“I was afraid for my leopard. I knew their leopards would really hurt him, so I fought him back—and pulled the trigger. It was . . . the worst moment of my life. The absolute worst, taking that man’s life in front of his wife and children. All for what? Money? So little they owed and we had so much. Blood and brains splattered over me, I was that close. I stood there horrified, unable to move or speak, tears running down my face while my father and uncles did unspeakable, vicious things to the wife and daughters and then allowed their leopards to kill them. They flung the bodies aside as if they were so much garbage.”

He no longer had bile rising even when he had nightmares thinking of his first kill. “I was traumatized. Sick. My father and uncles beat me for hesitating and then for crying and finally because I threw up. They called me names and forced me to crawl, covered in blood, back home. My father kicked me every inch of the way while my uncles taunted and made fun of me.”

She had laid out the silverware and napkins and put the food on the counter in front of them. A meal, shared with a woman. A first for him. As she slipped up onto the barstool beside his, her hand trailed across his back, a gesture, he knew, that was sympathy, but he found it oddly compelling. Disturbing. Sensual. His cock, already raging, refused to stand down.

“I think the men in your family corrupted their leopards, not the other way around. I believe that happened in my family as well.” The admission was soft. A thread of sound, but she’d given something of herself back.

His heart contracted and he picked up the fork, his gaze fixed on her face. She looked so beautiful to him. So fragile. He was a big man. He had more than a foot on her, and his shoulders were twice as wide as her body. There was no back up in her though. She would stand for their children—and she would stand for him.

“I’m a man who needs control, Evangeline. In all things. My childhood was a training ground for control and power. I crave the feeling of my fists striking flesh, of having fists hit me.”

“Fyodor.” Just his name. A reprimand.

“I’m trying to give you truth.”

“That’s the truth as they made you see yourself. The truth is far more than that.”

“I don’t want to be that man. I don’t want my leopard to be a killer, but I didn’t get what I wanted, not from birth, Evangeline. I was born into a fucked-up family. A fucked-up lair. The worst of the worst. No loving mother. No loving father. Just fists and kicks and blood.”

“Your mother didn’t protect you? I don’t get that.”