Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Kirill
“We need to take him to the hospital.”
I was on my knees, struggling to remain upright. I’d lost my gun. I might have lost more blood than I thought. But I was not losing my wife. I didn’t trust Kolya not to retaliate. “No hospital.”
“Kirill, Kirill?” My wife’s beautiful, worried face appeared before me. “Stay awake.”
The top of my shoulder was throbbing, and I could feel the life draining away from me.
“No hospital,” I repeated.
“Just let him bleed out,” that shrew Chloe said, peering over Lucy’s shoulder. “Then you’ll be free of him.”
“But…”
“You said he wanted you dead.”
The fuck? I wanted to strangle that bitch, but desperately wanted to hear Lucy’s answer, so I remained on my knees, pretending to sway and appear weak. I should win a fucking Oscar.
“The bratva will come after me.”
Kolya wouldn’t rest until he had avenged me. That was a fact, but not what I wanted to hear my wife say.
“I’ll help you get rid of the body.”
I really hated this King heir as much as I hated her half brothers.
“Wait. I know what to do. I’ll call Sloane.”
Lucy’s sister-in-law was a former mob cleaner.
My wife really wanted to get rid of me. The pain in my chest seemed to hurt more than my shoulder.
I clambered to my feet, leaning against Lucy, who was helping me to a couch but thought better of it.
She led me to a wooden chair and asked that woman for clean kitchen towels.
“Did you shoot me in the heart, Lusenka?” I asked.
She peered into my face. “Kirill?”
“Yes, wife.”
“What did you say?”
The words seemed clear in my head when I said them, but apparently not.
“My heart. It hurts. Did you shoot me in the chest?” I coughed. Fuck, everything hurt now. I was such a pussy. It was just a nick to the fucking trapezius. Out of nowhere, I thanked the heavy shoulder shrugs I did in the gym that built those muscles.
“I don’t understand you.”
“Chest hurts.”
A gentle hand rested over the spot where pain radiated.
“It hurts here?”
I must have nodded. My eyes focused on her angelic features for a brief second. Tears streaked her face in remorse.
She was crying.
Over me.
Had I finally earned her tears?
She regretted shooting me. That much was apparent, but I also knew how to hold a grudge. Knew I was going to make her pay. Not with her suffering. I think she’d enjoy choking on my dick, but I would also get satisfaction for the indignity she was putting me through.
Chloe came back with towels, handed them to Lucy, and backed away.
“Are you sure those are clean?” I demanded.
She rolled her eyes.
She’d been toting a shotgun but had the barrel pointed down. Good. If she was pointing at me, then I was done playing the helpless schmuck because, fuck if I’d let my wife be in harm’s way just so I could soak up her care.
Lucy sniffed them. “They smell clean.” She pressed them onto my shoulder.
I groaned softly, but I couldn’t help nuzzling her arm that was in my line of sight.
But my wife didn’t seem to notice that I was rubbing against her like a cat. “Can you keep the pressure on? I have to call Sloane.”
“I think I’ll be fine.” I looked around Lucy at Chloe. “Do you have a first aid kit?”
She gave me the finger. The bitch really wanted me to bleed out.
“With the amount of blood, I think it needs stitches,” Lucy told me. “It’s hard to see where the blood is coming from. And I’d feel better if she looked you over.”
Lucy repeated her command for me to put pressure on the wound. While she walked off to call her sister-in-law, Chloe and I engaged in a staredown.
“So Bruce Davenport was hiding you.”
No answer. Just tapered death-glare eyes.
“Why not come forward? Then you won’t have to live in the dumps.”
“I like the quiet life.”
“A quiet life? You’re hiding.”
“I’m not about to accept money from the people who killed my mother!” she snapped.
Lucy came back and signaled for Chloe to stop talking while she was on the phone.
Obviously, she wanted to hear more about Chloe's mother. I knew she was a woman called Renée. I’d heard Ivan and Irina argue about her.
My mother thought Ivan had been having an affair.
He never admitted to sleeping with Renée, but Irina said an emotional affair was still an affair.
Lucy ended the call. “Sloane is choppering in with Dom. Trevor had followed me and is picking them up at the nearest landing area. I couldn’t get my sister-in-law to hide it from my brother. Sorry.”
Was that another jab at me? That our marriage was doomed from the start because we kept secrets from each other? Maybe it was time to lay our cards on the table. My wound throbbed. After this fucking bleeding stopped.
And what the fuck did she mean, Trevor was following her? If I hadn’t seen her switch vehicles, would that mean they would be alone in these cozy Pocono Mountains? I notched that tidbit away for later interrogation.
“What was that you said about your mother?” Lucy asked. “The Kings ordered a hit on her?”
Chloe clamped her mouth shut, realizing she might have said too much.
My recollection of the affair that involved the Kings and the Zahkarovs was vague.
It had caused Irina too much pain. I hated that the sins of the past would come back and hurt her.
Sins of the past—that was the living and breathing woman in front of me.
The time to kill her had passed. I didn’t kill women without reason.
As much as Lucy might feel immense regret for shooting me, she couldn’t turn off what was intrinsically embedded in her DNA.
She wanted justice for the victims of the mob.
I was the mob. And Chloe was a victim. I was prepared to shoot Chloe to defend myself.
It was as simple as that. I understood my wife’s actions.
Lucy turned to me. “Do you know anything about this?”
I shrugged and then hissed at the reminder of my injury. “All I know is Esther King approached the bratva to do a hit, but Ivan intervened and told Duncan about it. This was long ago, right after I left for Russia.”
“When you were nine?”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t even born then,” Chloe said. “Bruce had reason to believe my mother died eight years ago.”
“Wait,” Lucy said. “You’re not sure?”
“We’d been separated since I was fifteen. For my safety, Mom said.” Chloe sniffed. “She usually reached out during the holidays and on my birthday, but it’s been total silence for eight years.”
Fuck. I could see Lucy’s face showing sympathy for her. They both scowled in my direction, and I questioned how I put myself at the mercy of two vixens. My hand itched to reach for the knife in my boot, but spilling more blood wouldn’t endear me to my wife.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. That was probably Kolya wondering where the fuck I was. I told everyone at the house my wife was mad at me and we might skip returning to the mansion and head straight for our vacation.
“I need to answer this,” I said.
Lucy came forward. Chloe raised the shotgun.
“Kindly point that thing away,” I enunciated. “You harm a hair on Lucy’s head and I don’t care who you are, I’ll slice your throat.”
“Not if I blow your head off first.”
“Okay, quiet, both of you,” Lucy warned. “What are you going to tell him?”
I grinned. “I’ll put him on speaker as a show of good faith.”
When Kolya came on the line, he was pissed. “Where the fuck are you?”
“Didn’t I tell you I was going on vacation?”
“You haven’t made arrangements for your flight.”
“Change of plans.”
Silence and then, “Am I on fucking speaker?”
“I need my hands free; they’re busy with my wife at the moment.”
“Fuck, comrade, are you fucking her right now?”
I smirked as Lucy shot me a glare.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Just letting you know everything tonight went smoothly.”
“Good. Is that it?”
“Yeah, shame I couldn’t convince you to do business in the Bahamas.” As expected, Kolya was on guard because he knew we were on speaker. It was a risk I took with Chloe in the room.
“I told you. It’s a pleasure trip for my wife and me, I have no plans on doing any business.”
“Don’t get too attached to your wife.”
And that was my signal to end the call before I admitted to being exactly that. Lucy’s face had comically taken on the palest shade of white.
“You ran away from me for nothing. You shot me for nothing,” I told her smugly.
I didn’t realize the satisfaction of holding something like this over my wife’s head.
We were toxic as fuck, and I thrived on it.
I was looking forward to having her at my mercy in a secluded cabin somewhere.
Yes, when I was driving through the Poconos, I’d changed my plans about the Bahamas.
She emitted a strangled sob so full of guilt, I almost reassured her.
“You did barge in here,” Chloe retorted.
“Shut up.” Lucy turned on the other woman. “Don’t you realize I misjudged him?”
“You don’t tell me to shut up in my house,” Chloe spat. She was right, but it didn’t lessen my desire to strangle her for talking to my wife that way.
“We’ll leave.” I stood only to have a shotgun pointed at my face. I clenched my jaw.
“Oh, no…no…you are going to clean up the mess. This is hardwood floor. I might not even get my deposit back.”
“You worry about deposit money when you could have millions at your disposal?”
“Kirill, sit before you topple over,” Lucy ordered. I was really fine. My heart was pumping more blood than I was losing, or it felt that way as the sharpness returned to my vision. Still, my wife convinced the virago to give me orange juice.
My call with Kolya seemed to have aggravated Chloe. There was no doubt she hated being dragged into the bratva’s orbit again. She had lowered her shotgun but was pacing and mumbling to herself until Lucy asked to see the trust documents. Meanwhile, I listened in.
“It doesn’t say here that you have to marry Kirill?” Lucy pointed out.
“No. But for me to receive the shares, there has to be a union between a King and a Zahkarov.”