LEV
"Yes, Дорогая." I confessed to Rose.
I peered up at her amber eyes, as they went through many emotions in that silent minute we were together in the basement.
First was the shock, her eyes widened in surprise, then the tears were threatening to spill, and in the end, I could see that despair formed in her eyes, she was beyond angry.
Rose pulled herself up from the chair, and I followed her, trying to reach out for her, but she pulled herself away from my touch, even as I was trying to help her, she spat insults at me, but that wasn't enough for me.
I leaned closer to her ear, and murmured, "Try to hit me as hard as you can."
Rose was baffled, but she did what I had commanded her, punching me right in the jaw, and then she bolted from the basement as I ordered a guard to keep her out of harm's way.
I massaged my jaw, at the spot she had hit me, because my woman knew how to throw a punch or two.
As soon as she was gone, I briefly glanced at the entrance of the door, at a pair of eyes that I knew too well off, and the entire reason I had confessed to Rose in the first place.
The man in the doorway was grinning at me without saying a single word, his demeanor indicating he wanted blood to be spilled, that's why he was here in the first place.
But then the man left, blending in with the shadows of the basement as I didn't know when he would return again, but I had to be prepared to face him.
I would do everything in my power to keep Rose away from Nikolai Novikov, because that man wasn't to be reckoned with, particularly after his whole family mysteriously vanished a few years back.
His entire family disappeared, and in the end the police decided to declare the family deceased because the family was never found, not even their corpses even as six years had gone by.
Everybody knew who had happened to the family, but nobody was brave enough to phrase it, because Nikolai would never allow those accusations to leave another person's lips.
My newly appointed right-hand man, Ivan, went to stand beside me.
"Ivan." I acknowledged him.
"We have a problem." Ivan, my right-hand man, said.
After Sergei died in the explosion, Ivan went to take the position as my right-hand man, since I had known Ivan for a long time.
"A life-threatening problem." Ivan muttered under his breath, the bitterness in his voice was unmistakable.
I motioned for the man to go on as I crossed my arms over my chest, the slight blood stains on my white shirt were visible.
"Nikolai is causing an issue again." Ivan shared information I was already aware of.
"I know, I saw him by the door when I was with Rose."
Ivan scrunched up his nose in disdain, "He still has access to this place? Even after you stopped taking him under your care?"
My right-hand man mentioned the time period when I took Nikolai under my care, guiding him and training him until he could stand on his own two feet, because I had taken one look at him and knew that he had a lot of room for improvement.
But one day, Nikolai had chosen his own path, and that was the path of his own destruction as I had to cut him off because back then he was a grave threat to my daughter, Layla.
And now he was a danger to Rose.
"How long has it been since you have seen him?" Ivan asked me as I took out a cigar from my pocket, putting it between my fingers and lit the end up.
I drew in a slow smoke then exhaled, "Three years."
"I haven't seen him during those three years, I had only heard gossip about the million-dollar empire he had built off his family's fortune." The nicotine spread throughout my lungs while I welcomed the intense sensation.
"But his presence can't be good, whatever he's up too was never a good thing."
"Who's Nikolai?" Rose's voice at the entrance by the door drew my focus to her, while the appointed bodyguard stood behind her.
"Rose-" I was about to say, but she cut me off.
"I knew that you were hiding something from me, especially when you told me to hit you in the face." She cleared up, but kept her distance from me.
I put out another cigar, clearing the smoke from the room because I didn't like her being around something that could damage her health, as my right-hand man answered for me.
"Someone who shall not be named." Ivan almost gritted his teeth at the mere thought of Nikolai.
"Have you ever heard of Nikolai?" I approached her about the topic of the man, but she shook her head.
"He's somebody you should avoid at all costs, never let him get near you. He's way worse than Marco Spencer." I told her as she narrowed her eyes because in her mind her father was the ultimate enemy.
But little did she know that there existed worse people than her father.
"That's why it's best that we begin with your training immediately." I added.
"I want to train with Ivan." Rose placed her hands on her hips.
My right-hand man looked between me and Rose, slightly shaking his head because he wanted his head to remain intact with his body.
"Ms Spencer, I would like to train you, but my boss would chop me into pieces." My right-hand man pointed out.
I ran a hand through my hair because I would have no issues for one of my men to train Rose, since her self-defense training was my top priority.
But going almost thirty-eight hours without getting any sleep doesn't make me think properly, especially when it comes to the matters of Rose.
"Rose." I called her name. "We can talk in our bedroom, I'll tell you what happened."
She was thinking for a while before she eventually agreed, and we headed up to our master bedroom.
Once we entered our bedroom, Rose took off my coat and I saw that blood had been smeared on her, another person's blood was on her, and I did not like that one bit.
I took a few napkins on the table, and without thinking I wiped the blood from her skin, off her neck as she didn't back away from my touch.
"Tell me the truth, Lev. Tell me about everything." Rose whispered as we stood in front of each other because I was cleaning off the blood from her neck.
"I knew it was you."
"How?"
"I could recognize you from a mile away, Rose. By your appearance, your scent and the heart-shaped mole on your shoulder, you could put a blindfold on me and I could still recognize you," I tell her.
"But why didn't you tell me the truth? You could have told me." Her eyes slightly allowed me in, because earlier they had been glistening with rage.
"Nikolai was there after we had slept together. If he found out that I treated you with any sort of compassion or love and not like a whore, then you would have ended up dead."
"Does that mean every time he will show up that you will treat me with no kindness at all? That you will treat me like a whore?" She questions, her voice filled with pain as she backs away from me.
"Rose, I have no excuse for what I did, but Nikolai is not somebody you should be near. He's dangerous."
"Who's this Nikolai? Who is he that makes you so scared of having him near me?" Her bewildered expression had many questions written on it.
"The people I torture in the basement, I choose to feed them human meat, but he does it the other way, he eats the people that he tortures."
Rose clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes going wide for a second time because this was about to get dark.
"You don't know this, but his family vanished six years ago, and there are no traces of them left, the police haven't found his family."
"Don't tell me..." She uncovered her mouth. "Did he eat his family?"
"It's a speculation." I told her, placing a hand on her shoulder and leading her to the bed because I knew that her ankles were swollen.
She sat down on the bed, then laid her back on the bed frame as I sat down on the end of the bed, placing her ankles on my lap while I started to massage them in the way she liked.
"But I know you, Lev. I don't think what you are making is a speculation," Rose says while biting into her lower lip, enjoying the massage.
"Nikolai was my underling for a few years. There was a chance that he was going to take over my position once I retired or died, but one day I caught him in the backyard."
"He was grilling human meat on the grill while serving the guests. I didn't care because the guests were our enemies, but what messed with my mind was when he took a bite of the meat, eating slice after slice, and that he enjoyed it."
"In his own words, he loved it." I explained to her, "I didn't care at first because you have seen what I did to Cordelia."
"But later on, he tried to kill my daughter and eat her as a way of rebelling against me."
"Was he one of the people who were in the cult that killed your daughter?" Rose asked me, putting two and two together.
"He's the person who started the entire cult, the same cult that ended up killing my daughter." I explain, as the memory of Layla's death would always be engraved in the back of my mind.
"Why isn't he dead yet?" Rose questioned because she knew me, she knew that I could kill a person like Nikolai if I wanted to.
"I can't kill him." I told her.
She frowned, trying to understand why I couldn't kill Nikolai even if I wanted to.
"You're hiding something." Her voice had grown quiet, pulling her ankles away from my hands and lap.
"I'm sorry, but I can't tell you because this is between me and Ana." The moment my ex-wife's left my mouth, her expression changed.
"For the respect of my ex-wife, I need to keep her secret, and Ana isn't ready to tell people yet, but you will find out soon enough."
"I remember now... Cordelia was threatening Ana with a secret, but you already knew about the secret?" She asked.
But she didn't allow me to answer, "Of course you knew, why wouldn't you know, Lev?"
Rose laid her head on the pillow, pulling the covers over her as I stood up from the bed, and I allowed her to rest because she didn't want to talk to me since she wouldn't get many answers.
If I gave her those answers, she would most likely leave my side, and I was a bastard, who couldn't tell her the truth because it would hurt her beyond words.