34. Tatiana #2
It was affectionate bickering. Right? I could hear the pounding pulse in my ears. It was slowly easing. My body trembled. I sucked in a deep breath as I watched the scene in front of me.
Men roaming this snowy wasteland. Black SUVs surrounding us. Men with guns everywhere.
Illias’ eyes turned coal black and colder than the temperatures here, but they weren’t aimed at me. They were aimed at the two men behind me. My gaze followed his to find Nikita lying dead, blood slowly tainting the white snow. Dead eyes staring into oblivion.
And Adrian. Alive.
His green eyes locked on me and I stared at him paralyzed.
He was shot in the leg, blood seeping out of his wound.
And my heart ached for him. Not because I loved him as my husband or a lover anymore.
My heart ached for my friend. The boy who was there almost as long as my brothers.
For the man who could have had so much more but chose hate and revenge over his future.
His eyes, those dark greens watched me with so much hate that it hurt to breathe. He didn’t move. He didn’t try to fight them. He just stared at me like it was me who had betrayed him.
“Tatiana.” The plea in his voice hurt. It spoke of childhood and memories that turned sour. The thing was that he twisted it all.
Konstantin growled, kicking the gun out of his reach, then scooping me up into his arms. My feet dangled and his chest pressed against mine. “Don’t fucking talk to her. Don’t look at her. Not unless you want a long and painful death.”
Adrian’s bitter laugh filled the air. “So typical of a Konstantin. They always take what doesn’t belong to them.”
Illias stiffened. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he took a step towards, towering over Adrian’s form. “Your hate blinds you, asshole. She was never yours.”
“I’ve known her since she was a kid,” Adrian spat, shifting to his knees. “She knows me inside and out. You’ll never have that. I married her first.”
Illias’ eyes turned dark. Cruel. He trained his gun on Adrian, and I placed my palm on my husband’s chest. His gaze flickered to my face. This was the Pakhan people feared. Ruthless. Merciless. Deadly.
A shiver went through me but I wasn’t scared. No, it wasn’t that which had my insides quivering. It was my husband’s heartbeat drumming strongly under my palm. It was his warmth. How he made me feel alive.
And each time I doubted my mind, I roamed my hands over his chest. I could touch him. A mere few minutes ago, I was saying goodbye in my mind.
“Do you want me to spare him?” Illias asked.
My breath hitched and my eyes widened. Something flashed on my husband’s face, but he kept his composure. He kept a firm mask over his expression. He was giving me a choice.
He didn’t even know how much that choice meant. My gaze found Adrian. He was perfectly still, his eyes burning but not with love. They burned with the maddening need for revenge. Hate had swallowed him whole. He just used me.
Yet, I had the power to save him. To spare him.
“When did you decide to use me?” I asked him, holding his gaze. That green that used to fascinate me. The same green eyes I hoped our children would have one day. When he didn’t answer, I did it for him. “In D.C.?”
Adrian’s jaw tightened. “At first, I erased all traces of you from the surveillance so he–” He tilted his chin at Illias, pure hate filling those emerald eyes.
“ – so he couldn’t find you. He kept searching, but came up empty.
” It finally made sense why he refused to touch me for so long.
I thought it was him in the gazebo. It wasn’t.
He used my assumption to his advantage. “When you ran into him in the L.A. restaurant, I knew I had to move quickly. Vasili was busy with Isabella. It left you wide open.”
“Because he trusted you,” I hissed. “ I trusted you.”
He used me. Like I was nothing. Like he hadn’t known me my whole life.
As I stared at my not-so-late husband who had been seconds from pulling the trigger and killing me for something I had never been a part of, I knew my answer. Adrian knew it too. He might have been lying to us all, but he knew me well enough to recognize my decision. My choice.
On his knees, he met my gaze. Sadness lurked in his green depths. “Spare me, pipsqueak. Take me back and I can fix us.” I shook my head. He must be out of his mind if he thought I’d just look over the shit he’d done to me. “Please,” he pleaded, hope lighting up his eyes.
I scoffed. “You don’t know me at all, do you?”
I was a Nikolaev through and through. We didn’t give second chances, and we always settled a score. “Nikolaevs always settle the score,” I said out loud.
The statement reverberated in the silence of the parking lot, making its way through the ghosts of our pasts.
“I love you, Tatiana,” he rasped, attempting to appeal to my heart.
He couldn’t. Not anymore. My heart clenched but I ignored it.
He was manipulating me. These were the words he had never given me before and yet, in the span of a day, he had uttered them twice.
“I loved you. Always, pipsqueak. My love and hate know no limits.”
It was his final goodbye. His final warning.
“I’m sorry you loved me,” I rasped as my heartbeat trembled in my chest. The man I loved died in the car crash, maybe even before.
The man I loved didn’t inflict pain. The Adrian I loved was a figment of my imagination.
“It was your mistake. Not mine.” He crossed the line.
And we both knew if I spared him, he’d be back.
“I want a man who will ruin my lipstick, not my mascara. And you’ve done that one too many times even before the accident, Adrian. ”
Adrian’s gaze darted behind me and I followed his eyes to find my big brother striding towards us with Alexei. My family. They were all here. For me.
Vasili stormed over to Adrian and punched him in the face. His head snapped sideways, spitting blood all over the snow. And all the while, Alexei dried my feet and slipped a pair of Uggs onto them.
I didn’t know where to look - at Vasili punching Adrian or Alexei actually touching me. He despised touching people, siblings or not, and avoided it at all cost.
“You were supposed to take care of her,” Vasili roared, pulling my attention away from Alexei. “Protect her.” Then he punched Adrian again. “You were like a brother to me.”
Adrian chuckled darkly. Bitterly. “Like a brother, but I’m not your brother.” His face was a mess already, his lip split. He spat on the ground at Vasili’s feet, the blood stark on the white snow.
“That’s a huge difference, Vasili.”
My eyes burned. My throat squeezed. The raw ache in my chest swelled.
Even though he used me and his hatred outweighed all the years of our history, he was a victim of circumstances.
He was the boy who lost both his parents due to passion and hatred.
His parents were taken from him just because they loved each other.
But Adrian festered in his own pain, forgetting that Illias lost a mother too. He was so consumed with his hatred and need for vengeance that he forgot he was hurting innocents in his path to revenge.
Vasili turned his back to Adrian and came up to me, pressing a kiss to my forehead.
“ Ty v poryadke ?” he asked in Russian. Are you okay?
I nodded.
“Always protecting the princess,” Adrian sneered. “God forbid a scratch marks that pretty face.”
The hateful words etched into my soul. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. Part of me still remembered the Adrian who protected me.
The lines of Illias’ face sharpened. All warmth drained out of his eyes and the already cold temperatures plummeted into negative triple digits.
“You’re damn straight,” he snarled at Adrian. “Not a single scratch on my wife and the mother of my children.”
Surprised flashed in Adrian’s expression and his eyes flickered to my stomach where my hand subconsciously protectively covered my lower belly. His left eye twitched, and I knew he thought back to all our arguments when I begged him for a baby.
“You always get what you want, don’t you Tatiana?” It was the last stab to my heart he’d be allowed to make.
I turned my head and met Illias’ gaze. “He has the chip,” I told him. “It was in the pendant of my necklace. It’s in his right pocket along with the key you need to unlock the pendant. He was going to sell it to Sofia Volkov.”
“What the fuck?” Vasili and Illias cursed at the same time. “That looney bitch?”
I nodded. Sasha took two steps toward Adrian and dug it out of his pocket.
Then he punched him in the face. “For holding a gun to my sister’s head.
” Then he kicked him in the gut, Adrian’s body folding over.
“It’s time for you to pray to every God known to man.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Time to die, motherfucker. ”
Jesus Christ.
My brothers were a bit nuts. But then so was I because my next words had everyone’s eyes shift to me in shock. “No more reincarnations.” I slid out of Illias’ arms and my feet crunched the snow beneath them. “I don’t want him coming for my family ever again.”
The words burned in my throat. The ache throbbed through my chest. But it wouldn’t break me.
“Your wish is my command, Wife,” Illias responded.
Something glinted under the bright sun. My eyes widened as I saw the knife in Adrian’s hands. Illias noticed it too. He pulled me back but it was too late.
The blade zipped through the air. My hands covered my lower abdomen. I shrieked as piercing pain shot through me.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three bullets rang through the air.
By the end of this, someone’s going to hurt.
Adrian’s words rang in my ears, mocking me, as darkness pulled me under.