He studied me for a long moment. “You don’t look like someone waiting to be rescued.”
“I am done waiting, but that doesn’t mean they’re not coming.” The truth of that hung between us.
To my surprise, Fyodor walked towards me, his steps sure on the floor between us. A part of me wanted to step back, but I stayed rooted to my spot and watched him, my eyes rising to continue meeting his gaze. He was even more handsome up close. The moment he was close enough, the faint scent ofcinnamon in his perfume hit me, filling me with nostalgia. It had been quite some time since I had felt him close to me.
“I know they are coming, Elisse. I don’t doubt that,” he said, his words uttered in a faint whisper, “but none of that will change the fact that you are my wife.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but his hands reached around my waist, and he held me, pulling me closer to him, and all coherent thoughts left me.
“Do you understand that?” he asked, his eyes gazing at me intently.
“I don’t,” I finally whispered, and pushed him away. It was certainly not good for me to be this close to Fyodor Romanov.
Chapter 16 - Fyodor
I looked around at the warehouse, realizing how it smelled like gasoline and bad decisions. I stepped over a crate split open in the middle of the concrete floor, boots crunching against broken wood. My men had already secured the perimeter. Two of Kliment’s lieutenants were kneeling against the far wall, hands zip-tied, and faces bruised but breathing. They were alive for now, but I wouldn’t be able to keep it that way much longer. They had to go.
“Who authorized this?” I asked calmly, but neither one of them answered immediately.
They knew better than to lie to someone like me, so I was sure they would eventually come through. I crouched near the open crate, my hands running over the assault rifles inside. I already knew they were all unregistered, unmarked, and freshly oiled. Whatever this attack was, it was neither defensive nor precautionary. It was simply provocative. I could see it for what it was, and it had Kliment written all over it.
“This shipment was rerouted from our southern corridor,” Viktor said quietly beside me. “It was scheduled for containment storage.”
“Not distribution,” I replied.
“Correct.”
I stood up, noticing how the two men near the wall avoided my eyes.
“Where were these going?” I asked.
They looked at one another, clearly hesitating before they answered my question. I didn’t raise my voice because I simply didn’t need to. I had never needed to. Anger was something thatdid not come to me easily, and my anger was never marked by loud voices and barely controlled rage. It was well within limits, and I always knew exactly how to make people sing for me.
“Brickell,” the man muttered. “Near Chernykh territory.”
“To do what exactly?”
My question was met with complete silence. I noticed how Viktor’s jaw tightened at the delay, remembering how he was always a little bad when it came to staying patient.
“To provoke a response from them,” I answered for him because all of us already knew what it was.
The man swallowed loudly, still not meeting my gaze. “Yes.”
I turned away from them slowly, my gaze falling on the engines which idled in the dark right outside. The slow thunder in the distance was enough to tell us that rain threatened overhead, with thick clouds already pressing low against the skyline. The sky would begin pouring within minutes.
All of this, whatever Kliment was doing, wasn’t strategy. It was simply his ego that kept making these stupid decisions. He had always been one to favor escalation when patience would suffice. But this was reckless even for him. He kept forgetting that we were not in Russia, and Miami was completely new territory for us. We had to be cautious and play it safe, and inviting the Chernykhs to war was not playing it safe.
“When I heard about this altercation, I sent orders through which you were told to stand down. Why were my orders not followed?” I asked, still facing the open warehouse doors.
“Yes, you did, but—”
“But Kliment overruled my orders,” I finished for him, knowing exactly what would have happened.
“Yes,” he confirmed.
Of course he had. I walked toward the exit, pulling my phone from my pocket.
“Unload the weapons,” I instructed Viktor without looking back. “And quietly redirect them back to storage. I don’t want Kliment to find anything out before I tell him myself, and I don’t want him to go about doing this again. We need to secure things better and increase our intelligence so we know everything he is planning to do before the order is passed.”
