Chapter 9: she reminds me of someone

I didn’t even realize when my tip was poking through my silk nightdress. I tried to calm, pressing my arm over my chest, embarrassed by how noticeable it was.

Thankfully Lazarus wasn't paying attention to me so I was glad.

I was nineteen, I’ll be twenty in September, it was march now, and my feelings were all over the place. I had never been allowed to want anything and never been with a guy or man I truly wanted. 

The maids couldn’t leave the mansion on their own, and after everything I had lived through while growing up, I had trained myself to push every feeling down and keep it quiet.

 It was easier. It was safer.

But standing in the same room as him, with his scent still clinging in the air and his hand’s warmth still lingering on my skin, it was getting harder to pretend I felt nothing.

Teenagers hormones can’t be stopped, I thought foolishly to myself. I had once hated men with my guts but something about Lazarus kept pulling me closer.

Or could it be just his handsomeness, because gosh he‘s so hot.

Stop it, Delia, I told myself. Don’t be foolish. He is the last man you should want.

But whenever I’m around him I don’t seem to be able to control myself, even when he offered S** as an option to prove his sexuality, I wavered but I want it to be done at my own pace and not forced into doing it.

What is he doing to me, I thought, scolding myself silently. I'd heard the whispers from Tonia and the other maids how he went through women like they meant nothing, how none of it ever lasted. I had no business feeling anything at all when he treats women like tools and being disposable.

His phone rang bringing me back to my senses. He glanced at the screen, then flicked his hand toward the door  a clear wordless order. Leave!

I didn't need to be told twice.

Before I could leave, his voice stopped me  sharp, cold, cutting through the room in Russian.

Привет, Кристофер, надеюсь, ты готовишься к оплате своих долгов, я не хочу задержек, иначе ты пожалеешь!

Hello Christopher…

I didn't understand the words, but I didn't need to. The tone alone already told me enough, the finality, the kind of voice that left no room for argument. Whoever he was speaking to on the other end of that call, I doubted they were in for good news.

By the time I made it back to my room, it was already 12:30 in the morning. Barely a few hours left before I'd need to be up, dressed, and ready for the mission he'd sent me on that would decide whether I lived through this or not.

I barely had the energy to think about any of it before sleep pulled me under completely.

Lazarus 

She really was something to look at, those wide brown eyes, always a little too honest for her own good, the way she trembled whenever I stood too close. It did something to me, watching her try so hard to hold herself together, to look braver than she felt.

 He could always tell when someone was performing courage instead of actually having it. Hers was a decent performance. Not good enough to fool him, but decent for a nineteen yr old.

He almost smiled, thinking about it. The way she looked at him, sometimes quick, searching glances she thought went unnoticed was almost funny. A low maid, mute, invisible, looking at him like he mattered to her in some way beyond fear and survival.

He didn't get carried away by women easily. He never had. There was no reason a mute little maid should be any different.

And yet.

He caught himself getting drawn to her more than he had any use for, that unsettled him.

His father's voice echoed in his head. Women are tools, Lazarus. Useful ones, sometimes. Nothing more. Alexander Petrovich Morganov, his father had drilled that into him before Lazarus was even old enough to understand what he meant.

Long before he'd watched exactly how his father treated the women in their household, disposable the moment they stopped being convenient. His mother. His sister. Every woman who'd passed through their lives, valued only for what she could offer, discarded the second she couldn't.

He'd built himself in that same shape, deliberately. It had never cost him anything before. Women came and went. He never remembered their names longer than he needed to.

He wasn’t fond of his father, he hated him instead. He was a ruthless and brutal man who killed, tortured and assaulted anyone he wanted, even little girls, he was the only mafia Lord who got away with the law even after many monstrous atrocities. The reason why he ended up being the law who killed his father.

Yet his father had drilled some stupid morals into his head, the same father who had murdered his mother and sister.

He thought of Vittorio, of the men he'd just ordered killed without a second thought, of the empire he ran with the same cold manner and way his father once had. He was good at this life precisely because nothing slowed him down. Nothing made him hesitate.

Yet the mute rat, he was taking his time to tame and own was slowly getting into his brain.

Careful, he told himself again, the same warning he'd been repeating to himself more often than he liked lately. Attachment made men sloppy and weak. Attachment gave enemies leverage. 

He'd learned that lesson early, and he had no intention of relearning it the hard way not for a maid, not for anyone.

His phone rang. Sebastian, the only man he actually trusted apart from black.

"Boss. Vittorio confessed and has decided to sign the estate papers." Sebastian said.

Lazarus almost laughed. The audacity of the man, thinking he could simply slip away and after several postponing, after taking me for a fool for trying to escape,Let him sit in that dungeon and understand exactly how much trouble he's really in."

 Okay boss., Lazarus hung up.

He needs to be taught a lesson, and I want his daughter caught… he said to himself

Lazarus paused then blinked, a strange, unplaced familiarity settling before him.

She reminds me of someone, he thought. Someone I've met before. Someone I might know.

He couldn't place it just yet, not quite a memory, just a flicker of recognition he couldn't pin down. It irritated him, the way an unfinished thought always did.

He filed it away for later, the same way he files away everything he didn't yet have an answer for.