“What do you want out of life?”
So much! Phase one was atonement, and phase two was disappearing. Phase three entailed getting a career and friends and a social life. Maybe once I had a new identity these things would be possible. World domination was a distant phase four.
I faced him again, smoothing my hair back. “A house. A yard. A dog to run in the yard. A kitchen with tons of spices, all organized how I like them.”
“Demanding creature, aren’t you?”
“Ha.” I wished hourly for some way to free myself from Edward.
“No man in that scenario?”
I never yearned for a relationship, since I was always preoccupied with survival. Plus, once burned, twice shy. Yet even before Edward had turned murderous, I’d been so disenchanted with men—and stunned by my own bad taste in them.
The love I’d thought I’d felt for him disappeared so totally, I doubted I’d ever loved him at all.
I swam closer to Sevastyan, settling on one of the steps. “Any man in my life would have to like my house. And my dog would have to like him. I would have a very discerning dog.”
He chuckled. Oh, I enjoyed that sound. “Stringent requirements.”
“And you?” I asked.
“I used to want only power. Now I’m not sure. My political term is ending, and I’m letting it.”
“Why?”
“It requires me to be in Russia more than I’d prefer.”
“Don’t you like it there?”
“In winter? I despise it,” he said, the words seeming to skim the surface of what he was thinking. “I might stay in Miami, buying and selling this town. I like it here.”
He would move here right when I was leaving? How unfair. Cool yo jets, Cat!
“You could teach me Spanish.”
Okay, now he was just playing with me. “Sure. Say cállate la boca.”
He repeated the phrase. “What does that mean?”
“Shut up.”
“You’re teaching me how to tell you to shut up?”
“Por Dios, no. You must understand when I tell you that.”
He laughed out loud, reaching out to pull me forward till I was standing between his bent legs. “I enjoy your humor, your playfulness. You’re like a kotyonok, a little kitten—”
Vasili suddenly appeared on the pool deck, gaze alert, hand on the gun in his holster.
Máxim twisted to conceal me, and I sidled up to his back. Another laugh rumbled from his chest. “So unused to the sound of my amusement, he comes running.”
“He could hear us?” I whispered.
“He must be making the rounds. I’ve booked the two stories below for him and his men. Vasili oversees all three floors.”
“Oh.” A small army of mafiya henchmen must be nice. All I had to protect myself was continual movement, a dead bolt, and a prayer. “Do you need this much security? Or is this more of an entourage situation?”
“I don’t think I’m under an acute threat right now. But the show of might deters some foes, and extra men always come in handy.” Sevastyan said something in Russian, and Vasili left. “Did seeing the gun bother you?”
“I don’t know.” My sole experience with one had been horrifying.
Bent on uncovering Edward’s ace in the hole, I’d retrieved my father’s commemorative pistol, a gift from the Cuban government. I’d loaded the accompanying bullets, planning to shoot the ceiling to get Edward’s attention, like they did in movies. I’d also grabbed my mother’s rosary and donned it for courage.
At the end of the night, I’d been drenched in blood, fleeing a madman.
I swallowed. Shake it off, Cat. I told Sevastyan, “It must be reassuring to be so protected. . . .” I trailed off. I’d dampened the material of Máxim’s shirt and could make out marks on his back. Unable to stop myself, I tugged his shirt from one shoulder.
Muttering something that sounded like, “Get this over with,” he yanked it off.
I gasped. Scars covered his back from his neck down to his hips—crisscrossing lines of them, as if he’d been whipped—repeatedly. What the hell had happened to him? Who could have done that? No wonder he had issues with touching!
He rose and turned with his shoulders squared, a dangerous glint in his eyes. He grated, “Ask me what happened.”
I was the last person in the world to ask about something so personal. “That isn’t my business.” Sometimes I wanted to strangle people who stuck their nose in my own. “If you want me to know, you’ll tell me, and I’ll listen.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Only a handful of people have ever seen my back. If you find out the story behind the scars, you could sell it to a tabloid. Make a lot of money.”
I rolled my eyes. “Now you’re just pissing me off, pendejo.”
He tilted his head. He’d probably expected me to clasp my hands to my chest and tell him I would never sell a story!
“Look, Sevastyan, I don’t mind problems—I handle problems—but I hate when they’re unnecessary. So don’t do this with me.”
“You’re not going to make the observation?”
“What observation?”
“That I whip women because I was whipped.”
“That’s not why you do it.”
He raised his brows. “Thrall me with supposition.”
I said nothing.
He stabbed his fingers through his hair. “It drives me mad not knowing what’s going on in that head of yours.”