Free Anatoly Medlov by Latrivia S. Nelson Page A

Pulling his gloves off his hands, he dropped them inside of the garbage can beside the table and left as quietly as he had come.
     
    “Continue,” Anatoly said with a smirk on his face. “And remember that in less than 24 hours, we’ll know if you’re lying about anything that you say.”
     
    “No need to lie,” Gabriel said, looking over at the bottle of vodka. “Do you mind?” he asked Dmitry.
     
    “No,” Dmitry said with a clever smile. “I don’t, if that is what you need to help you.”
     
    Gabriel made his way over to the table and poured himself a hefty glass of vodka. Turning it up, he swallowed one large gulp then turned to the men. He touched his chest and smiled.
     
    “I know what you think,” Gabriel said. “You think that I’m some fraud. But look at me. Really , look at me. I’m the real thing.” He hit his chest. “My father was a good man. I know that’s hard to believe, but he was. He had a few issues . My mother knew it all too well. He fell in love with her or no...he slept with her when they were both just young kids. They met in London. Both went their separate ways but kept in touch. My mother moved to New York and my father followed after. passed.
     
    “During his marriage to his only wife, Ari, he took on a less than active but more than abs role in my life. But he was proud of me. I don’t know why. I wasn’t an alpha male or anything like that. I was a boy scout. I made good grades and played baseball. But he was there, and he did a lot for me.
     
    “When I told him that I was going to NYU, he paid for it. When I graduated and said that I wanted to be like him, he gave me some other options. He wanted me to be better than him. When I proved myself, which mind you wasn’t easy to do, he left me his business. He said that he was going to Memphis to handle some unfinished business and wouldn’t be back. I didn’t want him to leave but he did. I thought that he was running away from me because we had gotten too close, but he claimed that he could start over there.”
     
    “He finished there ,” Anatoly said.
     
    Gabriel slowed his explanation. “He was still chasing Ari even though she was dead – still chasing the memory of her. That is what sent him to his end. That is what kept him from my mother. That is what drove him from me. If anything this is all the fault of a woman whom I never even laid eyes on.”
     
    “So, you know how he met his end?” Dmitry asked, finally standing up.
     
    “He loved you,” Gabriel said, biting his lip to maneuver around the question. “I know that it’s hard to believe, but he did. He talked about you all the time. But he just couldn’t let her go.”
     
    “And how does that make you feel?” Dmitry probed. He knew how it made him feel. Defeated.
     
    “As about as sad as it makes you. We both lost him to her, you.” Gabriel clinched his jaw. “I wanted to reach out to you when it first happened. I wanted to share the pain with you that you must have surely felt for what you were forced to do, but my mother passed during that same week. I felt like it was a sign. I needed to prove myself first. And I think over the last few years, I’ve done that.”
     
    Anatoly watched from a far as his father approached Gabriel. They looked more like Medlov men than he as they stood face-to-face. They both were unmistakable giants in stature, muscular in size, and most of all beautiful. Their features appeared to be carved from the most stunning stone, every careful definition of their faces perfect and startling.
     
    These were the type of men that people wrote about, the type of people marveled over and worshipped. Anatoly hated that. It was hard enough to live up to his father, now he had this bastard here vying for his attention, begging to outdo him. He stood up from the windowsill and cleared his throat.
     
    “Vasily, bring in the computer,” Anatoly snapped.
     
    Vasily walked in quickly and set up the large laptop.