And somehow that had hurt so much, so acutely that it had stolen her breath and stopped her tears.
Strangely, she had found no sympathy with her former guardian. Because there too she had done her research. The man had disowned his daughter, cutting her off both financially and emotionally, for not wanting to marry Nathaniel.
Ella shivered again at the actions of two men hell-bent on destroying each other...and her in the process. And now? All she wanted was to be free. From this, from him. From the memories of her own stupidity.
And worse, the hopes and dreams that had died that day. The ones that she had not realised she’d even had before Roman had conjured them from her like a magician. A childhood yearning for the things she had lost. And then he’d taken them away—the loss as real as if they had been solid things and not just the thin veils of heartfelt fantasies. And no matter how much she might want to erase her marriage to Roman, she knew she’d never be able to erase the mark he’d left on her heart.
And once again, as if a flame had touched the detonating cord of her anger, she was furious. Furious that Roman hadn’t come to the funeral today. Hadn’t bothered even to respond to the lawyers she had sent after him for a simple signature on the divorce papers she had had drawn up almost the moment she had been back in Célia’s little Parisian apartment. So this was how it was to be then. The hunted would become the hunter. Ella embraced her resentment and relished the thought of tracking Roman down. It was he who would soon know the feeling of regret. Because she was no longer the innocent he had claimed her to have been. No. Now she was a force to be reckoned with.
* * *
Roman took a conservative mouthful of ice-cold zubrowka, despite wanting to down the lot in one go. He knew himself well and, loath as he was to admit it, tonight—the day his grandfather went into the cold, hard ground—would be a trigger and he wanted his wits about him. He could feel it crackling in the air about him, as if a finger from the past had pressed against the back of his neck and burned an ice-cool trail down his spine.
As much as he’d wanted to see Vladimir laid to what he hoped would be unrest, a greater part of him didn’t want to see his wife. For somehow throughout the last eight months he had stopped viewing Ella’s fiancé as some separate part of himself and embraced the person chained, legally and bodily, to her as her husband.
Because Roman was unable to forget that kiss. It was, he’d decided, the moment the disguise had evaporated. It hadn’t been Ella’s fiancé who had stolen that impassioned, impulsive moment. No. It had been Roman himself. He’d wanted more. He still wanted more. He was not such a Neanderthal that he put the constant state of his frustration down to the fact he hadn’t spent time in a woman’s bed for nearly ten months now. He knew he could have had his pick ever since leaving Kolikov’s estate. But he hadn’t. It had struck him with a painful irony that some of Ella’s fiancé had rubbed off on him, and all the talk of the sanctity of marriage had somehow bled into him.
And it was that which was most threatening to him. That he had begun to believe his own lies. Begun to meld parts of the fiancé to parts of himself. In truth, it wasn’t just marital faithfulness that had wrapped around his conscience, but some unfathomable desire for something beyond revenge and vengeance. Some unnerving yearning for something he’d long thought himself not only incapable of, but utterly immune to. A craving that scratched at him from the inside, rolled around his chest, one that took effort to beat back down.
In its place he sought the safer familiarity of anger, the need for revenge, but even that had been infected, ruined by the near gut-churning agony of realising that he had never really got his vengeance. Roman’s deathbed promise to his mother had gone unfulfilled and he hated himself for it, whilst hating Vladimir more. But the one overriding question he couldn’t help voicing to himself in the deepest, darkest nights was whether Ella had known. Whether she had been playing him too. He knew it wouldn’t be answered until he looked her in the eye. Which was—as he repeatedly told himself—the only reason he had so far refused to sign the divorce papers her lawyers insisted on peppering him with.
As he took another controlled sip of his drink, in the back office of his nightclub in Moscow, Dorcas shifted by his feet. He’d not been able to rid himself of the beast. She had persistently followed him wherever he’d gone, seemingly not put out by either the noises of his clubs nor the strangely isolated life he’d returned to. And he’d come to enjoy the discomfort of the board members of Kolikov Holdings when they realised Dorcas would be attending his business meetings. It did great work in putting them on the back foot.
She had appeared to mope, somewhat disconcertingly for the first few months, roaming the rooms and halls as if looking for Ella. But she had finally settled into some long-term sulk that was appeased only by food or a good ear rub.
His mind returned to the question of Ella’s involvement in his grandfather’s plans. He appreciated the irony of doubting the truth of her intentions, despite the sheer villainy of his own. But with more than a few months’ distance, the assurance of her innocence had begun to fade. Because surely no one raised by Vladimir Kolikov could have ever been that innocent.
As he scanned the security feeds of the club in his back office, he paused, frowned and returned to the previous screen, his fingers tightening around the small cut-glass tumbler.
Ella Riding. His salvation or damnation, for her to decide.
* * *
She looked up at the waistcoated barman, who appeared oddly like an old-world Victorian with the most improbable handlebar moustache. She’d not known what to expect from Roman’s figurehead bar. Perhaps something a little more...seedy? A den of iniquity? Writhing, scantily clad women whose skin glowed beneath harsh red lighting even.
But certainly not this, with Art Deco stained glass designs across the ceiling and behind the bar, backlit and throwing soft yellows, greens and blues across a space full of dark wooden booths designed for privacy. The lighting somehow made the bar feel out of time—it could have been one in the afternoon rather than the morning, each of the customers seemingly ready to begin their night’s festivities rather than coming to the end of it.
It was, she ruefully acknowledged, beautiful. She ordered a single glass of ice-cold vodka from the barman who, much to her satisfaction, couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her. She had dressed purposefully for her task here. And while she would never usually wear such a thing, the skin-tight scarlet dress, slashed down almost to her waist, was having the desired effect. Because Ella had realised the need for disguise since she had married Roman Black. And now she would wield it as well as he once had.
Konstantin, still proving his complete and utter efficiency, had located Roman at this bar, at this very moment. And while Ella knew that she could ask, or even look, for her husband, another thing she had learned was that it was more important for the prey to come to the hunter. As she once had.
And her husband would come to her. She knew it as well as she knew her own mind. She’d done her research, and she’d planned and prepared this time. No longer would she wait to be used by others. She would be the one in control.
As she took a sip of her vodka, her eyes connected with a man openly staring at her with an invitation that needed no words. He was tall, attractive, but utterly uninteresting to her. Just as she was considering whether it would suit her purpose to appear to entertain such an invitation, the hair at her nape raised and the skin
on her arms pebbled with goose bumps. She felt a bank of heat at her back, the towering presence looming over her from behind and, if that hadn’t been confirmation enough, the look on the other man’s face dropped as his eyes glazed over, having taken in the presence over her shoulder, and he turned away quickly.
Her pulse flickered, and she hated the fact that Roman still held this sensual power over her. But not for long. Tonight she would get him to sign the divorce papers. Tonight she would finally be free.
‘I hope you didn’t wear that to the funeral. Otherwise they’d have been digging at least four more graves for the board members whose heart attacks you would have ensured.’
She silently cursed, having forgotten, or chosen to ignore, the effect his dark tones once had on her. Still refusing to turn, she placed the glass on the table before her and, head held high, steeled herself.
‘From what I hear, that would have done you a favour. Tell me, is all well? Or is there something rotten in the state of Kolikov Holdings?’
‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.’
‘Really? I’m surprised you think you know me well enough to say so.’