Chapter 18 - Jaroslav
Shaking my head in confusion, I press the phone harder against my ear. “What do you mean she’s with you?”
“She got here an hour ago. We’re going over the new evidence.”
“What evidence?” I huff, annoyed that my brother is acting like this is all completely normal.
I didn’t even know she was with Zakhar. And I definitely don’t like the idea of those two being alone together.
I saw how he flirted with her when they first met, and I’m very aware of how impressed he was with her after the brainstorming session the other night.
“Where are you two?” I ask aggressively.
“We’re at the office. She came straight here after the situation with Bardil.”
“Bardil?” I mutter, confused about what my other brother has to do with this.
“Popov,” Zakhar says. “Didn’t she tell you?”
“Tell me what?” I exclaim, getting angrier with each passing moment.
“Shit, uh, she was at the mall and he cornered her. Sorry, I thought she’d told you,” he answers quickly.
“I’m on my way,” I growl, hanging up on him.
Why wouldn’t she have told me? Why would she go straight to my brother instead of coming to me? What the fuck is going on?
And what happened between her and Bardil Popov at the mall?
That asshole could easily have hurt her.
He could have taken her. My stomach knots and churns like cement turning in a mixer.
The anger spikes when I think about the danger she faced without me being aware. Without me being there to protect her.
Parking outside the office building, I storm toward the elevator in the foyer, then stand, agitated and impatient as it carries me painstakingly slowly up to the top floor offices.
Music plays from a speaker hidden above me, and I have this irrational urge to rip the ceiling down and smash the speaker, so I don’t have to listen to it.
The elevator chimes, and the door slides open just as I’m about to vent my anger on the ceiling panels.
I step out and bump into my brother’s assistant.
“For fuck sake,” I snarl, and she squeaks in fright, ducking backward.
Seeing the look on her face, I realize I’m being a complete asshole. “Sorry.” I spit the word, then spin away, marching toward my brother’s office.
Inside, sitting close together behind his desk, the two of them are bent over some paperwork, discussing it excitedly.
Valery looks up and smiles when I walk in. “It matches,” she grins.
“What matches? What happened at the mall?” I hurry around the desk and pull her from her seat to hug her. She squirms and stiffens in my arms. “Um, the hair. It matches.”
“Ok, repeating that it matches still doesn’t answer either of my questions,” I sigh, annoyed, realizing her from the hug she clearly doesn’t want. She immediately sits down next to Zakhar again, and he throws me a nervous smile.
“The strand of hair from Bardil Popov matches the hair strands our forensic guy collected at the scene,” Zakhar explains.
“Oh, wow. Ok, well that’s excellent news. I see.” Nodding, I understand why they were so excited about this. But then another thought strikes me. “How did you get Bardil’s hair to compare it to?”
Valery glances nervously at Zakhar, biting her lower lip. She looks toward me and smiles tightly. “I, um, I sort of pulled it out of his head when we had the run-in at the mall.” Her face tells me she knows exactly how ridiculous she sounds.
“You pulled it from his head?” I snap. “Valery, you need to tell me exactly what happened. Every detail, before I lose my mind.”
She pulls her mouth tight and rolls her eyes. “I took the opportunity that I saw,” she huffs.
“No. In detail.”
She glances at Zakhar, and all he does is shrug, so she turns back to me and tells me step by step what happened with Bardil Popov.
By the end of her story, I’m barely able to contain my anger, and I keep clenching and unclenching my fists.
“You could have been hurt, Valery.”
“But I wasn’t.”
“But you were in danger.”
“I know I was in danger, and I did the best I could in the situation.” She shakes her head at me, her eyes narrowing in disapproval of my anger.
“You don’t get to be mad at me for this, Jaroslav. He approached me, not the other way around.”
“But you should never have put yourself at risk by taking his hair,” I growl, standing over her chair, glaring at her.
“I think what you mean to say is thank you, ” she shouts angrily, standing up and pushing me backward.
“Hey, come on, Jaro, it wasn’t her fault. And she got the evidence we needed.”
“Stay out of this, Zakhar. Why the fuck didn’t you phone me as soon as she got here and told you what had happened?”
My brother lifts his hands in defense and shakes his head. “I thought you knew.”
“Exactly, the normal thing would have been for her to call me and let me know what happened.”
“You’re overreacting, Jaroslav. I was just excited that I managed to get evidence, and I wanted to get here as quickly as I could to get them to compare it.” She brushes a strand of hair from her face and tucks it behind her ear.
Even when I’m angry with her, for putting herself at risk like that, and confused that she didn’t call me when she needed me…She’s still the most beautiful creature in existence.
“I’m not overreacting. I have a right to be furious about this. And if anything like this happens again…”
“What? You’ll ground me? You’ll ban me from going out? Grow up, Jaroslav. I’m not a thing that you own that you get to boss around.” Now she’s angry, her eyes flaring brighter than usual, and her lips pursed tightly.
She shakes her head. “I’m leaving,” she mutters.
“No, you’re coming home with me,” I demand. I turn to say goodbye to Zakhar, who stood up from the desk and is keeping a polite distance from our argument as he fusses over some paperwork near the window.
“Zakhar, send me a copy of the forensic report, please.”
“Will do,” he smiles, then his eyes dart to the left, and I turn to see Valery storming from the office without me.
“Shit,” I mutter, running after her.
The elevator doors are just about to close when I jump through them, locking us together in the tiny metal box.
“What were you thinking, Valery?” I snarl, grabbing her arms and forcing her to look at me.
“Get your hands off me. This wasn’t my fault, and I did the best I could with the situation I was in. If you can’t see that you’re a fucking idiot.”
“Oh. I’m the idiot? I must be an idiot if I don’t see what’s really going on here. You and Zakhar? How long has that been going on?”
Her face scrunches in confusion. “What in the world?” she stammers in disbelief. From her reaction, I know immediately that nothing is going on between them, but I’m too angry, too pumped full of fear at the thought of losing her to think straight. “You could have phoned me, but you phoned him.”
“I came to the office, and he was the one who happened to be here. I didn’t specifically go looking for him and no one else.” She’s even angrier now.
“Well, I can’t trust you. You are the same as all the Abashing. Liars. Manipulators…”
The sharp slap she sets across my cheek puts a sudden end to whatever stupid thing I was saying. My face stings, but I imagine her hand hurts more.
“You really are an asshole, Jaroslav.” Her words are no more than a whisper as the elevator doors slide open into the foyer of the office building.
She spins on her heels and storms away from me, raging, angry, and rubbing her hand against the side of her jeans where her skin must be heated from the pain of the slap she dealt me.
Stepping from the elevator, I know better than to follow her. I crossed a line. I was a total asshole. She needs space from me, and I need space to pull myself together before I say anything else and destroy everything between us.
Dipping my hand into my pocket, I pull out my phone and dial my security team.
“AJ? I need you to arrange a personal bodyguard for my wife. She’s just leaving the office building in town. I want someone to tail her until she gets home safe. I don’t know where she’s going. Track her car. Yes. Good.”
Hanging up, I force myself to take several deep breaths. With a guard following her, she will be safe. That’s all that matters. And once she’s home, they can leave her alone, and I can leave her alone until we’ve both calmed down.
Leaving the building, I walk to my car and climb inside. Tapping my fingers against the steering wheel, I mull over my options. What I want to do is talk to her. But it’s not a good idea. Not now.
Instead of going home and being tempted to try speaking to her again, I start my car and pull out into the road, then drive around town for a while. Driving helps me think. People and places rush past my window, and I keep going, turning anywhere, stopping, going, lost in my thoughts.
Unfortunately, the more I think, the guiltier I feel over my reaction to the intense fear I had after finding out she was face-to-face with Bardil Popov.
Fuck. I really was an asshole. I need to make it up to her.
I can’t believe I insulted her family like that.
I called her a liar and a manipulator. The insult didn’t even make sense.
I just blurted it out because I was overwhelmed and lashing out at her.
The bodyguard reports back to me to let me know Valery is safe at home, and I reply to tell him he can stand down. That’s all I wanted, for her to be ok.
I drive around for another hour before stopping outside a boutique store to get a bottle of wine and a massive bunch of blue flowers.
It’s not much to make up for what I did and the horrible things I said to her, but it’s a start.
I’ll have to do some serious groveling to undo what I said.
Shit. Honestly, Jaroslav, you fucked up properly this time, just when things were getting good between the two of you.
I arrive home in the late afternoon, in time for dinner, which I really hope to eat with her. I’m subdued when I walk into the house, prepared to apologize endlessly, and to endure her wrath until she can see through my stupidity and forgive me.
My car keys and wallet get dumped on the kitchen counter, then I carry the flowers and the wine upstairs, in search of her.
As I climb the stairs, I practice my apology.
I was a total asshole. It seems to be the best place to start. She can’t argue with that statement; that’s for sure.
Valery isn’t in our bedroom, she isn’t in the shower, the library, or the living room. She isn’t out in the garden or sitting by the pool. Where in the world is she? The guard followed her here. Her car is parked outside.
My heart constricts as new panic sets in.
Rushing downstairs, I grab my phone from the kitchen and dial her number. It rings to voicemail. I dial again. This time it hangs up. It’s possible she hung up on me. Sure. After what I said. But I’m also stained with a streak of worry that something worse has happened.
I don’t bother trying her a third time because I’m wasting time when she might urgently need my help. I dial my security team instead.
“Where is my wife?” I demand.
“I’m not sure, Sir. Last we saw, she was arriving at home.”
“She’s not here. Find her.”
Hanging up, I call the guards standing at the gates of my property. “Did you see my wife leaving again after she got home this afternoon?”
“No, Sir, but she could have left out back. I’ve been on duty in the front only.”
“For fuck sake,” I grumble, hanging up again and dialing the back gate.
I ask the same question, and the guy replies with an answer that shakes me. “Yes, Sir, she left about an hour ago carrying an overnight bag. An Uber came around to collect her. She didn’t tell me where she was going.”
I’m relieved that she wasn’t taken against her will, that she walked out of here freely, but I’m confused as to where she might have gone.
It’s not something I want to do, to invade her privacy like this, but she’s left me with no choice.
Logging on to my private security system, I punch in her cell phone number and then click the green button on the screen. Track .
It takes a moment for the program to connect with her phone; in the meantime, I sit watching a spinning circle with a little dot of light racing around its circumference.
A map floods the screen with a red marker, indicating where she is.
My heart sinks.
She’s at her brother’s mansion. She went home.
And she took an overnight bag. Does she not intend to come back to me?
It seems I’ve damaged things far worse than I at first thought.