The rich amber liquid slides down my throat, and I savor the subtle taste of vanilla and notes of caramel as it assaults my senses. After weeks of fucking stale water and the FBI considered food, this is heaven. Or as close as I will ever get.
I should be celebrating my release with my comrades.
Instead, I am pacing the length of my office behind my desk in an attempt to burn off some of the anger I have building thanks to the five idiots in front of me. The grip on my tumbler is so tight I can feel the crystal beginning to crack under the pressure.
“I gave you an explicit order not to use any of our men to rescue her,” I snarl at Vas. “Is that not what I fucking told you?”
I expect mySovietnikto be chastened, not smug.
“What do you mean,Pakhan?” Vas sits easily in his chair, relaxed, one leg crossed over the other. “I obeyed your instruction to the letter.”
“You call shotting up Elias Ward’s funeral to retrieve Ava obeying my orders?” I roar, throwing the crystal in my hand into the lit fireplace. The glass shatters against the marble; the fire shoots. Up as it laps at the liquor. None of my men blink. None of them flinch. They aren’t afraid of my ire.
Maybe I should change that. Make them cower beneath my blows for defending me Whip them until they understand my word is law.
Blyat.
Where did those thoughts come from?
I shake my head to clear the darkness that seeps in from beneath the barrier I erected so long ago. That is not me. My father is the one who beat his men into submission. It was the same for Elias. They rule with fear and pain.
I am not them.
I will never be them.
Tomas showed me a different way.
A better way.
“We didn’t know Ava would be there,” Nicolai speaks up, eyeing me warily as I resume my pacing. “Our sources told us he wouldn’t be stupid enough to drag her out in public. Then again, he wouldn’t have known our plan for getting you released. He probably thought it was safe to parade her around like she was a spoil of war, and he was Caesar.”
My jaw clenches, fists tightening at the thought of that pervert’s hands on her, touching her. I shouldn’t care about that. She betrayed me. Ava has sealed her own fate.
Or so I want to tell myself.
The minx is still under my skin, affecting me in ways no woman ever has. And many have tried. Ava was never meant to mean anything to me. I meant to keep my distance. To keep her at arm’s length, but even the best laid plans pave the road to hell.
I ordered Vas to abandon her. That decision tore me down to my very core. I was torn between my duty to my men, my empire, and the woman who is my wife. The woman who betrayed me.
Except she hadn’t.
Not really.
That failure is making me bitter and irritable.
“If you didn’t rescue her,” I question my men, “then who did?”
The five of them eye each other, their faces twisted with guilt, like toddlers with their hands caught in the cookie jar.
“Well, when you ordered me not to use our men to rescue her, we might have used a…mutually interest party instead.”
I raise a brow at him. “Mutually interested party?”
Dima covers a laugh with a harsh cough.
“Are you pausing for dramatic suspense?” I question. “Or are you too afraid to tell me?”
Vas mumbles something beneath his breath I don’t quite catch.
