“I don’t need you to take care of me.”
Silence.
“I need you by my side.”
“For how long?” she spat. “Until you get tired and need another?”
I took a step towards her.
She took three steps backwards. “Don’t come close to me. I need you to let me go, right now. Before it’s too late.”
“Before it’s too late for whom?”
“I’ve never assumed or expected love in my life, because even the people who should be biologically programmed to give that to me, couldn’t. I’m not asking you for anything, just let me go, okay?”
“Will you able to leave?” I asked her. “And forget everything about me? About us?”
“Time and my brain. They’ve allowed me to survive my fate thus far. I’ll keep leaning on them.” She started to leave.
I stopped her before she could get past the door. “Come with me to my Chateau in France. Both you and Yulia. I don’t have the confidence to love you. In my world, a billion things are always on the edge of going wrong. Having you in my heart will drive me insane, but my body needs you now, and I just can’t let you go. Not yet.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and made a quick call in Russian. In seconds, two hefty guards appeared at her door.
She gazed at them in disbelief.
“We will return from the chateau in a week. After that, you’re free to do whatever you want.”
“Are you imprisoning me?” she asked in disbelief.
“I’m making a decision for the both of us. Let’s fuck each other out of our systems before the week is over. This madness has to burn itself out. It can’t last. Nothing that burns this bright can last.”
She snorted in bitter amusement. “Do you actually believe that it will work?”
“It doesn’t matter if it does or not. We will be done with each other when we return from France. Not a day earlier. We’ll leave tomorrow night.”
Chapter 37
April
I awoke to the sound of Yulia’s laughter.
It was filled with such joy that it pulled me out of bed.
My feet landed on the floor, as the events of the previous night came to me. From the incredible fiasco with my mother and to my conversation with Yuri thereafter, it all felt unreal. It was as if I was peering through a looking glass at someone else’s life.
Pulling on a pair of jeans, I headed over to the window where the sound was coming from. She was indeed having a swell time, but with someone I didn’t recognize.
He had a sparse head of thinning white hair and was pushing her on the swings, as high as she could possibly go. It made me nervous, so I hurried downstairs and out to the garden behind the house.
She squealed even louder when she saw me, and urged for the swing to come to a stop, so she could come over to give me a hug. Runnng over to me she grabbed my hand and looked up into my eyes.
I brushed her hair away from her face. She was still in her nightwear. “You haven’t had a bath.” I pinched lightly at her nose. “I must have overslept.”
She looked slightly guilty.
I figured she must have come to my room, saw me still asleep, and tiptoed back out. I smiled at the lovely child and lifted my head to the stranger she seemed so comfortable with.
“I’m Ivan Volkov,” he said, his eyes a chilling blue just like Yuri’s despite the wide smile on his face. “You must be the new nanny that my niece is so in love with.”
I blushed with pleasure and accepted the hand he offered. I wondered if he could be one of Yuri’s older brothers, but the lines around his eyes and the grey at his temples aged him too much for that. He seemed to be in his late sixties.
“I’m her grand uncle,” he explained.
I nodded. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“I’ve been away in the US handling the family business, so I haven’t been able to see Yulia for almost two months. I’ve missed her so much.”
The smile that Yulia flashed up at him was open and trusting. A marked contrast to the way she treated Yuri.
“Will she be able to have breakfast with me before I have to leave?”
“There is absolutely no reason why not,” I replied with a big smile. I liked him. He was polite and more importantly, he was the first person Yulia seemed to adore. “I’ll quickly wash her up and we’ll be down in a bit.
Half an hour later, we were all seated in the dining room with Ivan right by Yulia’s side and constantly offering up bits of his food to her. He had asked for fried tomatoes and she usually never had those, but because he had ordered them, she decided she wanted some too. He gave her bites and nibbles from his fork to her absolute delight.