‘I have what you value most in this world. I wouldn’t say love, because clearly you are not capable of such a thing. Or perhaps that is reserved only for your company. Either way, now you must choose. You can hand over control and ownership of Kolikov Holdings and I will let her go. The marriage will be annulled. Or—’ Roman paused, as if ensuring he had the man’s complete attention ‘—I will leave Ella Riding ruined and destitute, just like my mother was.’
Ella’s legs buckled as she pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle the moan that threatened to escape her lips. It had all been lies? Every touch, every kiss, every word... Her heart severed from its moorings, cut through with a knife so sharp she felt flayed. Her husband was threatening to ruin her. The man she had fallen in love with, the man she had naively entrusted her future to. Bile rose in the back of her throat as she see-sawed between feeling devastating betrayal and hoping against hope that her guardian would come to her rescue. Would somehow defeat the beast that she had unwittingly married.
Later she would wonder whether she should have gone, fled the estate then. But if she had she would never have known. Never have realised the true depths of the two men who had been supposed to love her the most, but had revealed themselves to have betrayed her in the greatest of ways.
* * *
Roman stood before his foe, using the old man’s silence to take in the changes in his grandfather over the last eighteen years. He searched Vladimir’s face, hating the strange similarities between him and his mother. Between Vladimir and himself.
An almost dizzying sense of satisfaction roared through him as he finally held Vladimir in the palm of his hand. And the urge to squeeze, to destroy, to remove the man from the face of this earth was overwhelming. Until Vladimir laughed.
‘So cocky. So arrogant. And so convinced that you have everything you want. But you are wrong. All these years I knew that you would want your revenge. I saw it in your eyes that day. And if you hadn’t been the bastard son of my disowned daughter I might have even respected you for it, recognised you as part of my own flesh and blood.’
Roman worked hard to keep his face impassive. Unease stirred in his breast for the first time as he began to feel the steel traps close around him—but, like all prey, still vainly hoping that he was wrong.
‘Did you know that your mother was to be married to Nathaniel Riding? That all I ever wanted was to secure our business partnership with an unbreakable bond of family? When instead she chose that carpenter it nearly destroyed the business, ruining everything that I had worked for years to achieve. Nathaniel soon got over the disappointment, but I did not. Imagine—my own daughter being my near undoing. So when I realised what a beautiful creature Ella would become, I knew that I had the perfect bait...for you. The innocent, naïve young woman who would tempt you into playing your hand. And I safeguarded that innocence. That naivety. Giving her everything she would need to be the perfect focus of your attention. All I ever wanted was the joining of the two families. Mine and the Ridings’. And you have delivered it to me on a plate.
‘You want the company? It’s all yours. After all, you’ve achieved what I could never have done. You have proved the lengths you will go to, the very depths, and that is what makes you worthy. Finally, I see myself in you. That is why you deserve it.’
The rattling cackle that left the old man’s lips nearly destroyed him. Everything he’d ever wanted disappeared in a heartbeat—vengeance turned to ash on his tongue as Roman realised that all this time, all these years he’d thought himself better, quicker, smarter, and he’d done everything Vladimir had expected of him and more.
Roman felt a helpless fury ricochet through his body, every nerve, every cell vibrating with the power of it. Refusing to give the bastard the satisfaction of seeing it, Roman stalked from the room, the sound of laughter chasing at his heels.
He slammed the door behind him and turned, coming face to face with his bride. A bride who had clearly overheard every word.
* * *
Ella had stayed for one reason and one reason only. The vain hope that when she looked into her husband’s eyes she would see some kind of explanation. Some kind of reason or justification for taking the threads of her life and pulling them apart. Over the course of the conversation she had put together enough meaning, enough understanding of the need for vengeance, and the horrifying game the two men had played over the years. But still—beating deep within her—was the hope that in spite of it all there was some trace of the man she had married. Yet in his eyes she saw nothing but anger and hatred, resentment and fury. Those emotions suddenly detonated within her, forging her own rage in a flame burst that threatened to consume her.
She slapped him. Hard and fast across his cheek, before stumbling half-blindly past Dorcas, who seemed torn between her master and her new mistress, past Konstantin, whose longstanding self-containment seemed sorely tested, and into the back of the limousine.
When the driver asked her where to, all she could reply was Paris. After a beat, the man put the car into gear and whisked her away, saying nothing to the command to cross several countries in the middle of the night.
As the estate grew small in the distance Ella vowed that she would never let herself be so cruelly used by these two men ever again. She would not let this destroy her. She would find a way. A way to cut them from her life, a way to secure her own freedom. And she would never, ever believe in fairy tales ever again.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was wrong of the wolf to have underestimated Little Red Riding Hood. An oversight on his part and one that would change everything he thought he knew.
The Truth About Little Red Riding Hood
—Roz Fayrer
IT HAD BEEN eight months since Ella had set foot in Russia and though it felt as if everything in her life had changed, the landscape around her hadn’t. She stood in the gardens of Vladimir’s estate in Rublevka on the outskirts of Moscow, nestled amongst the houses of various celebrities and the Russian elite. Snow lay thickly on the ground even this far into March, covering the sprawling garden in a strange white blanket, but her waterproof knee-high boots prevented the frigid dampness from reaching her. All the lights were on in the grand neoclassical building behind her, casting a false warmth on the bleak horizon. But only she and one other remained. Konstantin would stay on for another month, closing down Vladimir’s vast and deeply secretive estate, his pension well accounted for in the terms of Kolikov’s will.
Her guardian’s life goal of uniting the two families locked within his once vast empire complete, Vladimir had finally succumbed to pneumonia and passed away seven days before. And she didn’t know how to feel. How to feel about a man who had used her as bait, but had also protected and nurtured her, allowed her certain freedoms and withheld others. While there had been legal conversations conveyed through her and Vladimir’s lawyers the moment she’d realised that her marriage had triggered her trust fund, only one phone call had actually passed between them.
She had expected explanations or apologies, but she’d been mistaken. Again. She had felt so horribly mistaken about everything. As if every single aspect
of her life had been a lie. But Vladimir’s assurance during that last conversation that he had protected her interests, her trust fund and her future with Kolikov Holdings hadn’t been a lie. Because while he had made good on his word to hand over control and ownership of the company he and her father had set up more than thirty years ago to Roman, Vladimir had had one last card to play. He had given her ten per cent of his shares—bringing the total, inclusive of the ones she had gained upon access to her trust fund, to twenty-five, automatically making her a shareholder on the board. Automatically handing her a voice, a bargaining chip, against the man she’d once thought of as her husband.
A man who hadn’t even bothered turning up to Vladimir’s funeral. Throughout the entire service her body had been on fire with nervous energy, drenched in ice-cold sweat one second and ferocious heat the next, hatred and disgust turning nauseous sweeps in her stomach. For every single minute of it, her concentration had been fractured with the expectation that Roman would appear, as if summoned by a call that even he couldn’t refuse. But refuse he had. And she hadn’t been the only one surprised by Roman’s absence.
Various business associates Ella remembered from her childhood had come, seemingly not to pay their dubious respects to a man who had ruled with an iron fist, but instead wanting to see the fabled prodigal grandson return, each wanting to know what her husband’s plans were for the company.
Ever since Célia had discovered Ella sobbing over a laptop open to a search about her husband—something she’d had neither the thought nor inclination to do during their time in France—she’d determinedly avoided any and all thoughts about Roman, Vladimir and that damned business. Célia’s reassurances that Ella had been both too busy and too worried about her grandmother did nothing to protect her from her own self-disgust at the shocking naivety with which she’d met and married a stranger.
A stranger who was reportedly not only uniquely ruthless in business—a fact she now well knew—but also thoroughly disreputable between the sheets. At first she had been shocked by the contrast of the almost idyllically respectful man she had married—the one who had wanted to preserve her innocence—and the notorious playboy he was proclaimed by the world’s press. It was then that she realised the true extent of his deception. That he really had only wanted one thing from her. Access to Vladimir.