Chapter 26
DARIUS
"Are all the shipments of the same caliber and quality?" I asked Pavel as we looked over the crates of semi-automatic weapons.
Pavel's new venture was impressive. And if he pulled this off, it would be incredibly profitable.
This was his first complete shipment of true ghost guns. Not guns that had serial numbers filed off, but ones that were never printed with them to begin with.
Extremely illegal and highly sought after by several of our customers, even if only a few could afford them.
"Yeah," Pavel said with a grin. "I had my doubts about this new supplier, but they have come through. We are still going to test each gun, firing off a few rounds before repackaging them and shipping them with the corn and soy headed to our customers' home countries."
I nodded, picking up one rifle and inspecting it. The weight of it in my hands was familiar, grounding. Just because I handled the legitimate side of the family business didn't mean I wasn't aware of how every single aspect of it worked.
"Good," I said, giving him a nod of approval. I was about to ask another question about the ammunition and how he planned to ship the bullets separately when two of my men rushed in.
They had been under strict orders not to disturb us. So if they had come and interrupted this meeting, I knew it was serious.
"Sir, uh..." Andrei looked at the floor, then at the ceiling, refusing to meet my eye. Andrei never hesitated to meet my eye. Something was very wrong, and he was afraid to tell me.
"Spit it out," I demanded as I set the rifle down with deliberate control and let him take a few steps over to the side, giving us a little bit of privacy in case that was why he was worried.
"There's been an incident at the girl's music shop."
My heart stopped. "What kind of incident?" I asked, limbs going cold, a ringing starting in my ears.
"We have contained it, but there was some...damage."
Some “damage.” Andrei didn’t mince words, and he didn’t sugarcoat things. Whatever this was, I needed to be there now.
"Pavel," I barked. "Handle this. I'll be in touch."
"Are you coming back?" he called after me as I ran to the SUV.
I didn't bother answering; there wasn't time. My fingers were already curling around my keys, my stride eating up the distance to the vehicle.
Fortunately, I was at the office near the waterfront, close to her shop in Georgetown. Andrei moved to the driver's seat, but I pushed him out of the way and got behind the wheel. My shoulder caught his chest hard enough to send him stumbling.
Andrei jumped into the car as I threw it into reverse, backing out of the parking lot. Gravel sprayed. The engine roared.
I couldn't recall the drive from the harbor to her shop, not a single detail. All I knew was I had to get there. My knuckles were white on the steering wheel. Every red light felt like a personal insult, every second an eternity where she might be bleeding, broken…gone.
I stopped in front of the store, not really parking—the SUV half on the curb, blocking traffic—before I left the engine running and headed inside looking for her.
My men were standing over some rich, entitled douchebag.
His eye was swollen shut, and the blood from his nose dripped down onto his suit jacket and jeans.
The asshole was still yelling, whining really.
"This isn't over. Wait until my father hears about this.
He is a powerful man. He has connections. You'll be sorry."
I barely registered his existence. He was already a corpse. He just hadn't stopped breathing yet.
I'd deal with that later.
"Where is she?" I demanded.
One of the men pointed over toward the side where Anna was sitting on a low, velvet armchair, her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs, her hair falling in front of her face, hiding her from view. Or maybe she was hiding from everyone?
The sight of her curled in on herself like that—small, broken—made something crack in my chest. Something that felt dangerously close to fear.
One of my men stepped over, hand on my shoulder, stopping me from going to her. "She's pretty banged up. Bruised cheek, possibly a black eye and a scratch over her cheekbone that looks worse than it is. Already stopped bleeding."
I stared at his hand on my shoulder until he dropped it.
"I want the store empty. Take that piece of trash and put it somewhere. I will deal with him later. I want two men at the front entrance, and two standing guard by the alley. Nobody comes in, is that understood?"
"Yes, sir," he said. I waited until they were out, and I heard the door lock click behind me. The sound echoed in the sudden silence. Just me and her now.
Then I went to her.
I knelt in front of her, careful not to touch her or startle her. My hands hovered, uncertain—a foreign feeling. Then I kicked myself for not asking the men what had happened. I was so focused on getting here to protect her, and then take care of her, I never asked what the fuck actually happened.
"Maya soloveyka," I whispered. "Can you look at me?"
Her head stayed down, but she shook it just enough to get her lilac locks to sway with the movement.
"Can you tell me what happened?"
"Go away."
"I can't do that," I said. I gently reached for her chin and tilted her face up. Her hair fell away as she met my eyes, and my breath stopped.
There was a nail scratch along her cheekbone and swelling just below her eye that was already turning a grayish purple beneath her pale skin. It was obscene. Wrong. Sacrilegious to harm such an innocent.
That I was as guilty of causing her harm was immaterial to me. This was different. It had to be or there would truly be no hope for me.
Every time I had gotten furious at someone, my veins filled with fire.
This wasn't that. This was colder. Arctic.
The kind of cold that burned. I was so far beyond anger my veins filled with ice, and my heart froze.
I was furious at that frat boy douchebag for doing this to her, at myself for not protecting her, at my men for letting it get this far before intervening, and at her for not telling me about this threat.
I needed to know who that asshole was, and why the fuck he thought he had the right to touch my girl.
The surrounding room darkened, and all I could see were the injuries that now marred her beautiful face.
The delicate bone structure I'd traced with my fingers, now swollen and discolored. The physical proof of how I failed her.
"I'm going to kill him." It wasn't a statement but a promise, to her and the universe. I could already feel my hands around his throat, feel the cartilage give way, hear the snap. The man who did this to her would never get another chance to hurt her.
"Why?" she asked, tilting her head like she was genuinely confused.
For a second, I couldn't even understand why she would ask such a thing. Then I remembered everything that she had been through in the last few days. Maybe she was in shock and couldn't feel the injuries to her face yet. That had to be it.
Carefully, I took her hand and lifted her to her feet.
She tried to pull away from me, but I wouldn't let her.
My fingers tightened around her wrist—not bruising, but unyielding.
Instead, I led her over to a glass instrument case with a mirrored back, and I had her face the mirror. Forced her to see what he'd done.
"That's why," I said.
She turned in my arms and shoved at my chest. A high-pitched sound of aggravation strained through her gritted teeth as she tried over and over to push me back.
She was so small and reminded me of a bird flapping its wings against a cage. It didn't matter how angry she was or how hard she flapped. She wasn't going anywhere.
She beat her fist against my chest, another sound of fury escaping her lips, and when she shoved me back again, this time out of some form of sympathy, I took a step back. Allowing her the illusion that she had won, at least for a moment.
"You're going to kill him? Because he hit me?" she asked, hysteria leaking into her shrill voice. "This will heal. This is nothing. Just a black eye and a scratch. But this?"
She wrapped her fingers around her diamond necklace and yanked it.
"This is so much worse. This can kill me at any moment. And even if you let me go? What then? What do I have left in my life, when I know that at any point, one of your kind can break into my home, into my work, and just strap explosives on me for your own fucking amusement?"
I took another hesitant step back, wanting to give her some room to breathe. But she didn't breathe. She kept ranting, pacing now, hands gesticulating with jerky, wild movements.
"You want to kill him because he laid his hands on me? After what you did? He's nothing."
"Anna." I put my hands up in front of me, trying to calm her down. The same hands that had fastened that necklace. That had claimed every inch of her body.
"No, don't ‘Anna’ me. You don't have the right to complain about another man hurting me when you strapped a fucking bomb around my throat for the last three days.
“I have been waiting for it to go off, thinking every second might be my last, having the reality of how sad and pathetic my life is, of how no one loves me and no one would care if I was gone, shoved down my throat every minute of every day. And you're mad that he hit me?"
Each word was a bullet. I felt them all land, tearing through tissue, lodging in bone.
"Anna," I tried again, and she turned on me. Her gray eyes were the same color as a powerful winter storm. And her fingers were like claws as they tried to rip and tear at the necklace, scratching at the skin of her neck instead. Fresh blood welled up in thin lines. She didn't even seem to notice.
She had lost all semblance of control, and the stress had finally broken her.
This was my fault. I did this to her. I'd broken her wings.
A knot formed in my stomach. Then twisted. Tightened. Threatened to strangle me from the inside out.
"My life was okay before you. I thought I was happy. I thought I knew what kind of simple life I wanted, and then you had to show up and ruin everything.” Her glare would heat the sun.
“It wasn't enough for you to just threaten me.
No, you had to play these fucked up little mind games.
One minute you're putting a bomb around my throat and threatening me,” she raged, “the next you're standing up to my mother for me.
Then you're bending me over the fucking bathroom sink and fucking me within an inch of my sanity, and then you’re spanking me.
“And now you want to kill my ex, who only hit me? He's nothing compared to the shit that you've put me through. Or is that it? You’re not upset because he hit me. You’re pissed because he messed with your favorite little fuck toy."
The words "fuck toy" coming from her mouth—that beautiful, defiant mouth I'd claimed over and over—made my cock twitch even as rage flooded my system. The dichotomy was maddening. I was furious and aroused and drowning in guilt all at once.
She doubled over and started laughing, a crazy, maniacal sound. "Fuck toy."
The sound of it—broken and wild and wrong—made my hands curl into fists.
I didn't know what to say. For the first time in my life, I was genuinely speechless.
Anna was hysterical, screaming and ranting, and she tore at the necklace, but nothing she was saying was wrong.
I did this to her. I had brought this violent chaos into her life. She was right. But I needed to make her stop. I needed to fix what I broke. Even if I had to break her a little more first to put her back together.
I grabbed her arms, pulling them to her sides and pulling her into me, and I tried to kiss her—anything to make her soul-wrenching cries and laughter stop. To swallow those sounds, to take them into myself where they belonged.
This time, she didn't melt into my embrace after a second.
She fought, not the apathetic fight of a woman who wanted to pretend that she didn’t like me. But the actual feral fighting of a woman who had had enough. Teeth bared. Nails out. Survival mode.
Her body struggled as she tried in vain to pull out of my arms, her fingers curled into claws as they scratched at my chest, leaving hot lines of pain even through my shirt. But I didn't let her get away. I didn't let her go.
Not until she dropped her hands. For a second, I thought she was done fighting, until her hand flew through the air and slammed across my face, her fingers just touching my ears as her palm smashed into my jaw hard enough that I actually tasted blood.
The copper tang flooded my mouth. My head snapped to the side.
For a heartbeat, we both froze. Her palm still raised, trembling. My face turned away, jaw throbbing.
Then something snapped inside me.
This was too much.
She was out of control, chaos embodied, and I couldn't stand that.
I needed order. Needed to restore the balance between us. Needed her to remember exactly who she belonged to.
And there was only one way to get it.
There was only one way to handle the situation, and to handle her tantrum. One way to remind her that even in her rage, even in her pain, she was still mine.
With a low growl of warning, I picked her up in one fluid motion.
She gasped—whether in shock or fury, I didn't care. Her fists immediately pounded against my chest. I let her. Each blow was nothing compared to what I deserved. I marched out of the back door and upstairs to her apartment.
My grip on her was iron. Possessive. Unbreakable.
She was still screaming. Still fighting.
Good.
Let her rage. Let her hate me. I'd take it all and then show her exactly what happened when she forgot who owned her—bomb or no bomb, hit or no hit.
Every step up those stairs was measured. Deliberate. A predator carrying his prey to his den.
And when I kicked open her apartment door, the lock splintering from the frame, she finally went still.
The silence was almost worse than her screaming.
Almost.