“I’m sorry. What was that, Judas?”
Everyone but Vas snickers.
“The Kavenaughs.” Vas clears his throat. “We struck a deal with the Kavenaughs.”
“And you found her how?” I have my suspicions, but I want him to come clean. They burned an asset to get her back. They would have had to. The only place for Christian to hold her would have been where Elias kept his women, and only a handful of people know where that is.
The question is whether burning that asset is going to hinder us.
“We didn’t have a choice, Matt,” Nikolai speaks up from his spot near the fireplace. “About a week after Ava went missing, he started sending us photos. He said if we didn’t get her outsoon, she’d be dead, and he made sure to show us exactly what Christian was doing to her.”
The older Russian drags out his phone, fiddling with an app before he hands it over to me.
Blyat.
I wanted so badly to believe she hadn’t betrayed me, and this proves it. The gruesome evidence before me causes my stomach to churn and bile to rise in my throat. Ava’s body is covered in bruises, her fair skin cut in several area. Blood drips down her pale, nearly lifeless face.
The more I scroll, the worse the evidence becomes, until I am forced to look away.
I am no stranger to violence. I’ve cut, stabbed, hacked, and maimed more men than I can remember, but never a woman.
And this is my woman.
My woman.
I swore to myself a long time ago that I would never let a woman get close to me. Not after Katerina, whose deception I’d been so blind to it had nearly cost me everything. I’d let my emotions blind me to her betrayal, and I promised myself that I’d never feel that way again.
And then came Ava.
Ava, who wears her emotions like a shield. Whose emerald eyes are a sea of torment and innocence that can swallow anyone whole. Unlike Katerine, Ava isn’t practiced in the art of seduction. She’d never been taught how to lure men to her bed. Hell, she was a virgin on our wedding night.
Still, she betrayed me in the end. Even if she didn’t mean to. Even if it had been to help someone else, she ultimately deceived me, and that is something I can’t easily forgive. Vas is sure there must be another way the FBI agent knew my brother’s name, but I’m not sold.
The real problem is that as much I want to pretend that Ava means nothing to me beyond a pawn I can move around the chessboard, it know it isn’t true. Even after her apparent betrayal, I feared losing her.
Ava is the chink in my armor.
My Achilles heel.
That must change.
She can stay with the Kavanaughs for all I care because there is no way in hell she is coming back here. The last thing I need is a weakness, and Ava is the greatest weakness of all.
I won’t let a woman destroy what I have worked so hard to build.
Even if that woman is my wife.
eight
The first time I wake, I have no sense of time or reality. The world around me shifts, my eyes too heavy to open, my brain too foggy to register the sway of my body.
Warmth envelopes me, but I am still cold and shivering. There is no part of me that is unaffected by the rage of pain coursing through my body like lightening. Someone is screaming. Crying.
I can hear it.
No.
I can feel it.
