Fear. Anger. Worry. Sorrow.
I trembled, overwhelmed with the relief that he was here.
I had been wrong, all wrong about him.
He did come to look for me. He’d found me.
Shouts and gunshots came from the other room, but I couldn’t slow down to catalogue whether that was Andre or his cousins out there or other Orlov men backing up their boss with my rescue.
It didn’t matter.
They werehere.
I would live.
Mikhail pressed his lips together in a firm line as he approached me. Stepping over the dead men, he reached me and lowered to help me.
Blood stained his suit. It dripped over the toe of his shoes. The imagery was a moment of déjà vu, when he’d saved me from that drunk kicking me at the hospital and I’d been on the floor, at eye level with his messy shoe.
I shook and focused on breathing as he leaned down, crouching with that same knife he’d used to kill my kidnapper. Swipes of the blade had my arms moving, lighting on a line of pain from the posture that wrecked my muscles and tendons. Once he freed me from the floor, he used one hand to help me up as he tugged my gag from my mouth.
No words crossed between us, but I didn’t need them.
As soon as my arms were free and I could sit up slowly, I threw myself at him.
Ignoring the blood.
Disregarding the gap between us from my choice to leave.
I hugged him and sobbed, clinging to him with all the gratitude and relief I couldn’t try to hide.
He didn’t shy away or lecture me. Not trying to remove me from him, he wrapped his arms around me and lifted me until he could carry me out of the nightmare I would never be able to scrub from my mind. I tucked my head against his shirt, clutching him like I never wanted to let go.
And in that moment, I prayed that he would still have room for me in his life. Not as a criminal boss who’d dictate what I could do and where I should go, but as my hero. The man who’d saved me. The man I loved.
31
MIKHAIL
Claire grabbed the front of my shirt and held on to me as I carried her out of the room she’d been tied up in. Her fingers curled tightly but her fist shook savagely. Light and trembling, like she’d never be able to calm down, she was a small bundle in my arms.
Not once did she lift her head. She burrowed her face against me, and her chest heaved with forceful sobs.
“Kill them all,” I ordered to Sergei once I passed him in the hallway. Every Giovanni guard we came across was dead, but with my instruction, my nephew would see to it that all of those who could’ve gone running or hiding would be found and eliminated.
Such a command should’ve provoked a response from the good girl in my arms. The sweet, altruistic, and giving doctor who’d tried to ask me if I could be less of a criminal. This was the point of contention between us, my life of violence and destruction versus her proper existence to do good and save lives, no matter what.
This was why she left, because I was the master of orchestrating death and destruction.
She should’ve recoiled, lifted her head to scowl at me and ask for peace and love, not war and hate.
But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Too stuck in the trauma of being taken, of being tied up like that, she didn’t flinch at all.
As I carried her through the building and then out to my car, I couldn’t tell if she had even heard me. All she did was cry and cling to me like I was the lifeline she’d been waiting for.
I told you sowasn’t happening. Not like this. Maybe not ever. She didn’t need me to explain that what I’d predicted was coming true. While she was too sweet and had too golden of a good, loving heart, she wasn’t stupid. This was a lesson she’d never forget.
I sighed heavily as I sat with her in the backseat of the car. Andre was still in the building, and he’d stay until he and Sergei and Roman could confirm that all the Giovannis had been handled. Handled as in they were dead.
