The Devil's Favourite Obsession

Two corridors east, behind a set of double doors that had been shut and locked the moment they returned from dinner, Lorian Romanovs was pacing.

He had removed his blazer and thrown it across the armchair without folding it, which, for a man who aligned his cufflinks with precision, was the equivalent of flipping a table.

”The audacity.” He loosened his tie and yanked it free from his collar. ”The sheer, brazen audacity of that woman to sit next to you. Eating expensive food. Touching the silverware she might have never seen before and the audacity she was back, replying to everyone.” He tossed the tie onto the blazer. ”She is a street rat, Olga. A common, uneducated street rat who latched onto Crown family name like a parasite on a host, and now she is carrying a child she probably used her charm to make Cassian wrapped around her finger and now she is aiming for Rafael.”

He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it over his shoulders.

”Fifteen percent. Fifteen percent of Crown Capital, sitting in the name of a woman who was scrubbing floors, perhaps. Have you seen her hand and especially her fingers? With one look I could tell she is cleaning woman. And a cleaning woman sitting with elites on the same table. What a joke..... Do you understand what that means? Do you understand what Cassian did? He handed a piece of Crown’s legacy to a strange. A woman with no bloodline, no education, no standing, no family worth mentioning, and no business sitting within a mile of the Crown name.”

He pulled a fresh shirt from the wardrobe and buttoned it with sharp, irritated movements.

”And Rafael. Did you see Rafael? Watching her across the table like she was a chess piece he intended to collect. That boy has always had his own agenda, and now he smells blood in the water, and I guarantee you he will circle that girl until he finds a way to use her against us.”

Olga sat on the couch at the foot of their bed.

She wore a cream silk nightdress that fell just below her knees. Her dark blonde hair was unpinned, resting against her shoulders. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her eyes were fixed on a point somewhere past the curtained window, and they had not moved since she sat down.

She had not said a single word since they left the dining room.

Lorian did not notice. He was too busy constructing his argument against a woman who was not present to defend herself.

”And the pregnancy. Let us discuss the pregnancy.” He pulled the wardrobe shut. ”I am unsure if we should really go ahead with the engagement with Rafael. Something is telling me not to trust Rafael. Not after witnessing how he looked at the cleaning woman.”

He turned around.

Olga sat exactly where she had been sitting five minutes before. Same position. Same folded hands. Same distant stare aimed at the curtains.

”Olga.”

Nothing.

”Olga?”

Her eyes blinked. Once, slowly. The way a person blinks when they are being pulled back from somewhere very far away.

Lorian studied her face. The irritation drained from his expression and was replaced by confusion. He walked to the couch, sat down beside her, and reached for her legs. He lifted both of them gently and set them across his thigh, her bare feet resting against the fabric of his trousers. He pulled the hem of her nightdress down over her knees with an absentminded care that contradicted everything he had been saying for the past ten minutes.

”I am sorry.” His voice dropped lower. The sharp, acrimonious tone he had used to dissect Cixi was gone. In its place was the voice he used only inside this room, only with this woman, only when the doors were locked and the performance of being Lorian Crown could be set aside for the night. ”You should not have had to sit through that. The entire dinner was a circus.”

He took her other foot in his hand and pressed his thumb into the arch. He worked the muscle slowly, kneading the tension from the sole with practised, familiar movements. He had done this a thousand times. After galas. After board meetings. After family gatherings, that left her quiet in the car ride home.

”And what happened with Tatiana...” He shook his head. ”Rafael announced the engagement to Cixi in front of everyone without consulting the family or thinking it through. I know that upset you. Tatiana shouldn’t have gone through the humiliation. She is still a child. Nineteen years old, whom we decided to get engaged with Rafael... I know we made the decision, but I am not sure anymore...”

His thumb pressed deeper into her sole. Olga’s toes curled slightly at the pressure, but her expression did not change.

”I will speak with Michael about it tomorrow. And about the shares. And about that woman. All of it.” He looked at her face, searching for the reaction he expected to find. Anger. Frustration. The quiet, simmering displeasure of a mother who had just watched her youngest daughter be claimed by a man twice her age. ”Olga, talk to me.”

Olga turned her head.

She looked at him. Her eyes were not angry. They were not upset about Tatiana. They were not focused on the dinner, or the shares, or Rafael’s ambitions, or the circus that Lorian had spent ten minutes narrating to a woman who had not been listening.

Her eyes held something else entirely. Something she had been sitting with since the dining room. Something she had been turning over in her mind, examining from every angle the way a jeweller examines a stone before confirming what it is.

”Do you not think she looks like me?”

The question landed in the room like a glass dropped on marble.

Lorian’s hands stopped on her foot. His thumbs froze mid-press as he stared at his wife.

”What?”

”Cixi.” Olga’s voice was calm. Quiet. Stripped of emotion in the way that only deeply significant questions are. ”Do you not think she looks like me?”

”Don’t be ridiculous. Why would she be looking for anything like you? She is no where close to you wife. What are you even thinking?”

”Do you think she can be our lost daughter?”

Lorian expression changed immediately. ”That cannot be possible.”