Chapter 8 Ransome
RANSOME
“Remind me again why you’re going on a business trip.”
Jenica is standing in my room in her wispy little nightgown, her hip popped as she attempts to drill me to the floor. It’s not going to happen.
Under her watchful eye, I pack a suitcase of bare necessities. I have always been a light traveler, especially since I hate to travel.
“Because I’m the CEO of one of the biggest oil and gas companies on the planet and sometimes my job takes me away from home.”
“I might believe that… if you ever actually traveled for work,” she says. “You always make everyone come to you.”
“Not this time.” I add another black shirt to my suitcase just for good measure. I can’t imagine that rural Montana has many reputable dry cleaners, and there’s no way in hell I’d use a hotel laundry room.
“You’re taking all black.” She narrows her eyes, arms crossed.
“And?”
“You don’t wear all black at the office. You only wear all black for Bratva matters.”
“I never said it was for Apex,” I snap, knowing exactly what I said moments before. But also, who the fuck does she think she is?
“He’s not in Montana, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I zip my suitcase up and check my phone. The private jet will be ready in thirty minutes, which means I don’t have time for the pillow princess and her third degree.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Tristan,” she says. “He’s not in Montana or Colorado or wherever it is you’re going.”
“I’m aware.”
She narrows her eyes even further. “Then why are you going there?”
I pick my suitcase up off the bed and head towards the door. “I don’t think that’s any of your business, Jenica.”
“I’m your wife!”
I clench my jaw. “Contractually.”
“No,” she corrects me. “Legally.”
With that, I turn around. “Is there something you want?”
“I want to be included in your decision making,” she says. And if I were a man with a normal sense of humor, I might laugh right now. But I’m not.
“There’s nothing to include you in. This, along with everything else, doesn’t concern you.”
“I want to be your partner,” she adds.
I suck my teeth before letting out an exhausted breath. “Why?”
“Because I had reasons for marrying you too!” Jenica cries out.
“You mean besides the status, name, and money that comes with marrying a pakhan?”
“I have my father’s money; I don’t need yours. He would have worshiped me till his dying breath even if I hadn’t carried on the family name.”
“Then why did you marry me?”
I check my phone again. I don’t have time for this. But the woman is clearly unhappy. Her tone is wound up high enough to come out in an octave that only dogs can hear and the last thing I need is her whining to daddy.
Jenica chews her lip for a moment. Jesus Christ, is she going to cry? I have two minutes before I need to be out the door and that’s pushing it. I hardly have time to pose as a supportive husband, let alone deal with the emotional needs of waterworks.
Luckily she stays strong. “Because I don’t want to live this life.”
“Which life is that?”
Jenica motions around dramatically. “This. I didn’t ask to be born into this. The same as my mother and your mother and just about any other Bratva woman doesn’t want it.”
“I am not having a conversation with you about my mother,” I say, heading for the door.
But again, her words stop me. “Am I wrong? Is this the life she wanted?”
If Jenica is asking if my mother wanted to be married to a controlling, overindulgent, lazy pakhan who more or less ran our name into the ground only to lose a son in the process, the answer is an obvious no.
But that’s just how these things work.
“I agreed to marry you because you seem to have a different idea than our fathers did about how things should work,” she goes on. “I also don’t want to see what will happen when Tristan decides to fight back. It’s going to be ugly, Ransome. And I don’t think you’re prepared.”
I step closer to her, looking down over her, my voice low and stern. “I have spent the last decade of my life preparing for what could happen between our two families. Don’t underestimate me.”
“And don’t underestimate him,” she says back up at me. “He doesn’t play by the rules. And he hates to lose.”
“That makes two of us,” I say before walking out the door.
The only thing better about Manhattan, Montana than Manhattan, New York is that there is zero chance I will see anyone I know. But I’m not gonna lie, rural America has me feeling like a fish out of water. Only one person on the planet could have motivated me to come out here. But it’s not Amara.
It’s the baby inside her.
Baron had a point. If that baby is in fact mine, and that baby is a boy, he is the next Rozanov pakhan. The only option for the Rozanov pakhan. Which means he cannot live in the middle of fucking nowhere, Montana. He has to grow up in the family. He has to learn young.
He has to be with me.
And by default, that means his mother does too, as much as the idea of it makes my skin crawl right now.
It’s not a disgust factor. Far from it, unfortunately. But that woman betrayed me on more than one level.
For one, she didn’t tell me she was pregnant. Leading me to believe this baby may not be mine. Which means I am either wasting my time or about to uncover yet another one of her lies.
Two, she and her brother were more involved with Tristan than she was willing to admit, an omission that is unforgivable.
I was tempted to stay home. Handle it all from my desk.
Have Maverick drag her back home. But I can’t exactly stuff the woman in the trunk of a car anymore, not in her condition.
And forcing her on a plane would no doubt be dangerous, and the last thing I need is my child being born premature seven miles high in the sky.
So the only viable option was coming myself. And here I am, sitting in a rental car in the parking lot of a dentist’s office, waiting for her to get off work.
I would have gone to the house, but her siblings might be there. I can just imagine Gianni whipping out a gun and it turning into a whole thing where I either have to knock it out of his hand or skim him with a bullet of my own. Yeah, I’ll pass.
My eye catches movement in the side mirror as the door to the dentist’s office opens.
A moment later, Amara walks out.
My stomach bottoms out at the sight of her. She’s dressed in scrubs with the office logo on the front. I hate to say that scrubs look sexy on her. I also hate to say that pregnancy looks sexy on her, specifically if that child is mine.
I don’t, however, know if it is. Which is why I have to keep the blood running to the right head and do what I need to do.
Just as she is about to put the key in her beater, I get out of my car.
Amara’s eyes flash up to me in shock. Then disbelief.
Then they roll back in her head as her body sways.
I catch her just before she hits the pavement.