Page 153 of Savage Don

But he’s still recovering. My fate rests in the hands of others.

That’s never sat well with me.

I don’t hear the response Leonid gets over the radio, but when he clears his throat, I take it as a sign that we’re not alone.

They’re listening in now. But they need to do more than listen. They need to figure a way out of this shit, and fast. Otherwise, we’re toast.

All I can do is buy us some more time. And as much as I hate the idea, I know that means I need to keep Sonia talking.

“And how are you going to make me suffer?” I ask, dreading the answer. I already know who she’s going to go after.

There’s only one person in this world I truly care about, and I’m sure it was obvious from the way I acted yesterday.

“Don’t think I didn’t see the look in your eyes last night,” Sonia confirms. “You weren’t the only one looking for a reaction. You’re in love, Raymond Byrne. And not with me.”

“I never loved you,” I spit, immediately deflecting back away from Francesca.

I can’t allow Sonia’s resentment towards Francesca to grow. It will only make her rasher.

Plus, I’m not ready to hear what she has planned for my princess. I can’t hear that shit until I know for a fact that I’ll be able to get out of here and do something about it.

“Good, because I never wanted you to love me. Okay, well, maybe that’s a lie,” Sonia shrugs. “There was a point about a decade ago, when I saw the man you’d grown into, that I could feel my cold dead heart flutter at the memories of what we’d shared as kids. It wasn’t just the way you looked, Raymond. It was who you were becoming. A boss. I like bosses. They know how to take care of a lady like me.”

“You’re hardly a lady,” I growl.

“So many men would disagree with you,” Sonia smirks, shaking her head. “But none of them were ever as manly as you were, even when you were just a boy.”

“Is that why you killed your first husband?” I ask, taking a shot in the dark. “Because he wasn’t man enough for you?” There’s no proof that she poisoned that poor rich boy she tricked into marriage, but anyone who knows Sonia understands that he probably wouldn’t have died so young if she’d never met him.

Unfortunately, Sonia doesn’t take the bait. Instead, she does a little deflecting of her own.

“You know, Andrew was one of those kids you nearly killed at the frat house, all of those years ago,” she reminisces. “He always had a sharing fetish. That’s how I got my hooks into him. No other girl was willing to go so far with the boy. Not even for a senator’s son. But let me tell you, I was willing to do anything to marry a senator’s son.”

“And that’s exactly what you did,” I remind her. Still, there is some new information here. I didn’t know that her ex-husband, Andrew Hoeven, was one of the kids I fucked up at that frat house two decades ago. “You married the poor fool and he gave you a life more privileged than either of us could have ever possibly imagined as kids. Why the hell did you throw it all away? Why the hell did you have to come back and bother me?”

“Because it was boring,” Sonia spits. “Because Andrew was never a real man, and his money wasn’t real money. Sure, it was legit, it was clean. But it wasn’t earned.”

“Since when do you care if your money’s earned?”

“I don’t. But I do care about the man I’m with. Soft men don’t turn me on, Raymond. Neither do weak men, or poor men.”

“Then why choose Domenico?”

“Because he was willing to give me what I want.”

“And what do you want?”

“Everything.”

Instantly, I know what she means.

Her goal was never just to destroy me. It was to destroy everything. The Kilpatricks. The Barinovs. The Greeks. Only then could she rise up from the ashes and take the throne she thinks she deserves.

The crazy bitch.

She’s always been too ambitious for her own good. But this? It’s insane.

I’ve worked to get here. What has she done?