The Agreement (Darkest Lies Trilogy Book 1) by Bethany-Kris (motivational books for men .TXT) 📕

Protection from a possible plot on his life certainly didn’t seem like enough when he could just cut out the middleman and kill the assholes if he couldn’t truly trust them.

What else was there?

“And what do you gain from this?” Roman asked.

Maxim looked over his shoulder at him, a gleam of wonderment coloring his expression as he stared at the beaten and bruised man hanging in front of him. The man who may have just saved his life. Did he realize that?

“Let me guess,” Roman choked out through another agonizing cough, “I bet you gain everything—you’ll finally be rid of her. Karine.”

There was a part of him that ached for her, too, but in a different way than the pain currently flexing through his body with the smallest movement. Sweet and naive Karine. She had clearly agreed to the marriage to please her father, on top of her other issues that had become abundantly clear to him, and she had no idea he was just using her as a pawn. She was nothing more than a small piece in a big game.

One she couldn’t play.

“She doesn’t belong to me. She doesn’t belong here.”

Maxim’s voice coated with hatred. The man’s disdain for his child stunned Roman for a moment. He couldn’t relate to that. At all. No matter what shit he’d done to his parents—to his father, specifically, a far better man than him—they still loved him. Not once had he heard them speak about or to him the way Maxim just did about his own daughter.

“She needs someone who wants her,” Maxim added quieter.

And that was Dima?

“She needs help,” Roman snapped back.

That wasn’t the response Maxim wanted if the way his burning gaze and red face turned on Roman was any indication. “And suddenly, you’re an expert? The fuck do I need your advice for—a privileged boy without an ounce of respect or loyalty?”

Even hanging like he was, battered and exhausted, Roman still bristled at the insult. He refused to rise to the bait, knowing good and damn well it wouldn't do anything for him to do so.

Instead, hoping the man would hear him this time, he said, “I can see enough to know she needs real help—probably a professional diagnosis of her condition, and the right kind of treatment. None of the medication you keep feeding her like candy is going to help. Not unless she gets seen by someone who knows how to handle her situation.” Roman briefly considered asking Maxim if he knew about Katee—that he suspected Karine and Katee were the same person. Even if one was seemingly a child, and the other, a grown woman. That Katee was an alter—an identity that fractured from somewhere in her mind, maybe to keep her safe or to deal with her situation. Whatever it was.

He decided to keep that piece of information to himself, just in case he wasn’t able to get out of there alive. If that happened, he wouldn’t be able to help Karine. And if her alter, Katee, was one of the ways she survived, then who was he to stop her from protecting herself?

Maxim scoffed, muttering, “I’m not taking her to a shrink. I don’t need some balding fuck with a degree on his wall to tell me what I already know about her. She is crazy. Has been for years. And yes, if someone wants her, and it works to my favor like this has, then I don’t see the problem.”

How?

God, how could he think like that?

Roman flinched, then, and not just because of the way his ribs burnt with pain. He couldn’t stand the sound of Maxim’s voice. Karine’s name on his lips. She was who she was—whether she was perfect or not shouldn’t matter to the fact she still deserved to be loved and cared for like every other human with a beating heart and a soul.

She certainly had those.

Or ... he thought so.

“So, you’re just going to hand her over to him. Like a weak man would—a scared man who doesn’t understand, can't comprehend, what they’re looking at when they see her. That’s what it is, right? You’re scared of her.”

It wasn’t even a question.

Roman didn’t need to ask what he now knew. Everything he had been missing was suddenly right in front of his face. He hated what he was looking at. The irony wasn’t lost on him, though. She terrified her father because she wasn’t okay by his standards, but clearly Maxim didn’t see it the same way. He didn’t see she was like a small kitten trying desperately to hide away from a big, mean world all at the same time. Did Karine even know the power she really had?

He didn’t think so.

“What makes you think you know anything about me, you sorry sack of shit.”

Just like that, Maxim’s rage returned. A wave that crashed against him, unable to keep himself from drowning in it again. He stormed at Roman with his bloodshot eyes narrowed, his chest and shoulders heaving.

“I know too much, that’s the fucking problem,” Roman growled, using the last seconds he had to toss out the final card trick in his pocket. The one thing that might save him, if it mattered. “And you’re wrong—it wasn’t Dima. I don’t know what Dima knows, but Leonid plotted against you with someone named Katina.”

Once again, the name unsettled him. Something felt wrong, even as he said it. And he could tell that he was right to feel that way based on the way Maxim came to a full stop just inches away from him, his shoulders lifting higher as his chin tipped up.

Staring Roman down, Maxim’s words came out slow, and hard. “What are you talking about?”

“I didn’t stutter.”

Not without effort, though.

“Katina—not Dima, Maxim,” Roman said, his voice hoarse now.

Maxim didn’t move an inch. “Katina is dead.”

“He was on the phone with her. I heard what he said—do you have proof of her death?”

Maxim’s breaths suddenly exploded from him in fast bursting pants that sounded like