Chapter 10 #6
Pain flared briefly as sharp stones bit through fabric and skin, but I welcomed it. I deserved worse. Blood seeped warm against my leg, grounding me in a reality I no longer wanted to inhabit.
I tried to speak again—to beg, to promise, to swear allegiance to a future she might never allow me into.
I never got the chance.
The low, predatory growl of engines rolled across the lot, vibrating through the air like a warning.
Three Lamborghini Urus—yellow, aggressive, unmistakably expensive—screeched to a halt in flawless formation.
Dust and gravel exploded outward, swirling like smoke from a battlefield.
Doors opened in unison.
Six men stepped out.
Tailored black suits. Polished shoes. The unmistakable posture of men who did not ask permission to exist.
Power radiated from them—not loud, not chaotic, but absolute. The kind that bent rooms without effort.
Not one of them looked at me.
Their attention locked onto Elena.
And then her eyes changed.
For the first time since she’d walked out of that hell, something sparked there. Not joy—not yet—but recognition. Relief. A fragile flicker of life that nearly brought me to my knees again.
The man at the center of them moved forward.
He carried himself like a king in exile—tall, broad-shouldered, dark hair swept back from a face carved in hard lines and harder resolve.
His presence warped the space around him.
Even I—who had faced warlords, executioners, men who sold cities like currency—felt the gravity of him.
He didn’t glance at me.
Not even to acknowledge my existence.
He stopped in front of Elena, his voice low, controlled, deadly calm.
“We’ll make him pay.” Steel wrapped in velvet.
He extended his hand.
She took it without hesitation.
That single movement shattered something primal inside my chest.
She stepped closer to him—into his orbit—her shoulders loosening, her posture softening in a way I had never been allowed to witness.
Her body leaned toward his, instinctively, as though she had finally found solid ground after months of freefall.
Like a flower turning toward the sun.
Something feral tore loose inside me.
I surged to my feet, rage and terror colliding violently in my veins. “That’s my wife.”
The words ripped out of me in a guttural snarl, raw and possessive.
My fists clenched so hard the healing bones in my right hand screamed in protest.
The man finally looked at me.
Just once.
His gaze was cold, assessing, utterly unimpressed. The faintest curve touched his mouth—not amusement. Judgment.
“She was,” he replied evenly. “Before you destroyed her.”
Each word landed like a hammer.
There was no anger in his voice. No need for it.
His words were clean, surgical. Each syllable cut precisely where it was meant to.
With a gentle pressure at Elena’s back—possessive without being rough—he began guiding her toward the middle Urus.
Something animal ripped through my restraint.
I lunged forward, vision tunneling, blood roaring in my ears.
Six men. Twelve guns, minimum. I didn’t care. I would have torn through bone and bullet alike. I would have set this entire prison parking lot on fire and watched it burn if it meant dragging her back to me.
My foot barely left the ground before Petros’s hand clamped onto my arm like iron.
“Sir,” he hissed into my ear, breath hot with panic. “That’s Dario Voss and his five brothers—the notorious gang that rules the entire New York mafia. Credible sources say they’re Elena’s foster brothers... they won’t harm her, sir.
The name slowed time.
Petros pressed closer, voice low but urgent.
“The Voss family... they’ve been watching, waiting.
If you lay a hand on any of them, it won’t just be trouble—it’ll be war.
Real war. And... Elena isn’t in the right state of mind to stay with you, sir.
She just lost her baby. She’s fragile, broken.
Being with you now... it could only hurt her more. Please, let her go with her brothers.”
My body locked in place, every muscle screaming for violence while my mind calculated the cost.
And the cost was her.
I watched—utterly helpless, something vital being ripped out of me—as Elena allowed herself to be folded gently into the back seat of the central Lamborghini. No resistance. No hesitation.
Dario slid in beside her, one arm braced behind her shoulders, shielding her from the world with instinctive ownership.
The doors closed with soft, expensive thuds.
Final.
Engines roared to life.
Three yellow beasts peeled away in flawless formation, tires spitting gravel like gunfire, disappearing down the access road with predatory grace.
My wife.
Taken.
From me.
The sky split open without warning.
Fat, icy raindrops slammed down, soaking through my clothes in seconds, turning dust into mud beneath my shoes.
The temperature dropped sharply, the world dimming as if the heavens themselves recoiled.
My knees gave out.
I collapsed hard, breath knocked from my lungs, palms sinking into wet gravel.
Petros scrambled, fumbling with the umbrella, trying to shield me from the downpour. “Sir—please—”
“Leave it,” I rasped, throat shredded raw. “Leave the keys on the trunk and go.”
“Sir—”
“That’s an order.”
For a moment, he hesitated. Then he nodded once, sharp and miserable.
He placed the key fob carefully on the open trunk lid—as if afraid to disturb something sacred—and turned away, his footsteps retreating into the curtain of rain.
I stayed.
The rain came harder, merciless, needles stinging my face, my eyes, my wounds.
I welcomed it. Let it scour me. Let it flay me down to whatever truth remained beneath the monster I’d become.
In the old Greek way—our ancestors’ way—I mourned.
I tore at my hair, fingers clawing, yanking out dark clumps until blood slicked my scalp and strands clung to my hands like offerings to forgotten gods.
Then I raked my nails down my chest, shredding fabric and skin alike, carving bloody furrows over my heart as if I could excavate the guilt lodged there with brute force.
Memories came crashing down on me.
I remembered dragging her to the darkest side of California. Making her stand among the graves I had dug—four of them—closing her in like a sentence already passed.
I remembered how I poured her mother’s ashes into the dirt as if they were nothing, as if her grief meant nothing, and how she screamed until her voice broke. How she collapsed, shaking, begging, coming apart right in front of me.
I remembered the sky opening up. The rain falling hard, merciless, soaking her through in minutes.
How the cold crept into her bones, how her body trembled uncontrollably, how the wind lashed at her clothes like punishment layered on punishment. I watched it all. I allowed it. I caused it.
I hurt her. Deliberately. Thoroughly.
And somehow, that still wasn’t the worst of it.
The worst was what came after.
After I stripped her of what little strength she had left, I took everything else too—her freedom, her safety, our baby, her voice—when I sent her to prison. I didn’t just break her once. I kept breaking her, even when she was no longer in front of me to defend herself.
I smashed my fist into the gravel again and again, reopening fractures, grinding bone against stone until the pain sang louder than the rain, until my hand was numb and useless.
Then I pressed my forehead into the mud.
I let it coat my face, my mouth, my eyes.
I tasted dirt and iron and salt.
Shame.
Hours passed.
The rain never softened. It beat me into the ground, washing blood into the earth, reducing my tailored suit to sodden rags, plastering hair across my skull until I looked less like Ruslan Baranov—the man men feared—and more like a drowned corpse dragged from a riverbank.
When the storm finally exhausted itself, the sky bruised purple and silent, I rose.
Slowly.
Unrecognizable.
A hollowed-out man wearing the remains of someone else’s skin.
I staggered to the car, wrenched the door open, and collapsed into the driver’s seat. My hands shook as they closed around the wheel, slick with blood and rain.
The engine turned over with a low growl.
“I’ll find my wife,” I whispered to the empty cabin, my voice stripped raw by rain and ruin. “I’ll find her... and I’ll beg on my knees until she either forgives me... or kills me herself.”
The confession felt less like a vow and more like a sentence passed.
I drove like a man unhinged—tires shrieking against asphalt, the speedometer needle climbing recklessly into the red.
Streetlights blurred into streaks of gold and white, the world narrowing to a tunnel of motion and obsession.
If a patrol car had appeared, I would not have stopped.
If a wall had risen in front of me, I would have hit it head-on. Nothing mattered except movement. Forward. Always forward.
By the time the gates of the estate recognized my plates and slid open, my hands were numb on the wheel.
The house loomed ahead—vast, illuminated, immaculate.
A mausoleum.
I didn’t bother with lights inside. I knew the layout better than my own pulse. My feet carried me unerringly through the halls, past rooms that still held the echo of her presence, straight to the bedroom wing I had pretended wasn’t ours.
Her side of the wardrobe.
She had never gone back for her things from that cramped apartment she’d called home before me.
Never asked. Never complained. She had worn Amy’s old sweaters instead—soft knits stretched thin with time, simple dresses that didn’t scream money or protection or ownership.
Clothes chosen to disappear in. Clothes that said, Don’t look at me too closely. I don’t belong here.
I slid the wardrobe door open.
The scent hit me immediately.
Jasmine. Rain. Paper. Warm skin.
Elena.
My knees weakened. I grabbed the nearest sweater and crushed it to my face, inhaling like a drowning man breaking the surface at last.
The smell cut straight through my chest, sharp and sweet and already fading, like the last note of a song you realize too late you loved.