My gaze bored into his, that one eye full of hatred...
And truth.
I felt my mouth—and something in my chest—twist. “Why should I believe you? Why tell me this now?”
His face was truly fucked up, but still, I could see the sincerity when he spoke his next words. “Because I love her, and she loves the boy. I watched her. He is her whole world,” he said simply.
Frowning, I stared at him. “You love her? Then why tell me about her?”
“Because if he's telling the truth, your shorty gon’ need your protection. This nigga knows if the wrong people find out about them, what happened to me could happen to your kid,” my brother said quietly.
I watched as he pointed at his scarred face. An old bodyguard of our father’s turned traitor and led enemies to Targen's mom, remembering how Papa felt for her. They knew instantly who her gray-eyed son belonged to. They thought they would make an example of him. Papa made sure they realized they thought wrong.
Fuck. If this was true, if all this time?—
Ilya’s low laughter interrupted my thoughts.
“I do have one regret, after all,” he rasped. “That I will not live to see how much he hates you, how muchshehates you,PakhanSidorov.”
His voice was mocking, and then he was laughing again, enjoying the thought of what he had taken from me, of what he had destroyed.
This time, I could not stop the fury. The gun was in my palm even as Targen’s voice sounded from what seemed like a distance, trying to stop me.
“Go to hell,” I condemned Ilya.
“Gladly.”
It was his last word before part of his head disappeared. I handed the gun to Ivan. He would destroy it immediately. Artyom was already barking the orders for a clean-up. And then his eyes were on me.
“Sir—"
“Find her,” I bit out.
“Maxim.”
“Find her!”
The words roared from me, echoing in the emptiness of the warehouse.
He nodded once.
“Yes,Pakhan.”
(Sunday,June 8)
Malik Labinjo better be glad he had a life worth saving. Even thinking that pissed me off, because who was I to judge who was worth saving? Fuck Targen Jones-Sidorov for putting me in a position where the thought even crossed my mind! Ugh! He even had me thinking in run-on sentences and comma splices, no-nos for the author in me. I jumped up from the bench at the foot of the bed to start pacing again. This bastard really brought me here and just…
Left me. Abandoned me in a house full of too quiet, too huge, foreign men while he handled God knows what.Of course, that was what he seemed to be best at, abandonment. Even knowing that, I couldn’t work myself up to be truly scared. How any bitof naïveté was left in me, I did not know. These men looked like they would kill me for breakfast and eat me for lunch.
Human borscht, indeed.
I plopped back down on the bench, my eyes scanning the gorgeously laid out room again. Half of the top floor of my house could probably fit in here, and I had a nice house. The soft green and pale-yellow bedclothes and curtains were sumptuous, and I had watched my father and grandfather work enough to recognize hand-carved furnishings. The bed was big enough for a whole family. I was low-key envious of the huge his and her closets.
These people were rich.
And they thought of everything, with their spying asses. One of those closets was stocked in my sizes. That, combined with the fact that most of the products in the bathroom were my favorites, had me cussing their sneaky asses out… the whole time I was in the enormous stone shower with its multiple shower heads and massagers. Might as well enjoy it while I waited.
But now, here I was, clean, exfoliated, and exasperated, waiting on a man I had promised myself I’d given up waiting on.
