The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2) (52 page)

“This is about Elena, isn’t it? You hate Dimitri, an innocent little boy who barely knew evil existed because of … what? Something stupid his mother did? What does that say about you?”

“It says I’m just as much of a monster.”

“What happened between you two?” she demanded. “I need to know. I need to understand how the man who raised me, a man I love more than life itself, a man who took a scared, lonely little girl and gave her more love than she knew what to do with, how he could be … this!”

John Paul said nothing. The wind whistled around them, blowing wisps of dark strands across his narrowed eyes, eyes that stared at the city skyline in the distance without blinking. The only hint that he’d even heard her was in the grinding of his molars.

“It’s never as simple as that, Ava,” he murmured so quietly, it was nearly snatched up by the breeze. “Some things are just never that simple.”

“What happened?”

His gaze lowered to the railing beneath his folded arms. “I knew Elena since I was a boy. Our fathers were in the Syndicate and we were forced to spend more than our share of time together. I never liked her.” His lips curled back over his teeth in disgust. “There was always something about her that made my insides crawl, a cruelty that couldn’t be masked no matter what she did. She reeked of it.

When we claimed our territories, I knew I had no choice but to be civil. I may not have liked her, but we were essentially partners. I accepted this new reality. I let my guard down. It was my own fault.”

She waited as he took a shaky breath. Something in his face made her want to stop him from telling the rest of the story. Whatever happened next had an anguished darkness creeping into the hollows of his cheeks and pooling in his eyes, and the sight of them wrenched her open.

But he was talking before she could tell him it was okay.

“It was a charity event. All the important people were present. It was mandatory I attend, so I did. Elena was there with her late husband—Ivan’s father. I don’t remember what happened next. I don’t even remember drinking very much, but I woke up with her…” He broke off. No. He choked. He choked on whatever he was about to say and turned away from her.

“Dad?” Ava reached for him, but he shook her away.

He raised a hand to his mouth. She caught the tremor in them and something in her shattered.

“She was on top of me. I…” He gasped for air. His shoulders caved with the jagged sound.

“Daddy…?”

“I couldn’t move. I was awake. I could see … I could feel everything, but I couldn’t…”

Ava tried not to make sound. She chewed into her cheek, tearing out a chunk of flesh, but still the pitiful,
no,
croaked out.

“I couldn’t stop her.”

Her hands flew up to her mouth, mashing back words, the tears threatening to break out of her. Her own memories of being helpless to Elena tangled with his and she knew how he must have felt, knew how terrified he must have been. But the reality of it was so much worse. It was the thing everyone feared, but no one talked about. That cold sensation women got when crossing a dark parking lot late at night. It was the crawling scuttle along the nap of a woman’s neck when she catches someone watching her that makes her uneasy. It’s that feeling of being violated and dirty at just the brush of an unwanted touch.

God, she didn’t want to hear anymore. Why had she asked? Why couldn’t she just leave it alone?

But John Paul was still talking.

“When it was over, she just sat there, me still inside her and smirked.

“See how good it is with a woman?”
she said.
“Maybe you don’t really like men. Maybe you just need a woman to make you fuck properly.”
she moved, using my chest to push herself up and over me, again and again.
“Your cock is still hard inside me,”
she moaned, this filthy sound I can sometimes still hear.

She came on me and I could feel her.

I almost threw up. I wanted to cry.

She just laughed and patted my cheek.
“Next time, don’t be such cold fish, yeah?”

Then, she left, and I just lay there, the room so fucking cold against my naked skin. I can still sometimes feel it at night. I wake up and I can’t move and it’s so cold.” He sucked in a ragged breath, like the chill had seeped into his very marrow. “I remember looking down at myself, at all the parts of me that still held the remains of my own body’s betrayal. I remember thinking that the second I could move again, I would set myself on fire. I would drown myself in bleach. I hated my skin and all the places she’d touched me.

And the whole time, her words kept repeating in my head,
next time
.” His chin lowered to his chest. “I have never felt so dirty, so … violated. I hated myself. I hated that I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next. I couldn’t tell anyone. Even if I did, who would believe me? Who would take me seriously? What happened to me doesn’t happen to men, especially not men in my position. Men don’t get raped. Men aren’t supposed to be weak. Men should want to get fucked. Some would even call what she did a favor. She was only trying to set me straight.”

Somewhere in the roaring in her head, Ava realized something she never once in sixteen years ever realized, and as soon as it dawned, she couldn’t believe she never saw it.

The separate bedrooms. The lack of sexual interest, the absence of a spark when he was with her mother. He’d always been loving and attentive, but there had always been something missing. She always thought it was Charlotte, and it probably partially was, but she’d just been the perfect scapegoat to hide who he really was. It suddenly made sense why he’d been so upset about the things Charlotte was saying about Robby, true or not.

Why hadn’t she seen it?

Maybe because it didn’t matter to her, she thought. He was still John Paul. He was still the same man who dropped everything to bake cookies with her. The same man who took her shopping for her prom dress and waited hours until she’d found the right one. He was her dad. Nothing else mattered.

She went to him. Her arms slid around his middle and she held him from behind, her cheek pressed in the place between his shoulder blades.

“I told no one,” he murmured, seemingly unaware of her. “I tried to forget it, like a bad nightmare. But every time I would see her, she’d grin at me like we shared a secret and my skin would crawl. The first time, a few weeks after it happened, I threw up. I left the meeting, saying I wasn’t feeling well, but it was her. She’d taken something from me that night. It took me years to get it back, but to this day, I couldn’t look at her without remembering.”

She closed her eyes and squeezed him gently, just enough to remind him she was still there, that he wasn’t alone.

“Then I found out she was pregnant and I knew right away that it was mine and I … God, help me, but I hated it. Hated seeing it growing inside her, filling and stretching her belly, this vile, disgusting thing that was created against my will. I had visions, terrible, horrific vision of…” he wheezed out a gasp and she tightened her hold, but he didn’t try to pull away. “I thought things, Ava, things you would never forgive me if I told you. Things no one should ever think about an innocent baby.”

He was trembling. Rocking so hard, her bones rattled with the sheer force of it.

“She brought him to me a few weeks after he’d been born, this tiny thing in blue. She looked at me, so proud of what we’d created.

“Isn’t he beautiful?”
she said.
“He has your eyes.”

I wanted to kill her. I wanted to punch my fist into her chest and tear out her heart. Instead, all I could do was tell her to stay away from me and keep her monster away from me. It wasn’t mine. I wanted no part of it. She laughed and told me I would change my mind.

I didn’t see him again for nine years when he showed up at my door, this boy who had my eyes and too many questions. I don’t know how he found me. I don’t know what he knew, but all I could see was his mother. All I could smell was her evil coating him, running through his veins.”

He pulled away from Ava and she let him. She stood frozen as he stumbled his way to a deck chair and dropped into it. His elbows pierced his knees and he clapped his hands over his mouth like that might stop the words from coming. His gaze fixed on something only he could see at her feet and never moved. Not even to blink.

“I turned him away. I said … such awful things, but I couldn’t…” Tears traced the worn lines of his face and disappeared behind his hands. “I couldn’t stand the sight of him.”

Ava could think of nothing to say, no words of comfort to give. She felt as hollow as a drum and as bottomless as a black hole.

This was the story she’d been begging him to tell her for years, the one thing he could never seem to talk about. Now she knew and she felt no better by the knowledge. She felt no understanding. All she felt was heartbreak. For him. For Dimitri. Two men she loved with all her heart ruined by the acts of a despicable woman. How was she supposed to fix this? How was she supposed to make it better? Where was Penny?

“You hate me.”

Ava started out of her own uselessness to find John Paul watching her with those eyes, those sweet, kind eyes that always lit up when they saw her, eyes that held so much love and warmth. Eyes that always made her feel so protected and safe.

“I could never hate you,” she whispered.

“I hate me.” The words were barely a movement of his mouth.

She sniffled. “Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe—”

He shook his head. “I won’t ask for his forgiveness. I don’t deserve it even if he gave it. Too much has happened, too much sad. Things I can never take back.”

“You don’t know Dimitri.” She wiped at her tears. “He’s got the most beautiful heart. He’s so much like you.”

He lifted his head, lowered his hands, and studied her. “Would you forgive your mother?”

That stopped her. She thought of the years of neglect, the snide, hurtful comments, the years of pretending she didn’t exist.

“No,” she whispered, ashamed of herself.

“Then why would he forgive me when I’ve done so much worse to him?”

“Because he’s not me,” she said. “Because he actually wants your love.”

“But I don’t love him.” He never looked away as he said it. “I never will. He will always be a reminder of what happened.”

A thought occurred to her then, one that finally brought sense to everything she could never figure out.

“Is that why you always told me he was dangerous, because you thought he would do the same to me?”

He lowered his gaze. “He’s his mother’s son. I couldn’t trust what he was capable of. I couldn’t trust him with you, not you, Ava.” His eyes shot up to her face, fierce and intense. “I would have killed every single last one of them if he ever…” His nostrils flared with his ragged breaths. “I wasn’t going to allow him to destroy you the way his mother destroyed me.”

She went to him and crouched down until they were eyelevel. She rested her hands on his knees, partially for balance.

“I have loved Dimitri Tasarov in some shape or form my entire life,” she murmured. “Since I was ten years old, he’s been my best friend. I don’t know what my life would have been like without him. I don’t want to know. You and him have made me the woman I am today and I love you both so much.”

His hand settled lovingly against the side of her face. His thumb smoothed away the tears that refused to stop falling. He peered into her eyes, so much sorrow in his.

“I would give you the world,
mon cher.
”

She shook her head. “I don’t need the world. I just want the two most important men in my life to get along.”

His shoulders lifted with his deep inhale. He continued to stroke her cheek while he searched her eyes. Finally, he leaned in and pressed a kiss to her brow.

“Je vais vous donner le monde, et ma bénédiction. Si tel est ce qui va vous rendre heureux.”
He stroked her head and repeated himself in English. “I’ll give you the world, and my blessing. If this is what will make you happy.”

A fresh batch of emotions blurred her vision. Her bottom lip wavered once before she mashed her entire face into his chest.

“I love you,” she rasped into the front of his dress shirt.

He held her tight, lips against the top of her head.
“Je t’aime aussi,
ma petite chou.”

The soft scrape of shoes on concrete had her glancing over her shoulder at the familiar silhouette darkening the doorway. The sight of him had her heart leaping in her chest and then plummeting.

He knew. He’d heard everything.

It wasn’t on his face. There was nothing on his face. But she knew. She could feel his pain as physically as if it were her own.

“Dimitri…”

“I came to ask if you were hungry,” he said with an ease that hurt her soul.

“I’ll have something brought up.”

John Paul got to his feet. He helped Ava up to hers and then walked straight past his son and disappeared inside without a word.

“Dimitri,” she said again, her throat tight with words she didn’t know how to say.