Her Russian Beast: 50 Loving States, New Mexico (9 page)

C
OMING back
for her sister’s wedding was not a mistake. It wasn’t, Thel told herself over and over again.

After all, Willa wasn’t just her sister. She was her best friend. The woman who’d helped get her through the worst time in her life. The best person Thel knew in the entire world. She deserved nothing less than a maid of honor doing her best to make her special day go off without a hitch.

So far, so good. The wedding had been beautiful, Willa’s and Sawyer’s families managing to get along despite years of acrimony and not one, but two court cases between them.

Proving that times had truly changed, even in their little antebellum town, quite a few people from her time at Greenlee High happily attended, including Sawyer’s friend Donny Lacer, the football player who’d been too chicken shit to do more than make secret passes at her because of the color of her skin.

“You know I’m the one got them together,” he told her, flirting with her openly now. “They met again at my family’s dealership. Guess seeing her again was what finally led him to claim that son of theirs.”

Little did Donny know that wasn’t remotely how it played out. But the real story was just too impossible for most people who weren’t either touched by some kind of special power, or the granddaughter of a siren raised by a woman who actively communed with spirits, to believe.

So Thel just said, “Good for you, Donny.”

Donny furtively looked around. “Folks seem to be accepting it. Maybe it’s not too late for us.”

Thel had to resist the urge to roll her eyes. He was acting like they were some kind of romantic story cut short, whereas all she really remembered about Donny was his many drunken passes. And that time he’d refused to buy her and her starving sister a meal because he didn’t want to look like a traitor in front of his former asshole friend, Sawyer.

Sawyer had changed for the better. Donny, Thel could tell, had not.

She pushed his arm away with a cutting look. “Donny, either go get yourself another beer or go home. Ain’t nothing for you here.”

She walked away before he could answer. Feeling much the same way she used to when a man got too close and she knew one of her bodyguards was watching. Like she had to get away as quickly as possible, before the Beast found out about it.

But Bair wasn’t here. Her whole trip to Florida had probably been unnecessary. Possibly just her crazy mother stirring up more drama. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

The fact was, Thel wasn’t in her 20s anymore. No longer a fresh young thing, easily manipulated. It had been six years. Long enough for Bair to find a new pet. A prettier one with real breasts who never got sad.

So why was Florence still singing, tossing her heart back and forth with every ominous note?

She hadn’t dared to sing in weeks now, for fear of that song coming out of her mouth. But it was getting hard to talk. Like the song was clogging up her throat.

She started over toward her sister who was sitting on a picnic blanket with her new husband. Maybe she needed Thel to do more bridesmaid stuff, she thought hopefully. Helping with the wedding had been the only thing keeping her sane since she came back to Greenlee from Florida.

However as she approached, Willa looked up at her and Thel could plainly see the worried look in her eyes. Willa had been trying to get her alone for a “real talk” ever since she came back, and Thel had a feeling her sister would try to force the issue again before leaving on her honeymoon.

So instead of going over to Willa, Thel headed towards the five-piece band they’d hired to play instrumentals during the reception.

Without any introduction, she gave them the universal sign to stop playing. They did, probably thinking she was about to give a toast.

But when she opened her mouth, instead of words, a battle cry against Florence’s dark soundtrack came flying out. The most uplifting song she could think of to describe her sister and new brother-in-law’s love: Natalie Cole’s “This Will Be.”

It had been so long since she sang anything that wasn’t opera, but the song came out of her like a thing possessed. Fully realized, with each word appearing in her head easy, like it’d been there all along.

The band quickly started playing behind her without a word of protest. And eventually the boats began gathering around her rocks. Guests getting to their feet to dance as she sang and sang, so many songs dedicated to her sister’s love.

The siren manifested bright that day, keeping her voice strong, long after her body became exhausted with the effort of belting out upbeat love standards without any breaks in between.

But eventually the siren began to taper off, letting Thel go with the words for one last song. A slow one. “Endless Love.” Meant to be sung by two, but a solo arrangement flowed effortlessly off of her tongue. That is until she saw the man approaching from her grandfather’s old field in the distance.

When she saw him, the siren let her go abruptly. Her voice cutting off mid-note as if she’d been strangled.

Bair.

Bair Rustanov was coming toward her like a gathering storm, his large body bearing down on the sweet picnic reception.

Six years had passed, but he looked…exactly the same. Long inky hair, obviously oversized muscles barely contained by a perfectly tailored suit. And the same eyes, glittering hard and angry like black diamonds. He came to a stop at the edge of the picnic blankets, staring at her with the infamous Rustanov sneer.

Everything had gone still around her. The wind. The band. The wedding guests. Even her sister, who now stood at the halfway point between her and Bair, stared at him like a bridal statue frozen in time. Her sister, like their mother, could literally see ghosts but she’d never, Thel knew, encountered anything like Bair Rustanov.

“Who’s that?” Thel heard her nephew say somewhere in the distance.

“That’s Mr. Rustanov, dear, Thel’s husband. He’s been looking all over for her. And now he’s finally found her,” Marian answered.

The wedding guests then turned as one to stare at Thel, who had never told anyone, not a single soul including her sister, that she was married to a beastly Russian billionaire.

And Marian said, “Now, sssshhh everybody! This story’s going to be sooooo good!”

H
E could hear
her singing as soon as he stepped out of the car. A dark Bentley that looked out of place in front of her mother’s humble house.

That threw him off from the start. He hadn’t expected to find her singing, and without conscious thought, instead of going to the front door, he followed the sound of her voice around the red brick house. Once again a sailor led astray.

Behind the house, he discovered an unexpectedly pastoral scene: a colonial mansion on a hill, looking down on a small river. On the north side of the river a picnic reception was taking place, with several people, including a black bride and a white groom dancing beneath a willow tree.

Dancing to the song Sirena was singing with a band at her back.

The sight of her propelled him forward. He stormed through the dead field. Over the little footbridge. Until he came to a stop at the edge of the reception.

By the time he got there, Sirena had stopped singing. She stared at him openly on the other side of the sea of blankets, as if she were trying to figure out if he were real or nightmare.

Both
, he answered silently with a dead-eyed stare as he took in all the changes six years had wrought.

Her hair was much shorter now. Her curls, which she’d kept slicked back into a bun at his behest, now flew freely. A brown storm that stopped just below her ears with a flower tucked into the mess that did absolutely nothing to hold it back.

She wore a shimmering gold dress, one that clung to her generous hips and matched her champagne colored eyes. However, the dress’s bodice also accentuated an asset she hadn’t had before. A large set of breasts.

His nose flared, incited beyond all reason by the sight of them. Not just because he knew another man must have bought them for her, but because it had been the one gift he’d refused her when she’d been his pet.

She’d asked him for the surgery as a Christmas gift during the second year of their arrangement, but he’d insisted she keep her breasts exactly as they were. Small handfuls he liked to suck and/or manipulate with his large hands as he fucked her.

But now here she stood in open defiance of what he’d specifically told her she could not do.

“Who’s that?” a child’s voice said inside the space separating him from Sirena.

“That’s Mr. Rustanov, dear, Thel’s husband…” another voice answered the boy. “He’s been looking all over for her. And now he’s finally found her.”

Yes, he’d found her, Bair thought to himself, his heart a stone inside his chest as he drank in the sight of his long missing wife. The horrified expression on her face enraged him beyond all reason. Made him want to punish her even more than what he already had planned.

For moments on end they stood there. Completely frozen in anger and time. But then Sirena suddenly re-animated, running toward him across the picnic blankets with her arms braced in front of her.

Like he was a truck and she was the only thing standing between him and the crowd.

“Why are you here?” she demanded harshly. “What do you want?”

“You have to ask?” He sneered down at her and then his eyes flickered over her shoulder to the people behind her. The tall, dark-skinned bride he’d been told was her half-sister, but who looked nothing like her, continued to stare wide-eyed at him. Her groom’s eyes were also on Bair, but he looked as if he were trying to decide whether to get his wife out of harm’s way or go get a gun. Former armed forces. Bair would have known that even if it hadn’t been in the investigator’s initial report.

The only two people at the reception who weren’t looking at him like some kind of wild animal had just entered the midst were the owl-like black lady, and the little toasted brown boy sitting beside her. In fact they both smiled up at him as if they thought he’d been sent here to provide further wedding entertainment. Her mother and Sirena’s nephew, Bair discerned. Two more members of the family she’d kept secret from him.

He’d found her living like a dog in Greece, but she had a family. One that obviously loved her. And she’d kept their existence hidden from him the entire five years they’d been together.

Fuck this bitch
, he thought, the Darkness rising inside him.
Fuck this cunt. This user of men.

“Bair,” he heard her say somewhere in the distance of his rage, voice as quiet as she could make it. “If I come with you now, will you leave my family out of this? Pretend like you never saw them?”

His eyes flickered from them back down to her. “You are in no position to bargain with me,” he snarled.

“You’re right, I’m not,” she admitted, meeting his ruthless gaze with a pleading one of her own. “But I’m asking. I’m begging. Please.”

He’d always liked when she begged him. Begged him to let her finish. Begged him to stop. But this…this desperate woman standing in front of him. Pleading for her family’s lives. He hated this. Hated her.

“You are ready to come now?” he asked.

Her shoulders sagged with relief. “Yeah. At least I can be. I just need ten minutes to get my things together.”

“Then come,” he said.

“Okay, okay, just let me…” She pasted on a relaxed smile and turned to face the wedding crowd.

“Sorry about this everybody,” she said, her voice suddenly full of good humor. “Obviously Mr. Rustanov and I have a lot of catching up to do. But ya’ll keep on with the party. The band’s still here, the sun’s setting, and you know there ain’t nothing better than dancing under a moon!”

She’d been so tremulous just a few moments before, but she exuded good ease now. It was all an act, he realized then. The laughing girl he’d met in the Greek basement, a façade she put on like any other when she took the stage.

He stared down at her. Not understanding. How could he have not seen through it before? How had he let her wreck his entire life before he understood who, no…
what
she really was?

He turned and walked back toward the house. He didn’t trust himself to touch her in that moment, but he knew she’d follow as he crossed back over the bridge. Follow or else.

“
T
hel
! Thel!” a plaintive voice called from behind her, as she turned to follow Bair across the foot bridge.

Thel didn’t answer. Tried to pretend like she couldn’t hear Willa calling after her as she walked away from her beautiful family to follow Bair into what she knew would be an ugly punishment.

But Willa, bless her brave heart, wouldn’t be put off. Her sister caught up with her on the other side of the bridge, and grabbed her arm.

“Thel! Thel! What are you doing?”

“It’s okay,” Thel assured her.

“No, it isn’t. Who is that guy? Is he really your husband like Mama said? Is he the reason the SoCal Opera rescinded your invitation to join their program? Is he…?” Willa glanced at the man now walking across their grandfather’s field and lowered her voice. “Is he who you were running away from in Germany? Because if he is—”

Nothing
, Thel thought miserably. There was nothing she or her sister could do about it. Not now that he’d found her.

“It’s okay,” she lied to Willa nonetheless. “I’m okay. I’m just going to go talk to him for a bit.”

“Really? You’re just going to talk to him?” Willa countered, her eyes wide with disbelief. “Because that guy is a total beast. I’m half afraid he’s going to eat you up!”

Thel let out a weak chuckle. Wow, less than a minute of knowing Bair and her sister had inadvertently landed on his nickname. She glanced at his retreating back, remembering how scared everyone used to be of him. Everyone but her.

“He’s not going to…” Thel couldn’t quite bring herself to lie that baldly. So instead she tried to tug her arm out of her sister’s death grip. “It’s going to be all right. Just let me go, Willa. Remember what Mama said about me. I’ll be fine.”

But Willa kept holding on to her, a world of hurt in her eyes. “No, Thel, please don’t run away again. I can’t lose you. Please.”

Oh, God. She’d put her sister through so much over the last decade plus. First disappearing on her after their brother’s death. And then the cancer. And now this.

She gently took Willa by the arms. “I’m not running away, I promise you. But I have to go with him,” she told her younger sister. “I’ll text you tonight. As soon as I’m settled, okay?”

Not okay, she knew from the look on her sister’s face. But Thel turned and walked away from her sister anyway. She loved Willa, but nothing—not even her sister’s hurt feelings—was worth letting Bair into this part of her life.

She had to go with him back into his life. Or else he’d invade hers.

Still, Thel could feel her sister’s forlorn gaze on her as she ran to catch up with her estranged husband.

“
Willa
. She is the ‘W’ from your diary,” he asked when she fell into step beside him. As if he were finally putting something important together.

She blinked up at him. “You read my diary?”

“
Da
,” he answered, voice as cold as a Berlin winter. “What do you think I would do after you disappeared and left everything behind? Of course I read it. I read many times how you truly felt about me.”

Her heart twisted as they arrived at her back door. Torn between guilt and defiance. On one hand, she’d never meant for him to see what she’d written there. On the other, hadn’t he driven her to every one of those feelings with his controlling ways?

“Okay, well, I have to go inside and grab my purse,” she told him, setting her confusing emotions aside. “You can wait out here if you want.”

Apparently he didn’t want. He followed her into the house, filling up their small front room like a Minotaur. Inside, he took in the space with one dark sweep of his coal black eyes.

“What is this place?” he asked her, nostrils flaring on the question. “Why do you have so many books?”

“Because my mom’s crazy,” she answered simply. She glanced all around, taking in the small, overstuffed living room and seeing what he must be seeing for the first time. No one outside Sawyer had ever been inside this place, never saw how they lived. Until now. When she’d been given no choice.

But she could see how insane their home must look to an outsider. With every single wall overflowing with bookshelves. So many that there was barely any room for regular things like a couch. Or pictures, much less the kind of sophisticated works of fine art that had graced the walls of their apartment in Berlin.

“This is how it’s always been,” she admitted to him now. “I barely even see the books anymore. You ready?”

She grabbed her purse from the little wooden table. The one Trevor had made with a felled tree he’d found in the woods. Her brother may have been mentally disabled, but he’d been a genius when it came to working wood with his hands. Just like all of Marian’s children, he’d had magical gifts others outside their family couldn’t quite understand.

She hated having Bair here. Looking at Trevor’s shelves and all the wooden furniture he’d left behind. Judging the overstuffed space with those black diamonds he called eyes.

“Is that all you have?” he asked, nodding at her purse.

She hugged it to her chest. “Do I need anything else?”

He answered with one angry swipe of his chin. But then he once again looked around their manic wood fairy-library space and said, “I understand why you were living like dog when I found you if this is where you grew up.”

She bit back a retort. He didn’t understand shit about her, and she could barely stand to have him in her home, judging her and her family. But he had all the power here, and he was the kind of dude to use it—that much she remembered all too well. If she tried to push him out of her family home, he’d stay just to spite her.

Fight or fuck, Sirena. That is only choice you will ever have with me.

So she bit her tongue and settled on simply leaving through the front door of the house. Outside she found exactly what she expected to find. A black Bentley waiting on the road with a large man in the front seat.

Dark car. Hulking man. Yes, she’d definitely been found by her beastly husband.

L
ess than three hours later
, they were in another state. Apparently Bair had a private jet now—one with Rustanov Enterprises scrawled across its side. That was new. But she barely got a chance to get a good look at it before she was guided into another car. A limo that pulled away from the small airfield as soon the door closed behind them.

If not for the highway signs, she wouldn’t have even known they were in Santa Fe. She opened her mouth to ask why he’d brought her to New Mexico of all places, but seeing the dark look on his face, decided against saying anything at all.

She’d sat with Bair Rustanov in the backseat of enough cars to know not to talk to him when he was in this kind of mood.

The limo stopped in front of a two-story stucco building painted a deep orange. But once again, she wasn’t given much time to check the place out. He hauled her out of the limo, up some pretty tiled stairs, and across the beautiful bamboo floor of what looked like a luxury condo. Then he practically threw her through the door of a large room.

One hurried glance revealed the room to be a bedroom, with a baby grand piano, a vibrant orange duvet, and a huge bed with a dark wooden frame.

She got on her feet immediately with the insane notion that she wanted to stand when he took her this time. Not docile on the bed like before. She wasn’t that girl anymore, and this time she wanted to meet him head on.

But he only stood there. Nose flaring. Looming over her like the beast he was reported to be in the underground fighting world before his business makeover.

She waited, breathing hard as she watched his fists clench and unclench at his sides.

But he said nothing for what felt like hours on end. And that was when her bitter apprehension turned into something that felt a lot more like worry. For him.

“Why aren’t you…are you okay?” she asked. She reached out to touch one of his clenched fists, just to make sure he was still there, and not in that dark place he used to go when he went too long without—