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Bruno ignores Ashlyn and looks at me with a fiery glare. I can see I got to him, and it feels good. He swallows back his rage and nods his head while he looks at me.
“You think that’s some kind of payback?” he asks with a deranged smile on his face. “If you were smarter, you would have kept that to yourself. I would have married you and treated you like a queen. But now you’ll just be my worthless slut until I get bored with you.”
Bruno pauses and watches me, but if he’s looking for terror or subservience, he won’t get it from me. Viktor has done some wicked things to me, but he’s also taught me to be a stronger person, and it’s a strength I’m leaning on now that I know my best friend betrayed me.
Ashlyn looks at Bruno with hope in her eyes. “Does that mean you’ll marry me instead?”
“No,malishka,” he says. “Tatyana and I will still be married, but only because we also purchased a marriage. But I’ll have years to take my disappointment out on her, and I will,” Bruno says as he walks into the hallway.
“That was very foolish of you,” Ashlyn says proudly. “Bruno can be tough to live with sometimes, but he knows how to treat a woman right when he wants to.”
I cross my arms over my chest and turn away from her. “You can have his treatment,” I say.
Ashlyn laughs. “It doesn’t work that way, but I’ll let him know just how you feel. Maybe he’ll learn to direct his anger at you in the future. It looks like you want that. Maybe one day you’ll learn the best thing to do is obey him, but I won’t beg you to come to your senses, Tatyana. Be the black sheep if that’s what you want. I’ll benefit from it.”
“Don’t you realize he’ll kill you the moment he wants to?” I ask Ashlyn.
She scoffs. “He would never do that to me.”
“What if someone kills Bruno?”
“No one is going to cut through Bruno Stepanov. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!” Ashlyn’s face softens to something blankly happy, like a brainwashed member of a cult. “I know this is difficult for you, but you’ll get used to it.”
Ashlyn leans over and I feel a pinch to my neck. I whip back at her, but my vision spins in front of me and my body falls back onto my bed. My limbs grow weaker until they can’t move. My vision fades, but I can still hear Ashlyn’s words as she hovers over my limp body.
“Hush, now…” she says with a vacant smile. “The medical staff will be here to take you to surgery soon and you’ll come back home a new person.”
Her smile fades as she continues to look down at me. “Well, youmightcome back. I still haven’t decided on it yet. If you were to die in surgery, I think Bruno could forget about you. And I’d marry him instead.” She brushes a strand of my red hair in her fingers. “All I would have to do is order the staff to make… a mistake.” Her warped smile comes back. “And you’d be out of our lives forever.”
Two men wearing scrubs appear in the doorway and roll a stretcher into the room. They pull levers that raise the bed to the same height as my bed and steer it so it’s lined with me. I hang lifelessly as the men transfer me onto the stretcher, only able to hear Ashlyn’s words.
“See you in a few hours,” she says as the men roll my stretcher towards the door. When I pass Ashlyn, she pulls the stretcher to a halt and leans over so her mouth is right next to my ear.
“Maybe…” she hisses as the stretcher rolls into the hallway.
Chapter24
VIKTOR
An unmarked truck turns into a street lined with warehouses and shuttered businesses. I lean into a doorway, obscuring myself until I see it pass the building I’ve been watching.
I’m learning bits about Chicago as I go along. This district was a former meat packing and manufacturing headquarters for the area. The businesses that catered to the food industry survived since the Fulton Market area is now a row of trendy restaurants. Factories that didn’t serve the food industry are still closed down or renovated into new offices.
The street I’m on is lined with restaurants that are only open at dinnertime and the meat factories that keep them stocked. The smell of fresh meat saturates the air so much you can smell blood from the trucks delivering stock for restaurants to serve that evening.
My eyes stay focused on one building that is neither a trendy restaurant nor a building receiving deliveries of meat. It looks like the sort of warehouse that should have died for not keeping up with the changes through the years. The original shop windows line the upper portion of walls around the entire building. Some of the small rectangular windows are broken, others painted shades of white, green, and smokey gray, likely at different times through the years it’s been in operation.
A dark car reflects morning sunlight, catching the corner of my eye. I look over and smile, recognizing the car as Aksel’s. It’ll be good to see him again, regardless of the circumstances. I was taken to Russia at a moment’s notice, and in my absence Aksel and Yuri took care of our crew, proving to me I picked the right men to trust.
It was hard leaving Vadim in Russia, but he’s been making progress in his recovery. He’s been able to speak in full sentences, and most of them have been vows to murder Boris Stepanov himself. He made me promise to leave that job to him, and if I can, I will. But that’s not the only problem I have with the Stepanov family.
They have Tatyana. I can’t wait for Vadim to recover before I make my move to save her. From the moment she left, one thing has been clear to me. Tatyana belongs at my side. I wanted to respect her decision, but when I found out the Stepanov family took her prisoner, there was no way I would allow that to go unchallenged.
I’ll protect her until the day I die.
“He lives,” I hear Yuri mumble behind me. I turn and can’t help but smile when I see Aksel and Yuri settle into the other side of the doorway I’m using to stand watch over the Stepanov warehouse. I exchange handshakes with both of them. Aksel’s head leans over and follows another truck coming driving down the street towards the Stepanov warehouse. When it passes, he turns back to me.
“There’s two Stepanov sons, correct?” Yuri asks me.
