Defiant. Sweet. Alluring.
A business deal gone wrong brought me to her doorstep.
She's everything I shouldn't want; everything I was against after watching my mother's obsession destroy her.
Still, I can't stop myself from craving her.
I should know...
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"WHAT ARE YOU DOING here? It better be worth me putting clothes on." I climbed down the last of the stairs, pinning my father with a glare. "I don't remember inviting you."
Green eyes the same shade as mine filled with nonchalance as he helped himself to Mikhail's scotch he'd discarded on the coffee table before he went to bed. "Every day, I think your attitude will get better, but you always end up spawning into a worse monster."
I flashed him a humorless smile as I came to take the seat right across from him, the coffee table separating us. "I live for disappointing you, don't I? You told me that yourself."
I signaled for Anton, one of my senior guards who'd alerted me of my father's presence, to leave.
A thoughtful look crossed Igor's eyes. "Hm. I did say something like that." He lifted his gaze to meet mine. "I apologize."
I coiled back like I'd been struck by a cobra, my fingers frozen where they were curled around the neck of the bottle. "What the fuck is going on?"
First, it was Viktor smiling at me and being chatty at the airstrip followed by Anatoly's strange display of power in front of me. And now, this was happening.
Igor was apologizing to me.
I narrowed my eyes on him, honing in on his body language. He seemed relaxed, and nothing was out of the ordinary. "What have you done, Igor?"
He glowered at me, a sliver of the man I was used to peeking through. "I did nothing, and I told you to stop calling me by my first name."
"You'll get my respect as a father figure in my life when you earn it." I popped the cover off the bottle of scotch, guzzling down a mouthful. The burn the liquid brought as it slid down my throat was welcomed. "Looking at things, it's too late to play 'dad' at twenty-eight, no? Until then, I'll call you whatever the fuck I feel like."
His lips twisted into a rueful smirk. "You were always one to hold grudges."
I fixed him with a bored stare as I leaned back against the couch, shoving my hands into the pockets of my hoodie. "Get to the point of this visit."
"What, a father can't share a drink with his son?"
"Not with the type of relationship we have."
He built me up to be his heir using whatever gruesome methods he saw fit.
I had no problem with the things I had to go through to get to where he envisioned me, but where I drew the line was him touching my brother; something we didn't seem to quite agree on considering our now strained relationship.
"That's what I'm here to talk about. I realized I've been quite harsh on you when it came to raising you."
I chuckled humorlessly. What in the actual fuck was going on? "Quite harsh, huh? And when did you get this epiphany? When you were fucking Reina?"
