His presence haunted me long before my eyes landed on him.
The maids rushed in, carrying his luggage from the door and past me to his room upstairs.
Ariella shrunk behind me when he approached us, his arms extended. "My daughter. My sweet Stella." Just like mother had, he cupped her cheeks, turning her head from side to side like he couldn't believe we'd actually found her.
"She's still shocked Kirilli. Killian said she'll get a full check up tomorrow. But it's true...our little girl is back." Mother came out from the bronze edged door that stood next to the twin stairs, which lead to the dinning room. She didn't seem to want to believe that there was an error. Denial could be so powerful in the face of years worth of my mother's depression.
He turned to her, gasping when she flung herself at him, wrapping her hands around his neck. His shock was understandable. Mother had been little more than a walking corpse these past sixteen years.
"Anya?" Father chuckled, his laugh quickly replaced by a grunt when mother slammed her fist into his chest. "The hell was that for?"
"You piece of shit. You missed the chance to welcome your own daughter home, after all these years. What is wrong with you? This is Stella." Her arms flew to Ariella's general direction dramatically. "Our daughter. She's back. She's safe. How could you_"
"Anya, pull yourself together. Look at her, the girl's terrified." He gripped her shoulders, stroking her gently. It's not everyday my parents showed each other affection. In fact it was really rare, so this scene of affection playing out infront of me was just weird as hell.
"Right. You should get cleaned up. The table is almost set anyway. I wasn't even expecting you to come back home today anymore."
Father nodded, walking past us and up the stairs after the maids who had carried his luggage. As he reached the top, he turned to face me, like he just remembered my existence.
"Killian. Come up, I need to speak with you. Let Stella spend some time with her mother, after all this time."
Ariella gripped my bicep, digging her short nails into the skin, causing me to wince. My hand wrapped around hers, squeezing reassuringly before detaching her fingers from my skin. "I'll be right back. Go with mum for now."
She let out a shaky breath before allowing herself to be pulled away by my mother, her crystal blue eyes never left mine until the dinning room door shut behind her. My father had long walked away, no doubt expecting me to follow.
His room stood at the very end of the hallway, the cream colored door was slightly ajar. It creaked when my foot nudged it further open, revealing my father standing in the centre of the room on the wine rug that covered most of the floor. His shirt was off, though the multiple tattoos didn't leave much skin revealed. The parts of his upper body that didn't have ink were riddled with scars. Some faded long before he had me, and some I carved into his skin myself. Not exactly a perfect father-son relationship.
"What did you want to see me for?" The dim lighting of the room made if difficult to make out his expression, though that should have been obvious. His poker face was a fucking default setting.
"Now, what's with that hostile attitude, Killian? You haven't seen me for weeks, didn't you miss your old man?" His ability to speak light or threatening words without so much as twitching his facial expression still baffled me.
The urge to roll my eyes is almost overwhelming. "I missed you more than anything. What do you want?"
His expression hardened subtly, eyebrows pulling together. "That girl downstairs, you're completely sure that's my daughter?"
"You gave me the lead on Vegas. You should be just as sure as I am." He'd gone back to Russia last month, then sent me a file with information of a mob boss who traded a girl that was most likely my sister a few years ago.
The bed creaked when his weight settled on it, the white duvet material wrinkling from the impact. "You've spent days with her. You should know if she's really your sister or not."
"I already informed Dr Larson. He'll test her, so we'll know for sure by tomorrow. Why did you send me all the way to Vegas if you weren't even sure?" The irritation must've slipped into my tone, and though he didn't show it the tension in the room definitely increased.
"I know some of the things I've done to you aren't ideal, and probably not even forgivable." Understatement of the fucking century. "But if you knew there was a possibility that your daughter was rotting in the beds of some bastards, would you take that chance?"
His words demanded some level if sympathy, though his expression remained neutral, almost completely unbothered. Passive motherfucker.
"What about the traffickers? We still haven't found all of them. The Sherbakoba's took Stella away years ago yet some members of that useless family are still alive, basking in wealth after making my sister suffer." My accent slipped from my typical Chicago drawl to my Russian one.
"Calm down, Killian. Finding Stella was the main priority, and now that we might've achieved that, we can weed out all the sons of bitches involved. But first, answer my question. Do you really think that's her?"
"Since you're in doubt, I can't exactly be sure. But yes. Nothing about her so far dismisses the possibility." Except maybe her name and the fact that she clearly denied it.
But she did look just like Stella, not to mention they went missing at possibly the same age, and also the fact that she didn't even remember her childhood.
"That's good to hear. There's so much time I've lost. With both of you. I'll make up for it." He ran his fingers through his jet black hair. "I'll join you and the ladies downstairs. Just need to get settled first."
"Of course." The dismissal in his tone was clear. This conversation was over. But still, he'd shown me a vulnerable side of Kirilli Morozcov that had been hidden from me my whole life. Maybe seeing stella meant he really could change. Maybe.
Moving to the door, the handle felt stiff when my fingers closed around it. A question sat at the back of my tongue. A question so important I'd never felt more stupid for forgetting to ask him.
"Father?" My head titled, meeting his gaze from over my shoulder. "If she really isn't Stella, what do we do then?"
He sighed, waving his hand nonchalantly. "If that happens, then we'll dipose of the girl and leave no trace. Then resume our search. We have to find her, othr wise the Sherbakoba family will keep having the satisfaction of tearing our family apart."
My lips parted but no words came out. When he spoke again, his casual tone almost made me doubt the fact that he just threatened Ariella's life.
"Go downstairs. Don't act righteous now, you've taken almost as many lives as I have. Besides, if what i know anout where you found her is true, then death would be a relief to her anyway."
The men whose lives were lost to me had always crossed me somehow. Ariella had no crimes against me yet her life turned to a gamble because of me.
He was still the same, and the sliver of hope in me that hoped he might changed was crushed. He didn't care about Stella, he just wanted the satisfaction of defeating his enemies by finding her.
How fucking typical.