Page 65 of Kidnapped Bride

"No, baby, wait. Tell me where you are. Let me come to you, let me do something?—"

"I love you. I have to go, Mom."

"Kira, please?—"

I hung up, but as I did I heard footsteps in the hallway and I knew it was too late. Nikolai stepped through the doorway and his eyes went to the phone, then to my face. I watched his eyes narrow as the softness from earlier tonight drained out of his expression and it darkened.

"What did you do?" Nikolai wasn't shouting, but the tone he used terrified me. "Who did you call?"

"Niko, it's not what you think." I started to stand up, but he moved toward me and I sat back down.

"Who did you call?" He pulled the phone out of my hand and looked down at the screen. When he saw the number, something flickered behind his eyes but the anger didn't go down at all. The foreign number must've jogged his memory or something.

"My mother," I blurted. "That's all it was, Niko. I swear. I needed to hear my mom's voice." I stood, reaching for him, but he threw the phone onto the desk, knocking the water off the other side. It shattered on the floor and startled me.

"You went through my desk." When he grabbed my wrist and pinned it to my chest, I whimpered. "You waited until I was gone and you went through my things?"

"I didn't go through anything. The phone was sitting right there in the open?—"

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" He started pacing, running his hand through his hair, and I'd never seen him like this. Even when he caught me trying to escape in the hallway, he wasn't this angry.

This was different. This was fear underneath the rage and it was pouring off him so strong, I started to get afraid too. "Yourfather has people monitoring everything. If anyone on his end is watching your mother's phone, they can trace this call back to a tower and from the tower to a radius and from the radius to this house."

"My mom wouldn't give that information up."

"She doesn't have to give anything up, Kira. That's not how it works." Those words came out in pure hostility. I hated that he was talking down to me. "They pull the records whether she cooperates or not, and it leads them right here. Right to you and me and everyone under this roof."

"You're overreacting." I started toward the door but he spun around, grabbing me again.

"I'm overreacting?" His grip on my wrist hurt, but I didn’t think he'd really hurt me. "Kira, I just stole about fifty million dollars of cocaine from your father, and when he learns about it and he figures out where I live, do you know what that means?"

"Holy shit…" I mumbled. My hand fluttered to my mouth and I felt my face opening up like a book. There was no way to hide my shock when my eyes went wide and my jaw hung loose. "He's gonna…"

"I know!" Nikolai snarled, coming at me angrily again. He wrapped his arm around my waist and started dragging me toward the door as I pelted his wrist with my fists. "I can't believe how foolish you were."

"Let me go!" I snarled, clenching my teeth. I gripped his forearm, trying to pry him off, but it was no use. "You swore you wanted me in your life for good, Nikolai. What did you think I would do, pretend I don't have a family?"

My hysteria didn't seem to bother him one bit. He kept moving, dragging me out the door of his office and down the hall. And then suddenly, we were on the ground, and a large boom resonated around us, so loud, it swallowed every other sound and shook the walls. I fell, and Nikolai collapsed on top of me, shielding me as debris rained down and more booms echoed.

My head hit the floor hard, and pain shot through my neck and chest. I felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest, and the lights went out. And when I clamped my eyes shut in fear, unable to make a sound, the world went black.

23

NIKOLAI

I came to with my face in Kira's hair and dust so thick in my mouth, I could barely breathe. My ears were ringing and the room was sideways—or I was sideways—and it took me a few seconds to understand that I was lying on top of her on the floor outside my study with broken glass scattered everywhere around me.

"Kira." I pushed the debris off and rolled to the side and looked at her, out cold. Her eyes were closed, face slack, blood running from a gash somewhere near her hairline. I couldn't tell how bad it was with the lights out, so I grabbed her face with both hands and turned it toward me. "Kira, wake up." But there was no response, even when I patted her cheek. She was breathing but she wasn't waking up and the blood was pooling in her ear and running down her neck.

"Shit! Yakov!" I shouted, but my ears were ringing so loudly, I couldn't hear myself. I sounded muffled and distorted, like I was in a bucket underwater. "Vlad! Gregg!"

Slowly, my hearing started to clear and return. The alarm system was screaming from somewhere down the hallway and I could hear the crackle and pop of fire eating through the walls in the direction the blast had come from. They'd hit the east wing, which meant the bedroom, the hallway, everything between here and the front door was compromised.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, but the screen was shattered, spiderweb lines crawling across the screen from corner to corner. Yakov didn't pick up when I dialed him, neither did Vlad, and Gregg's phone went straight to voicemail. After the night we had, it was possible Gregg was still unloading, and Vlad too, but Yakov should've been close.

"Come on," I muttered, trying Yakov again. "Pick up the goddamn phone."

This was such a hard hit, and so fast after she'd made those calls, I knew Markin had been watching us. This wasn't triggered by her calls or our taking that shipment. They had been planning this a while, and they chose this moment because I was weak. My men weren’t here.