Something flickered in his gaze, and his jaw clenched as a shadow passed over his face.
He said nothing. And his silence unnerved me, stirred bitterness in my chest.
How dare he not have an explanation for why he took away the only person in my life, the only steady ground that had I held onto for years?
“Why did you kill him?” My voice cracked as I stumbled forward, my bloodied fingers threading through a fistful of his shirt. “He was off-limits!” I sobbed, my free hand throwing punches at his hard chest, my shoulders vibrating with every ragged breath. “He was all I had. Why did you do this to me?Why did you have to cause me so much pain just to prove a point? Why? Answer me! Why?!”
Still, he said nothing, not even a word.
His silence became an abyss, swallowing my sorrows, my fury, my pain.
“Why did you have to go ahead and do this to me, answer me, please?” My grip loosened on his shirt as I crumbled to the floor. “Why have you ripped everything away from me in one night? Why didn’t you just leave this one for me? I would have come back to you. I was going to come back to you. I would have done anything you asked of me. You didn’t have to do it. You didn’t have to take Kenzo away from me.”
My reddened and teary gaze lifted to him, catching a fleeting tic in his jaw, and the flexing of his fingers beside him.
And then without a word, he turned on his heels, heading for the door.
Eyes blurry, heart heavy, I watched him open the door and walked out, locking me in…again. Because I was not a wife grieving. I was not the woman he regretted hurting.
I was his prisoner.
As his feet echoed down the hall, the grief clawed out of my chest, engulfing me whole.
I wanted to die. I needed to die.
What was there to live for?
48
ZAGHAN
And mine.
The air was heavy with cigar smoke and the lingering smell of aged whiskey.
The loud hum of murmured conversations in Russian ceased the moment hands slammed on the polished surface of the table.
My hands.
They were making noise and it was driving me crazy. I felt like putting a bullet to someone’s skull. Well, I always was giddy at the mere chance to kill, but today, I was really tense and nothing released the bound muscles than a good, old kill, and the cry of terror, of course.
“We were discussing the ledger.” Someone pointed out, tone undoubtedly accusatory. “What are you doing about it? Why are we hearing that you haven’t found it? It’s been months.”
Barely two months.
Again, the noise resumed, rippling through the room, some cursing under their breaths, heads shaking in disapproval and disappointment.
My fingers twitched. I felt it too much, the cold weight pressing behind me–the silver gun latched onto my belt. It was screaming for action. All I had to do was move my hand, just a little. A tad bit-
“-With all due respect, Marshal, do you know if this ends up falling into the wrong hands, if law enforcement catches wind of it, all our operations will be compromised?”
Something crackled like forest fire in my chest, and I couldn’t mask the tic in my jaw.
“I mean, do you understand the gravity of this situation? Because the way you’re handling this, it seems you don’t.”
I held the man’s gaze. John Popov was his name. Always so fucking opinionated, acting like he was smarter than everyone else just because he went to law school. I wondered how I should silence him for good. He had two daughters and a son. If I slit the throat of one and delivered the body to his office, would the grief shrink him? Would he become mute and stop getting on my nerves?
“Eugene would surely never have allowed this to happen, you know this very well.” The motherfucker wouldn’t keep his mouth shut. How dare he compare me to Eugene Raskov? Yes, right now, they thought they were talking to Callan. But even as foolish as Callan could be sometimes, comparing him after all he had done for this Bratva to that loser of an adopted father was a calculated insult.
