Chapter 28
Viktor~
I was in a shit mood, but I knew that I had no one to blame but myself.
Because I was already in over my head with my wife, I’d been expecting too much from her, hoping that she felt the same, and I could admit to blotching this whole thing with the inexperience that I had when it came to having feelings for a woman.
After all, until Aurora, I hadn’t ever had any.
Nevertheless, challenges didn’t scare me, so I was prepared to do whatever it took to set us back on the right path, and if that meant caving and taking off that damn tracker, then I didn’t see where I had any choice in the matter.
Right now, my wife believed that I was bedding some blonde hooker because that’s what I’d led her to believe, and I never imagined that I’d ever be this big of an asshole.
Walking into the house, I knew that she’d be nowhere else but in the bedroom, and that was something else that we were going to have to talk about.
I wasn’t sure why Aurora limited herself to the bedroom only, but her daily routine was going to have to change.
This was our house now, not mine, and she shouldn’t be afraid to eat in her own home.
It was also obvious that she wasn’t living here, merely staying here, and that shit needed to end.
Opening the door to the bedroom, I saw that she wasn’t inside, so I immediately walked over to the bathroom, but upon finding that room also empty, a spike of dread hit the back of my spine.
Unless she was in my office, destroying it to pieces, I couldn’t imagine that she’d be anywhere else, so that’s where I immediately headed to, hoping that she was there.
Once I got there and found it also empty, I sat behind my desk, then cued up the security feed, wondering where else she could be.
I’d given Armen specific instructions to take her straight home, and I couldn’t imagine that he’d defy my orders.
Of course, Armen Orlova wasn’t my usual driver, but still.
When Misha had asked for a few days off to go visit his ailing mother, I’d been fine with it, and I hadn’t had an issue with Armen taking over his duties in the meantime.
After all, Armen wouldn’t be employed by us if he wasn’t just as trustworthy as the rest of our guards.
However, with Aurora nowhere in sight, my mind started racing with just how little I knew about Armen Orlova, and that didn’t sit well with me at all.
Yes, there was also a detailed background check on anyone that we employed or did business with, but we could probably do a better job of continuing to keep tabs on them once they became part of the Korolev family.
Scanning each fucking screen, I found nothing but the usual activity, Aurora nowhere in sight. Then, when I rewound the outside footage to see when she’d gotten home, my blood immediately began to boil when it finally became clear that she hadn’t made it home at all.
Now, my first instinct was to find Armen to kill him with my bare hands, but then I remembered who I was married to, and it was quite possible that he could be lying dead in a ditch somewhere, Aurora finally having had enough of this marriage.
After all, I was learning really quickly not to put anything past my wife, and with me still not knowing what she’d been up to the other night, the possibilities were endless where she was concerned.
So, before I activated that tracker, crossing a line that couldn’t be uncrossed once I did it, I pulled out my phone, then dialed Armen. When he didn’t answer, I dialed his number again, and then again, and then again.
Once it was clear that Armen wasn’t going to answer his phone, I did my best to give Aurora the benefit of the doubt, calling her next. However, just like with Armen, my calls kept going to voice mail, my wife not answering, either.
So, with my heart beating wildly in my chest, I pulled up the app to Aurora’s tracker, and when I saw that she was at the Starlight Docks, I felt a fear that I couldn’t remember ever feeling.
There was absolutely no reason for Aurora to be at the docks, in the complete opposite direction of our house.
With my hands shaking in a way that they hadn’t ever before, I dialed my brother because someone needed to know that I was headed to the docks and possibly into something that might kill me, though that wasn’t going to stop me.
As I grabbed my stuff, then headed to the car, Kasimir answered on the second ring. “What’s up?”
“I put a tracker on Aurora,” I informed him.
“Jesus Christ,” he laughed. “And you’re still alive?”
Ignoring that, I said, “I instructed Armen to drive her straight home from The Akvarium earlier, but they never made it here.”
“What?” he asked, his voice no longer carrying any humor in it.
“I checked the cameras, looking everywhere in the house for her, but when I couldn’t find her, I checked her tracker, and it claims that she’s at the docks,” I told him, doing my best not to sound like a man that was about to lose his shit, though I absolutely was.
“I’ll meet you there,” he said, and I honestly hadn’t expected anything different.
“I need you to call Otets, and let him know what’s going on,” I instructed, not having the time to deal with our father right now.
“I’ll call him on my way,” he replied, and that was all that I needed.
“See you at the finish line, brat,” I said before hanging up.
Pulling up Aurora’s tracker again, I watched as it didn’t move anywhere else on the screen, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or bad. She could be dead or hurt, or she could be dismembering Armen’s body before feeding him to the creatures of the river.
No matter what, it was becoming painfully clear that the option to take off her tracker no longer existed.
I’d been willing to compromise when she had walked out of the club earlier, but now I didn’t see how I had any other choice but to make her keep wearing it.
After all, if it wasn’t for that damn tracker, I would have no idea where she fucking was right now.
As I raced through the streets of St. Moran, I contemplated just kidnapping the woman, taking her to an island where the rules would be simple; neither of us would leave until we came to a mutual understanding about this fucking marriage of ours.
Now, while the idea did have some merit, I knew the Marchettis well enough to know that it’d do nothing but launch a full-out war between the families, the complete opposite of what our marriage was supposed to have achieved.
Nevertheless, we couldn’t continue on like this, and I knew it.
We had to find a happy medium or risk really killing each other, but that wasn’t the threat that it sounded like.
With Aurora’s dark gaze still haunting me from this afternoon, I knew that it was going to be me who caved first, if I already hadn’t.
When I finally pulled up to the docks, the tracker signal adjusted to detail, and my heart stopped when it showed that it was in the actual water, not on the pier or in any of the observation decks.
No.
No fucking way.
Driving faster, I didn’t care what the wooden terrain was doing to the car’s suspension.
All I cared about was why the goddamn tracker was showing that Aurora was in the river when she couldn’t be.
Unless the crazy woman was trying to swim her way back to Marchetti territory, there’s no reason why she’d be in these waters.
When I finally reached the end of the pier, I parked the car, then got out, and whatever I’d been feeling before was nothing compared to what I was feeling now.
There was fresh blood on the wooden planks of the pier, and there was enough of it to suggest that someone had bled out or that there were several someones dead.
Not wanting to believe what I was seeing, I walked further down the walkway, and I could feel my hands begin to shake with uncertainty.
It was also clear that Armen had played an integral part in whatever had happened here because he’d been driving the car that was supposed to have taken my wife home, but instead, he’d driven her here.
Still, why would Aurora allow him to do that?
My wife wasn’t a stupid person, and so she would have noticed that they’d been headed in the opposite direction of the house.
Or maybe I was giving her too much credit.
After all, it wasn’t like she’d been in the habit of leaving the house on her own, exploring her new territory.
Instead, Aurora had stayed home unless she’d been feeling hungry, and even then, I had driven her around.
The sounds of tires screeching had me reaching for my gun, my head snapping sideways, but when I saw that it was Kasimir getting out of the car, I shoved my gun back inside my waistband.
He looked ready for battle, but when he finally noticed the blood on the ground, the look on his face immediately turned from angry to worried.
“Is that blood?” he asked when he was finally standing next to me.
“Yes.”
“And...and Aurora?” he hedged, almost afraid to ask.
“The tracker shows that she’s in the water,” I said, the words sounding dry on my tongue.
“Or she found a way to take it off,” he suggested, trying his best to calm me down.
Yeah, or...