ago he’d been her lover, the embodiment of all her fantasies, the sum total of everything she could have never dreamed of. Then one day it was over. He’d said he was traveling on business. Then he’d never contacted her again.
The end had been so sudden she would have believed something terrible had happened to him if she hadn’t read about him in media sources that covered the rich and famous. It had forced her to stop her efforts to contact him after one unanswered try. For only one thing could explain his ending it like that. In their incendiary, if short-lived affair, all the passion and emotion had only been on her side.
Yet everything he’d been doing since the attack contradicted that assumption. None of that was the actions of a man who cared nothing for her, or for Alex, whom he’d cut off as well. Everything he’d told her proved he’d kept close tabs on her. He’d come to their rescue without a moment’s hesitation, and he continued to go to unimaginable lengths to eliminate any further danger to her and her family, and to avenge Alex. He’d been unwaveringly there for her through this ordeal, by her side from the moment he’d rescued her.
It was beyond confusing. But she was also beyond attempting to make sense of it all.
She could do nothing but let him steer the situation as he saw fit. He had all the knowledge, and all the power, while she was demolished, fragile in body and psyche.
She nodded weakly, accepting his vow and admitting her need for his protection, then lowered her aching, trembling body back to a supine position.
“I know you don’t want thanks, Ivan, but you have mine. I’d do anything to repay you.” His growl started to interrupt her but she closed her eyes, aborting his exasperation. Before she let exhaustion drag her into nothingness again, she whispered one last thing. “Let me know when you decide it’s safe to contact our families.”
* * *
Ivan watched Anastasia’s breathing even out until it was the imperceptible movements that had at first sent him berserk, thinking it was a sign of deterioration.
But he’d been finding other things to compromise his sanity—her gemlike azure eyes, which had turned muddy, her peaches-and-cream complexion and even her long, thousand-hues golden hair that had become ashen, and her body, which had lost its lush curves and looked more fragile by the day.
But Antonio had kept assuring him she was getting better, and he’d been by her side day and night making sure she continued to do so, watching for every sliver of improvement.
Now the last words she’d said before she’d slipped back into oblivion reverberated in his head.
Our families.
She’d meant her and Alex’s families: their parents, Alex’s wife and children, and his in-laws, who were like a second family to both of them.
She couldn’t know one of those families was his, too.
Keeping that fact a secret, keeping away from that family, had been one of the two reasons he’d forced himself to walk away from her and Alex years ago. Though he’d told her a lot today, that was one revelation he was keeping to himself. As it was, what he’d revealed of the tragedy had hit her hard enough.
But she’d made him tell her. And soon the need to keep their families in the dark would be over and her family’s grief would only add to hers.
Dealing with the scum responsible for Alex’s murder had been the easy part of this disaster. The hard part—and what kept getting harder—was dealing with everything that concerned Anastasia. His dread for her. His inability to give her her life back, with her body intact and her brother alive. And the expectation that he’d soon have to relinquish her again.
But the hardest thing of all was her very nearness.
When he’d deprived himself of it seven years ago, he’d thought he’d eventually become numb to the loss. It had taken one look into her eyes, in those nightmarish moments when he’d thought he’d been too late to save her, to prove how wrong he had been.
He hadn’t been numb; he’d been shut down completely. It had been the only way to continue functioning. The injury of her loss, what he’d inflicted on himself, agonized and hardened him like none of the ordeals of his hellish past had. And that had been when she’d been alive and well. In the time he’d thought she might die, too, he’d known he wouldn’t survive losing her for real.
But he hadn’t lost her. Antonio had saved her.
At first he’d hidden Alex’s fate from her, and the details of what he’d done, in order to hide his true nature. Anastasia and Alex had known him as Ivan Konstantinov, not Wildcard, The Organization’s lethal mercenary with a body count that neither of them could have thought existed except in fictional tales or real-life stories of monsters.
But she’d insisted on seeing Alex until he had to tell her the truth. Watching her almost disintegrate with grief, he’d been grateful he hadn’t told her she’d only survived because of the liver transplant she’d gotten from Alex.
As it had turned out, he should have told her, not about the transplant, but about the rest. Now that she was privy to everything, she was letting him deal with everything as he saw fit. He should have trusted her then to make the rational decision. After all, the Anastasia he knew never let emotions interfere with pragmatic priorities.
When he’d walked away, she’d only tried to contact him once. When he’d made no response, she’d gone on with her life as if those magical weeks they’d shared hadn’t happened.
At first, instead of being relieved that his desertion hadn’t hurt her, that she’d decided to just move on, he’d hated it, had felt such contrary bitterness that had made him even more ruthless and cynical.
But he’d still been unable to stop watching her and Alex obsessively. And as time had gone by and she’d been too busy with her scientific studies and research career to move on, he’d felt perverse pleasure that she hadn’t replaced him. Even if she had, he still would have helped her. And he had, opening doors for her and Alex that would have remained closed otherwise. Their success had been deserved, but even in the world of science, it wasn’t always merit that saw someone get their dues. He’d seen to it that they did.
It had remained a struggle to keep away even when he’d believed her better off without him. He lived in fear his past would catch up with him and he’d place her and Alex in danger. That had been the main reason he’d walked away.
It was such tragic irony that when fatal danger had targeted her and Alex, it had had nothing to do with him.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Getting it out before the noise could wake her, he read the message he’d been waiting for. Fyodor, his right hand, affirming his latest move had been carried out.
Alex’s murderers had been neutralized.
There was no reason to put off contacting Anastasia’s and Alex’s families anymore.
Not that his reluctance had anything to do with caring what they would suffer once they knew the truth. If not for them being Alex’s family, if it wasn’t for them continuing to impact Anastasia’s life, he wouldn’t have considered them at all.
After all, they were the people who’d sent him to hell.
“Don’t discharge her.”
Ivan blocked Antonio’s path in the deserted corridor, intercepting him on the way to Anastasia’s room.
His best friend’s turbid eyes clashed with his unwaveringly, in their depths things Ivan had never seen before. Not even during their worst days as The Organization’s captives and mercenaries.
Antonio had always been their brotherhood’s most sangfroid member, at times seeming inhuman in his ability to deal with any level