The Beauty Who Loved Him by Bethany-Kris

3.

Vera appreciated thatVaslav wasn't a liar. She did soon learn why she needed boots and exactly how he returned to the house so fast after her initial arrival. The sporty four-wheeled ROV featured a roll bar painted in neon yellow and decorative stickers of black flames on every wheel well.

Only one helmet waited in the passenger seat of the two-seater recreational off-road vehicle, and Vaslav didn't give Vera any time to argue about who would wear the helmet before he plucked it up where it waited on the black leather racing seat beyond the loose mesh that clipped to the roll bar like a makeshift door, and plunked it down on her head with a gentle plunk of his fist on the very top.

“Might be a little loose,” he told her as his fingers spread wide on the top of the helmet to jiggle it.

Vera glowered playfully at him when he lifted the visor of the full-face shield high enough for him to see her face inside the helmet. “A little warning would have been nice.”

“I don't like when people know my plans, actually.”

“It’s just a helmet.”

Vaslav winked. “Is it?”

Vera, still holding the reasonably-sized storage cooler Mira had packed with lunch, only sighed. There wasn’t much else she could do considering her hands were full. He soon took the cooler, shifting the lever handles on either end from her hands to his and shoved it to the middle block between the two seats of the side-by-side. The only spot it could go other than on her lap considering the ROV didn’t even have any rear trunk space.

“Jump in,” he said as he rounded the front, “and buckle up.”

Vera eyed him as he went, enjoying the view of him in dark-wash denim and an old cotton sweater with lettering across the front that had long since faded. She couldn’t remember a single time when he had dressed down in her presence, but he still looked good to her with every long stride of his muscled thighs.

“Will you, too?” she asked back.

“What?”

“Buckle up? I don’t see a helmet for you. Safety first and all.”

That made him laugh. A delight she wasn’t expecting considering the way it lit up his scarred face. Vaslav jumped in the driver’s seat of the side-by-side making it rock on the suspension from the sudden weight. “Get your priorities straight, kisska. Helmets and seatbelts are the very least of my problems when it comes to safety. Come on, he’s been down there thirty minutes or more. I bet he’s about ready to kill me for it, too.”

“Kill you for what?”

“I might have left him a little busy.”

Vera still didn’t understand. “Are you messing with me?”

An entirely plausible scenario.

Vaslav flicked a switch on the dash and then turned the key to spark the engine to life. He had to yell over the roar of the ROV coming to life for her to hear. “Do you want to walk?”

That did the job.

Vera soon found a comfortable spot in the side-by-side’s passenger seat, but she barely had time to buckle up before Vaslav yanked the shifting lever into drive and hit the gas. Her immediate reaction was to reach for the cooler to keep it steady, but she soon figured out that the way he wedged it between the seats kept it firmly in place.

Vaslav didn’t speak as the ROV took the almost six acres of grass leading down to the far tree line in a mere minute at a speed that kept both passengers glued to their seats. She had noticed the dirt road that lined the trees and rounded the far edge, they even walked it together during her first visit, but they hadn’t gone far enough where the metal gate closed the road from going any further beyond the bend in the tree line.

Except today.

The gate was wide open.

“Do you keep the side-by-side in the big shed with the Rolls?” Vera asked.

Vaslav didn’t hear her.

Or maybe he couldn’t.

Despite the windshield of clear, spotless plexiglass in the front, the wind still whipped in through the open doors, carrying her words away with the rushing wooshes. The ROV eventually came off the grassland and hit the road, but the suspension kept the vehicle from behaving as if the sudden change in terrain affected it more than a gentle rock from grass to rocky gravel.

His focus stayed on the path ahead, and the way it curved beyond the gate, rounding the bend in the tree line. The backdrop of tall trees whizzed by in a green and brown blur with specks of reds, yellows and burnt oranges from the fall. Overhead, the fluffy clouds of white painted a blue backdrop, but she couldn’t find any promise of rain in the sky.

Although she struggled to manage it, Vera was able to turn in enough time to see the very top of the Federal Colonial disappear beyond the rolling hill as they entered the midpoint of the turn in the road.

“Look.”

The only reason why she heard Vaslav’s shout was because he let off the gas for the side-by-side. Vera swung back around in her seat as the view ahead of them began to form.

Or rather, a lake awaited to greet them.

A good three football fields in length, and at least one across, the still, dark water was framed by a mountain of climbing trees just starting to change color for the autumn season. It was a shame that a person couldn’t see the sprawling, quiet lake from the main house, but as their off-road vehicle crept along the dirt road, she couldn’t look away.

Like the road curving along the bend of the tree line, so did the edge of the water. It continued beyond even where she could see that the turn started to end and where a fence line of natural post stakes made of logs began. The fence, clearly a work in progress as there were no connecting lines between each log post sticking out of the ground, wasn’t even stained or painted.

“Hell of a spot down here,” she heard Vaslav say beside her.

Vera couldn’t disagree. “The guesthouse is down here?”

“Da. Gets power by generator. I almost let Mira have the keys last year.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Vaslav tossed a grin her way. “She didn’t like the walk.”

Ah.

Vera didn’t get the chance to respond before Vaslav pushed hard on the gas again, sending her back flat into the seat and leaving a cloud of dust from the dry road in the wake. She wasn’t really paying attention to the arch of branches from trees where the road led through to a clearing because something out in the water caught her eye instead.

A black mass bobbing along the lake’s surface. It took her more than a couple of blinks to discern the figure swimming slowly from one side of the lake to the other.

Marrow.

The black retriever didn’t seem to be having any trouble doggy paddling his way across the lake. If anything, the dog was determined and focused.

Beyond the break in the trees where the branches swept high across the road like arches, a line of stake posts began every six feet. The unfinished fence also lined a small portion of the lake. Vera finally caught a glimpse of the front of the home Vaslav called a guesthouse where the break in the trees opened to a clearing surrounded in the colors of fall. Designed similarly on the outside to the main house, it featured gray bricks and crawling green vines that lined every long, rectangular window. Except it was like a mini version of the house on the hill. Instead of three levels, there were two, and it was barely half the size in length. She doubted it had more than two bedrooms. No towering birch trees welcomed them, and there weren’t any stone steps leading to the front door, but the likeness to the main house was unmistakable all the same.

And so was the man standing by tall posts where a dirt path led from the driveway to the docks for the lake.

Her father.

Vera hadn’t thought Vaslav lied to her about where Demyan was, but she didn’t exactly expect to see him holding a ten-foot post at the mouth of the dock, shirtless and sweating, and glowering their way.

“See,” Vaslav said over the rumble of the engine as their ROV slowed to a crawl again, “I told you he was probably getting impatient.”

At the sight of the all-terrain vehicle, Demyan let go of the tall log post with one hand, and gestured wildly in their direction. For whatever reason, he glanced back at the unmoved post stuck deep in the ground, and his brow furrowed with surprise and anger.

“You prick!” she swore Demyan shouted.

Vaslav heard it, too.

Because he laughed.

Cackled, really. Like he enjoyed whatever trick he’d successfully played on Demyan.

“All right, off you go,” Vaslav told Vera then.

Her head snapped his way, and she hadn’t realized until that moment how long she’d been holding her breath because it came out in a heavy woosh. “What?”

The side-by-side rolled to a stop in the middle of the driveway, halfway between where the road ended at the mouth and where the guesthouse waited on the other side of the drive. Vaslav yanked the shifting lever into park, and pointed at the man now coming their way. Whatever task her father had been left with by the fence was forgotten, it seemed.

“I’ll take the food in and get it ready to eat on the back deck. The lake wraps around to the back of the house, too. Come in when you’re ready, yeah?”

Vera blinked. “You’re not leaving me alone—”

“With your father?”

He even cocked a brow at the question. She knew how silly it sounded, but his expression only drove the point home.

Her chest tightened. “I ... well,” she tried lamely, still stumbling over her thoughts.

Vaslav’s thin patience only extended so far with her, apparently. “Trust me, he’s not even the slightest bit annoyed with you. I made sure of it. Now go.”

Ten years.

Did he know that?

Understand it?

Vera didn’t think so, but she also didn't believe that those few seconds were enough for her to explain to Vaslav that it had been a good decade since she spent more than a passing handful of minutes in her father’s presence. Not by choice. Mostly.

Circumstances kept them apart.

Life.

Her career, too.

The few times she had been stateside for productions before her accident didn’t even lead to extended stays with her parents. In a way, Vera became a woman—or stumbled into adulthood, rather—far away from the prying eyes of the people she knew loved her most. At least, when she failed, that made swallowing it easier.

Less humiliating. Even if the isolation had eaten her heart up to its last lonely shred.

At the same time, it also left her feeling like a stranger to the people she left behind. Maybe that was the problem making her nerves stay on high alert, lost connection.

Vaslav reached over to unbuckle her seatbelt, and with a single wag of his finger, she begrudgingly climbed out of the side-by-side. As she tugged off the helmet, shaking her head a bit to settle the wild strands of her hair, she could hear the approaching footsteps on the ground behind her.

She handed the helmet over.

Vaslav took it with a measured smile. “I’ll see you shortly, krasivyy.”

“You told me the post would fall, Vaslav!”

“But only your pride took a hit, comrade,” came the rueful reply.

Vaslav jerked the sporty ROV out of park and into drive once more, but he didn’t step on the gas as he pulled away that time. Thankfully. Vera couldn’t say she was in the mood to face her father in a cloud of dust.

Instead, she turned to find her father facing her while the backdrop of the lake painted a picture of a serene, natural beauty around his tense posturing.

“I held that for more than thirty fucking minutes,” Demyan said.

Vera’s brow furrowed. “Held what?”

“The post!”

She glanced at the log post in question that still stuck up straight, reaching ten feet high from where it jutted out of the ground toward the sky. Out of all the other posts, it was the only one as tall as it was, and facing a more center section of the wide lake. Another one of a similar length waited nearby on the ground.

“Did it need to be held or—”

“Apparently not!”

Vera blinked at the high pitch of annoyance coloring her father’s tone of voice. “You were helping Vaslav build the fence?”

Demyan scrubbed a hand down his mouth and chin, eyeing his daughter warily but not closing the six or so feet of distance between the two. “He woke me up at five.”

“In the morning?”

He nodded.

Vera squinted a bit at that. “No, thank you.”

“Tell him that.”

Um...

Vera didn’t really have to think about that option. “Another pass for me, Papa.”

One didn’t refuse Vaslav.

He took what he wanted.

When and how he wanted it.

Maybe it was the papa that did it, but Demyan’s tension melted out of his strong, broad shoulders in a flash. He still didn’t step toward her, but the softness in his gaze urged Vera to inch a little closer to her father.

A part of her held back, though. She kept enough space between them that he couldn’t reach out and hug her just yet.

She stared into the stretch of dirt in front of them needing those few seconds to think about the things her father probably needed to hear her say. As a young girl, everyone had liked to tell her how much she looked like her dead, biological mother, Gia. That her dainty features, even her mannerisms and sprite-like demeanor was all Gia right out of bed.

Yet, Vera found familiarity most when she stared into the eyes of her father. They were the same sky-blue as hers. Cold when they were angry. Icy, even. His black hair had passed on the genetics to the mop she called her own. Maybe they weren’t identical mirrors of one another, but home was still home all the same, and she felt it unquestioningly when she looked at Demyan.

A piece of it, anyway.

“It fits, I see,” her father said suddenly.

His gaze had locked on the sparkling diamond sitting perfectly on her ring finger. Vera didn’t even consider covering it with her other hand or hiding it behind her back to keep him from seeing a truth she bet he had already figured out by now.

“Papa, I’m engaged,” Vera said, then.

She needed the words out.

One hurdle over.

Demyan released a heavy breath. “And without even saying a word about it to anyone, too.”

What could she say to that?

Vera opted for nothing.

The pregnant pause of awkwardness didn’t deter Demyan from pushing harder.

“Do you have anything to say to me?”

“About this?” Vera asked, lifting her hand to show off the large diamond.

“About anything!”

His raised voice echoed over the quiet lake.

Vera shrugged in response. “No, not really.”

Her father blinked. Whether it was from the shock of her frank answer or the situation facing him, she didn't know.

“You’re always doing that to me,” he murmured. “Demanding distance. Taking space. But I don’t think you realize how it looks from my perspective. You don’t see what I see. Every time I turn around and blink, you’re someone different, Vera. Look at you.”

Nobody ever said Vera was perfect. Sometimes, though, she didn't recognize her own selfishness until it stared her down to the ground. Or rather, how it reflected in the eyes of her father. She never actually considered how her need to learn and express herself away from her family would hurt them.

He clapped his hands without warning, making Vera jump in place.

“You stopped holding my hand to cross the road one day, and the next you wanted to do ballet,” he said. Then, Demyan clapped again. “Boom—sixteen, and you’re off to Russia without as much as an argument from me because I knew you’d hate me forever if I refused you.”

He clapped once more.

Vera spoke for him that time. “I’m all grown up, only talking to you on a screen, and getting married.”

His hands fell to his sides, but he nodded. “It’s just ... a part of me thinks this is your way of running. I never could figure out what you were running away from, though. Was it me?”

“No.”

Of that, she was positive.

Demyan didn’t look like he believed it. “You scared me to death.”

Vera let out a laugh. “How?”

He jerked a hand toward the guesthouse. “How, are you serious? Who is more like it!”

“You only know that because you paid someone to keep tabs on me and bring the information back, Papa.”

“Which is my right, the very least I can and will do!”

To him, he was allowed his opinion, and Vera wouldn’t argue the point.

What was done was done.

“You were hiding something from your mother and I,” Demyan said, “and you can’t fault me for finding what it was.”

“No, I omitted details that weren’t your business.”

“You’re getting married and that’s not my business?” he demanded.

“The engagement is still new,” she tossed back.

Weakly.

Demyan outright scowled. With her twenty-seventh birthday approaching in only a couple of months, Vera shouldn’t have folded in on herself as much as she did in the face of her father’s disappointment.

You’re a grown woman. Act like it, she told herself.

And still ...

It didn’t help.

Vera opened her hands and arms in a sign of surrender. “I’m fine. I’m okay, look at me. I was going to tell you that I’d met someone. Soon,” she hedged.

At that, her father’s posture loosened up again. Not that it helped with the tension between them.

“It’s not the state of you that worries me, Vera. It takes very little research to understand the kind of man you’re involved with and let me tell you, I didn’t like a lot of what I found.”

“Because he’s criminally affiliated, really?”

“Don’t even start.” Demyan shook his head, and eyed the house. “The whys. Why all of this, why him? Why does he do the fucking things he does? Why, Vera? Have you asked him any of that yet? Because when I ask why, I don’t get answers. Does he at least answer to you?”

“I don’t know what you’re asking me.”

“Is he forcing you—”

“I’m where I want to be,” Vera said. “I’ve done exactly what I wanted to do, too.”

It was that second when she knew it was true, too. The one thing she learned from Vaslav in their short, sporadically chaotic time together was that whatever she said, she needed to mean it. Especially because he wasn’t a man who said things that he didn’t mean. Even if they were in anger, he could apologize for it later, or a truth that would sting her from its reality.

It didn’t matter.

If he said it, it was true, and he meant it.

Vera extended the same respect to Vaslav, and her promise of that only strengthened the moment she agreed to be his wife, and he slid the ring down her finger. It wouldn’t matter if she did ask Vaslav the things Demyan said she should, and her questions might not even revolve around why like his had, but she didn’t say that to her father.

Instead, she asked, “Could I have a hug? We can yell at each other later, you know? There’s always time to fight.”

And not nearly enough to catch up.

Demyan blinked. “What?”

“A hug from my father. I missed you. I can’t remember the last time you hugged me, and—”

“God, yes. Come here.”

That was all she needed to tell him. Demyan closed the distance separating him and his adult daughter. Time had changed a lot of things for the two of them, but the way he could make the world disappear when he wrapped her in a hug wasn’t one of them.

Yes, her communication skills had been lacking. No, his worries weren’t for nothing.

The hug took it all away ... at least, for a moment.

“It all happened really fast,” she whispered, not knowing how else to explain the strange relationship she had stumbled into with Vaslav since their first meeting. None of it had been normal, certainly not the standard, and she couldn't say she wanted to change what she found because of it, either. Even if she wasn't ready to say what that thing she found was; how could she when she had yet to make sense of it herself?

“And I don’t regret any of it,” Vera added after a second.

Demyan huffed a breath into Vera’s hair, squeezing her tighter when he muttered, “He’s goddamn crazy, Vera.”

“Don’t say th—”

He held her away from him. Far enough that the two had to stare one another in the face as he said to her, “I can’t even remember getting off my plane.” Demyan jammed a finger into his chest. “I woke up again and again only to get a rag over my face the second I was conscious. He had my associate shot in the face while he drank tea and told me where I would be staying like he was checking me into a hotel, Vera. Where I walked to, by the way, in the middle of the night while the bald one followed me.”

Demyan scoffed. “Follow the road. Door’s unlocked.”

She blinked at the callous way he mocked Vaslav’s amusement but was more struck by how unsurprised she was at the way her father had been treated by the man. It wasn’t like Demyan to just talk that way to her. So frankly. Hell, she was a teenager before she got him to admit he was affiliated to the mob.

Her grandfather, on the other hand ... well, Anton Avdonin never had a problem saying exactly who and what he was when asked. As long as it wasn’t a cop asking the question.

“He’s dangerous, likely unstable, and that’s concerning to me. Whether you’re willing to admit it, or not.”

“He takes some getting used to,” Vera tried to say.

“He woke me up with breakfast,” Demyan said, “before the sun was even in the sky. With a job, he said! His mood was a hell of a lot better, mind, but given the way I was dumped on his floor, I don’t particularly trust his smiles. The enemy you know is better than the one you don’t.”

“That’s the thing, Papa.”

“What thing?”

“You don’t know him, but even if you did, that’s not the point. He handles people better when he believes they don’t know anything about him at all.”

Demyan blinked at that, dropping his hands from her and taking a small step back. “Vera, do you hear yourself say that, it’s insane!”

“Well ...” So be it, Vera thought. She folded her arms over her chest, and planted her booted feet, Mira managed to find a pair of hikers that fit, firmly into the ground. No doubt, the sight of her, the contrast between her dress and footwear, and the entire scene was silly to Demyan. She wished she cared. “Nobody said you had to like it. You came here.”

She expected anger.

Maybe it was even justified.

After a pause that made Demyan look frozen in time against the soft movement of the lake and breeze in the trees, he barked out a laugh.

“Oh, God,” he crowed.

Vera shifted a bit on her heels. “Why are you laughing?”

It took another low rumble of laughter before Demyan managed to mumble his reply, “That’s what he told me, too.”

“I mean ...” She let her palms helplessly slap against her thighs over the cashmere dress. “It’s true.”

“Was that a cooler I saw on the ROV?” Demyan asked, then.

The change of subject brought Vera sweet relief. “Yeah. Salad, bread, coffee. Something sweet, too.”

“Is he going to give me back the rest of my things, too?”

Vera hesitated long enough for her father to roll her eyes. Defensively, she said, “I didn’t know he’d taken your things.”

“And my phone!”

“I’ll get your phone back,” Vera snapped. “Did you even bother to ask for it yourself?”

“I asked enough questions to learn he didn’t like to be asked questions, Vera.”

Fair enough.

There was one thing she could fix.

Vera pulled her phone from the pocket of her dress, one of the best features next to the neckline, in her opinion, and offered it to her father. “Here. Call Ma. She’s very worried.”

She didn’t need to say it twice.

Demyan took the phone and grumbled, “Yeah, I bet.”