been found by her beastly husband.

Less than three hours later, they were in another state.

Apparently Bair had a private jet now—one with Rustanov Enterprises scrawled across its side.

That was new. But she barely got a chance to get a good look at it before she was guided into another car.

A limo that pulled away from the small airfield as soon the door closed behind them.

If not for the highway signs, she wouldn’t have even known they were in Santa Fe. She opened her mouth to ask why he’d brought her to New Mexico of all places, but seeing the dark look on his face, decided against saying anything at all.

She’d sat with Bair Rustanov in the backseat of enough cars to know not to talk to him when he was in this kind of mood.

The limo stopped in front of a two-story stucco building painted a deep orange.

But once again, she wasn’t given much time to check the place out.

He hauled her out of the limo, up some pretty tiled stairs, and across the beautiful bamboo floor of what looked like a luxury condo.

Then he practically threw her through the door of a large room.

One hurried glance revealed the room to be a bedroom, with a baby grand piano, a vibrant orange duvet, and a huge bed with a dark wooden frame.

She got on her feet immediately with the insane notion that she wanted to stand when he took her this time. Not docile on the bed like before. She wasn’t that girl anymore, and this time she wanted to meet him head on.

But he only stood there. Nose flaring. Looming over her like the beast he was reported to be in the underground fighting world before his business makeover.

She waited, breathing hard as she watched his fists clench and unclench at his sides.

But he said nothing for what felt like hours on end. And that was when her bitter apprehension turned into something that felt a lot more like worry. For him.

“Why aren’t you…are you okay?” she asked. She reached out to touch one of his clenched fists, just to make sure he was still there, and not in that dark place he used to go when he went too long without—

He jerked away like her touch had burned him.

Then he took one step back and then another, nostrils flaring in and out. Yeah, the old Darkness was riding him, she could tell. And she guessed six years hadn’t been enough time apart, because the urge to reach out to him, to calm him down with a song took hold of her, compelled her forward.

“You want me to sing to you, Beast…?” she asked with a sympathetic tilt of her head. “Is that why you brought me all the way out here—?”

He abruptly turned and left. Leaving her in the huge bedroom with her hand in mid-air and an Annie Lennox song chewing on her chest