AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Heavy footsteps resounded from outside, and they were growing closer by the second, heading toward Viktor’s office. I didn’t need further confirmation; I could recognize his footsteps from a mile away. In a quick second, I hung up, tucked the phone in my back pocket, and hid under the table. At the same moment, the door opened, and he stalked toward the desk, leaned over, and... I heard the clicks of the keys on the keyboard.
I didn’t see his face, but just the muffled pounding of his shoes on the brown Persian rug sent shivers down my spine.
He made a few rounds in the room, picking one item after the other before he turned around and headed out the door. A breath I didn’t know I was holding left my lungs and I clutched my chest before rising to my feet again.
I barely made it to the door before the door swung open again, revealing a very, very livid Viktor. My heart dropped and the sea of excitement dried up.
Chapter 17 - Viktor
“I want you to scream? That’s what you came up with? What am I, a Vampire?”
Disappointment and bitterness waded like untamed sharks in the water. I wanted to break something, anything. The flames flickered and crackled in the fire pit in my stomach, and a steady burn radiated in my chest. I combed my fingers through my hair and my ears hummed when a dangerous calm settled over me.
I saw this coming—this betrayal. I’d sniffed it from the moment she walked into my house as my wife. The loyalty to her family had shone through her eyes like red lipstick stain on a crystal-clear glass, and that championed the decision to track her phone and movements closely.
She sidled toward me, and shuffled between the desk and bookshelves, looking frantic like a deer caught in headlights when she reached for my hands. “No, wait, Viktor... Hold on, it’s not what you think. I can explain.”
Dragging my hand away from hers, I took a step forward, and she inched backward. I wanted her to see the sparks of craziness in my eyes and how hard I restrained myself from hurting her. “It’s not what I think? You can explain? Fucking classic lines, don’t you think?”
“But...”
“But what?”
I reached for a nude silhouette painting on the wall and, before I knew it, it was flying across the room and hitting the bookshelf. She raised her arm, shielding herself, but I was past caring. “You want to explain why you’re fucking snooping around in my office? Or maybe let’s hear you explain why I have seven failed password trials entered into my laptop. If you can’t explain those, then tell me, why the fuck were you on the phone with pretty boy Declan?”
Her eyes widened. She figured out that I had her device monitored.
Another step forward, and her back hit the desk. On any other day, I would have bent her over and claimed every inch of her. But this wasn’t any other day. Today, I looked into the eyes of a woman who could betray me without persuasion.
She gazed at me with glassy eyes. “Viktor, hear me out, I’m begging you.”
“I have no good reason to listen to you.”
She attempted to struggle, and I clamped my hand down on her throat, grabbing her face closer to mine. “It looks like you enjoy being in this position, dear wife. You like this, being caged and all, don’t you? You like to see your wings clipped. The liberty you had, you abused. Now, I promise, I’ll do something about that, but first, I have to make this clear...”
“You are Bratva now, Ava,” I growled against her lips. Even with the anger, everything inside me still ached to kiss this woman. “You belong to me. I thought we already established that.”
Defiance flared in her green irises. “I am first my father’s blood before I am your wife, Viktor. You have to understand why I did it. I cannot pretend that everything I am is you. There exists in my heart, family. Family that came before you.”
Hearing that was like taking a plunge at my chest with a fucking spear. I tightened my grip on her throat, and water formed in her eyes. “You…” I pressed harder, ignoring her gurgles. “You are my fucking wife. Everything you are is me. That is the way it’s meant to be. You carry a child that has my blood running through its veins. Your loyalty should lie with me first.”
When I said that, I remembered she did carry our child in her womb. Hurting her was hurting the baby, cutting off its air supply. I released her and watched her crumple to the floor, wheezing, and rubbing the red sting I’d left.
Reaching into her back pocket, I picked out her phone and sat on a chair facing her. “You are lucky you are pregnant. I might have killed you now if you weren’t.”
The teardrops on her eyelids tried to move me, so I glared at her phone instead. Not hurting her didn’t mean there were restrictions on destroying her device.
She gawked when she read the intention on my face. “Please, wait…”
I dropped the phone on the rug and smashed it with my feet. One, two, three fucking times, till I was sure the mother-fucking-board was fucking destroyed.
She cried, with sweaty red strands of hair sticking to her face and a tiny bit of spittle on her chin. My fingers twitched to wipe it all away; the spittle and the tears. But her betrayal stung like a bitch.
“Before I became a Varkov, I was, and still am, a Voronin.” I twirled the steel band on my finger. “As a Voronin, I was hard-headed, harsh, rough, and sometimes fucking stupid. But I liked to think that the conditions of things made me so. Who knows? Maybe I was right. After all, being who I was, led me to who I am.”
Her whimpers and sniffles grew louder as if she already understood the hidden message behind my story.
“…I was determined, and the Pahkan liked it. Just like pretty face, Declan is to your Da, so was I to the former boss. He gave me his last name. No one other than me has such a record. No man without the Varkov blood running through his veins has the Varkov name attached to his.”
