Page 27 of The Brutal Arrangement (The Ivanov Syndicate #2)

DAMON

T he wrong bride?

Lucy wasn’t the wrong bride for me. Over these past few weeks, she was proving how perfect she was, sweet and submissive, eager to please while also not shying away from my brutal darkness.

“Why is this the first we’ve heard about this?” I asked, keeping my tone cool and neutral about this situation. “My brothers have looked you up. They’ve run a background check.”

She shrugged again, sighing so heavily like this was taking a toll on her soul.

“I wasn’t in any position to tell you about her.

My mother is all I have left. She’s my only family, my only anything.

Funding her care is literally the only priority and goal I have.

It’s been my reason to exist and work so hard.

Katerina used her as leverage with me already.

Don’t be so shocked that I don’t want someone else to use my mother as leverage against me again. ”

Brave enough to speak so hotly like that, she almost impressed me.

And I couldn’t blame her for her reasoning.

It was one of the things my brothers and I spoke about before—that having a spouse or any other people we cared for would make them collateral damage or targets.

Katerina had used Lucy’s mother against her, so, yes, she was wary about letting anyone else know about the connection.

I really couldn’t fault her for that defensiveness, and no, I hadn’t outright asked her about her family to have uncovered this myself.

Because I hadn’t asked her anything.

I’d just wanted to indulge myself with how good her pussy was.

Fuck. What if this is all true?

I didn’t want to doubt her for the hell of it.

And it wasn’t as though I hadn’t already considered this angle.

I told my brother and grandmother that I bet Lucy had gone along with this bride swap for this arrangement for one of two reasons.

If Anton or Katerina or any other Kozlov hadn’t threatened her and scared her into going through with this, then someone had to have bribed her.

I now knew which it was. Since seeing how docile and mild-mannered Lucy seemed to be, so quick to submit to me sexually, it made more sense.

Of course, she’d be good-hearted to do anything she could for her mother.

I knew exactly what that was like, albeit in a different way.

I would do anything for my father, my brothers, my grandmother.

For my family, nothing was too much of a sacrifice.

I just hadn’t figured that was what Lucy was doing too.

But is this true?

I didn’t want to take her word for any of this. I heard her, and I couldn’t forget what she had said.

“You told the person on the other line that you’d look into something. Then report it to them.”

She rolled her eyes, but even that gesture was a tired one.

“Yes. You heard correctly. I told the director of the nursing home that I would look into why my mom’s bills hadn’t been handled.

That’s what normal people say. Obviously, I’m limited in doing that.

It’s not like I can just call Katerina and ask why she didn’t hold up her end of our deal. ”

“Why not?”

She frowned. “What?” It wasn’t like she was trying to be sassy. She merely looked exhausted, exasperated and not handling this emotional upheaval well.

“Why can’t you call her up and ask her?”

Narrowing her eyes at me, she seemed to debate whether I was joking. “Because… you’ve made it clear the Kozlovs are the enemy and if I try any funny business, it’s my life on the line. I’m not that stupid.”

“Then what were you going to do? Just wait for her to contact you and say okay, try to divorce him now?”

She hung her head and shook it slightly.

“I don’t know, Damon. I have no clue about any of this anymore.

I thought I was making the best choice I could at the moment, a free clearance of my mother’s debts and care.

I was wrong. I have…” She stood, not looking at me.

“I have no clue what to think about anything anymore.”

Goddammit.

I wasn’t a fan of this defeatist tone she was using. I hated it. While I had a lot to learn about this woman, I was decidedly against her sounding so… down. So broken, like she’d rather just give up.

“May I go to the bathroom? I want to take a bath and try to manage this headache.” She barely glanced up at me now, proving how little energy she had anymore.

“You’re dismissed.” It seemed like an idiotic thing to tell her, but I wasn’t going to get much out of her when she was so dejected.

Pulling answers out of broken people wasn’t that hard, not for me.

I was a master at torture, and most people couldn’t handle much pain before they cried and spilled all their secrets.

But mental pain? Anguish? When a person went numb and lacked the willpower to fight, it was over. Nothing could crack through that wall.

There was too much to explore, but not now. I’d follow up on every little thing she might be able to tell me about Katerina or Anton. She might have noticed something that didn’t seem like a big deal to her but could be a crucial clue for us to tuck away for later use.

I’d be asking her more, but she was too closed off at the moment.

After she left the room, I stood right where I was for several more minutes. Ruminating over all that she’d said—and hadn’t said—I was stuck in place to reflect on this woman I called my wife.

Deep down, I knew she was telling the truth. She was honest with the part about her mother, at least. I wanted to feel confident that she wasn’t lying about that, but I didn’t like not knowing all the details.

I sighed and left the room to seek out the proper men who’d be able to assist me with this matter.

Not bothering to find a shirt, the better to give Lucy the illusion of privacy, I headed up to Maxim’s floor.

He wasn’t there, off buying things with Sloane for their nursery, so I changed my route and went to the floor where most of the surveillance crew had their operations.

John was there, a coincidence, really. I checked with him about Nik and received the same old reply that he wasn’t revealing where he was yet.

“I need you to look into something else for me,” I said.

Telling him about Lucy’s claims didn’t feel like I was betraying her trust. She sat on telling me at all, so I didn’t let myself think I was doing anything wrong by sharing her secret motivation.

“Do you have a name?” he asked as he took in all the information.

“It should be on Lucy’s birth certificate,” I replied.

I didn’t want to make the hunt for answers any harder for him, but he wouldn’t struggle getting through the databases to verify what she had told me.

I also told him to check with the man in charge of supervising her cell phone use.

That soldier would be able to direct him to the number she’d called about the outstanding nursing home debt.

“And she claims that Katerina paid into these accounts?” John asked, brows raised. “Because if she did, I bet she’s using something that’s covered up.” He shrugged. “I’m just pointing out that this might give us some details about more Kozlov finances in a way we haven’t been able to before.”

“Whatever helps.”

With him delegated to look into what Lucy told me about her mother and confirm her story, I left and knew this would weigh on my mind until I heard back from him.

The longer I fell into the pattern of getting my wife to submit to me sexually, the more I seriously doubted she’d have much intel to give me.

Anton wouldn’t tell a mere maid all his secrets.

And if Lucy was as quiet and meek as a maid as she was as my wife, then she would’ve been prone to staying out of the way and going unnoticed rather than calling attention to herself.

She still might have seen something. She could’ve overheard something.

On my way back up to my apartment, I slowed down at Saul coming the opposite way down the hall.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I smirked, annoyed that I was clearly wearing my expressions like this. I didn’t need the third degree from him, not now. But when he furrowed his brow and seemed more concerned than anything else, I knew he was only acting out of love to ask me that. He wasn’t pestering.

“Lucy told me why she agreed to marry me,” I said.

He motioned for me to walk with him. “That sounds like a development.”

I nodded, joining him as we strolled toward the back of the house.

I filled him in on what she’d told me, leaving nothing out.

He wasn’t surprised that she had gone along with this plan for the sake of her mother, someone she clearly cared about greatly.

While he listened, he didn’t interrupt with more questions and throw me off track.

Once I’d told him all of it, including that I’d asked John to confirm all that she’d told me, the man himself came looking for us on the back screened-in patio.

“That was fast,” Saul quipped.

John nodded. “It wasn’t hard to find at all.” He took a seat under my prompting and reported what he’d found.

“Bethany Garrent, her maiden name, has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. She’s been in a nursing home for years now, and all the financial agreements and contracts have all been signed by Lucy. She’s made payments when she can, it seems, until about a month ago.”

“No one’s paid anything since she came here?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. Nothing paid into anything. Now here’s what’s interesting. I tracked back on the banking systems and one deposit was attempted. It came from a different source but wasn’t approved after it was placed. It seems like that was Katerina’s attempt to pay the bills.”

I glanced at Saul, who also had his brows raised, like I did.

Hmm.

John wasn’t done. “I asked around with neutral parties who sometimes tell us things from the Kozlov end. It seems that Anton has no clue what Katerina was doing. It looks like he wasn’t aware of her asking Lucy to come here, or that she was making payments.

This stop on the payment seemed like an automatic redaction. ”

“So Anton thinks that Katerina is here?” Saul asked.

John shrugged. “According to what I’ve heard, Anton’s been in Greece since the day of the wedding.”

“Wait.” I furrowed my brow, doing the math. “He thinks he just sent Katerina here and then left?”

John nodded. “It appears that way. Maybe he figured business was settled and he’d be out of town while any drama followed.”

“That wouldn’t make sense if he wanted Katerina to come here as a spy,” Saul said.

“Maybe, maybe not,” I replied. “He could be playing a long game and waiting.”

We wrapped up the conversation with more details about other facilities Bethany could be moved to. That state-run place looked terrible, not anywhere I’d want one of my loved ones to be.

Then again, Lucy wasn’t my loved one. She was my wife, but I refused to give too much attention to how much deeper I was coming to care for her. How much more I wanted to open myself up to caring for her outside of the bedroom.

I wasn’t familiar with letting my emotions seep in like this.

I couldn’t let my emotions, especially vulnerable ones like love, control me.

All my life, I’d gotten used to shutting my emotions down—both good ones and bad ones.

My mother’s betrayal messed me up something fierce, and it wasn’t difficult to see how I might have developed a fear of being happy in case I’d lose the source of that happiness.

Relying on this mask was how I could be so angry like a demon or a beast in the torture rooms. When I refrained from letting myself feel too much, I could be the cold killer my family needed me to be for the security of the Ivanov name.

But it was also the means by which I could be oblivious to the process of letting love in.

Of opening myself up to learn my wife and how much better she could improve my life.