The Bastard’s Betrayal by Katee Robert
Chapter 15
Rose understood why Dante relented so easily within ten steps of the cabin. She’d expected nature to be quiet. It certainly looked peaceful when she sat on the couch in the early morning with her coffee and looked out over the view. Now that she was outside, all she could hear were strange sounds. The buzzing of insects. The trees shifting in the breeze. Something moving deeper in the woods just out of sight.
She inched closer to Dante. Not intentionally, of course, but this strange world was not her world. She didn’t know what to expect. She didn’t even know where they were. Did they have mountain lions in this area? When Sasha was younger, she’d gone through a big-cats phase, and as a result, Rose knew far more that was comfortable about one of the few big cats native to North America than she’d like. Sasha, sweet girl that she was, had several books about how to survive a cougar attack, and they were all filled with stories about hikers or joggers or campers being stalked and attacked by the cats.
“What are you doing?”
Rose stopped searching the branches above them, instantly feeling foolish. “Are there cougars around here?”
Dante gave her a long look. “Sometimes. They don’t usually come too close to the cabin, though.”
She expected him to laugh at her. In his place, she would have. Silly city girl, afraid of the woods. He just offered his hand. She shouldn’t take it. He’d look into the gesture and see it as a sign of her capitulating to his theoretical future.
Rose slipped her hand into his.
He led the way down a dirt path that was barely wide enough for him to walk, let alone both of them side by side. She told herself not to be foolish, but she couldn’t help continuing her search of the trees… At least until the space opened and she saw their destination. “I knew there was a car around here.”
“Si. Traveling by plane is quick but not convenient at times.”
“I suppose.” She followed him to the garage. It looked like a smaller version of the cabin, albeit with fewer windows. Rustic, but in the unique way only the ridiculously wealthy seemed to accomplish. She reluctantly turned away when Dante keyed in the code, straining her ears as he typed it in. Six digits instead of eight, but they weren’t tonal like so many devices, so she had no idea what the number combination was. Oh well. It wouldn’t matter soon enough.
She had absolutely no intention of letting him bring her back to the cabin.
Rose wished she could say the sex was all part of the plan, down to needing Plan B, but she’d be lying if she claimed that. She hadn’t been thinking about anything in that moment but getting as close to Dante as possible, with nothing between them, and how hot we shouldn’t was. The potential consequences only slapped her in the face after the high from her orgasm wore off.
There were times over the past three days when she forgot she was supposed to be looking for a way to escape.
He opened the door, stirring her from her thoughts, and stepped aside for her to precede him into the dark garage. Rose stepped in perhaps a little too willingly, but having all that nature at her back gave her the heebie-jeebies.
Inside, there was a spotless black SUV and nothing else. She eyed the empty walls. It made logical sense not to have a bunch of shit in here, especially when so many tools and outdoors type equipment could be used as weapons, but… “This really is a sex cabin, isn’t it?”
Dante pulled open the passenger door and looked at her expectantly. It wasn’t until she’d climbed in, and he went around to the driver’s seat that he answered. “How you feel about the trees? We’re of the same mind. I prefer the city to the country.”
She relaxed back into her seat and watched the garage door rise. “Then why have a cabin in the woods?”
“Sometimes the quiet is nice.”
She supposed she could see that, even if the tunnel of green they started down made her skin crawl. Getting to the cabin would be the stuff of nightmares, but she supposed the actual cabin itself was nice enough. “We don’t have anything like this back home. My grandparents on my mother’s side have a house out in Connecticut, but I’ve only been there a few times. My mother isn’t close to them, and my father hates them.” She frowned. “Though it’s definitely mutual.”
“Your grandparents are cut from the same cloth my uncle is.”
“Da.” No use denying it. There was a reason they weren’t overly close with any of her aunts and uncles, and it had to do with how her grandfather attempted to move them around like chess pieces on a board only he had control of. Once her uncle Aiden took over the family business, things shifted, but no one forgot the bad old days. They didn’t seem overly inclined to forgive, either. She couldn’t blame them for that. “Not my parents though.”
“Aren’t they?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, Dante, they’re not. And if you quote the marriage to Romeo at me, I might throw myself from the moving vehicle. All leaders make sacrifices. I’m not special in that regard. I went into the choice with eyes wide open.”
“Would you have had to make the same choice if you were a man?”
She opened her mouth, but no words came. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s a valid fucking point, and you know it.” He picked up speed until they were bouncing along the dirt road leading from the cabin.
She’d planned on taking careful note of their surroundings in the event that the worst-case scenario played out and she ended up back here, but Rose quickly got bored of the unrelenting green. The dirt road turned to gravel and then pavement, and still the green persisted.
She hoped things were going okay back home. It had only been…four days? Less than a week for things to change so drastically. Except they hadn’t changed at all. Dante was still the enemy. She would still marry Romeo when she finally got back to New York. They would still have…
“Why would Jovan Romanov’s people be joining in the search for you? Is that something your father would have coordinated?”
Dante’s question jarred her out of her dark thoughts. “What?” She twisted to face him. “Why are you asking about Jovan Romanov?” He was another cousin of her father’s, though more distantly, and now the patriarch of the greater Romanov family. They all paid allegiance back to Russia, but those ties had spun out over the last generation. Something Jovan wasn’t too pleased about.
“Answer the question.”
A sliver of alarm went through her. She spent a moment debating continuing to push for answers but finally said, “No, Papa wouldn’t have called them in, even if it was an emergency. Especially not in this situation involving me. My father has done several things over the years that pisses them off, including naming me his heir instead of marrying me off to one of his men so they can lead the family. They would be only too happy to use this as proof I’m not suitable.” Her parents had always supported her as heir and trained her as such from the time she was a teenager. Jovan was like Dante’s uncle, like Rose’s grandparents, in how he viewed anyone who wasn’t a man. As in, they weren’t suitable to lead.
Dante drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “They are not allies, then.”
“They’re family.”
He shot her a look. “You’re not naive enough to think blood ties will protect you if they decide you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
No, she wasn’t. She’d played a very careful game for her entire adult life. Entertaining her “cousins” from Russia when they came to visit with obvious agendas while never agreeing to anything. She’d gotten very good at dancing on the knife-edge between too strong to fuck with versus being too much a pain in the ass to be allowed to live. Her family in Russia was always hungry for more. More power, more territory, more money. It aggravated them to no end that her father eventually settled into something resembling peace with the scattering of other families in NYC and the surrounding area instead of crushing them beneath his heel in a bloody war.
Somehow, in all of this, she hadn’t considered that they’d get involved.
Foolish. So fucking foolish.
She let her head drop back against the seat. “Damn it, I didn’t expect them to move so fast.” It wouldn’t matter that she’d made the right call—and she was certain she’d made the right call—the day of the wedding by getting in that trunk. It wouldn’t even matter if she’d made no calls at all and Dante had overpowered her. She’d disappeared with the enemy, put their alliance with the Capparellis in jeopardy, and had been missing for days. Of course, they would use that opportunity to their advantage. “Fuck.”
The trees opened up the tiniest bit as they came to a stop sign at what appeared to be a highway. Dante looked at her. “Are they a danger to you?”
“Da.” No reason to lie. She’d be gone before it mattered, and even if she didn’t manage to escape, he’d figure it out eventually. “They aren’t my biggest fans, and if in the course of this whole clusterfuck, I somehow died and Sasha became the next heir, they’d have a better chance of convincing my parents to marry her off to someone of their choosing.” Sasha wasn’t built like Rose and their other sisters. She was softer. A brutal husband would break something fragile inside her that she might never recover from. Anya and Lorelei would make sure he never had a chance to do it again, but that wouldn’t save Sasha after the fact.
“Rose.” From the way he said her name, it wasn’t the first time. Dante waited patiently for her to drag herself out of her dark thoughts and look at him. “They won’t touch you.”
“I wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for you.” Not the truth, not really. If not this, then something else would have happened to give them the excuse to go after her. She just thought she had more time, more space to build up the walls to keep herself and the people she cared about safe.
“They won’t touch you,” he repeated.
She had no business feeling warmth from his assertion. Even if the fairy tale in this man’s head came to reality, even if he was as formidable as his reputation, in the end, Dante was only one man. He couldn’t protect her from the full might of the Russian Romanovs if they decided to take advantage of her being outside the relative safety of New York. “Do they know where we are?”
She half expected him to brush off her question like he had in the past. Instead, Dante pulled onto the highway. “Si. Not our specific location, but they’re in the area.”
Her breath whooshed out. “Dante, you have to let me go. If your uncle wants me dead and they’re sniffing around… You’re outmanned and outgunned. Eventually they’ll find you—find us—and then it’s all over. They’ll kill both of us and make it look like it’s your fault and…” And then the people she loved would pay the price.
What was the fucking point of all this power if all it did was paint a target on her forehead? Her parents claimed it served to keep their family safe, but if she were a civilian, she wouldn’t have to deal with shit like this. Rose didn’t spend much time worrying about what her life would have been like if she were born into a different family because, ultimately, it didn’t matter. Her circumstances were what they were, and she mostly loved her life.
Just not when it seemed like everyone and their dog was gunning for her.
Dante didn’t look at her, but his body had gone tense at her statement. “All the more reason for you to agree to my terms.”
“That’s not possible and you know it. You are one man, Dante. No matter how good you are, they’re better. Marrying you would just make it worse.”
“That’s not a no.”
She opened her mouth to tell him no but couldn’t make her lips form the word. Dante was not for her. He couldn’t be for her. It didn’t matter that she was starting to believe him about their connection being real even before they were honest with each other. It didn’t matter if he fucked like a dream and seemed to enjoy her at her most monstrous. It didn’t matter that he’d most likely burn the entire world down for her if she set that as her condition for marrying him.
It didn’t matter what she wanted.
She closed her eyes. Okay, fine, she wanted Dante. She even liked the way they circled each other, neither willing to pull their punches. She liked that he was the perfect combination of Jackson Smith and Dante Verducci. She liked how they fit in so many ways.
But he wasn’t for her. He couldn’t be. Even if they could get the situation figured out with the Russian Romanovs, her family would never accept Dante. The Capparellis would never accept her marrying a Verducci, either. The implications for following what her heart may or may not want…
No. The cost was too high.
“It’s a no, Dante,” she said softly. “It has to be.”
He didn’t say anything the rest of the drive. It wasn’t an angry silence, though. His body language remained loose and easy and his expression contemplative. It made her want to push him, to poke and poke and poke until he snapped. To ask him if he was actually that easily dissuaded, even though the act of asking would give away far more than she could afford. This was what she had to want, after all. Him to back off.
She watched the road signs but couldn’t dredge up any happiness when she realized they were in California. What did it matter now? This had to end, and end immediately.
The town Dante drove them to was barely large enough to have a Walgreens. He parked at the back of the lot and turned to look at her. “I need you to stay in here.”
“But—”
“Rose.” Rose. Not Rosa. Not amata. That, more than anything, made her stop protesting and look at him. He held her gaze. “I will go and get the meds for you. The Russians were spotted in the next town over, so they might not be here, but we can’t risk it.” He paused. “If you run, I can’t protect you.”
“I wouldn’t need protection if you hadn’t interfered!”
“Si.” He shrugged. “But it happened and now we deal with the consequences. There is nothing stopping them from gunning you down in the street if you try to run. Stay in the car. Please.”
He could be lying. He probably was. If that were the case, why bring her at all? He could have kept her locked up in the cabin and returned with the medication. Yes, it would mean a few more hours before she could get the dose, but ultimately it wasn’t Dante paying the price of their recklessness.
She nodded slowly. “I’ll stay.” Even Rose couldn’t tell if she was lying or not.
For a moment, it seemed like Dante might change his mind, but he turned off the car. “Lock up behind me.” Then he was gone, striding toward the building.
She watched him disappear through the doors. A not-insignificant part of her wanted to stay right there in the car. She could tell herself she had no choice because she needed Plan B, and then she’d have no choice but to go back to the cabin, and then she’d have no choice to keep fucking Dante and hiding from all the problems waiting for her.
That was the thing, though.
She did have a choice.
She couldn’t let her selfishness hurt any of the people she cared about. It still took more determination than she could have anticipated to pull the door handle and step out of the SUV. Late-afternoon heat made her cardigan almost unnecessary, and she looked around, temporarily disorientated. Rose’s gaze landed on an old Latina lady pushing her cart, and she hurried over. “Ma’am? Do you have a phone I could use?”
The woman flinched but then peered at Rose. “I haven’t seen you around here before. You in trouble?”
No reason to pussyfoot around it. “Yes.”
“Don’t steal my phone.” She dug it out of a truly massive purse and handed it over.
Rose stared at it for a long moment. It was one of those flip phones that had been designed to look like the old ones from the mid-2000s. She held her breath and dialed her sister. Not Lorelei this time. She needed Anya.
“Romanov here,” her sister barked into the phone.
“Anya?”
Instantly, her sister went on high alert. “Rose? Is that you? Where are you?”
“I’m at a Walgreens in…” She held the phone away from her face and looked at the old woman, who was watching her suspiciously. “Ma’am, what town is this?”
“Cedarville.”
The name meant nothing to her, but when she repeated it to her sister, Anya cursed. “They were just through there yesterday. Hold on.” She didn’t bother to hold the phone away as she started issuing commands. “Call Uncle Jude. She’s in Cedarville.” A few seconds later, she came back on the line. “Can you stay where you are for fifteen minutes or so? Grady is on his way.”
She had a dozen questions about what their extended family was doing in the area, but it would have to wait. “No, I can’t stay here that long, and I have to give this phone back.”
“Fuck. Okay.” Her voice went muffled. “Give me your fucking phone, Vasily. No, I don’t have time to argue. Give it here.” A pause. “Okay, if you go to the street the Walgreens is on and head north, there’s a bunch of shops and shit. Go to secondhand motherhood store or whatever the fuck Moms and Me is and hide there. Grady will be there in ten.”
“Okay.” She ignored the guilt threatening to swallow her whole and hung up. This was the only way. Honestly, this was preferable, because if she set things to right, maybe she could divert her family from a quest for vengeance and calling for Dante’s head. He wouldn’t thank her for it, but it was better than the alternative.
“Thanks for letting me borrow the phone.” She looked up and froze. The old woman wasn’t looking at Rose. She was looking at something over Rose’s left shoulder, her expression terrified. Fuck, Dante must be back already. She handed the phone back and started to turn. “I can explain…”
Rose trailed off.
It wasn’t Dante standing behind her, violence written across his face. It was a man she’d only seen in pictures, one of the people her father had warned her about as active threats to her existence. He was a lean, dark-haired guy with a remarkably normal face considering his reputation. Just handsome enough to be utterly forgettable, at least until a person looked into his empty gray eyes. She numbly passed the phone back to the old woman and stood there as she rushed into her car and practically left half her tires on the pavement peeling out of the parking spot.
I thought he’d be taller. She pressed her hand to her mouth to keep the words inside.
“You know who I am.” His thick Russian accent should have felt familiar, but she couldn’t see past the threat.
“Da,” she answered in Russian. “I know who you are. The Mad Wolf.” The one their Russian extended family sent when the situation had gotten messy and they wanted to make an example of the offending parties.
Casimir Romanov.
