Chapter 51
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
SLOANE
I’m grateful I’m not alone right now, because if Emilia and Fiona weren’t here, I’m not sure I’d still be holding myself together.
Emilia sits beside the bed with one hand around mine, while Fiona stays close by like she has no intention of leaving. The two of them barely know me and they don’t owe me this, but they’re here anyway, doing what they can while I sit in this hospital bed trying not to fall apart.
“They’re going to find them,” Emilia attempts to reassure me. “Kirill and the guys will bring them home.”
Fiona nods. “Those men don’t fail when it comes to their family.”
I want so badly to believe that, but all I can think is, what if he’s too late? What if Eli already…
My eyes squeeze shut, panic hitting so hard it’s as though it’s an extension of me now. Without thinking, my hand drifts down to my stomach, trying to protect the other child we now have.
The thought is surreal. My boys are out there somewhere, terrified and alone, and somehow in the middle of all this chaos, there is another tiny life growing inside me, depending on me to stay strong.
Think positive. Focus on something good.
Before I can even try, my phone rings on the small table beside the bed. My eyes fly open and lock on the screen lighting up with a number I don’t recognize. The room spins, my nerves hitting all at once.
Emilia and Fiona both notice the way I tense up before I’ve even reached for the phone.
“Do you want me to answer it?” Fiona asks.
I shake my head. “No. I’ll do it.”
Pushing myself a little straighter against the pillows and ignoring the thumping in my head and throbbing in my arm, I reach for the phone and answer. “Hello?”
There’s nothing on the other end except static, and that tiny stretch of silence makes my whole body go cold.
Then his voice comes through. “Hey, Eden. How are you? I hope you didn’t get hurt too badly.”
The air in the room turns too thin to breathe.
“Where are my boys? What are you doing with them?” I get the words out, but my hands are shaking so hard, the phone nearly slips from my grip.
Fiona goes still beside me, and Emilia’s expression sharpens.
“They’re safe.” The bastard laughs. “For now.”
“Why would you do that to innocent children?” I choke out, fighting to keep the dread from spilling out of me. “They haven’t done anything. Just let them go. You can have me. I told you that.”
“Nah.” He snickers. “This is better. He’ll pay top dollar for those kids, and if he doesn’t…you know I’ve got no problem shooting them both.”
“Don’t touch them, you sick son of a bitch!” Rage explodes out of me. “You’re a fucking monster!”
Fiona grips my shoulder, while Emilia is already typing furiously on her phone, probably sending a message to Konstantin.
Eli makes a clicking sound with his tongue, and it slithers across my skin like something filthy. “I’d be careful what you say to the father of your son, Eden. He might hear you.”
All the blood drains from my face.
“Wha-what?” The words stumble out of me before I can even process them. “What the hell are you even talking about? Milo isn’t yours. Are you insane? Have you let all those drugs rot your brain?”
He chuckles. “You don’t remember anything, do you?”
My thoughts race, scrambling to make sense of what he’s saying while every part of me fights against it.
“I mean, it’s no surprise,” he continues with a mocking sigh. “You were so drunk, you could barely stand on your own two feet. If it hadn’t been for me helping you, you probably would’ve fallen in the pool and drowned.”
Barrett’s party. The memory flickers through my mind like a broken film reel, but I don’t remember much.
“I…I was with a stranger…”
“Sure you were,” he says, almost fondly. “I remember the party. Right down to the denim miniskirt you wore…and that hot-pink thong underneath.”
My hand flies to my mouth.
No. Please, God, no.
“You should’ve seen the way I wanted you back then,” he continues, words dripping with something that makes my skin crawl. “So damn hot. So I took what I wanted in that closet when you were practically begging for it.”
The room tilts. My chest heaves as tears drip down my face.
Milo can’t be his. He can’t be.
“I was sixteen.” I shake so badly I can barely keep the phone against my ear. “You were twenty-three. Old enough to know better. How…how could you do that to me?”
“Look what you got thanks to me. Our boy is special, isn’t he?”
His laughter is like hot coals, burning through my chest like acid. Everything hurts. Everything.
Please, someone, make it stop.
I hold the phone away from my mouth as a sob carves out of me.
It was dark. I didn’t see his face. I barely remember anything except the feeling of being cornered and confused and too drunk to understand what was happening. But I know it happened. I felt it happen.
God. How could I have let that happen?
Suddenly, the phone is gone from my hand.
I peer up through the haze of tears and find Kirill standing beside the bed, his massive frame filling the space like a storm I somehow didn’t even hear coming.
Shame hits so hard, I want to vanish. But instead of anger, his hands come up and cradle my face.
“I’m going to kill him even slower for this, detka,” he says, low and deadly. “Do you understand me?”
I nod weakly, my chin trembling.
He leans down, his breath warm against my ear. “It is not your fault. He violated you, and I will violate him. There will be nothing left of him.” Then his lips find my forehead and remain there before he says, “I love you, Sloane. I will always love you. Until the day I die.”
The words shatter whatever fragile hold I had left, and I break.
Emilia and Fiona slip quietly from the room, leaving us alone while I weep against him, one hand still gripping the phone, the other holding me like he has no intention of letting go.
“Still there, Eden?” Eli’s words crackle through the speaker. “Or did I lose you?”
Kirill lifts the phone to his ear, his face twined with wrath, and when his gaze cuts toward me, it chills me more than the threat itself. “I swear to God, when I find you, I will rip you apart.”
“Careful, Marinov. You forget I have your son.”
“Sons. You have my sons. You will suffer double for that, and far more for what you did to my wife. Your death will last weeks, if I can keep you alive that long—and believe me, I will try. You will know pain beyond anything one person was ever meant to experience.”
Eli laughs. “Forty million, Marinov. I sent the account info. If I don’t have it by tomorrow, I’ll send you those boys in body bags.”
The call ends, and Kirill drags his fingers through his hair as he gets up and starts pacing, only to turn back a second later and grab my hand so tightly it almost hurts.
“We have a location,” he says. “We’re going.”
My head jerks up. “What? When?”
“Now.”
“I’m coming.”
I try to swing my legs off the bed, but he stops me immediately, his fingers pressing gently but firmly around my arm.
“You heard what the doctors said. You and our baby need to rest.”
The way he says our baby sends warmth through all the panic and grief crashing inside me.
My hand covers his. “I love you, Kirill. And I love our baby. But if you think I’m going to lie here while you go get our sons, then you don’t know me at all. If you don’t take me, I’ll ask Emilia to do it.”
A voice cuts in from the hallway right away. “I sure fucking will.”
Kirill pinches the bridge of his nose. “You’re not helping, sister-in-law.”
“Sorry.” Emilia strides in with Fiona at her side. “But us girls gotta stick together in this fucked-up family, and I’m not about to help you keep a mother from seeing her sons. If she wants to go, she should at least have the option.”
Kirill swivels toward her, frustration flashing across his face. “And if something happens to her? Then what? Hmm? I will not allow it.”
I tug on his wrist, knowing he’s just trying to protect me.
“I know you’re worried,” I tell him when he faces me. “But you’ll be there. Your brothers will be there. Your men will be there. I won’t get in the way, I promise. I’ll stay in the car. But I have to go. Please, Kirill.”
He closes his eyes and releases a long exhale. “Fine. But you stay in the car at all times.”
“Deal.”
Emilia gives me a subtle wink, and for the first time since the accident, a small smile tugs at my mouth.
The boys are coming home. They have to be. Because there is no future without them.