The Lies Between Lovers (The Beast of Moscow Book 2) Read online

  THE LIES BETWEEN LOVERS

  THE BEAST OF MOSCOW – A SAGA: PART TWO

  BETHANY-KRIS

  For every woman who loves a beast.

  CONTENTS

  THE LIES BETWEEN LOVERS

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS

  Copyright

  1.

  “Vera Giana, how dare you?”

  “Hannah—”

  “I have been calling you for days!”

  Four, actually. Since the day she arrived back from Paris.

  Vera figured the exact number wouldn’t really matter to Hannah at the moment seeing as how it was the first time she’d picked up her friend’s calls. She couldn’t even use the excuse that she hadn’t noticed because that would be a boldfaced lie.

  “You sound like my mother,” Vera said, eyeing the quiet street for any sign of the car that was supposed to arrive at her villa.

  Hannah’s forlorn sigh crackled through the phone’s speakers. “I miss Claire.”

  Vera did, too. It was hard not to when the very memory of her stepmother’s comforting, loving aura was enough to make her warm on the windy walkway. Hannah’s adoration for Vera’s mother was a testament to Claire’s sweet nature considering her friend had only met her mother twice in person.

  “Maybe I’ll call her and tell her something is up with you,” Hannah said, reminding Vera that she wasn’t going to let this issue of hers go.

  “You know, sometimes people just need time to think by themselves, Hannah.”

  “Yeah, well—”

  “I’m sorry if I worried you.”

  The responding silence gave Vera the chance to check the street again, only to find the same thing waiting for her. Nothing but a group of kids kicking a ball at the far turn. She checked her watch—he did say ten.

  But it was now quarter past.

  “Did you even hear me?” Hannah asked, the annoyance clear.

  Vera winced, knowing she couldn’t hide the fact that she hadn’t been listening when her friend came back to the conversation, and that probably wasn’t going to help her case where Hannah’s worry was concerned. Perfect.

  “No,” she muttered.

  “What are you doing? It sounds windy.”

  “Waiting outside my place.”

  “For?” Hannah pressed.

  “I’m going to lunch with someone,” Vera replied carefully.

  Or it was close enough to noon that lunch was the only real option she could go for without giving Hannah too many details. The only thing Vera planned to do today was cross one more thing off her list. She’d been avoiding it; ending it, really.

  Feliks, that was, and properly stepping back from her role at The Swan House.

  “Are you hiding something again?” Hannah asked.

  “Again?”

  “Like in Paris—come on, Vera, don’t deny it. You were being purposefully secretive about the guy you came with, and then he shows up at the tower, has a—”

  “Stop.”

  She didn’t want to get into Vaslav, or what happened that night under the tower. It wasn’t her place to discuss those things, or the private life of a man Hannah didn’t personally know. Even if that man had stepped off a jet and walked away from her without a look back after telling her that she would in fact marry him. Without details as to how exactly that would happen.

  Four days later, Vera still didn’t have any damn answers. Hell, maybe that was for the best.

  “You didn’t even call me about breakfast the next morning like you promised to!”

  “I was up and gone before I could,” Vera replied just as hotly.

  Except Hannah wouldn’t know that—you didn’t explain, she told herself. Not to mention, all the phone calls she had ignored. Was this really her friend’s fault?

  Vera already knew the answer to that.

  “I’m sorry,” Vera said again, turning her back to the street and facing her villa instead. She hadn’t even seen her neighbor, Mr. Anatoly, since arriving home. Faced with a fast-approaching fall season, he would usually be outside prepping his garden beds for a final harvest.

  Or maybe she had been too distracted to notice.

  “I have a lot of things on my mind,” she added when Hannah stayed silent.

  Her friend picked up on that.

  “Like what?” Hannah asked. “The guy?”

  “What guy?”

  “What guy,” her friend replied with a little laugh. “The guy, Vera. The one you came to Paris with. Who else?”

  Vaslav was only one problem of many that Vera currently faced and didn’t know how to deal with. Or maybe he was one issue that she didn’t have to think about to deal with right this second, because he hadn’t attempted to contact her by any means once since she stepped off the jet—even leaving her to find her own way home from the airport, not that it was too hard to do so.

  “Vera?” Hannah asked quietly.

  “I’m—”

  The playful shouts of children and the crunch of tires rolling across asphalt stopped Vera from explaining exactly what had her so distracted—a culmination of things, really. She turned back to the street to find the reason for the children’s yells rolling closer to her home in a two-door black sedan.

  He was even driving.

  “I have to go, Feliks is here,” she told Hannah.

  Well, almost. Another fifty feet and the prick would be parked in front of her place. At least he hadn’t been driving recklessly because the children felt safe enough to go back into the bend on the street to play with their bright red soccer ball.

  “Feliks?” Hannah shrieked. “What are you doing with that asshole again?”

  Vera bristled at the again comment. Like the very fact that she even spoke about the man meant there was something happening in a romantic or personal sense beyond what she couldn’t control—work.

  “I decided last night to tell him I was going to quit before I have to go back to work, actually,” she explained, trying to keep her tone level.

  Did she succeed?

  Not particularly.

  “Oh,” Hannah returned.

  “Yeah,” Vera muttered, eyeing the approaching vehicle as it rolled to a stop. “I don’t want to do it in front of the kids; that’s not fair to them. And even though he is an asshole that doesn’t deserve anything from me, and doesn’t have a current contract that he can keep me tied up in, I respect The Swan House enough to do it privately and figure out a way that quitting can work for everybody.”

  Hannah scoffed at that. “You think it’ll really work like that with Feliks?”

  “Why would he even care if I stayed? I only teach kids ballet.”

  “He’s just not the type,” her friend said.

  “The type to what?”

  “To feel like he’s lost something.”

  “I’m not something. I’m me.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re not something to him.”

  Vera didn’t like that at all.

  “I have to go,” she told Hannah. “He’s parked and waiting.”

  Not that she could see Feliks through the
blacked-out front and rear windows of the sedan once he was parked.

  “Lunch, you said?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Make sure you call me—and I mean it, too,” her friend added sternly. “We need to talk.”

  “I thought we just did?”

  “No, there’s other stuff, Vera. We both know it.”

  Truthfully, she didn’t know anything.

  Vera figured that was part of her problem, if not the biggest one. She didn’t tell Hannah that, and instead, said goodbye to her friend with a promise to call when she was feeling up to chatting. Not that she could say when exactly that time would be.

  Stuffing the phone into the pocket of her trench coat, Vera stepped to the edge of the walkway, and reached for the car’s passenger door to open it. Feliks hadn’t even bothered to get out of the car or roll down the window to greet her, instead letting her go to him. He didn’t grunt hello or anything as she slid into the passenger seat and buckled up after she’d placed her handbag to the floor.

  In fact, he pulled the car away from the side of the street before she had the chance to close the damn door.

  “What are you in such a hurry for?” Vera asked him, noticing the three-piece black on black suit that looked tailor fit and brand new that Feliks wore. “You were the one who was late.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said in a smirk, not even passing her a glance under his opaque aviator shades. “The man of the hour won’t give a shit if I’m late, anyway.”

  She blinked, confused.

  “What, I thought we were going to lunch?”

  Now there was a man of the hour?

  “Who said anything about lunch?” Feliks asked.

  “I figured because of the time—”

  Finally, the man pushed his sunglasses high to the top of his head, giving her access to see the bloodshot eyes that Feliks had been probably trying to keep hidden. He sounded about as annoyed as he looked when he glanced over at her with a knotted brow and narrowed eyes to say, “I also told you to wear black, Vera.”

  She peered down at the standard cocktail dress she had pulled out of her closet, barely giving the request by Feliks any thought at the time. Maybe they were going to one of those restaurants he liked that preferred to keep a dress code for its patrons, as ridiculous as she thought that was.

  “I’m not going to some party with you,” she said. “I said I wanted to talk about what happened.”

  Feliks nodded, and his foot pressed harder to the gas, sending the car lurching forward. “And we will,” he returned. “After.”

  “After what?”

  “The funeral.” He grinned, then, sending a chill racing down her spine at the coldness she found staring back from him. “I needed a date, and apparently, you had time today.”

  2.

  “Mr. Pashkov, wait!”

  Vaslav stopped and turned on the bottom steps of his home to see Mira waving a familiar item in her raised hand.

  “You don’t want to forget this—you wanted it a bit smaller, right?” she asked him, the pocket square in her hand already perfectly folded and ready for its home.

  In his breast pocket.

  The diagonally striped maroon and black silk matched the vest and tie he’d put on for the day to go with an appropriate suit. A custom set, from the tailored slacks to the black silk dress shirt he’d taken entirely too long to button earlier when his hands kept shaking.

  He blamed that on the bottle of gin he downed the night before. That, and the Vicodin he’d been swallowing on and off for the day. He really needed to stop mixing the two.

  “Here,” Mira said reaching for him once she was close enough to place the pocket square in its rightful spot. Her hand didn’t linger on his suit jacket any longer than was necessary, and she was careful not to meet his gaze once she was done and had stepped higher on the stairs again to put space between them. “I hope it’s better for you like this, yes?”

  “Of course,” he replied.

  The problem, though?

  Vas couldn’t remember asking Mira to do anything about the pocket square. He had thought it was better halved than the size his tailor sent over, but had he verbalized that?

  The liquor and pills are fucking with you, he thought.

  Or was it something else?

  Could he just not remember?

  How would Mira know otherwise?

  “Is something wrong?” she asked him.

  Maybe because he lingered there on his steps, his gaze distant on the front doors over her shoulder, lost in his failing memory. She wouldn’t usually question him like that, but he was grateful for her quiet voice all the same.

  It dragged him back to reality.

  The present.

  The only place he needed to be. At least here, he was still alive.

  “No,” Vaslav eventually said. “It’s just another day.”

  The lie was easy to say.

  It was everything else that was hard.

  “We’re running late, Vas,” came the call from the driveway.

  Igor waited next to the rear passenger door of the SUV limo; their driver for the day likely wouldn’t move his ass from the front seat, unless told to do so.

  “One more thing,” Mira said as Vaslav headed for the idling vehicle. “I forgot to mention it since you arrived back ... things were busy.”

  To say the least.

  In fact, she was being kind.

  Vaslav’s mood had been borderline psychotic since Paris, and it hadn’t particularly gotten better. His den almost didn’t make it through the spell he threw when he woke up confused and still hung over. He didn’t blame the woman for keeping a distance and only getting close to his personal spaces when it was demanded.

  A smart choice, really.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Your mother was by. When you were gone, I mean.”

  Vaslav blinked when he pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to flex his mind around why that news would be important to him. Especially so much so, that Mira felt the need to fill him in on the details now when he was already supposed to be on the road. Although, could he really be late for a funeral that wasn’t his?

  He doubted it.

  Natalia was one of the few things in his life that he wasn’t currently concerned with. She kept her distance, took his extra on her allowance without complaint, and hadn’t bothered him otherwise. He considered it a bonus that he hadn’t heard of a single issue that his mother caused since their last meeting, too.

  Wasn’t that what he wanted?

  “And?” he asked, sharper than he intended.

  Or maybe he wanted it to sound exactly like it did. Vaslav didn’t care anymore.

  “Well, usually she calls first, sir, and she did,” Mira rushed to explain, folding her nervously fidgeting hands at her middle. “If you’re not home and she wants to chat, the telephone is fine, but then she came over.”

  Huh.

  “It seemed like she wanted to have tea,” Mira said. “But once the tea was made, she wasn’t very interested.”

  Scrubbing a hand over his throat, he considered his mother’s motives. There had to be one. There always was.

  It was a little concerning that Natalia had been around, but especially when he wasn’t at home. Not entirely unusual, necessarily, but it was if she knew he wasn’t there. Even tea and conversation with Mira wouldn’t be enough to pull his mother away from the city and whomever she was currently leeching off.

  “You kept an eye on her?” he asked gruffly.

  “I tried to,” Mira replied.

  Which wasn’t a yes.

  Well, not a satisfactory one.

  The very idea that his mother had been alone in his home, possibly allowed to wander his personal spaces without supervision, was enough to send Vaslav heading back for the house. Not to mention, his ever-present paranoia decided to kick up a notch.

  Rightfully so.

  Natalia could not be trusted.

/>   At his back, he heard Igor yell out with his frustration.

  Nothing pissed his head of security off more than a last-minute change of plans.

  Oh, well.

  Some shit couldn’t be helped.

  “Where are you going?” Igor barked. “We have a funeral to go to!”

  Vaslav didn’t turn around.

  He had a bigger problem.

  Maybe.

  “I’m sorry,” he heard Mira mutter as her footsteps chased him up the stairs to the front door. “I should have told you sooner.”

  Yes, she should have.

  He didn’t need to tell her as much.

  *

  “What are you looking for? Or better yet, did you find it?”

  Igor’s question didn’t gain much of Vaslav’s attention as he continued the search of his safe’s shelves. Eight, in total. He was surprised it took the man as long as it did to come find his boss in the house, but the hour gave Vaslav the time he needed to scour everything from the drawers in his desk to the filing cabinets in the cellar.

  “You know,” Vaslav muttered as he stepped back from the safe and scratched at his jaw, “today was the first time I stepped foot inside my bedroom in over a year.”

  “What?”

  He glanced up to find Igor had come to stand at the edge of the hole in the den’s floor. Every piece of furniture on the large rug in the den had needed to be moved in order for him to gain access to the latch door keeping the safe hidden. Ten steps led down to the seven-foot tall safe encased in cement. The only way the damn thing was coming out was if someone burned the house down around it first.

  Good luck.

  “My bedroom,” he clarified to Igor. “I had to check in there, too.”

  “For what?”

  For what?

  “My mother!”

  Igor’s brow lifted high at that statement, and if the man tried to hide the incredulity shining in his eyes, he didn’t do a very good job of it. “Your mother.”

  “I just said that.”

  “You thought your mother was in your room—now? That’s why we’re late for Nico’s funeral?” Igor’s wide eyes bulged a bit in their sockets like he was purposefully trying not to roll his eyes. “I know you’re a little neurotic sometimes but Jesus Christ, this is ridicu—”