His eyes widened with annoyance. “And you think your time shopping for trinkets is more important than Axel’s time?”
“I didn’t say that,” she said quickly.
“Give him Oleg and Anton back. We’ll get you someone else.”
“Sergei would be perfect,” I said smoothly. I didn’t want Sergei around here, but I did want to give the old bat a taste of her own medicine.
Grisha nodded vigorously. “Good. Let him drive you.”
“I don’t want Sergei to drive me.” Her voice sounded pained.
“If he was good enough to marry Mila, then he’s good enough to take care of you.” I stared at her with dead eyes.
She gave me a slightly strangled look. “Do you have anyone else?”
“I can’t promise anything,” I told her. And, without looking back, I walked back upstairs.
After Mila fell asleep,I left to have an online meeting with Richard and Yuri. I pulled into a deserted parking lot. The rain drummed noisily on the roof of my truck. I set up my laptop and dialed in.
Richard and Yuri peered at me from two separate screens.
Richard started the meeting. “How are things going with Grisha in town?”
“Not good. He’s ready to go to war.”
“We have to be ready to move,” Yuri said. “Do we have enough to take this family down?”
Richard cleared his throat. “We’d like to hang on as long as possible. Giselle is working her magic from her angle.”
Yuri looked peeved. “I’ll be booking the next available flight to Vancouver.”
Richard nodded. “That’s not a bad idea. We should start getting ready for the inevitable. The second these two families start to kill each other, we need to proceed with our raid. We can’t have that kind of fight spilling onto the street.”
That night,after I showered, I crawled into bed beside Mila. Like every other night, she was dead to the world. She murmured in her sleep and curled her back against my chest.
It was the best feeling in the world. These stolen moments with her were the only thing that kept me going.
I bent down and kissed her ear. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
I was sorry I couldn’t give her the life she deserved. I was sorry that, every hour, we were closer to the implosion of her entire world.
She mumbled in her sleep but didn’t wake.
I held her, fighting sleep as long as I could. Every time I held her in my arms, it felt like I was living on borrowed time.
I just needed to protect her.
At the end of the day, the only thing that mattered was her safety.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
MILA
I came homefrom another midterm to find Bandit lying on the bed, his tail between his legs. When I crawled onto the bed to pet him, he moved away from me, but in slow motion, like he was in pain.
“Baby,” I soothed, “are you okay?”
I ran my hand over his body and when I touched his ribs, he growled in pain and then quickly started to lick my hand, as if apologizing for his response.
