“Sato loves her too, I hear.” I could feel Kolya’s stare singe my face.
“Spit it out.” I passed a semi on the highway.
“Do you want me to get rid of her for you?”
My head whipped fleetingly toward him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You can’t kill her, so you married her to make her pay, but it looks like you’re the one losing sleep.”
My fingers tightened around the steering wheel as I stared broodily ahead. I had the oddest desire to leave him on the side of the road. “So, you’re going to do it? Get rid of her? You think Margo Winthrop won’t think I ordered it?”
Kolya sighed. “You know I have connections. It will not blow back on the bratva. I just need to give them her schedule.”
“We’re trying to solidify our alliance with the De Luccis and Morettis so we can control Moscow. You think if their beloved Lucy gets killed while married to me, it’s not going to cause problems?”
“Didn’t you hear what I said? It won’t blow back on the bratva. Moretti has as many enemies as we do.”
A wide shoulder appeared several yards ahead. I didn’t hesitate and yanked the wheel to the right. The SUV rode the rumble strips and screeched to a halt. I punched on the hazard lights.
Kolya slammed his palm on the dashboard to cushion the momentum. “What the fuck.”
“Out,” I snarled.
I needed air. I’d been living as if an anvil was weighing down on my chest for months. It was getting harder to breathe.
I skidded down a snowy embankment until I was on a level access path. Kolya stared at me from the top and threw up his hands, and his expression said, “Really?”
I paced while I waited for him to join me.
His eyes were blazing blue. It took a lot to get any reaction from Kolya, but when it was just the two of us, our guards lowered.
We trusted each other. But then again, it’d been a year, and I had convinced him to stay in jail longer for the good of the bratva.
“If I had known you would do this, I would have worn the hiking boots Aralina had sent me,” he muttered. He was wearing black sneakers. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You threatened my wife,” I snarled, slamming my palms against him to make a point.
Kolya’s whole face went blank. He’d put up a wall, but his assessing gaze made me uncomfortable.
“What?” I snapped.
“Have you perhaps become attached to your wife?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I growled. “I’m barely around her to get attached.” It didn’t mean I didn’t demand ridiculous amounts of updates from Sato. So much so that my soldier had the gall to suggest that maybe I wanted to be her bodyguard.
“That’s why Anya is restless,” he said quietly. I almost didn’t hear him. Then louder, “And it’s me, Kirill. You forget. My job is to protect the bratva. My job is to protect you. And the way to do that is assess not only the weakness of the enemies but the weakness from within.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re pakhan. I need to know whether I should treat your wife as an enemy of the bratva or to protect her.”
“Sato protects her,” I said. “Anya is being ridiculous. She just wants to cause drama. You know she slit her wrists, right? On my fucking wedding night. The doctor told me it was very shallow, and she’d be fine. So I had our men clean up the blood, and I had it tested.” I shook my head. “Two sets of blood and one of them not even hers.”
“She killed someone?”
“Who cares?” Breath vapor escaped my mouth with my long exhale. “The thing is, Anya is becoming erratic. The will is still in probate.”
“Anya has become a liability for the bratva.”
“Yet you entertain her calls.”
“Keep your enemies close and all that.” The difference between Kolya and me was that he served no master except the good of the bratva. That was what happened when you grew up an orphan and trained since you could walk. Which was why I had to keep a close eye on him. Not that I expected him to whack me at some point if he felt I was destroying our organization, but anyone outside was fair game. And to him, Anya had become an outsider, not someone we grew up with.
