Vaslav really needed to follow along with Vera’s conversation if he was going to give her a valid reason to drop all of the nonsense. Even if that meant laying his overheated, overly sensitive body on a cold tiled floor while his wife—who really should be sleeping—eased his pain by barely a notch with her tired hands.
He knew they were tired.
The lack of give and flex in her fingers before she’d stopped, probably stiff by now as the two of them had been at this for a good hour, was proof even if she didn’t complain. The most selfish creature he’d ever known was himself, and yet, the guilt gnawed at him with every sleepless night he dragged out of this beautiful, vibrant woman.
“I was listening,” Vaslav corrected as he squinted through the slits in his eyelids to eye his quietly contemplating wife. “I stopped, no?”
A disapproving tilt of her head answered him back.
Vaslav tried not to let it eat away at his heart too much. Goddammit. Why did she have to be the one who made him feel human?
“Not on purpose,” he added after another few seconds of silence.
It wasn’t a lie, and he wouldn’t have said it otherwise. Locked in pain left him trapped in his mind and thoughts; Vera knew those troubles of his all too well.
Her anger softened only slightly above him. He let out a small breath, and closed his eyes to avoid the strain of seeking out her face in the dimly lit space.
“Let me paint you a picture,” Vaslav started, still keeping his eyes shut.
Vera snorted. “Another one of these, huh?”
“Stop it, there’s only one time I enjoy the sound of your whining.”
He heard the pop when her jaw snapped close.
“Rude,” Vera muttered shortly after.
And yet, not untrue.
“The picture,” Vaslav continued, one of his hands lifting from the floor and waving a circle like he was making an invisible frame before he dropped his arm back down to the tiles with a slap. “Let’s go back to that, yeah? The kid is being watched by certain people to see if he’s usable for them. He’s also a runner for Igor—doing whatever, whenever. I have to be a silent, uninvolved observer or skin is in the game.”
“What about the picture?” Vera asked.
At another time, he’d truly enjoy her sarcasm. This wasn’t one of those.
“The point is that I’m not fucking in it,” Vaslav snapped, scowling. “Isn’t that obvious?”
Vera gave no warning before her weight lifted from Vaslav’s body, and he opened his eyes wide enough just in time to see her heading for the bathroom’s door.
“Where are you going?”
“To bed,” Vera replied without a pause to her steps. “I’ll call the car service we used when my parents were in the city—I’m sure they’ll have something. You’re right, I need to learn to drive.”
Vaslav didn’t move from the floor to stop Vera from leaving other than the slight lift of his hand that reached for her, even if only in a silent demand to wait. Frankly, he didn’t have the strength for more, and it was going to take him a moment to get up, if he really needed to.
“Vera—”
At the door, she turned to look back at him, shrugging. “It’s fine. You rationalize something as ridiculous as Kiril driving from the city to here, but have no issues with me making the drives. Alone, by the way. Like somehow saying you’re retired, changing a tattoo, and a few rumors change anything about who you are or the things you’ve done.”
That made him squint.
“What do you know about the things I’ve done, kisska?”
It was a genuine question.
For a few reasons ...
Vera took the bait, but not the way he expected her to. “Enough to say you know there’s a reason why you don’t want any skin in the game. Your words, not mine.”
Fair.
Reasonable, even.
“The problem you miss—or overlook, rather,” he corrected with an indifferent roll of his shoulders against the floor while his gaze fixated on the vaulted ceiling overhead, “is that it wouldn’t make a difference, my love.” His head fell back to the side, and his gaze landed on her as he smiled sadly.
He could finally finish painting that earlier picture for her even if it would shatter what remained of her rose-colored glasses regarding their marriage and life together. Hell, he thought she had already figured it out by now.
Shame.
“What’s done has already been done—I wrote the past. Nothing, not even me, gets to determine the future that’s yet to be made because of it. You see? Either the process and the oath means something to men who someday might want to find themselves in my position”— retired; a thief out of the game—”or it doesn’t. And either my past and legacy is enough of a warning to make it valuable and important for those men to leave me alone, or it isn’t. But what’s done is done, all the bodyguards in the world won’t make a difference.”
“Are we just sitting ducks?” Vera asked.
“Try not to think of it that way,” he returned easily, the joking tone belying the pain stabbing into the base of his skull, “who does that help, yeah?”
“Vaslav—”
“They’d have to get us together,” he interjected before his wife could concern herself over minor details of a plot that they didn’t even know was afoot. This was why he didn’t like to share his thought process regarding certain things. While he planned for events that may never happen because it was what managed his more obsessive tendencies, others simply worked themselves into a panicked mess.
Good for nothing.
“Which we’ll rarely ever be, and certainly not with enough forethought to let anyone else have the knowledge except in this house and on this property,” he added the impossibility under his breath.
Not quiet enough, apparently.
“So, what, just one of us gets killed or—”
“If it’s me, then it was never meant for you,” Vaslav explained.
“And if it’s me?”
Well ...
“God save them all,” he said.
“I don’t even know what to say to that.”
“I didn’t realize we had that chat for you to respond, honestly.” Vaslav sighed, scrubbing a hand over his mouth and down his throat before finally shoving himself higher into a sitting position. It did nothing for the current weakness in his stomach. A few deep gulps of air helped with the swaying of his shoulders, but little else. “Christ,” he mumbled into his hand. “You’ve got to put that other shit out of your mind—we won’t live scared. What good does that do?”
If she believed him, Vera didn’t say.
“Come to bed,” Vera urged instead. “I’ll help you to sleep.”
Or something close to it.
She always did, that was a certainty he could count on when it really counted. At the moment, a couple of blissful hours of near-sleep with her was a promise he couldn’t refuse. His body ached for her softness back, and the clean sheets that she’d put on their bed earlier in the day teased him from where he sat on the cold, hard floor.
“I know it doesn’t always make sense,” Vaslav said, groaning when he stumbled his way to his feet. His wife, still standing with her arms crossed over her chest in the doorway, remained like a silent statue as she waited for him. Stripped down to nothing but a blue sports bra and matching boyshort panties, she was his every wet dream come true. Wrapped around his finger, happy to be under his thumb, and wickedly willing to follow him anywhere or do anything he asked of her. Yes, she was perfect.