Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 69662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Where was he? What was he doing right now? Did he even think about me, miss me, regret not even saying goodbye? Was he even alive?
But I’d get no answers. I didn’t back then and I certainly wouldn’t now.
“Dorogaya moya, Kostya and his father were relocated.”
I felt myself crying and hated it. I lifted my hand and gripped the necklace I’d found on my bedside table, the one that I knew Kostya had left for me. It wasn’t one that screamed money. It wasn’t flashy or even gold. But it was the most precious possession I had, and it was because I knew he’d left it as his goodbye.
It pissed me off and broke my heart.
My father glanced at what I held. “What’s that?”
I shook my head. “A gift. From Kostya.” I tightened my hold on it, afraid he’d take it away. But he just exhaled and gave me an empathetic look. “I have to assume it was his way of saying goodbye.” More tears spilled down my cheeks. I’d put our pictures inside that very morning, excited to show him, but then realizing I wouldn’t see him again.
I could feel Timur watching us from the corner, but I felt zero shame or embarrassment that I’d busted into my father’s office while he’d been in a meeting with Timur. I didn’t care who saw me breaking down over Kostya leaving.
“It was out of my hands. Orders came from Moscow.”
I angrily swiped at my cheeks, brushing away the tears. “Why didn’t you tell them his family was needed here?”
“Sweetheart,” my father said with anguish in his voice as he stood and walked around his desk to envelop me. “You know that’s not how it works,” he murmured against the crown of my head. “I might have power, but there are those more powerful than even me, and I can’t go against orders.”
I buried my face against his chest and cried. “He didn’t even say goodbye. He’s just… gone.”
“Shhh, it’s okay, dorogaya moya. Everything will be okay. You’ll see.”
But I knew it wouldn’t be okay. Nothing ever would. It felt like someone had just ripped my chest open and scooped my heart out with a spoon.
“Please,” I said and clasped my hands in front of me, pressing them to the center of my chest. “There has to be something you can do? There has to be someone you can speak to and find out what happened or where he went?”
My father gave me a sympathetic look and shook his head. I didn’t know why I glanced at Timur again, maybe to see if he’d give me some kind of reassurance, but he looked absolutely gutted and as helpless as I felt.
I exhaled when the silence got too tight around me, when it was clear the conversation was over between myself and my father.
I left his office and walked only a few steps down the hall. I could hear my mother laughing followed by the deep rumble of her guard’s voice as he said something that had her giggling all over again.
I leaned back against the wall and rested my head on the overly expensive damask wallpaper my mother insisted on having put up in this part of the house, one I wanted to rip off with my bare hands. I closed my eyes for a moment and told myself I had to be stronger.
But I’d never felt this weak before, and it was almost crippling in its intensity.
A second later I heard my father’s office door open and close, then heard footsteps come closer. Only when I felt someone standing in front of me did I open my eyes and look at Timur.
His expression was sympathetic and I curled my hands in tight fists, hating that anybody felt sorry for me. But then again I brought this on myself by breaking down in front of so many people, it seemed.
“I feel so stupid for asking him when I knew there wasn’t anything my father could do.”
There was a strange expression that crossed his face as he looked at my father’s closed office doors. His throat moved as he swallowed, and then a muscle ticked under his jaw.
“Some things are out of our hands.” He exhaled and for the first time I saw Timur’s ironclad aura fade slightly. “And not having control is painful. It’s hard walking the earth knowing there’s so much you want to say and do, yet you can’t.”
He looked at me then and shoved his hands in the pockets of his suit jacket.
“I know pain. I know loss. And I wish there were things that I could change in my life, but sometimes we have to take the little bit of strength we have left, plant it deep within ourselves, care for it, and hope and pray like hell that it grows.”