Deceitful Vows (Marital Privileges #2)

59. Zoya

59

ZOYA

“ I ’m so sorry,” I apologize when the loud shrill of my phone startles the lady in front of me.

We’re in an elevator, and I’m riding her ass so closely that she’ll need a proctologist to get me out. It isn’t that I’m a fan of invading people’s privacy bubbles. I just needed a way to sneak into Mikhail’s apartment without him knowing about my arrival. I don’t want to be removed from the premises like I was when I visited Andrik’s family’s country estate three days ago with the hope Mikhail was there.

This beautiful woman is as deliciously chunky as she is tall. I wasn’t spotted by the doorman, much less the security guard monitoring the new state-of-the-art surveillance camera system installed throughout Mikhail’s building.

My inquiries have been dodged left, right, and center since Aleena’s bachelorette party. Andrik and Aleena have an excuse for their silence. They’re being watched as much as Nikita. But what is Mikhail’s reasoning? Yes, I used him to rile Andrik, but he signed up for that willingly, so he has no reason to ignore my calls.

He hasn’t returned a single call or text message, and I’ve reached out to him over a dozen times in the past two weeks.

When Nikita’s grinning face flashes up on my phone again a second after I sent her last call to voicemail, I slide my finger across the screen and push my phone close to my ear.

“Hey, is everything okay?”

I told her days ago that I was going to help Aleena with last-minute wedding plans because I didn’t want to look like a loser who can’t maintain a single friendship beyond ours. She might dump me if she learns how crappy of a friend I am.

My endeavors to make contact with Mikhail weren’t as stellar as my attempt to reach Vlad, but cut me some slack. Vlad didn’t look like I had vomited in his mouth after we kissed. Mikhail appeared disgusted after our lip lock.

“Hey. Yeah. Everything is fine.” My bullshit radar sounds an alarm, but before I can call Nikita out on it, she continues. “I was just wondering if you could do me a favor. You’re at home, right?”

“Ah…” I scan the internal walls of the elevator before grimacing. “I can be, if it’s urgent.” When she sighs, I blow my cover by straightening my spine. “Is it urgent?”

“Kind of.” After another deep sigh, she tells me how she made a promise to pay the medical expenses of a child the hospital was refusing to treat since she didn’t have insurance, and that she was hoping the money in her box would be enough to cover the expenses.

This is why I love her. She would give you the clothes off her back if you asked. But I’m lost as to why she needs the equivalent of her life savings to pay the bill. Maksim is giving her the world. She never has to penny-pinch again.

“Why are you using the funds you set aside? Maksim gave you a limitless credit card and permission to use it for whatever your heart desires. Use that.”

“I can’t.”

“You can, and you don’t have much choice. You have two, three nights’ admission max saved.”

I’m reminded how daft women become when we’re trapped in a love haze when she says, “And?”

“And…” I leave her on hold for a couple of seconds to ensure her head doesn’t get too big for her boots. It’s what best friends do. “During your two-minute rundown on what happened, you said the clerk announced the Petrovitches were several thousand in debt. I don’t think you have that much in your box, Keet. Because if you did, you would have purchased your grandfather’s breathing machine with it months ago.”

Her sigh breaks my heart. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Yeah, you do. Maksim gave you that credit card for a reason. He wants you to use it.”

“That was before we…”

I follow my co-rider out of the elevator on the seventieth floor before asking. “We…?”

She says the last thing I expect. “We’re kind of not on speaking terms.”

“Huh?” One word shouldn’t relay so much devastation, but it does. If Maksim and Nikita can’t make it, there is no hope for the rest of us. “Since when?”

“Since I threatened to leave him?—”

“You what!”

Her voice is almost a sob. “Things are complicated.”

“Oh, I bet they are. Maksim is?—”

“I miss him, Z.”

I’d give anything to be in front of her right now. She couldn’t say no to some friendly PDA. Not with that much angst in her tone. “Then tell him that.”

“I can’t. What if I lose him too?”

“Keet…” Nikita is the smartest woman I know, but she has no street smarts whatsoever. “I love you, girl, but sometimes you’re so blind you can’t see what is directly in front of you. Maksim would never put you in that position. He loves you too much to ever hurt you like that.”

Her breath catches in her throat. “No?—”

“He. Loves. You. That’s why he is struggling to give you the promise you need to move past your fear that you will lose him too.”

I resonate so much with what I’m saying, but this isn’t about me or my wish to be placed first. This is about my best friend and how she’d rather be picked last than love and lose.

“He isn’t a man who can sit back and let the person he loves be hurt because she wants him to promise not to retaliate. I don’t know a single man who could promise that, let alone one who spent most of his childhood protecting his mother.”

“He told you about that?” she asks through a sob.

“No. But I know you, and I understand your fear.” I give her the honesty she deserves. “And I also understand Maksim’s. He doesn’t want to hurt you. He wants to love you, but that comes with a prerequisite of protection. Everyone knows that. You just seem to have gotten the criteria a little mixed up since you’ve forgotten the love a parent has for a child is different from the love of a spouse.” I give her a moment before hitting her with the big stuff. “Maksim isn’t your dad, but I sure as fuck hope he loves and protects you as fiercely as your father did your mother, because that is the type of love every girl should strive for. That is real love.”

A stupid tear rolls down my cheek when Nikita murmurs, “Z, I have to go.”

“Fuckin’ oath you do.” I cough to ensure my words come out clear before making sure she doesn’t forget who she is talking to. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t stir her. “Give him a kiss from me.”

I laugh when she grunts. It is either laugh or let the stupid emotions that have been hammering me nonstop over the past several weeks win. I’d rather look like an idiot laughing at my own jokes than cry in public.

After taking a moment to center myself, I reenter the elevator and select the top floor. My arrival has already been thwarted, so I may as well make the most out of the distance between the security officers in the lobby and me.

I ride several floors before a cough forces my eyes from the floor for the first time in minutes. I can only see shadows in the brushed steel panels of the elevator, but I don’t need mirrored walls to recognize who the cough belongs to. The prickling of the hairs on my nape tells the story.

“Does he know you’re here?”

“No,” I reply, unwilling to turn around in case I say something stupid. “Well, I’m assuming he doesn’t. I had to break cover to take a phone call. One of your tenants on the seventieth floor is very voluptuous.”

Andrik’s huffed chuckle tickles the hairs his presence stood to attention. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Probably because she isn’t of breeding age.” I snap my mouth shut, inwardly cuss, then twist to face him. “I’m sorry. I’m an asshole who rarely thinks before speaking.”

My guilt worsens when I take in his thick beard, unkempt hair, and sunken eyes. Don’t get me wrong. He is still the most handsome man I have ever laid eyes on, but he looks exhausted.

Has he slept at all in the past two weeks?

I step closer, crossing over into the danger zone before asking, “Are you ok?—”

I’m interrupted by the ding of the elevator announcing we have arrived at Mikhail’s floor.

After tightening his jaw like the gesture pains him as much as his disheveled appearance hurts me, Andrik gestures for me to exit the elevator first.

I do, albeit hesitantly.

We don’t need a code to enter Mikhail’s apartment. The door has been left wide open, and it smells like someone crawled inside and died many days ago.

“I’ll open some windows while you check the bedroom.”

Andrik takes my bossiness in stride. He veers through the penthouse living room that looks worse than a frat house after a raging party as I open a window in the kitchen before moving for the massive Constantine doors in the dining room. They open out onto the balcony and the city lights.

I spin to face Andrik when he says, “He’s not in there, though he’s been here recently. The shower is wet and there are towels on the floor.”

“Has anyone checked the Broadbent?”

He nods. “I just came from there. He isn’t there either.”

“Someone has to be buying all this.” I wave my hand over numerous boxes of takeout on the dining room table. “And from what Mikhail told me, that person isn’t you. And don’t say it was because we kissed. You cut him off before that happened.” Now isn’t the time for this, but I truly don’t know if I will ever get the chance again, so I run with it. “If you wanted to backtrack on your promise, you didn’t have to make Mikhail your scapegoat. You could have told me that the sex was a good distraction from your son’s health battles, but that was all you wanted from me.”

“ Good? The sex was good?” He laughs like he needs a trip to the psych ward. “The sex wasn’t good. It was great . Blistering. So fucking unreal I can’t get it out of my head.” He jabs two fingers into his temple so furiously I have no idea how his brain doesn’t ooze out of his ears. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to live with that? To act like I didn’t destroy everything I’ve been working toward for the past thirty-five years? You didn’t just fucking destroy me, Zoya. You ruined me.”

“You had an affair. It isn’t the end of the world. Men cheat. It’s almost second nature, or your family?—”

“I didn’t cheat!” he roars, scaring the living daylights out of me.

I’ve never been subjected to so much anger and pain that I’m lost on how to reply. I would take away his pain if I could. I’d accept it in an instant. But since I feel like that means I would have to give him up permanently, I don’t know if I can do that.

“Andrik—”

“Go home, Zoya!” He pulls away from me with a sneer and peers out the window before proving he has mind reading capabilities. “If you want to help me, go home and pretend we never met, because that may be the only fucking way I will ever survive this.”

My words wobble when I say, “Mikhail?—”

“Is not your problem. He’s mine ! He has been mine for years, and I’m not willing to give him up for you. Not now.” His next two words are whispered. “ Not ever. ”

I keep my reply short with the hope it won’t display my heartache. “Okay.”

I shouldn’t have bothered to hide my disappointment. Even the briskness of my reply can’t conceal my devastation. I’m not solely upset about losing Mikhail. I am shattered by the words I must speak next for the sake of a child I will most likely never meet.

“Goodbye, Andrik.”

Glass smashing sounds out of Mikhail’s apartment as I rush out the door and into the corridor. When multiple jabs of the call button fail to open the elevator doors, I toss open the emergency exit stairwell door and then commence a multiple-floor descent. I don’t give up this time. I need sweat to hide the tears streaming down my face. Otherwise I will break the only promise I’ve ever made to myself.

I’ll never cry over a man who doesn’t want me for me.

“Hey.”

I curse myself to hell when Ano greets me with a grin in the foyer of Nikita’s building. My visit to Chelabini had a dual purpose. I was meant to check in on Mikhail before making a dreaded trip home so I could see if Stasy had kept Aleena’s Polaroid camera as stocked with film as she did mine during my teenage years.

I wanted to back up my claims that Ano is Bayli with physical proof, but I was so upset after my exchange with Andrik, I drove straight home.

I must have gotten a hundred fines because the speedometer barely dipped below a hundred.

“Are you all right?” Ano asks, eyeing me suspiciously. It is understandable. I also gave him the line that I was going home to help Aleena with her wedding. “You’re looking a little frazzled.”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

He laughs before banding his arm around my shoulders and noogying my hair. That’s how tall he is. He doesn’t even need to stretch to balance his chin on the top of my head. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just figured I’d ease you into asking how much elevator rocking you were subjected to. But since you seem to like it dry and hard, I’ll just ask. How perverted are you, princess?”

“Call me princess again and you’ll find out.” I squash my finger to his lips before the “p” of princess leaves his mouth. “And what elevator rocking?”

“You missed it?” He blows out a hot breath. “I guess I’ll bunk with you tonight. You may be the only one saved from his wrath when he learns her moans could be heard from down here.”

“He?” I ask, lost.

“Maksim and Doc,” he answers like I’m slow. “They made up.” I smile, happy. “And they’ve been hogging the elevator for”—my smirk grows when he checks his imaginary Rolex—“long enough that if Doc charges by the hour, Maksim is gonna wish he had taken out premium health coverage.” He nudges his head to the conference. “His four p.m. has also been here for over an hour.”

“Did you tell Maksim he has a guest waiting?”

When Ano shakes his head like my suggestion is insane, I whack him.

“What? You can’t seriously expect me to interrupt Maksim when he’s…” He makes a gesture I am extremely proud of. “You may survive that shit, but I sure as hell won’t.”

“You’re such a chicken shit.” Says the lady who hasn’t told him about our possible connection because I’m terrified my mother is responsible for the assault that stole his memories. “Where are they?”

“In the elevator. Duh. ”

I roll my eyes before entering the security office to advise Maksim of his appointment. My brisk pace slows when I spot a Post-it note stuck to the front of my planner. It has a date two weeks from now and a location scribbled across it, but no other details.

“What is this?” I ask anyone listening.

Two guards shrug before a third one pops up. “The caller didn’t leave any details. He just wanted me to tell you that that is the date.” He emphasizes “the” like it should mean something.

“The date?” My heart whacks my chest when the fog clears enough for me to understand the cryptic message. “ The date. This”—I wiggle the Post-it note in the air—“is the date.”

When he nods, I stumble back.

My baby sister is getting married in two weeks, and my invite came in the form of a Post-it note.

I guess it is better than no invitation at all.