Chapter 36 - Mira
“That was a very successful party, wasn’t it, Sarah?” Mira laughed as she let herself into her room and headed straight for her dressing table. She was suddenly feeling very hot and a bit nauseous, no thanks to the many dances Mikhail had subjected her to.
She looked around the room, unable to spot Sarah’s familiar form anywhere. “Sarah?” she called and was greeted with silence.
She had specifically asked Sarah to wait in her room to help her out of her evening dress at the end of tonight’s event, but the flighty girl seemed to have run off with her gaggle of friends, Mira thought with affectionate exasperation.
She sighed as she started to reach for her zipper to struggle out of her dress herself.
“I wouldn’t take that off just yet if I were you,” Alena said coldly from behind her.
Mira froze and then spun around, unwilling to believe her ears. Sure enough, Alena was sitting in an armchair in the far left corner of the bedroom. She was dressed in a pair of leather pants topped by a leather jacket, and she held a gun in her hand.
“Alena,” Mira said. Belatedly, she saw Sarah’s slumped form in the corner with a deep gash on the girl’s forehead. Rivulets of blood trickled from the wound.
Alena rose to her feet. “Happy to see me?” she asked with a grin.
Mira’s widened eyes flew to the door, hoping that Mikhail would materialize. No such luck; the doorway stayed empty.
“He’s not going to come,” Alena assured her with a purr.
Mira looked at her, “What gives you the idea that you know what I was thinking about?”
Alena chuckled. “Oh, honey, I know enough things about you to give you gray hair.
Mira glared at her. “You’re not going to kill me. If you wanted to kill me, I would already be dead.”
Alena gave her a delighted smile, like a parent who was pleased to discover their kid had become intelligent. “Wow, Mira. Being around Mikhail has started to rub off on you. Very smart.”
Mira subsided into angry silence, choosing to think of an escape plan instead. Her room was upstairs and far removed from the ball room. Even if she screamed, no one would hear her over the earnest conversation and laughter of the remaining guests coupled with the soft music playing. She was too far away.
Alena lifted cold eyes to Mira’s face. “Well? Aren’t you going to beg for your life?”
“Where’s Sarah?” she demanded.
Alena scowled. “Who the fuck’s Sarah?”
“My maid. The one you probably clobbered in my room and left bleeding,” Mira said nodding towards a small patch of blood she could see on the floor near the mantelpiece.
Alena sighed. “Oh, that little brat. Be thankful I didn’t kill her for trying to bite my hand. She came at me like a rabid dog,” Alena continued with a shiver. “Had to take her out.”
Mira hid a grin. Sarah had always been a puzzle to most people. Good girl. Perhaps she had alerted Mikhail by now.
“You can wipe that silly little smile off your lips, Mira. She isn’t going to be much use to you now.”
Mira blanched. “Did you kill her?”
Alena gave her a grin that was pure evil and could be easily interpreted. Then she turned away and began to busy herself with something Mira couldn’t see on the mantel. “The cats in the alley will have eaten up what’s left of her remains by now. No body, no crime, see?”
Not for the first time since she’d discovered she was pregnant, Mira felt sick to her stomach.
She turned her face to the side, hoping for some fresh air to keep her from vomiting, and that was when she spied a shadow of movement in the hallway. It was so silent and swift she almost missed it, but even in that brief sighting, she recognized Mikhail. Suddenly her world righted itself.
He was here. She was safe. He would see to it that nothing happened to her, she knew.
“What do you want, Alena? You cheated on him and your relationship ended thanks to that. So why are you here now?”
“I want Mikhail back and you’re in my way. You and your pregnancy bump,” Alena cried.
Mira stared. “That can’t be right. You don’t love him.”
Alena threw back her head and began to laugh. As she watched the other woman, Mira felt as if she was watching someone who had become unhinged.
“Alright, you got me. I don’t love him anymore. I despise him. He stole my Dmitri from me, and isn’t the saying an eye for an eye?” Alena said, whipping around with a crowbar in her hand.
Mira paled. “What do you intend to do with that thing?”
She made certain her voice was loud so that Mikhail could hear it, so he would know now was a good time to come right in and save her. What the hell was he waiting for anyway? Alena didn’t seem to have any men working with her. She seemed to be alone.
Alena studied the crowbar as though she were surprised to find it in her hand. “Well, it’s like this—I believe that karma is a woman. And I am a woman. Know what else karma and I have in common? We both wanna make Mikhail pay for what he did to Dmitri.”
She sauntered over to Mira. Mira’s blood went cold at the look in Alena’s eyes. She wasn’t imagining it, the woman was crazy or at least halfway there. The look in her eyes just wasn’t right.
“So you want to pay Mikhail back for killing Dmitri. How does that have anything to do with a crowbar?” she asked desperately to keep Alena talking.
Why the hell was Mikhail taking so long?
“Mikhail has a weird sense of justice. When he found Dmitri and me in the throes of passion, he decided to punish Dmitri most severely. He ripped out Dmitri’s cock with a crowbar before he put a bullet in him. So I’m going to rip out your baby with a crowbar before I kill you with a pistol.”
Mira sternly told herself that this was not the time to faint as the room swam before her eyes.
“And while we’re on the subject, your father also happens to owe me one. He shot my favorite earring to smithereens right from my ear, and then he threw me out like trash.”
“You are trash,” Mira told her.
A strange light entered Alena’s eyes, and Mira knew she had pushed too far and the woman was about to strike.
Mira started to respond when someone sprang at her from the shadowy part of her room where her wardrobe was and cupped a hand over her mouth, stifling her cries and Alena quickly stepped forward and blindfolded her.
“Let me go,” Mira tried to scream, but the hand over her mouth muffled her words.
Next, they stuffed a nasty-tasting handkerchief into her mouth and tied another cloth around her mouth and head to hold it in place.
She paled with fright when Alena lifted her hand high in the air to strike. And that was when she saw it, the pinpoint infrared light that only a sniper rifle could make—it was aimed dead-center on Alena.
The bullet from the sniper rifle shattered the glass as it flew through the distance and hit Alena in the hand, dislodging her grip on the crowbar.
Mira’s screams were still echoing through the room as Mikhail tore into the room with Vlad and his men on his heels.
He rushed to Mira even as Alena was flung to one corner of the room by the impact of the bullet that had hit her. Her accomplice, a greasy-looking man, darted for the windows and jumped out, uncaring of the one-story height.
Mikhail untied Mira carefully and lifted her into his arms, hugging her close and kissing her temples. She laughed and drew his head down for a kiss pouring the relief she felt into the kiss.
When he lifted his head, she asked, “How did you know?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t. I was just coming to tuck you in and insist you put your feet up when I heard her voice from the hallway.”
She nodded happily, her arms still around his neck.
Mira blinked owlishly at him. “You saved my life. She was going to…” Her voice trailed off in consternation, unable to repeat what she had heard.
He nodded and kissed her nose. “I think you ought to know, I would never let you be harmed. Not on my watch.”
Mira looked over at where Alena was being pulled to her feet by Mikhail’s men.
She swung her gaze trustingly to him. “Mikhail? What do you plan to do with her?”
Mikhail shrugged. “I was going to make her go back to that island, but it occurred to me that she would just escape again. I’m out of ideas. What do you think?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Right at that moment, Alena slammed her head right into Vlad’s forehead as he reached around her to tighten the handcuffs. She executed a mighty swing with her arm that wrested a pistol out of the hands of one of Mikhail’s men and she pointed her gun directly at Mikhail and Mira.
Before she could pull the trigger, Vlad pulled his faster and shot her dead center in the middle of her forehead.
Alena died on impact, crashing to the floor as her eyes rolled back in her head.
Mira stared down at the other woman unable to believe the same person who had been talking and threatening her a scant minute ago was dead.
“You’re not going to start weeping all over her again, are you?” he asked, teasing her in a bid to get her out of her disquiet. Mira shook her head. “She was a hateful woman. She was going to harm an innocent baby still in its mother’s womb,” she said looking up at him out of teary eyes.
His gaze roved over her face and then he sighed, “Fine. I’ll tell them men we’re starting a we-hate-Alena club.”
She chuckled through her tears. And then Mikhail bent to kiss her again. In a shaky voice, he whispered against her lips, “I love you, Mira Nikolai. I love you as I have never loved anyone else.”
Stunned disbelief coursed through her and then her gaze had to flicker away with uncharacteristic shyness. He was staring at her so intently she could barely breathe.
He cupped her cheek in his hand and made her look up at him. “Mira?”
“I love you too, Mikhail,” she confessed in a trembling voice. “Now kiss me.”
He was still kissing her as his men carted Alena’s remains from the room.