She’s nothere. Whoever that feminine laugh is coming from, it isn’t Yvette, and I know the sound of Liam’s voice.
But I can still feel the flicker of jealousy burning in my gut.Who is it?Had I misinterpreted everything, and Liam has someone already? I know he can’t be married, even if he were the kind of man who preferred not to wear a wedding ring. His home is too masculine, with no touch of a woman’s presence outside of the room I’m staying in. And even if his wife preferred heavy furnishings and dark colors too, there are no photos, no hint that anyone is ever here other than him.
A girlfriend, maybe? A fiancée? I can’t imagine any woman being okay with him letting me live here, though, if that were the case—and Liam doesn’t seem like the kind of man to keep something so significant a secret, anyway.
I sit there for a long moment, feeling frozen. I don’t even know if I want what there is between Liam and me to grow into anything more, so why do I feel like bursting into tears at the idea that there could be a woman out there who he could be dating, who could mean something more to him than I do romantically?
Maybe it’s a friend. Or perhaps he has a sister. You’re overreacting.I think of how he’d touched me in the hotel, devouring me like a starving man.That’s not a man who has someone he’s sleeping with regularly.I’ve been with enough men to know what even normal desire feels like. The way Liam had touched me had been ravenous, as if he’d been saving up all his lust for the moment when he could finally have me in his hands.
I climb out of bed, pushing my tangled blonde hair out of my face as I go to the closet in search of something to wear. There’s a light blue collared sundress hanging that I slip on, the silky fabric as luxurious on my skin as the clothes I’d worn yesterday had been.I could get used to this,I think, tightening the brown leather belt with it around my slender waist and running my fingers through my hair. There are several things I still need—like a hairbrush—but I feel awkward asking Liam for anything. I don’t have my own money right now, and I don’t want to assume that he’ll buy me things.
Once I feel reasonably presentable, I slip into the hall, hearing the clinking of dishes from the kitchen, the voices still chattering away. It sounds almost as if there’s more than one woman there, and the voices sound familiar—
My heart almost stops as I step into the living area and see Sofia and Sasha sitting on the leather-topped barstools, Caterina moving around the kitchen helping Liam cook breakfast as if this were the most normal thing in the world.
I can’t keep my jaw from dropping open.
“What—how—” I croak out the words, looking back and forth among the three of them. “What--?”
“Ana!” Sofia’s face lights up the moment she sees me, and she’s off the barstool in a flash, crossing the room and grabbing me in a tight, bone-crushing embrace. She presses her cheek against mine, and I can feel the tears on her face as she squeezes me tightly, as if she’s not entirely sure that I’m real.
“Liam called me as soon as he had you on the plane to London,” Sofia says breathlessly, when she finally pulls back long enough to look at me. “He wanted me to know you were safe and with him. Originally he’d thought he was bringing you back to Manhattan, but once you and he decided you were staying here, for the time being, he contacted me again to let me know. And of course, the three of us immediately made plans to be on a plane out here to see you.”
“We couldn’t get on Luca’s plane fast enough,” Caterina says, turning to look at me with a smile on her face as she sets a stack of plates down on the counter, slipping around it to come and give me a hug as well. Sasha gets up too, coming over to shyly hug me once Caterina steps back, and I feel a flush of warmth through my entire body, as if I’m glowing with an emotion that feels altogether unfamiliar.
Happiness. I feel happy. For the first time in a really, really long time, I feel completely, unequivocally happy, even if just for a moment. I feelloved. Even Sasha, who barely knows me, is beaming as she looks at me. Caterina looks as if she wants to cry with happiness right along with Sofia, although she’s always the more composed out of the two of them.
“Liam said you and Viktor had another wedding?” I look at Caterina, noticing immediately how much happiershelooks, too. Since her marriage to Viktor, she’d withdrawn into herself, but now she’s the glowing, effusive woman that I remember from early on, before she’d married Franco, and that had taken a bad turn.
“We did,” Caterina confirms as she helps Liam dish up breakfast, setting the plates on the dining table. “After Viktor and the others came to rescue us from Alexei, things changed. I saw a different man. He promised tobecomea different man—to change his business, the way he did things, so that we could be happy together. And he’s kept those promises.” She smiles softly. “There’s always going to be hard times, moral grey areas, when you’re married to the kinds of men that we are. But there are things I can live with and things I can’t. And Viktor and I have come to an understanding about that.” She touches her stomach gingerly, still flat under the fitted black t-shirt she’s wearing with jeans. “Besides, with another baby on the way, I wanted our family to be as strong as possible.”
“Liam said you were pregnant.” I look at her, hardly able to believe how much has changed in such a short time. “But—that means—”
“I was pregnant before I was kidnapped,” Caterina says, motioning for Sofia and Sasha to come and sit down. “This baby is going to be a tough one, that’s for sure. It shouldn’t have survived everything that we went through, but it did.”
“It’s a good sign for the rest of the pregnancy,” Sofia says with a laugh. “For both of us.”
“Yours is okay, too?” I sink into my own chair as Caterina sets a plate in front of me and sits down next to me, Sasha on the other side next to Sofia, who is sitting to my right. Liam sits down at the end of the table, watching us silently as we talk.
“Better than okay,” Sofia confirms. “Luca insisted I go in for a scan before I flew here, even though I wasn’t due for an appointment. Dr. Carella indulged us and said everything was fine. Luca was still on edge about me coming out here, but I managed to convince him.” She reaches across the table, squeezing my hand. “There was no way I would have missed seeing you. I’m so glad you’re safe now, Ana. I was so afraid for you. I’m so sorry—”
“Viktor has been wracked with guilt,” Caterina adds. “Every day since he and the others made it to the safe house and you weren’t there, he blamed himself for not getting there sooner.”
“All of us did,” Liam says quietly, speaking up for the first time this morning. “Viktor, Levin, Max, myself. We all felt deeply responsible for not getting there in time to save you with the others, Ana. Which is why we stopped at nothing to rescue you.”
“I’m so glad he got you away from that awful man,” Sasha says, pushing her food around her plate. “The way he bought you, like you were some piece of art or something—”
That’s exactly what he saw me as.Out of anyone, Sasha is the last person I want to try to justify Alexandre to. I know for her, more than anyone else, the topic of being bought and sold is sensitive. I don’t know her well, but I know a little of her story from when we were all at the safe house—that she’d been one of Viktor’s acquisitions and that one of his soldiers had decided to help himself to her virginity. That soldier had paid for his crime with his life. Since Sasha had lost most of her “value” after that incident, Viktor had given her a job in his household instead, as part of the staff.
Clearly, she’s become even closer to Viktor and Caterina since then, since Liam had said she was working as their nanny now. Once upon a time, I would have said I couldn’t understand that level of forgiveness, to become almost a part of the family of a man who had once intended to buy and sell you like property.
But now, after Alexandre and especially knowing that Viktor has changed his business dealings, I can understand it a bit better. And I can tell from the way Sasha and Caterina behave around each other that they’ve grown closer, as well.
The experience with Alexei is one we all share now, for better or for worse.
“It wasn’t all bad,” I say quietly, poking at my food. “He wasn’t—cruel.”
Liam clears his throat. I look up quickly and see that his expression is flat, guarded, as if he doesn’t want me to see what he’s truly thinking right now. I instantly regret mentioning Alexandre—I can only imagine how it makes him feel, especially after he’s done so much.