Bound by lies Trapped by Desire novel Chapter 137

Elena’s POV:

I clenched my fists, my jaw tightening. “If that’s the case, Mr. Morozov, then why are you even here? Shouldn’t you hate me for the death of your wife?”

But then he said something that made me once again feel a jolt of surprise. “I don’t blame you, Elena. It’s not your fault what happened to your birth mother. Nor do I blame her for what she did in the end. She was suffering deeply… It was me who couldn’t provide her with enough strength, enough reason, to make her want to keep living, to stay with me.” He said, his voice low, and I turned to look at him fully, my initial defensiveness wavering.

Was he… actually being serious? Could this ruthless man, known for his iron will and alleged cruelty, truly be holding himself accountable, accepting responsibility for the tragedy that had shaped his life? And not blaming the woman who had ultimately left him, or the daughter who had been born of that tumultuous relationship?

In that single, unguarded moment, if he was indeed telling the truth and not just attempting to sway me with carefully chosen words, wouldn’t that make him… better than Nikolai, in a way? Nikolai, who carried so much anger and

resentment towards his own family, towards me, for the perceived wrongs of the past.

The idea felt wrong, a disloyal thought that pricked at my conscience. Because if I truly thought that, then I would be shifting the blame onto Nikolai, who was also, in his own way, a victim of a difficult upbringing.

I wasn’t going to do that. I didn’t blame Nikolai for the suffering he had endured; all I truly blamed him for was the initial lie. That was it. But now… now that I was also knowingly lying to him about something as huge as being pregnant with his child, did I even have the moral high ground to be so quick to judge his past actions? The hypocrisy of my own situation suddenly felt glaringly obvious.

The car descended into a comfortable silence as he smoothly pulled out of the metro station driveway and entered the main road, the early morning traffic still relatively light.

“Have you had breakfast yet, Elena?” He questioned after a few minutes, his gaze flicking towards me briefly before returning to the road. I nodded silently.

The car ride continued in silence. I fidgeted in my seat, my gaze fixed on the unfolding cityscape outside the window, trying to decipher the rhythm of this unfamiliar part of Velhaven. Almost an hour had passed since we had left the metro station, and a growing sense of unease began to creep into my thoughts.

“How much further is it?” I asked, trying to keep my tone casual, masking the slight tremor of anxiety that had begun to build. Just in case, I had sent Fiona a temporary location sharing link via text message earlier, along with a brief message

to check in on me later.

A girl could never be too careful, especially in a situation like this. And truthfully, if any of my other friends had decided to go off with a man they barely knew, even if he were to be their long–lost father and also happened to be a notorious mafioso, going without any kind of backup plan in case things went awry, I would be absolutely furious with them. If Fiona.

ed off to had pulled a stunt like this, I would have likely not even waited for her to text ‘help‘ before I got into my car a

drag her ass back home.

Fortunately…or maybe unfortunately, Fiona wasn’t quite as impulsive or prone to reckless decisions as I sometimes was.

1/3

Chapter 137

And I hadn’t yet told her the full extent of my plan, only that I was meeting someone for a belated lunch. So there’s that.

“The last three times you asked, Elena, I believe I said it would still take a little while longer. This time, however, we are actually here.” He said, a hint of amusement in his voice. “As for my house being so far away… well, I think you’ll understand why soon enough.” He said, and I clutched the car door handle a little tighter, a knot of apprehension forming in my stomach.

Why… did that seemingly innocuous sentence sound so foreboding?

He glanced at me, his piercing eyes sharp and perceptive, and a slight quirk touched his lips, his Russian accent becoming more pronounced as he spoke. “I will not be kidnapping you, Elena. You are free to leave any time you like. You can stop being so worried, dochenka.” He said, his tone a curious mix of amusement and genuine reassurance.

I knew he had seen me discretely send that location link to Fiona earlier. He missed very little, it seemed.

“Yeah… that makes me feel so much more reassured,” I said, rolling my eyes.

He didn’t say anything after that, simply turning his attention back to the road. And frankly, he didn’t need to, because my own eyes widened in surprised awe as a massive, ornate silver gate appeared seemingly out of nowhere from behind the dense shrubbery lining the long, winding driveway.

The sprawling estate beyond the gates was even bigger than I had initially imagined, the manicured lawns stretching as far as the eye could see, dotted with meticulously sculpted gardens and fountains. The house itself… it wasn’t a house at all;

it was a palatial mansion, with high walls.

And here I had thought Dmitri’s family mansion was uselessly big and ostentatious. This place dwarfed it.

“Are you sure… you’re not secretly royalty?” I questioned, completely baffled by the sheer scale of the property. “How .many rooms are even in that… house?” If you could even call that a house.

“Well,” he replied casually, as if discussing the size of a small apartment, “there are only twenty in my wing. Which is the left one.” He said, and I frowned, turning to look at the left side of the massive estate. Outwardly, from this distance, it didn’t seem drastically different from the right side, but there were subtle variations in the architectural details, a slightly

more refined and… regal feel to it.

“And who lives in the right wing?” I questioned, my curiosity getting the better of me. I was genuinely intrigued. Had he not remarried in the twenty–five years since my birth mother’s death? That seemed unlikely for a man of his stature. Maybe he even had many other children I didn’t know about. Wait… wouldn’t that mean I potentially had half–siblings? The thought

was strangely unsettling.

Verify captcha to read the contentVerify