“I think it will make a difference. Once I told her more, about who he was—is?” He growled in frustration. “He'd better be dead. And if he isn’t, he’s still dead to me.”
Lev’s hatred for his father ran so deep, partly because of how young he’d been when his traitorous act happened. I’d never cautioned him to lose that hatred. It could fuel him, for all I cared. He’d never been anything but loyal to my father, and he would stay loyal to me as the next Pakhan, too.
“Once I told her more about who he was and the time when he’d died, she had more things to explore. I think she was working with Sacha on how to piece together a timeline of when companies were started. Almost like she was basing her researchon the hypothetical that he’s been alive all this time and has been starting up this network over the course of years.”
I rubbed my face.Of course, she would.Elena was a hardworking woman and had the spirit of never quitting.
Your loss, my gain, dumbass.
I still couldn’t understand how John Morovov had ever thought to give her up.
Just to save his own ass? To give me his daughter as a payment to spare my hurting or killing him?
“Thank you for the update,” I told him sincerely. While I had been debating when and if I’d tell Elena more about the sensitive nature of the Volkov family history, I couldn’t fault Lev for what he’d shared with her. If it would enable her to do her job better, then that was for the good of all of us.
In the middle of the night, when Lev called me again, I instinctively knew that it wasn’t to update me about what he or any of my brothers could have told her.
Seeing the call come in triggered something in me.
Something’s wrong.
Something had to be wrong with me, since being away from Elena wasn’t working in regard to getting her out of my mind.
Because I was still obsessed about her, my first thought went to her.
And my instincts were right.
“Someone trespassed on the property,” he said. “And they tried to break into the guest house.”
A stain of red filtered through my soul. Hot fury consumed me, and my body reacted to the threat of danger.
Not here.
Not toward me.
But danger targeting her.
It was all that it took to get me rushing back home. I’d been planning on returning later that day, but with the news about someone trying to reach Elena, all my protective instincts flared into overdrive.
Maksim and Alexei were also on their phones as we headed to the airport shortly after Lev called me. Countless orders were given to the men at the estate. Checks were done on the perimeter. Staff and guards were interrogated. In a flurry of action—despite my being across the country and boarding our private jet—the matter was taken seriously and looked into.
But I didn’t contact her.
I couldn’t.
I had toseeher.
I had tofeelher.
Because anything short of those two things would seem like an illusion. The panic and rage in my heart that she could’ve been hurt or taken wouldn’t abate until I could know with my own eyes that she really was all right.
Nikolai was running interference, anyway.
He called toward the end of the flight, explaining that Elena had slept through it all.
“She didn’t even wake up,” he said as the plane landed. “The guards were on it. They noticed the activity, a team went out to counter the intruder, and they killed him before he could even turn the doorknob twice.”
That appeased me.
