Chapter 25 - Mira
Mikhail was in a fine mood and Mira wasn’t even sure why.
She stole sidelong glances at him as he drove at breakneck speed with the wind whipping through her hair and his. His mood was a paradox, especially since she had already made two other attempts on his life just this morning, but once more, he had escaped unscathed.
“You burned your tongue on that coffee,” she observed now, reaching out to lay a gentle hand on his forearm.
For some reason, he looked down at her hand on his forearm as though he were calculating or measuring something, then he looked back up at her, his eyes shuttered and his face inscrutable.
She had laced the coffee with some poison again, hoping to kill him, but he had lifted the cup for a sip, made a face and declared the coffee unsuitable for him. Then he trashed the entire coffee, including the mug.
Next, she’d spilled some oil on the staircase, hoping he would fall and break his neck, or some bones at least. He hadn’t used the stairs all morning.
Either he was one lucky bastard or he knew she was trying to kill him. Her money was on the later because Mira had stopped believing in luck, or fate, or coincidences a long time ago. She was convinced something was up. Even now, when she had initiated touching him after days of giving him a wide berth, he seemed unmoved.
Calmly, he tugged his forearm from underneath her touch and smiled at her. “The coffee didn’t have enough…cream to suit my taste buds.”
“You like cream in your coffee?” she asked, feeling a tug as she looked at his boyishly handsome smile.
“Loads,” he affirmed, turning back to face the road.
Was he avoiding her? Experimentally, she reached out a hand again and laid it on his forearm.
This time he wasn’t subtle about it; he lifted his hand away and placed it on the steering wheel.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Hmm, let me see, you tried to kill me three or four times now, failed each time. Nothing wrong, we’re good. All’s right with the world.”
Chills of fear chased down her skin at his laissez-faire attitude.
Suddenly she took a closer look at their surroundings. They were going nearly a hundred miles per hour on an empty stretch of road with no houses around for miles. If his intent in bringing her out here was to take revenge for her killing him, he would succeed admirably.
She frowned. But even if he had decided to kill her at his villa, none of his men would so much as quirk an eyebrow. Their unquestioning loyalty was to him and him alone.
“Mikhail,” she began.
“So tell me why you’ve been after me. Was this the deal with your dad from the start, or did I do something to trigger such…murderous tendencies?” he enquired in an even, cultured tone which was all the more chilling and frightening because it was so polite.
Mira licked her lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course,” he agreed.
She shrank toward the door and away from him, feeling deathly afraid. “Mikhail, don’t do whatever you’re planning on doing.”
He looked at her. “And what is it I’m planning on doing?”
Suddenly her neckline felt tight. She couldn’t breathe properly. She twisted in her seat, struggling against the seat belt as she tried to get more air into her lungs. She was hyperventilating, she realized in wonder. The car was a convertible with the roof down and all the windows down, so how could she possibly be starving of air?
“Mikhail, I need to get out. Stop the car.”
He looked at her, his gaze piercing as he enunciated, “Fine. Get out.”
The way he said the words and the tone of his voice told Mira more than anything that he was good and pissed. Because what other reason could there possibly be for Mikhail to invite her to off herself as though she was nothing whatsoever to him?
He acted with such supreme indifference that she could barely reconcile this stranger and his tightly controlled anger with the same man who had made passionate love to her twice.
Then he stepped harder on the accelerator, ramping the powerful car up to 120mph.
The speed was dizzying and Mira was honestly going to be sick. She knew she could hardly open the door and leap out at this speed, but something about the journey was making her ill. Mira yanked off her seat belt, calling his bluff.
He stared straight ahead. When she made to open the door on her side, she found she couldn’t. Child lock. Of course.
“Stop this car this instant, or I’ll jump,” she threatened.
“Answer me this first. Why are you trying to kill me?” he asked, tossing her an arctic look.
Mira ignored him.
“Answer me, Mira,” he demanded. “Why?”
She remained stoically silent, knowing as she did so that her silence would anger him.
It did.
His voice became more grating and hard as a whiplash as he persisted, “Was it to please Daddy dearest and get back in his good books? Was it so you could tell him that even though you betrayed him you really did it for him?”
She stayed silent, fighting nausea and dizziness.
“Come on, Mira, was it so you could convince him that all the times you were moaning in my bed with your legs up in the air you were taking one for the team?”
She was really going to be ill, she thought, as black dots swam before her eyes. She could hear his voice from a distance, hard and angry. She tried to grab his arm to tell him she was going to faint, but she couldn’t see anything but darkness in front of her eyes.
“And the times you were moaning and asking me for more? Was that also part of your plans to kill me?” he grated.
Even through her discomfort, she could hear the thread of hurt in his voice, as though he had been hurt when he found out she wanted him dead. She tried to open her mouth to say something.
The nausea pressed more insistently against her and before she could control it any further, she vomited all over the interior of his expensive car.
From a distance, she noticed he hit the brakes, making the tires screech loudly. Dimly she heard, “Mira, are you all right? Mira!”
Mikhail’s concerned face hovered in front of her eyes, and she heard a string of swear words in Russian and French.
He can speak French , she thought dimly, and then she succumbed to the darkness.
When she came to, she was dressed in a hospital gown. She was lying in a room that was so clean it didn’t even have any smell whatsoever, but her instincts recognized the hospital bed right away.
She looked around, her mind reaching for Mikhail. Where was he? The room was empty and she was by herself.
Returning memory assailed her and she groaned with embarrassment when she recalled how she’d thrown up in his car. If there was something she’d learned from her friends in college, it was that men who owned such cars didn’t like to get so much as a speck of dirt on it, never mind someone’s vomit in it.
She groaned again. A different kind of man would have been off somewhere chanting her name into tea leaves or something to express his anger, but Mikhail was probably cleaning out his pistol and getting ready to kill her.
Why had he asked her those questions, she wondered as memory returned. He’d known she was trying to kill him, yet he’d made his questions about them being lovers.
She had also heard something remarkably like hurt in his tone, she realized now, biting down on her lips. She shouldn’t have tried to kill him, she thought with remorse. She should have found some other way to avenge her mother.
What other way was there, though? Her subconscious wanted to know. Isn’t the code a life for a life?
She sighed. Mikhail was trying desperately to kill her father because he claimed her father had killed his. And she had been trying to kill him to avenge her mother. Mikhail, of all people, had to understand it.
Just then, the door popped open and a cheery-looking doctor walked in with Mikhail dogging her steps.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” she announced chirpily before Mira could pretend otherwise.
Mira gave the woman a glare that wiped the grin off her face.
The woman looked uncomfortably from Mira to Mikhail before returning her gaze to Mira’s. “I am Dr. Winberg,” she introduced herself. “Rebecca Winberg. You’re at Cross Memorial Hospital,” she added.
When Mira continued to stare at her in silence, the doctor stepped closer to her and laid a gentle hand on her arm. “Do you remember anything?”
Mira frowned. “I was in a car with Mikhail. He was going so fast. I felt dizzy and nauseous.”
The doctor nodded encouragingly and seemed to be waiting for more.
Mira frowned at her.
“Well, you have a bit of a concussion because it seems you hit your head on the console when you fainted?”
The woman made it sound like a question and not a statement. Why was she—
In a flash, Mira realized she was checking to make sure Mikhail hadn’t hurt her.
Mira paled. He would never hurt her; his restraint, even in the face of knowing she had been trying to kill him was proof of that. He might be mad at her, but he wasn’t the sort of man to physically harm an unarmed woman. If anything, she had been the one to hurt him.
Her gaze met his across the room and she felt lower than dirt when she saw the absolute certainty in his eyes that she was going to accuse him of hitting her.
She frowned and shook her head. But before she could speak, Mikhail said in a quiet, authoritative voice that brooked no argument, “I know you’re only doing your job, doctor, and I applaud you for that. But out of nowhere, my perfectly healthy wife vomited and fainted. Forgive me if I’m a little more fixated on that than anything else. If you can go ahead and give us a diagnosis and begin treatment, I’ll be happy to show you the recording in my car once we leave here.”
“Recording in your car?” Mira croaked.
He shrugged. “I’ve installed a device to take recordings of happenings in and around my cars as a security measure.”
Mira paled. Did that mean he’d gotten her on video in the limo the first time they made love?
As though he’d heard her thoughts, he continued, “It’s in all my cars except the limo.”
The doctor was following their exchange closely as though looking for something. Then when they stopped talking, she smiled at them. “Mira’s absolutely fine. She’s just pregnant. Congratulations, you two.”