“Sure you were,” he says, almost fondly. “I remember the party. Right down to the denim miniskirt you wore…and that hot-pink thong underneath.”
My hand flies to my mouth.
No. Please, God, no.
“You should’ve seen the way I wanted you back then,” he continues, words dripping with something that makes my skin crawl. “So damn hot. So I took what I wanted in that closet when you were practically begging for it.”
The room tilts. My chest heaves as tears drip down my face.
Milo can’t be his. He can’t be.
“I was sixteen.” I shake so badly I can barely keep the phone against my ear. “You were twenty-three. Old enough to know better. How…how could you do that to me?”
“Look what you got thanks to me. Our boy is special, isn’t he?”
His laughter is like hot coals, burning through my chest like acid. Everything hurts. Everything.
Please, someone, make it stop.
I hold the phone away from my mouth as a sob carves out of me.
It was dark. I didn’t see his face. I barely remember anything except the feeling of being cornered and confused and too drunk to understand what was happening. But I know it happened. I felt it happen.
God. How could I have let that happen?
Suddenly, the phone is gone from my hand.
I peer up through the haze of tears and find Kirill standing beside the bed, his massive frame filling the space like a storm I somehow didn’t even hear coming.
Shame hits so hard, I want to vanish. But instead of anger, his hands come up and cradle my face.
“I’m going to kill him even slower for this, detka,” he says, low and deadly. “Do you understand me?”
I nod weakly, my chin trembling.
He leans down, his breath warm against my ear. “It is not your fault. He violated you, and I will violate him. There will be nothing left of him.” Then his lips find my forehead and remain there before he says, “I love you, Sloane. I will always love you. Until the day I die.”
The words shatter whatever fragile hold I had left, and I break.
Emilia and Fiona slip quietly from the room, leaving us alone while I weep against him, one hand still gripping the phone, the other holding me like he has no intention of letting go.
“Still there, Eden?” Eli’s words crackle through the speaker. “Or did I lose you?”
Kirill lifts the phone to his ear, his face twined with wrath, and when his gaze cuts toward me, it chills me more than the threat itself. “I swear to God, when I find you, I will rip you apart.”
“Careful, Marinov. You forget I have your son.”
“Sons. You have my sons. You will suffer double for that, and far more for what you did to my wife. Your death will last weeks, if I can keep you alive that long—and believe me, I will try. You will know pain beyond anything one person was ever meant to experience.”
Eli laughs. “Forty million, Marinov. I sent the account info. If I don’t have it by tomorrow, I’ll send you those boys in body bags.”
The call ends, and Kirill drags his fingers through his hair as he gets up and starts pacing, only to turn back a second later and grab my hand so tightly it almost hurts.
“We have a location,” he says. “We’re going.”
My head jerks up. “What? When?”
“Now.”
