Chapter 32
EILISH
Gavan and Drazen shake hands before the older man passes Gavan a hard drive.
“Everything you need is on that. Oh, and since you may not have heard in your mad rush to get here, Marko Kalishnik is awake.” Drazen smiles grimly.
“I’m sure he’d welcome a chance to see what I have on Abram before he metes out his vengeance on the snake.
My helicopter is waiting outside to take you back to your plane. ”
Gavan says nothing. He just nods, pockets the hard drive, and then walks directly over to me. He takes my hand tightly, not looking back as he leads me out of the courtyard, through the lavish home, and out the front door to the chopper.
“Where do you want to go?” he murmurs in my ear as we climb in. “Literally anywhere you want. My plane is waiting on the mainland.”
I just smile as I slide in next to him and turn to look into his eyes.
“Home,” I breathe as I close the distance between my lips and his. “I just want to go home. With you.”
***
I’d love to say that we spend the whole flight screwing like wild animals. But the truth is, the second we sit down on that plane, we both crumble from sheer exhaustion and sleep through the entire nine-hour trip.
I’m still in a bit of a fog when we get back to Gavan’s place, but I’m grinning from ear to ear, my hand tightly in his as we step through the front door.
Home. We’re home.
“Now,” he growls with a glint in his eyes that makes my core clench and throb. “What ever should we do now?”
I bite my lip. “Is going back to Paris for, like, another year on the table?”
I shiver as he pulls me close, taking my hands in one of his and cupping my jaw with the other.
“If that’s what you want,” he murmurs quietly. “Then yes.”
I feel my cheeks heat. “You’d do that for me?”
“I’d do anything for you,” he growls, looking right into my eyes. “Because I lo—”
His eyes start from his head as he grunts violently, suddenly toppling past my shocked face and dropping to the floor. I scream, whirling to help him, when suddenly, a claw-like hand is grabbing me, wrenching me away from him, and hurling me against the wall.
I hit hard , wincing as my back slams into a side table, knocking my head back against the wall and making me see stars. I topple to the side, pain lancing through my arm and wrist as I land just as the large glass vase on the side table explodes into shards around me.
But I’m not looking at my arm. My eyes have snapped across the entryway to Gavan. And suddenly, my throat closes with pure horror when I see the figure looming over him, holding a gun, leering at me.
“ You little bitch ,” Svetlana snarls, her face twisted with demented rage as she waves the gun erratically in my direction. “Did nobody ever tell you not to touch what isn’t yours ?!”
When she turns back to a dazed, groaning Gavan, I scream in rage. I make an attempt to lurch to my feet, but my hands slide wetly across the floor as I slump back. When I glance down, the color drains from my face.
Oh God .
My arm is bleeding. Badly. Really, really badly, actually.
Red ribbons drip from the ugly gash on my wrist courtesy of the shards of vase that I landed on.
My gaze drags nauseatingly back to Gavan, who I’m just realizing Svetlana must have hit in the head with her gun.
My face pales as she fixes her gaze on me.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” she hisses quietly. And before I can even try to form a response, she’s kneeling down next to Gavan and yanking a hypodermic needle from her pocket.
I see red.
“ Don’t you fucking touch him! ”
When I go to move, pain explodes through my back from slamming into the wall and in my arm from the gash. Svetlana ignores me, biting the cap off the needle and grinning savagely as she plunges it into Gavan’s arm. His eyes widen for one second, then he slumps to the ground.
I start to scream.
“ Get up , you little cunt!”
I cry out in pain as Svetlana yanks me to my feet.
She jams the gun against my side, shoving me further into the apartment and toward the staircase.
I stumble, slip, and trip my way up the stairs with the gun pressed to my ribs, trying to bite back the pain throbbing in my back and head, not to mention the gash in my arm that feels like it’s on fire.
Svetlana shoves me down the hallway, until suddenly, she’s kicking open the door to Gavan’s playroom.
I cry out as she kicks me against the edge of the bed, shoving me down onto it before she reaches up and yanks down a pair of cuffs on a chain looped over the crossbar. She snaps one around my good wrist, then snaps the other even harder around my bloody one, making me scream with pain.
Which she laughs at.
Then, leaving me hanging there by my wrists, she exits the room.
My vision swims, and the pain pulsing through every part of my body is almost overwhelming. But I twist around anyway, trying to look out the door as I scream his name.
“GAVAN!” I choke. “ GAVAN! ”
“Oh, don’t worry.”
I flinch, wincing in pain as Svetlana returns, half-carrying, half-dragging a nearly unconscious Gavan. She throws a wild smile at me as she staggers into the room under the dead weight of him slumped against her.
“He’s here, honey,” she spits. “And neither of you is going anywhere.”
Svetlana dumps Gavan on the couch facing me. I pull against the cuffs on my wrists, ignoring the searing pain as I snarl at her.
“What the fuck did you do to him?!”
She turns to glower at him. “Nothing less than he deserves, the little snake. The bastard child nobody but my idiot brother wanted. The cancer that ate at my life!”
I ignore the pain again as I slam against the chains holding me tight. Svetlana just smiles again.
“I gave him a neurotoxin, that’s all. Right now, it’s going to work on his heart.”
No …
Her lips curl demonically. “I’d say he has…I don’t know, maybe fifteen minutes left until it stops beating altogether?”
“NO!”
Svetlana laughs and laughs as I strain and sob against the cuffs.
“Of course, that clock speeds up if he’s…” Her eyes flash pure malevolence at me. “ Exerting himself.”
My lips curl into a sneer. “I know what you did to him, you fucking monster.”
She smiles even wider. “Oh, do you now?” Her smile drops. “ Good . Then this won’t be a shock to you.”
Suddenly, she’s sliding onto Gavan’s lap. I scream in rage and pain, yanking at the chains as she turns to half look at me. Her lips curl cruelly before she leans close to his face and licks his neck slowly.
It’s like I’m being stabbed.
“ Get the fuck away from him!! ” I explode at her.
Svetlana just smiles even wider, her eyes gleaming with cold, sick cruelty.
“Oh, no-no- no , my dear,” she sneers. “No, you see, he knows me. He remembers me and our time together fondly, I’m sure.” Her eyes draw to slits. “I bet he even thinks of me when he fucks you.”
Anguish rips from my throat as she chuckles, turning to look at a barely conscious, bleary-eyed Gavan.
“ Don’t you, my sweet baby boy .”
She turns her gaze to me again. “Goodness, I bet he even fucked you in this very room. How….” She giggles. “Poetic.”
She turns back to Gavan, setting her gun down on the couch next to him as she starts to unbutton her blouse while hot, thick tears flow down my face.
“What do you say, baby boy? One more roll in the hay for old times’ sake before I leave you here to die together?
” She sighs, undoing more of her blouse as she turns to grin at me.
“That’s what this will look like, of course.
After I’m done here. A lovers’ quarrel, ending in murder-suicide.
How cliche and yet how fitting. And of course, there will be no more resistance to me taking the company. And the bank,” she hisses.
I try and yank at my bonds again, but the pain sends a fresh wave of blackness over me. It’s not just the pain. I’m weak. My shirt is soaked red. And when I look up, I see blood still pouring down my arm, and the blue of my veins through skin that’s unnaturally pale right now.
It’s not just the pain making my head swim.
I’m losing too much blood .
“I’m going to enjoy this, Eilish,” Svetlana purrs maliciously as she shrugs off her shirt. “I’ve never been an exhibitionist. But I think I’m going to enjoy making you watch me fuck him right in front of you.”
Something inside of me snaps, brutally. Maybe it’s partly the realization I’m about to die and have nothing to lose. But even more, it’s looking at this monster in front of me, once again about to hurt the man I love so deeply.
I think that’s what makes me break.
I yank on my arm. I ignore the blinding pain and yank again, and again, and again, until I’m almost throwing up from the raw feeling exploding through my wrist. But slowly, with all the blood dripping down my arm, the cuff around my wrist begins to slip off.
And suddenly, one arm comes free.
I bite back the cry of anguish, cradling my bloody wrist before I grit my teeth and force my arm back up again. The cuffs are for playtime, not restraining criminals. And because of that, there’s a release mechanism on the side.
With a clumsy flick of my numb fingers, my other wrist falls free. In one motion, I lunge off the bed, stagger across the floor, and fall onto the couch.
I’m in a foggy daze. But my fingers wrap around the gun. And when I twist around, I use the rest of my strength and my consciousness to level the barrel right at Svetlana.
Her eyes bug out as she scrambles off Gavan’s lap. But then she swallows thickly, and her lips curl.
“You won’t shoot me,” she sneers.
My heart beats heavy and slow, my vision dwindling.
I don’t have much time.
“Look at yourself, honey,” Svetlana jeers. “You’re a goddamn fucking mess . And beside that?” She laughs coldly. “You’re no killer.”
She walks back to Gavan again.
“ Get away from him ,” I croak.
“Or what?” She barks, reaching out to run a finger up his arm, taunting me.
“ Get away from him! ” I groan again, feeling the last of my strength begin to ebb away.
Svetlana laughs again. “You’re not going to pull that trigger, honey. Because you’re not a—”
The gun explodes in my hand. Svetlana’s head jerks back, taking the rest of her body with it as she topples over dead on the floor.
“ Yes I am .”
The gun drops from my slick, sticky fingers. My head lolls to the side as I crawl and inch across the couch until I’m right next to Gavan. I reach up, cupping his face as a single tear falls down my cheek.
“ I love you so much. I…I love… ”
Then I’m falling into darkness. And falling.
And falling.