Chapter 29 #2
Ignoring Ivan, I strode forward, my weapon pointed down and arms loose at my sides. I knew there might be traps, and this was probably an ambush, but I didn’t care. Leah was in there, so that’s where I needed to be.
At the end of the day, her safety and the safety of my unborn child were all that mattered.
Whether I lived or died didn’t even come into it.
Swinging open the door, I was met with a narrow, dark hallway, nothing but breeze blocks and a cement floor.
There were no lights except for the faint glow of one at the end of the hallway.
I stepped through, Ivan close on my heels. He had his gun pointed right over my shoulder. I might not be thinking straight, but at least he was.
“She’s in here,” Piotre said in a weird sing-song voice. I bristled with the need to strangle that voice right out of him.
“Easy, Viktor. Be the man she needs you to be. No emotion.”
I lifted my hand, and held the gun firmly. “No mercy,” I said firmly because he was right. “We kneel for no man.”
I strode forward. There was no point creeping. My enemy knew I was there.
Coming to the end of the hallway, I paused. The room was cavernous and piled high with boxes, and in the middle was Leah.
She sat slumped over in a spindly hardback chair, the light shining right down on her like a spotlight. And right behind her stood Piotre and Manda with her damn knife.
“Be the man she needs.”
I shook off Ivan’s warning. I didn’t need it.
“Leah?” I called to her softly.
She didn’t move. She didn’t even flinch.
“She’s fine,” Piotre said smoothly. “I didn’t let Manda hurt her too badly. She was more of a way for me to get you here. We have a lot to talk about, don’t we?”
Slowly, I lifted my eyes from her to him and grinned. A slow, malicious grin. If he thought we had things to discuss, then we did. But it wasn’t the things he thought we did.
“Printsessa?”
She stirred, lifting her face, which was black and blue. There was blood under her nose, and her lip was split.
“Viktor?” She cried out my name like a prayer. “I didn’t tell them anything.”
“I know.” I smiled because even now, she was so fucking brave and beautiful that she took my breath away. Not missing a beat, I squeezed the trigger.
Manda dropped without a word. Her eyes were wide and glassy. A perfectly round hole in her head. I pointed the weapon at Piotre next. His eyes widened in shock. “Well, that was unnecessary.”
He didn’t look particularly bothered by her death, though.
“What did you do that for?”
Surely, he couldn’t be that stupid. Apart from I knew he was. I had been told he was. Piotre was cruel, but he didn’t have the brain cells to see what was happening here.
I shrugged. “She laid hands on my wife,” I said calmly. It was the kind of calm that scared people. And it should have terrified him. He was just too stupid to see it.
“Anyone who touches her dies,” I cocked my head to the side. “That includes you.”
“This is business, Viktor. Nothing more.”
I laughed. “You want a piece of the empire? As the bastard son of a crippled man? That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You think we are brothers.”
“I know we are.”
“He did have a bastard.” I took a step forward.
“A child by another woman, which was why my mother left, but that child wasn’t you.
It was a girl. A woman who died when she was seventeen.
You’re not the prodigal son, Piotre. Your mother was a cheap whore who got knocked up by a John.
” I forced myself not to look at Leah as I approached them.
I wouldn’t take my eyes from him. If I did he would attack.
Right now, he was still reeling from my words. His face contorted in anger.
“She was not.”
“Oh, come on, the whole city knows.” I rolled my eyes. “But I’ll let you into a little secret. Even if you were my brother, I would still kill you.” I stepped close again this time, so close that the muzzle of my gun was almost pressed to his head.
And still the fool didn’t flinch. He really did think he was invincible.
That’s when I saw it. He had a gun of his own. Something small and ladylike, but still deadly. And it was pointed right at my wife’s stomach. He caught my line of sight and grinned. “One wrong move, Viktor. One more word out of your smug mouth about my mother, and I will—”
“You’ll do what? Shoot her?” I pressed the muzzle of the gun against his forehead and grinned. “Do it.”
I didn’t even want to look at Leah.
“She’s pregnant with your baby, you wouldn’t.” The first hint of fear flickered into his eyes. “My father has changed our deal. I am not in charge.. He is. I only married her to get power, and now, I don’t have it. She’s worthless to me. Pull the trigger. It will save me millions.”
“Viktor.”
Jesus, her voice was pleading, pleading, and so full of hurt that it felt like my heart was being shredded.
“Our father—”
I shot him through the head before he could finish the sentence. Blood and grey brain matter flew everywhere. Hitting me in the face, covering Leah, who was screaming so loud it was earsplitting .
At the other end of the room, more gunshots rang out, my men taking out Piotre. No one would walk out of here alive apart from the people I wanted to, but I didn’t move. I just stared down at him and the ruins of his head as it spilled out over the floor.
Maybe he was my brother. I didn’t know. Everything I had said had been a lie.
Every single thing apart from one thing.
“Ivan”, I snapped, and he was there in a second, kneeling in front of Leah and using his pocket knife to cut through the ropes that bound her to the chair. She sagged into his arms, and he cradled her like a baby, and still, I couldn’t look at her.
“Viktor?” she whispered.
“Take her home, Ivan. Take her to her old life. I never want to see her again,” My voice was cold and flat.
“Sure thing. Come on, Leah. Let’s get you home. We have a doctor waiting, and your friend Dion is being collected. You’re going to be fine. Just hold on to me.”
He walked away with her cradled in his arms, and it was only when he was halfway across the floor that I let myself look.
And God, she looked so small and broken.
“Viktor, I love you.” Over Ivan’s arms, her eyes clashed with mine. And I could see the misery in her eyes.
She believed it, all those lies I had just told. She believed them all. Just the way I needed her to.
“Get her out of my sight. I never want to see her again.” I snapped and turned my back on them. I heard her sobbing, and it took everything I had not to turn around and make it all better. This was for the best.
They would never be safe unless I let them go.
“I love you,” I whispered under my breath, and then I walked away from the sounds of her cries, and I didn’t look back. “God, I love you so damn much.” I finally said the words, but she couldn’t hear them.
She wasn’t meant to.