No. I can’t go in there.
I had to fall back to another option. Forcing my trembling fingers to work on my phone, I opened my emails and took the cowardly way out. I would email the head of the department that I was leaving. It had to count as an official resignation. This was as far as I could go.
As I tapped in the words, frantic to stay plastered to the wall and out of sight, I heard Jack and the mobster joking about someone needing to be taught a lesson. Or fucked until they died. Something crass and crude that I couldn’t make out as I hurried to type in my email.
Before I could ensure that the email was sent, the small circle still spiraling as my phone tried to connect to whatever Wi-Fi was reachable out here, he yelled out.
“Hey! Are you spying on us?”
I jerked my head up, realizing too late that the Italian thug had noticedmein the reflection of that same window. I hadn’t been as hidden as I assumed I was. I’d tried not to move to attract attention. Otherwise, I would’ve run away. But they’d spotted me.
“Fuck. She’s listening in,” Jack said, rounding the corner and chasing me. “Claire?”
I panicked, shoving my phone into my pocket and turning to run.
Pumping my arms as fast as I could, I broke into an immediate sprint. Their footsteps pounded after me as I darted into the pedestrian traffic out in front of the hospital. People walked by. Cars honked and braked sharply. It was rush hour and clogged up on the road and the sidewalks, but it didn’t matter which way I ran.
More of the Giovannis showed up. They had been around, it seemed, and now that the one who’d been talking to Jack shouted to get me, I whimpered and cringed, unsure how to run out of this situation with them surrounding me.
Two ran after me from behind. Another one was rushing at me from the right. The suited muscle jogging toward me head-on curled his lips in a sinister grin.
Oh, shit.
Fuck.
Fuck!
In a last-ditch attempt to escape, I pivoted and stopped short to run through the congested street. Risking my life, literally, to stay away from these enemies who had only ever wanted to hurt me because I dared to fall under the spell of loving Mikhail Orlov, the Mafia boss who’d never want me back now.
27
MIKHAIL
Andre became more involved with Anya over the course of the day. He was my go-to in terms of making sure her needs were met, yet whenever he checked in with me around the meetings and such, he hinted at her not entirely warming up to him. Which didn’t surprise me. She had to get used to having a brother before she could adjust to having a sibling caring for her.
I was grateful that he stepped in like this. As he did with so many other things, he was my right-hand man, the son I could depend on no matter what. Raising him had been a pleasure. However, I was still at a loss for how to connect with her, especially after she saw me as the reason she was here at all. The reason she was ever targeted.
Without my making a move to fix this disconnect between us, I was at a loss for what else I could do right now to reach her. It emphasized how much I had been counting on Claire in that regard. I had been looking at her for the first, crucial step in helping with my daughter’s recovery.
Did she even consider that?
How could she walk away from her, too?
Letting my son deal with Anya felt like a cop-out. Like I was being too dismissive to do more to help her. Or like I was avoiding her.
It wasn’t that. I was simply caught up in all the hell of this day’s events. Between the Popovs and the Giovannis, it felt like fucking war had been declared on us. It had to be a tactic of kicking someone when they were down, a battle coming at us from too many fronts.
It didn’t change over the course of the day and night. I gave up trying to sleep, staying in my office and going over files and footage of all that I needed to supervise to make this empire run efficiently. Because of the late hour, I poured myself into work and securing all angles of revenge on my enemies, working this much harder to defeat them in business, to cut them off from any profits in all their revenues. Speaking with the businessmen and investors on the other side of the world was something I could manage in the middle of the night, but ultimately, I crashed.
Waking up in the morning with my head on my folded arms, a crick in my neck with this angle of slumping over my desk, I groaned.
“Did you stay in here all night?”
Sergei knocked on the open door as he let himself in.
“Looks like it,” I admitted, sitting up and wincing at the uncomfortable position.
“Didn’t know when to quit?” he asked as he sat in the chair opposite me.
