Page 81 of Secret Heir

She nods against my chest, her tears soaking into my skin. “Soon. I promise. Just…not tonight. Please.”

“Not tonight,” I agree, pressing a kiss to her hair. “But soon.”

She relaxes slightly, and we lie there in the darkness, holding each other. Her breathing eventually evens out, and I think she’s fallen asleep.

But then she speaks, her voice barely a whisper. “Maksim?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you. For tonight. For being…gentle and showing me that we could be more than just⁠—”

“Angry fucking?” I finish for her, smiling as I feel her softly laugh. “I know. I felt it too.”

She tilts her face up, and I kiss her softly. Once. Twice. Three times. Each kiss a promise. Each touch a vow.

I love you. I’ll protect you. I’ll wait for you to trust me.

11

ARIA

Daniel’s favorite toy dinosaur is missing. It was one of the first toys Maksim bought him and Daniel imprinted on it immediately. It’s not as dear to him as his stuffed rabbit, which is tucked safely away in his room, but it’s pretty damn close.

“It’s in the garage, Mama,” he insists from the doorway. “I remember bringing it out there when Maks was showing me the cars.”

“Then why don’t you go get it?” I’m sitting on his bed, exhausted from a morning of nausea that finally subsided an hour ago.

“There are spiders in there.” He makes a face. “Big ones. I saw them.”

So now I’m in the garage, rifling through a bin of toys that Maksim apparently keeps out here for when Daniel wants to play while he works on the cars. The garage is huge—a six-car space with tools and equipment I can’t even name, everything organized with military precision.

Of course I’m the one doing this, I think bitterly as I push aside another truck. Daniel’s scared of spiders, but somehow I’m the brave one now, even though I hate them just as much. Mother of the year, right here, risking life and limb for a fucking dinosaur.

I’m bent over the toy bin, pushing aside trucks and building blocks, when I hear the garage door start to open behind me. Len pulls in with Maksim’s Mercedes, the engine still running for a moment before he cuts it. The smell of gasoline and exhaust fumes hits me immediately.

And just like that, I’m gone.

The smell is the same. Exactly the same as that night eight years ago.

Eight years ago

I’m twenty-one years old and so stupidly in love it’s almost embarrassing.

Maksim Sokolov is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, and he wants me. Me. Ariana Delano, the girl who put herself through NYU working three jobs and eats ramen most nights because groceries are too expensive. The girl whose idea of luxury is buying name-brand shampoo instead of generic.

And yet somehow I have the attention of the most gorgeous man on the face of the planet.

We met three months ago at the gallery. I was working the evening shift, cataloging new acquisitions in the back room, when my boss Dmitry poked his head in.

“Aria, there’s a client asking for you specifically. Something about a Kandinsky?”

I’d authenticated that Kandinsky two weeks earlier—a stunning abstract from 1913 that had somehow ended up in an estate sale in Connecticut. The research had taken me days, tracing its provenance back through private collections, auction houses, and finally to a wealthy Russian family who’d fled during the Revolution.

The Sokolov family.

When I walked out to the gallery floor, I saw him for the first time.

He was tall—well over six feet—with broad shoulders that filled out his suit perfectly. He had dark hair and sharp cheekbones with a strong jaw that gave him an almost aristocratic look. And his eyes—gray like winter storms, intense and focused entirely on me as I approached.