‘I have never visited Sofiya’s resting place,’ Roman said, surprised at how easily the words spilled from him. ‘Her parents despised me.’
Olivia sat up slightly. ‘Her parents? Not yours?’
‘We were both abandoned by our birth mother at a very young age. Sofiya was a tiny blonde cherub with big blue eyes. She was adopted very quickly. I was not.’
‘Oh...’ She sat up slightly, looking down at him with concern.
He hated the feeling of being so vulnerable, and yet somehow he was unable to stop the words from coming once they’d started. ‘Unlike my sister, I wasn’t the most appealing child. I always had too much to say. It became a part of me to cause as much trouble as I could manage.’
He frowned, remembering the uncontrollable rage that had filled him as a child. He had broken toys, furniture—even bones on a few occasions.
‘I was fuelled by anger and hatred. I was kept at the orphanage until I grew too big to contain. After I ran away for the third time they stopped trying to bring me back.’
‘That is when you became homeless?’
Roman nodded. But the truth was he had never known a home. The only difference was that once he’d left
the orphanage he’d had the added struggle of finding a safe place to sleep at night.
‘I can’t imagine how that was for a young boy.’
‘I was thirteen—practically a man.’ A low, harsh laugh escaped his lips as he thought of his gangly young self, so cocky and self-assured. ‘When the local thugs saw the size of me they asked me to run errands. I didn’t mind that they were criminals. They took me in...gave me a warm bed. One of the guys even bought me shoes.’
His chest tightened at the memory. He had worn those shoes until his feet had burst out of them. Then he had gone out and stolen himself a brand-new pair.
‘I was thin and fast. They used me to climb through windows and vents and such on jobs. I felt very important.’
Olivia was quiet as he spoke on, telling her of his ascent into the criminal gangs of St Petersburg. To her credit, she did not react in any way other than to ask a question or to clarify a point. She just listened.
She listened when he told her of Alexi—the father of ‘the brotherhood’, as he’d called it. She nodded as he told her how, when he had grown broader and stronger, he had advanced to being a part of the main crew. They’d held up banks, intercepted cash in transit and generally just taken whatever they wanted. More than once he felt the old shame seep in, threatening to silence him, but she urged him on.
‘This Alexi guy...he sounds dangerous,’ she said softly, tracing a small circle on his chest as she watched him.
Roman thought for a moment of the man who had simultaneously given him everything and then torn his life to pieces.
‘I wanted nothing more than for Alexi to be proud of me. He was the only dominant male figure I had ever known. It made me feel needed, validated—I don’t know.’ He shook his head, uncomfortable with the conversation all of a sudden. He didn’t like to think of Alexi, of the hold he had once had on him.
‘I think that was only natural. You were easily groomed—an easy target. You were vulnerable and he exploited that.’
‘I never truly relaxed into the so-called brotherhood, and Alexi could see that. I had seen how quickly some of their drunken brawls escalated and I made a point to always stay sober. More than once he questioned my loyalty using violence.’
‘Is that where your issue with guns stems from?’ she asked quietly.
Roman frowned, realising he had gone off on a tangent. How had he kept on speaking for this length of time? Usually talking of the brotherhood and its fearless leader was enough to send him into silence for days, but something about Olivia had kept him talking...opening up.
Unwelcome memories assaulted his brain. Memories of the last night he had seen Alexi. Of the blood and the outrage and that pair of terrified, lifeless, baby-blue eyes.
Suddenly he couldn’t talk any more. He stood up, walking to the terrace doors to look out at the night beyond. He shivered, feeling a cold that was not actually in the air but inside him. Ingrained in him.
* * *
Olivia bit her bottom lip hard as Roman remained completely silent by the doors and then watched as he walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him with finality. She had pushed too hard—her curiosity had been too overbearing. He was likely already planning the best way to tell her to leave.
He had made it perfectly clear that he was a one-night-only, no-snuggling type of guy—and here she was, initiating a psychotherapy session.
She lay back, throwing one arm across her face in mortification. She had just made love with this physically gifted specimen of a man and still she kept digging deeper, wanting more from him than he had warned her to expect. Trying to peek under his armour.
She angrily swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, feeling her inner muscles throb with just the barest hint of exertion. She didn’t feel too different, she thought with a frown. A little sore, perhaps, but not monumentally transformed as she had expected.