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He swears under his breath as he holds out my phone to show me my last message to Papa on the screen. I had told him that I tried to get into Alexei’s home computer but couldn’t figure out the password.
“No,” I say to my husband. “That’s a lie. I had to give him something, so I lied. I never went into your office when you weren’t there.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “Why? Why risk lying to your father and give up your big dreams?”
Tears roll down my cheeks and I wipe at them and my voice hitches on a sob. “Because I don’t want to betray you. You’re a good man. I never knew what that meant until I got to know you. I want to be on your side.” I reach for him again but his shoulder is stiff under my palm. “I am on your side.”
He stares down at me for a long moment, his jaw twitching with tension, then takes my hand off his shoulder and gives me back my phone. Turns on his heel and walks away.
I follow on his heels like a pathetic puppy, but he pays me no mind. Back in his room, he storms into his walk-in closet and slams the door behind himself. I pace for a few minutes, finally turning my phone off so I don’t have to hear the incessant calls and messages that keep coming in. I should be panicking about the hit that’s probably already been ordered on me, but all I want is for Alexei to tell me he believes me and that he understands.
He comes out, dressed in a navy business suit and crisp white shirt, as if he’s just going to inspect his bars and restaurants. Maybe he is, because he doesn’t give me a single glance as he strides out of the room. A moment later I hear the front door slam.
He’s gone.
He’s left me alone.
As foolish as it was to expect him to stick to what he proclaimed last night, I’d still had hope. That he was loyal to me. That he’d stay by my side.
And now I’m alone instead.
I should be packing, getting the hell out of here, but where could I go that Papa wouldn’t find me? I can’t do this by myself, and even though my impending death sentence should be at the very front of my thoughts, all I can do is stare at the place where Alexei had been a few moments before.
All I can do is wish him back, wish I’d never gotten out of bed, wish I’d never been born, because I’d have to go back that far to untangle this sordid mess.
Most of all I wish he’d never said those wonderful things to me, never been the man I couldn’t have dreamed existed. Wish he’d never shown me such tenderness and loving kindness. Because now that I know what that’s like and it’s been ripped away from me, never to return, I might as well be dead.
I collapse on his bed, sobbing at what I’ve lost. When I take a shuddering breath and smell him on the pillows, it feels like my chest is being crushed in a vice, each rib stabbing into my heart.
“Alexei,” I say, as if that will bring him back.
Making it worse for myself, I hug his pillow tight to my body and drench it with tears, wishing it was his chest I was crying into, but knowing deep in my trampled heart that those days are over.
Before they really began.
And now I’m alone.
Chapter 8
Alexei
On the way down the elevator, I call Niko and tell him where to meet me. My blood is boiling, but my nerves are steady. I know what I have to do to finish this.
I’ve been walking the line of respectability and legality since I took over my family’s organization. I’ve worked hard to let the people who remained loyal to me know that things were going to be different.
Fair compensation. Mutual respect. Less violence, less fear.
Now there’s going to be lots of violence and plenty of fear, and I’ll be damned if any of it involves anyone else but me. When I get in my car, I call Sera’s oldest brother Leo, the man I know is meant to take over her father’s organization one day.
“We need to talk,” I say when he answers, and tell him where to meet.
He’s surprisingly agreeable. Not that he has a choice—I’d find him anyway—but I’m always glad to see someone be cooperative.
I spend the rest of the drive going over the messages I saw on Sera’s phone in my mind. The constant outpouring of threats she’d received since our wedding boggles my mind. Then the last one she sent, with her admitting to trying to get into my computer but not knowing the password.
The thing is, I don’t do anything much more than play Call of Duty on that computer. Work-life balance and all that. I bring some contracts home now and then, but there’s nothing like that on the hard drive right now, and hasn’t been for weeks.
There’s not a password on that computer. It has nothing on it to hide.
