16. Becca

16

BECCA

I couldn’t bear the look in Ivan’s eyes. He was so tense, but I couldn’t pinpoint why.

At first, I wondered if he could’ve been upset that I trespassed into his room and dared to stand there in his privacy while he finished his shower. I’d been too stunned to move then, tantalized by his naked form.

Then once I shared that recorded call with him, I worried that he would react in anger near Emily. I hadn’t felt danger around Ivan since I’d come here, but he had been so upset, so riled up at the sound of Steven’s voice that I couldn’t help but want to cringe.

Now, as I elaborated about how Dominic had used me, he looked furious. Ferally angry.

I warred between two options. Shut up and go to bed or try to explain further. I wasn’t hiding anything else, but something in the way he stared at me suggested that he thought I was still untrustworthy.

Even after I’d shared that call with him. If that couldn’t be the biggest sign of surrendering to him and his plans, I wasn’t sure what else I could do.

“I thought you said you had no connection with Dominic.”

I swallowed, rubbing my hand down Emily’s back both to soothe her and seek my own comfort from her.

“I don’t. He sent me packing after he raped me.”

“You share a child with him.”

I refused to flinch at his hard tone. “I don’t share her with him. He doesn’t even know she exists.”

He arched one brow. “Are you sure about that?”

I nodded, but that gesture now felt like a lie. So many things convinced me that Steven was the one trying to use Emily to get to me, but I felt certain that Dominic didn’t know about Emily. Nor that he would care.

Unless he wanted to use Emily as a way to get to Steven? I dismissed that thought. That would only work if Steven cared about her, and he didn’t. He didn’t care about me, either.

It was such a sad mess. And I was supposed to call it my life.

“I was no one to Dom,” I insisted, knowing that Ivan wouldn’t leave any of this alone. He wanted to know the full story, and I wouldn’t accomplish anything by not sharing since I was already in this deep.

“Except a way to keep tabs on Murphy.”

I nodded. “That was the only value he saw in stringing me along. And he did. That was all Dom did from the first moment I spoke with him. He saw me as someone to use for a bigger purpose, and because he was so charming and involved in the art world, I was the ideal idiot to fall for everything he said or suggested.”

I hated to revisit the gullible moments I would never be able to take back. All those times when I was a na?ve, stupid woman with tunnel vision on my goal of becoming a successful artist one day.

“Dom blindsided me the night I said I wanted to leave, that night I overheard him arguing with Steven. But all along, during those several months when he tried to con me into thinking and believing that he’d be the person to nudge me into recognition as an artist anywhere, he’d been manipulating me. Lying. Teasing. He’d led me to think my passion wasn’t silly, but I had a chance of being a real career artist. It was how he twisted my mind, playing with my heart.”

He tilted his head to the side. “You loved him?”

“Never. Not even close. But I loved my art. And he’d hit me and tricked me where it hurt most.”

All that mental warfare stung with an agonizing depth that I doubted anyone could understand, much less sympathize with. Least of all, Ivan.

He watched me, stoic and cool with his expression, and I felt desperate to know what he was thinking. During these weeks as his hostage, as a guest at this fancy house, he’d come to matter. I didn’t see him all the time. It wasn’t a nonstop companionship or control. I’d begun to wonder if he was trying to maintain his distance from a woman and her baby until that evening I cut my hand. I couldn’t make sense of what was happening between me and Ivan, but it didn’t feel like a hostage situation.

It felt like something that could deepen, especially with my offer of trust when I recorded that call for him.

I wanted to be delusional and think we could be… friends.

His icy demeanor with this tale of my darkest moment had me thinking that was a foolish wish.

Ivan was a hard man. I saw it in his scarred body used to brutality, both delivered by his hands and whoever had inflicted all those scars on him.

He could be aloof, remaining in charge no matter what and always calling the shots as the superior in any troublesome situation.

As I glanced at him again, I wanted to believe that he looked so stony and mad because he was upset for me, not at me. But having to wonder about that should have explained that I had no business wanting him at all.

I knew Ivan was a rough man. He’d played with me so expertly. He’d taken me so roughly and quickly that I should’ve been stuck in this déjà vu sensation of being raped again. He hadn’t sought my verbal consent, but he hadn’t raped me. I’d been so aroused and confused. I wanted him, and after I’d calmed from the rush of that orgasm I still hadn’t forgotten from weeks ago, I understood how much I preferred his kind of blunt and harsh treatment. I preferred the way he didn’t lie and try to use psychological warfare against me.

“He tricked me,” I repeated, needing him to understand that fact.

I hadn’t been a willing participant in any of this danger. I never once volunteered for these cards to be dealt to me.

And just the same, I felt confident about Ivan, no matter how much I was coming to yearn for his touch.

He’d made himself clear, painfully so. From that first time he saw me at that sex club, he’d been honest. I served him a purpose, as bait, and that was the only reason he wanted me around. I was nothing but a piece to move around in this war.

I wasn’t a woman he’d want or lust for.

Sometimes, the truth hurt as bad as the lies. It was at this moment that I realized how badly my craving for him and his touch had become.

I sighed, catching him eyeing Emily. Every time I saw her in his arms, he disarmed me that much more. When he picked her up and calmed her down, so unerringly good at that, he proved his patience for her, his regard for her comfort.

Those moments felt like lies. Like contradictions when he seemed like daddy material, tender and sweet, while at the same time I recognized him for who he really was—a violent criminal, a Mafia man.

“She’s a Rossini,” he said. It sounded not like a question but a statement. A reiteration of what I’d painfully explained.

“Yes.” I narrowed my eyes, wondering if he was doubting me. “I didn’t—I don’t—sleep around. There wasn’t anyone else, and the timing of her conception matched when I tested positive.”

He lifted his hand, almost seeming annoyed as he cut me off. “I wasn’t implying anything else.”

“Hard not to think that with the way you’re reacting.” I huffed.

“Emily is the daughter of the Valkovs’ enemy,” he added, as though he had to spell it out for me.

“And I’m the daughter of the crooked cop you want to kill, another enemy,” I bit back.

He stood, regarding Emily as she slept against my chest. Still, I swayed in place, not wanting to rouse her to fuss while I railed against the pain in my heart.

“You are.” He looked me up and down. “And I won’t forget it.”

Without giving me a chance to reply, he turned and left me in the room with my sleeping daughter. His parting glance sickened me.

He’d looked at Emily with something like disdain, like he viewed her as a bastard child, not an innocent baby who was getting good at capturing his attention.

Even worse was his regard for me—a tight smirk as though he wouldn’t be deterred from squeezing out every drop of usefulness out of me, the daughter of his nemesis he was determined to kill.

He shut the door after himself, and the soft close sounded so final, so judgmental. After sharing my hardest story with him, all he wanted to do was shut me out. And I hated how badly it hurt.