We left things charged. She asked for something I could have ignored, but I was already looking into it. So what was this? The curiosity as to why she was calling was killing me.
I checked the screen. The line was open, but she wasn’t speaking.
“Inna, darling.” I returned to the table. “You didn’t call just to breathe at me, did you?”
A male cleared their throat on the other end, and I became more alert.
“I have the right person.” The deep voice came, and everything in me went still.
I pulled the phone from my ear and looked at the screen again just to confirm I was connected to my wife’s number.
The door opened without a knock, and I looked up. Akim walked in with his laptop already open. The signal he used for emergencies was on his face. I read it in a second.
Inna was in trouble.
“I see.” Akim was already working. “I’m curious. How do you have my wife’s phone?”
The man on the line chuckled. “Let’s call it magic. Though it took some time to know what your number is, because she has you saved as Psycho.” He laughed. “Can you imagine? This girl is something, isn’t she?”
Akim turned the laptop screen toward me. There was asignal, a location already pulling into focus. Akim wrote down a message so fast, telling me the man worked for Iker.
“She is,” I said, studying the screen. “You must be wondering why I married her. I like interesting women.”
“You can fool anyone else but not me,” he said, “There’s something you need from her. I want to know what it is.”
My jaw ticked once. So Iker didn’t approach me after the auction. He chose to take her instead. This meant he planned this after the auction, to see if Inna was really my wife.
I admired that, and I also intended to make him regret it.
“Let’s skip the introduction,” I said, grabbing my motorcycle keys. “What do you want?”
“Now we’re talking.” He cleared his throat again. “It’s simple. I want the boy.”
I let out a short laugh, just enough for him to hear it. He wanted Cole? “And what makes you think I’d hand him over?”
“I’m serious,” he said. “Two hours. I’ll send the location. You bring him, I give you the girl.”
So Cole was the target all this time?
“Two hours?” I was already walking to the door.
“Mess this up, and she dies.”
“What’s interesting is that you think I will let you have my wife for two hours.” I stepped into the elevator. “I enjoy a good game. Do you?”
“You think this is a joke?”
“Isn’t it?” The doors closed. “Here is what happens. You touched my wife. So in seven minutes I will touch you, and you will feel it somewhere in your bones.”
I hung up and turned to Akim. “Update.”
“Same location. He hasn’t moved.”
There was one thing people who underestimated me consistently failed to understand. The fact that I would discard Inna after a while didn’t mean she was unclaimed. She was mineuntil I decided otherwise, and I made people bleed for touching what was mine. That never changed, and it was not changing tonight.
He took my wife. That sat wrong. I got onto my bike and rode off.
“Let me introduce myself.” I pulled my gloves tighter at the wrist and stepped closer to where the bastard was crawling across the floor, leaving a dark smear behind him. “I’m Dmitri. Dmitri Konstantinov. In case whoever sent you forgot to mention who you were walking into.”
