The Promise (Darkest Lies Trilogy Book 2), Bethany-Kris [top 50 books to read .txt] 📗

at dealing with it than he had been as a fourteen-year-old troublemaker with a serious disrespect for anyone in power.

That hadn’t gotten better.

Except this time, it wasn’t so much the tone Demyan used as it was the decibel he spoke at. He had no idea Karine was sleeping mere feet away, or that he even had a reason to lower his voice.

That didn’t change the fact that Roman didn’t want to wake Karine. She clearly needed as much rest as she could get. He seriously doubted the coming days were going to be easy, for different reasons.

“We can talk,” Roman snapped, his own words hushed but not hiding their warning, “but you need to keep your voice down.”

Demyan tipped his head a bit to the side, saying only, “Excuse me.”

He didn’t even ask it.

A clear try that again.

Roman didn’t bother, glancing in Karine’s direction instead, letting that do the work for him. His father followed the action, and finally, he found the sleeping form on the chaise near the windows. At least, the light had shifted just enough to be off Karine’s face. Not that it had seemed to bother her, but he didn’t think that would be comfortable. Sleeping, or not.

It took Demyan a few seconds.

Then, more.

He blinked once, turned his head back to Roman like he might say something, but then his gaze narrowed just as fast, and he stared at Karine again. He counted the seconds—a full two minutes—it took before his father finally responded. Every single one of them was absolute hell.

“Roman,” Demyan muttered, careful now to keep his voice down as he eyed his son with that don’t fucking lie to me gleam in his eye. “Roman, son ... I’ll ask once. Just the once, and I want a truthful answer. Who in the hell is that?”

Well, that was an easy answer.

“Karine.”

Demyan’s lips pressed together in a grim line as his gaze passed between the woman on the chaise, and his son again. “Karine—the Yazov girl?”

Roman’s silence must have said enough for him.

Demyan shook his head, the disbelief lighting up his face as he struggled to find the words. Or maybe he just couldn’t form all the questions he suddenly wanted to ask. Then, he pointed Karine’s way, but didn’t take his eyes off his son, asking, “That’s her?”

“Yeah, that’s her,” Roman replied with a nod. “That’s Maxim Yazov’s daughter.”

That should be clear.

She was who she was. No matter who had tried to hide it. Whatever their reasons, it still didn’t change that important fact.

Demyan’s curiosity—though Roman didn’t understand why—couldn’t be contained, and he stepped in Karine’s direction. Just to have a look, maybe. His muscles tightened painfully with the urge to block his father’s path, to give Karine her privacy.

Even if Demyan didn’t know all her vulnerabilities, and the very reason why she was sleeping there on the chaise out in the open to begin with, Roman did. The protective surge came from nowhere, but he tampered it down.

His father didn’t mean any harm.

That didn’t make it easy.

Demyan stood close enough to Karine to watch her sleep. She didn’t move, not even her eyelids fluttered, for the few seconds he spent surveying her tucked under the blanket. Roman hoped that meant even despite her worries about him and being in New York, that some part of her was also at peace—even better if she trusted him and her surroundings. She probably wouldn’t admit it to him, if that even was the case, but it was still his hope all the same.

Demyan let out a low groan when he spun around to face his son again—two of his fingers pressed into his forehead as if he was willing away a sudden headache. His next question hissed out between clenched teeth, “What is going on?”

Roman considered that, but the answer wasn’t as simple like before. So, he went with that—honesty. At the very least, his father would respect that. “I want to be truthful, but because I’m missing details and facts, I don’t think you’ll believe me.”

Demyan fumed as he stepped closer to his son. “Are you fucking with—”

“No.”

That didn’t make it better. Demyan obviously couldn’t fathom what Maxim’s daughter—the daughter he kept practically secret and locked away from the entire world—was doing in Roman’s apartment. He didn’t blame him.

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t fill Roman with confidence about how this situation was going to play out with his father, either.

“Well, you’re going to have to—try, Roman, and explain this to me. Start somewhere. Anywhere.”

“Not here,” Roman replied, lifting one shoulder in a shrug.

With his hands clenched into balls at his side, Demyan’s face darkened with a deep red—that anger was barely in check. “I don’t care if you want us to go stand in the middle of the damn street. I just want some fucking answers. Now.”

“My office is open.”

He didn’t offer a different alternative, spinning on his heels to lead the way to the office he kept in the apartment. As he did, Roman looked over his shoulder at Karine who was still fast asleep.

He would’ve loved to sleep as soundlessly as her—except he was quickly reminded that her peace in the moment was caused by a greater chaos she couldn’t seem to control. And that ... well, that checked him back into his place fast.

THREE

His wasn’t as grand of an office as his father’s, but it was Roman’s, nonetheless. His place of business, and a space where he was the boss. To find his father standing on the opposite side of a desk was practically unheard of; something men in his position often took special care not to do lest it make someone think they were the lesser man in even something as simple as a conversation.

He wasn’t accustomed to this reversal of roles, even though his father didn’t make note of it—he blamed that on the situation at hand, and nothing more. The only thing that concerned Demyan was the fact Karine Yazov happened to be sleeping in his son’s apartment, and