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“She doesn’t know,” says Tracy softly, realizing. But she surprises me by saying, “It’s probably for the best, that way.Adam is everything to her. And…knowing my daughter, she’ll give anything to protect him. Including herself. Including her life.”
“I know.”
“I don’t like it,” Tracy says. “I don’t like this, or the situation, or your relationship with my daughter. I don’t like you, and if there were any other way, I hope you know I’d take it. But…for whatever reason, my daughter seems to trust you. And if you’re the only one who can resolve this… I suppose I can’t really tell you how to do it, can I?”
“So, you’ll go?”
Tracy sighs, long and slow, gazing out the window. After a moment, without even looking at me, she asks: “When do we leave?”
***
She looks so peaceful. I hate it. She could almost be dead, lying there like that.
“We have a few ideas where he went,” Yuri told me when I returned to the house, Tracy and Adam on their way to the lake further upstate, by the border.
I have a safehouse there, through a friend of a friend; closely guarded, dense with cameras, security, and now, a massive team of men to look after them. It’s a band-aid on a bullet hole, that’s for certain. A temporary fix, and one that could still prove breakable if Konstantin manages to get eyes on them. We were extremely cautious in the set-up, though, and no one in town should even know that Tracy has gone anywhere. If we’re lucky, they’ll be safely out of the picture until the worst is over.
But it’s late tonight. As much as I want to go on that rampage in my mind, the one that ends with me torturing Konstantin to a slow and miserable death, it must wait. I won’t leave Kat like this. Not tonight. Revenge can wait until tomorrow.
“We will keep eyes on it all,” said Yuri. “And report to you throughout the night.”
Now, darkness has fallen. It’s windy outside, gusts battering the trees. Even in the dark, even in this lousy weather, there’s something about the property out here that has begun to feel enticing to me; almost seductive. The privacy, the anonymity, even the way it’s all overgrown. It begs to be loved, to be built up and cared for, poured into. I can picture Kat doing that. Knowing her, that’s why she bought this place to begin with. She probably looked at it, and where others saw a mess, all she saw was potential.
Does she picture herself here forever, I wonder? Does she think of getting old? Grooming horses and gardening, raising her son here, and someday her grandchildren?
Does a man ever factor into that fantasy? If so, it could never be me. Rugged, dangerous, from a different world entirely. I am not part of Kat’s life. I don’t deserve to be.
Well…now I have no choice.I have already moved forward with my plan. I should have waited for her consent, probably. For both sending her mother and son away, and making our marriage official. But after what happened to her last night, I could justify it. She needs every ounce of protection I can give her. So what if she disagrees? We can always annul the marriage one day, if she truly detests it. We don’t even have to be a true couple, true husband and wife. Even if she remains here and I return to Russia, she will be protected now, by our marriage. By my name, attached to the end of hers, and to her son. My legacy. My power. My connections.
And now Konstantin’s vendetta has a whole different ring to it. Now, it’s serious—a threat not against a girl, but against my entire operation. That’s the kind of threat that gets people killed.
Good. As it should be.
Kat stirs, moaning softly. Her eyes bat open, and immediately they fill with fear, and then pain, and then tears. “Oh,” she moans. “God. What happened? Where is Adam? Is he OK?”
“He’s safe.”
Her eyes dart to mine. I’m seated beside her bed, in a reading chair I pulled over from under the window. I lit a candle beside her bed, because the medic told me she’d have a hell of a headache when she came to. Judging by the look of agony on her face, that’s not all that hurts.
“What happened?” Slowly, painstakingly, she moves to sit up. I quickly stand, taking her gingerly by the arm and elbow, slowly helping her sit up. Once she has, I shift the pillows behind her back to support her. “I remember leaving…and…oh…”
“What do you remember?” I press, because there are tremendous holes, still, in the story. And I want every detail; every name and face, every visceral piece of the puzzle. So that I can make sure the right people are held accountable—and in the right way. “After you left, what happened?”
“I was outside, in the treehouse.” She grimaces, and touches her head, squeezing her eyes shut. I pour her water from a pitcher on the bedside table, and hand it to her. But her hands are shaking, badly. I stand there, guiding it to her lips. After a moment, with my help, she manages to drink. “Then, I was walking away, toward the front of the house. I think I got further than I meant to, deeper in the woods and closer to the edge of the property. It was dark, and raining. I wasn’t thinking, and…”
“And?”
“And…” Tears fill her eyes again, but her face becomes hard and stoic, and she pushes them back. “And then a man showed up, there were two of them—I couldn’t make out their faces, though, it was too dark. They grabbed me. I didn’t even have time to scream. They had chloroform, or something like it, I guess. When they grabbed me and held it to my mouth…” Sheshakes her head again, and this time, a tear escapes, gliding brightly down her cheek.
Without thinking, I brush it away with my thumb. “It’s OK,” I murmur. “Take your time.”
“I woke up in the restaurant. Konstantin was there, with two guards. They…” Her chin wobbles, and she touches her face, hissing in a painful breath when her fingertips prod the cut on her cheekbone. She traces the little stitches there. “They were just threatening me. He wanted me…he was telling me to beg for mercy.”
The motherfucker. I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him, but I’ll torture him first, and I’ll kill every one of his men.This might have begun as business, as my less-than-intentional killing of Konstantin’s brother. But all it is now is personal. And clearly, Konstantin is willing to lose anything to fulfill his vendetta and get his retribution. He’s willing to lose his men, his position—his own life.
Or else he wouldn’t risk fucking with me like this.
“He said that he wasn’t going to kill me right away.” Her eyes find mine now, bright and fearful in the dark. “He wants me to suffer. Because he wants you to suffer. He wants…I think he wants to keep doing this. Dragging things out. Hiding and stalking me, taking me like that. I think if he caught me again, he’d…” Even beneath the blankets, she begins to shiver. “He would just torture me again, and not kill me, and…”
