Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 92549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
What was so important?
I needed to find out. And I needed to find out now.
Once I understood what I was dealing with, I could call Gregor, give him the information he needed, and make things right. But not until Marina was under my protection. Not until I knew I could keep her safe. Not until I finally did right by my late wife.
A familiar ache pulsed in my chest at the thought of Veronika.
Not longing. Never that.
It was anger—hot and sharp. Guilt—cold and corrosive.
A tangled mess of things I had no time to sort through.
And now, something else slithered through the mix.
Something new. Something green and dangerous.
I shoved it down, ignoring the feeling as I made my way up the stairs, searching room by room.
The first was an immediate no.
The walls were covered in posters of alt-rock pinup girls and weed leaves. A cloud of stale incense clung to the air, doing a poor job of covering up the underlying scent of marijuana.
Absolutely not Marina’s room.
I moved on.
The next door opened to something different.
Cozy. Lived-in. A space that felt like a home, not just a place to sleep.
Mismatched furniture held small, carefully placed odds and ends. A wooden chair, worn and rickety, had clothing draped over it; warm, stylish, but visibly secondhand. The kind of pieces someone chose for function rather than indulgence.
It wasn’t messy, but it was cluttered.
Shelves lined the walls, filled with trinkets; pretty, delicate, but not overtly girly. Tchotchkes and knickknacks arranged neatly between stacks and stacks of books, each one stamped with a sticker from Open Books, West Loop.
I picked one up, thumbing through the pages until I landed on a dog-eared section.
Explicit.
A sex scene.
Between a young woman and a priest.
What the hell?
This didn’t seem like Marina. Not the girl I remembered.
Doubt crept in. Maybe this was another roommate’s space. Maybe I’d been wrong—
Then I saw it.
A shawl. Dark emerald-green, woven with a traditional pattern.
The first time I met her, she had been wearing it, and the image had burned itself into my mind. Not because it was expensive but because of the way it made her look. The green had brought out the depth of her eyes and made them glow. The fabric had turned her dirty blonde hair into spun gold under the winter light.
I reached for it without thinking, bringing it to my nose.
Her scent wrapped around me instantly.
Not the saccharine floral perfumes Veronika used to favor. This was different.
Deeper. Spicier. Warmer. Vanilla and clove.
It was her.
And it did things to me that it shouldn’t.
Not for a woman so young.
The age gap wasn’t scandalous, six years wasn’t much. In Moscow, it wouldn’t even be talked about.
But she wasn’t just any woman.
She was Veronika’s younger sister.
She was supposed to be forbidden.
The scent of her skin clung to the fabric, laced with something faintly sweet, something intoxicating. I inhaled again, my grip tightening.
How many nights had she wrapped this around herself, seeking warmth? Had she pulled it over her bare legs while curled up in bed? Had she pressed it to her lips in thought, in fear, in longing?
I shouldn’t have wanted to know.
But I did.
A violent, unwanted ache twisted in my gut.
Veronika had never brought feelings like this out in me. Even in our most intimate moments, there had been no heat, no fire, only duty. She had been cold, selfish, a woman who had never belonged to me, barely even in name.
But Marina…
I shut my eyes, jaw clenched, every muscle wound tight with something dark, something dangerous. I had spent years avoiding her, denying myself the pull of her sharp tongue, her defiant green eyes, her quiet strength. And now here I was, standing in her bedroom, holding her shawl in my hands like a man starved.
A man obsessed.
My fingers curled into the fabric. I should put it down.
I didn’t.
She had been running from me for months. Dodging me. Denying me. Hiding from what was inevitable. Because the one reason my marriage had never worked, the one thing I had never admitted, was that every time I looked at Veronika…I wished she were Marina.
Did Veronika know? Had she figured it out? Was that why she pulled away? Or had she simply never cared?
It didn’t matter.
None of it mattered.
Because no matter what I wanted, Marina was not for me.
She could never be for me.
It didn’t matter that she had the face of an angel but a body meant to tempt the devil—one sent to torment me, to haunt my dreams, to taint my every fantasy.
It didn’t matter that every time I had taken a woman to my bed, I had wished it was her.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
But it did.
It was wrong to lust after my sister-in-law.
My marriage to Veronika had never been about love. It was business, a calculated alliance. Still, I had told myself I would make it work. That I would try.