Nikolai's Girl

~••••*••••~

Daphne

I guess I should begin by introducing myself. That’s what people do when they have a story to tell, and believe me, I have one. Unfortunately, mine comes with enough secrets, terrible decisions, questionable judgment, and one spectacularly disastrous love story to make me wonder why I’m even bothering to tell it.

My name is Daphne Elizabeth Santoro, and if you’ve heard the Santoro name before, there’s a good chance you’ve heard it attached to money.

A lot of money.

My family is one of the wealthiest families in Europe, which sounds glamorous until you realize that growing up rich means having security men stationed around your home, cameras watching every entrance, and enough people following you around to make going for a walk feel like a military operation. I grew up thinking that was normal, so naturally, I didn’t understand why everyone else found it strange.

I had my parents, and my best friend, Esme, who had been around for so long that she was practically part of the family.

I had a beautiful home, a protected life, and everything a girl could possibly need.

At least, that’s what I thought.

You see, it all really started three years ago when I made the gravest mistake of my life.

I fell in love with my uncle.

Not my actual uncle, technically. Nikolai Rozanov was my father’s foster brother, but in our family, that distinction had never mattered. He was Uncle Nikolai, and that was exactly what he should have remained.

Unfortunately, sixteen-year-old me had never been particularly gifted in the area of common sense.

I’m not entirely sure when my little childhood crush became something more dangerous, but I remember exactly when I realized I was in trouble.

But let me take you back to the summer it all started.

It was the summer Nikolai walked back into my parents’ lives after being gone for fifteen years.

My mother cried when she saw him.

My father looked as though he’d seen a ghost.

Maybe he had.

From the very little I’d been told about Nikolai growing up, he might as well have been dead. Nobody ever explained where he’d gone or why he’d disappeared, and whenever I asked too many questions, the adults suddenly became very interested in changing the subject.

Then, one unbearably hot afternoon, he came home.

And I saw him.

And that, my friend, was it.

One look.

One ridiculously inconvenient, completely humiliating look.

My heart actually skipped a beat.

Nikolai Rozanov was the kind of man mothers warned their daughters about while pretending they were only teaching them sensible precautions about dangerous strangers.

He was beautiful in a way that almost felt unfair, with mismatched eyes—one blue and one grey—and a presence that made people instinctively lower their voices when he entered a room.

He looked like danger.

He felt like safety.

He was the sort of man you should run from and somehow the exact man you wanted standing between you and everything you were afraid of.

He was a predator wrapped in sophisticated charm.

And yes, I know how pathetic that sounds.

Believe me, I have had two years to think about it.

I should have recognized the warning signs.

I didn’t.

Instead, I fell for him.

Hard.

And that was the moment my fate was probably signed, sealed, stamped, and sent directly to hell.

The worst part is that I actually got to have him.

Not in the innocent, ridiculous way sixteen-year-old me imagined when I used to stare at him from across crowded rooms, but in the very real, very secret, very disastrous way that eventually left me wondering how I had ever convinced myself it could end well.

I loved him.

God, I loved him.

And then, two years ago, Nikolai disappeared.

No goodbye. No explanation. No returned calls or messages. Nothing.

He simply walked out of my life and left me to pick up the pieces of a heart I hadn’t realized could hurt that badly.

For a while, I was a complete disaster.

Esme was the one who kept me together.

She sat beside me when I cried, dragged me out of bed when I refused to leave my room, listened to me repeat the same questions until she probably wanted to throw a pillow at my head, and somehow managed to make me laugh on days when laughing felt like something I’d forgotten how to do.

She never told me to get over him.

She just stayed.

And eventually, I did what was best for me.

I moved on.

Or at least, I learned how to live without him.

Then Ethan came into my life, and loving him was easy in a way loving Nikolai had never been. He was kind, patient, present, and wonderfully uncomplicated, and when he asked me to marry him, I said yes because he made me truly happy.

Unfortunately, I should have known things won't go as planned.

Because the universe apparently wasn’t finished laughing at me.

So imagine my shock when my mother looks at me from across the breakfast table, grinning from ear to ear, just one day to my week long engagement party...

“Honey, did you hear what your father just said?”

I blink at her, completely lost, before slowly shaking my head.

“No.”

My parents laugh softly, clearly accustomed to my habit of disappearing into my own thoughts. Even I find it funny but when I glance toward Esme, the amusement dies inside me.

She’s staring at me from across the table with wide, frightened eyes, her face so pale that my stomach immediately twists.

I know that look.

It’s the look she gives me when we’re fucked.

Not mildly inconvenienced.

Not this is going to be annoying.

I’m talking about we should probably start praying, type of fucked.

My heart begins to race.

I slowly turn back toward my father.

He’s wearing the exact same grin my mother is. Like they're about to deliver some grand news.

That does absolutely nothing to calm me.

“Dad?”

He leans back in his chair, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

“What did you say?”

His smile widens.

And then he says it.

"Nikolai is coming home for your engagement party.”

My heart drops so violently it feels as though it falls straight through my chair, through the floor beneath us, and all the way down to the deepest, darkest depths of hell.