5. Kirill
Kirill
The rental SUV’s engine roars into gear, the cheap frame shuddering as we lurch forward. I don’t feel like myself all of a sudden. Like I’ve stepped outside my own body, and I’m watching this unfold from a distance.
The scent of vanilla hits me first. It’s soft, but it manages to cut through gas fumes and mold beneath the rubber floor mats.
Sandrine.
Her smell threads through the air like the memory I refused to forget. It’s undeniable, and it lodges in my lungs with the force of recognition so absolute it borders on pain.
My wife.
There’s no doubt. This is her. My body knows it before my mind can catch up. My soul knows the cadence of her breath even as it comes fast and panicked. I know the subtle shift in her weight as she struggles against one of my guards who is holding her from behind in the third row.
It kills me to see a man touch her. But I don’t object. Her kind of betrayal deserves nothing but punishment.
I sit behind the front passenger’s seat, my mask still in place. My hands shake in a restless storm that builds beneath my skin.
In the two captain’s chairs, Sandrine sits in one.
Her friend in the other. Or cousin. I never knew she had a cousin.
Maybe it’s another lie. Sandrine shakes, but doesn’t struggle.
The other woman, the brunette, the extra complication I hadn’t planned for, is giving the guy holding her in that seat from the third row a fight, her movements sharp and frantic.
Drago sits in the front seat, directly behind me. He turns his masked face just enough that his voice reaches me without carrying. “What do we do with the extra cargo?”
“We’ll dump her at the airport,” I reply, my gaze never leaving Sandrine. I lift my hand and snap my fingers at her cousin. “Brunette. Give me your license.”
“Fuck off,” she fires back immediately, her chin lifting despite the fear flickering in her eyes.
“Your defiance might be considered admirable under different circumstances.” I smile behind the mask.
Then I do something that settles like acid in my gut. I raise my gun and press it to Sandrine’s temple.
“Give me your license, brunette,” I repeat, softer now, letting the threat speak for itself. “Please.”
Her gaze snaps to Sandrine, then back to me, as she tries to understand the logic of what’s happening.
Did your cousin not tell you she’s married to a dangerous Bratva heir who she ran away from five years ago?
After one of my men lets go of her arms, the brunette releases a frustrated breath. She fumbles through her purse. After seconds of digging, she yanks out her wallet and shoves the card toward me. I take it without looking away from Sandrine for a moment.
“Run this,” I tell Drago.
He takes it from me, already pulling out a device to read the strip. “Elodie Vale,” he says the name on the license.
The name means nothing. But… Vale. There’s a Vale Syndicate north of here. I push that away.
“What do you want?” Elodie Vale demands, her voice tightening with anger. “I’m not backing down on the story.”
“Story?” Drago murmurs under his breath. His device begins to beep with information. “She’s an investigative journalist. That could be why I couldn’t get an ID on her.”
I close my eyes. Fuck.
Of all the complications, this is the one I didn’t need. Exposure. Attention. God, I’ve seen this movie before. This can get chaotic very quickly.
“Now you’re both coming with me,” I say, my tone hardening.
“You didn’t answer me,” Elodie presses, her voice sharper. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll find out when you get there,” I reply with practiced ease.
“Real mature.”
I ignore the brunette and focus my attention back to Sandrine. I’ve wanted to see her face for five years, and now it’s hard to look at her. I take her in piece by piece, cataloging the changes, the sameness, the way time has touched her and yet somehow left her intact.
It feels like I’m watching a ghost sit across from me.
“You,” I finally address her directly, my voice lower, meant only for her. “Give me your license.”
She shakes her head, her brows drawing together in confusion rather than defiance. “I don’t have one.”
That stalls me for half a second. She can drive. I taught her.
“What’s your name?” I ask, waving the gun, hoping it’s enough to tell me the truth.
She frowns, as if she has to reach for the right response. “Jessica.”
That’s a lie. But why lie to me? She doesn’t know it’s me. She can’t see my face.
“ETA,” I say, leaning back slightly so Drago can hear me.
“Five minutes,” my enforcer answers, his eyes flicking between the road and the device in his hand.
Across from me, the two women exchange a look, something unspoken passing between them. Elodie leans closer, her voice dropping.
“You should know,” she begins carefully, “we have connections to the Greek Mafia in New York.”
I let a slow smile spread beneath the mask. “I know Ares Zervas.”
Yet, he’d kill me if he knew I took his wife’s sister. He fucking knows that Sandrine is mine. I sent him the video. He didn’t care. He must have been following Sandrine’s wishes to stay hidden.
Surprise!
Me dropping Ares’s name makes them both go quiet, the tension in the van coiling deeper. Good. But now I have to consider how I dump the brunette without creating more problems than I’ve solved by letting a witness go free.
The SUV turns sharply, the motion making them lean slightly to one side.
“Watch it,” Sandrine says to the man holding her from behind. “You’re hurting me.”
“I said hold her.” I slice his arm. “Not hurt her. Remember who she is.”
Sandrine screams, seeing the bloody knife. She’s seen a lot worse. What is going on?
The choreography is already in place. Armored cars lie ahead with men ready to protect me.
We finally slow down, and the sound of gravel crunching beneath the tires means we’ve pulled into the cargo area. My plane sits just outside the hangar.
We stop, and the SUV’s engine is cut off. For a moment, there’s only silence. The driver is staying behind to return this car, or dump it, or burn it. I don’t care.
I give myself another moment to think. Smiling, I press the gun to Elodie’s head this time. “You’re going to get out of this car and walk a thousand paces without turning around. You turn around, I shoot you.”
Not really.
Her eyes widen, confusion cutting through the fear. “Me? Just me?”
“Yeah,” I say evenly. “Just you.”
Sandrine’s voice breaks. “Not me?”
“No,” I answer, and this time there’s no room for interpretation. “I came here for you.”
“Why me? I don’t—”
“Shut the fuck up.” I hate myself for being so harsh, but all I can hear is tiny crying, all while Sandrine was in Scottsdale at a fucking spa.
The rear passenger door wrenches open, light flooding in. “I’m not ready, Drago.”
Looking that way, the world fractures. It’s not Drago at the door. Two men I don’t know have guns to my enforcer’s head.
And the one man I do recognize has his weapon raised right at my head. The only man in my dark underground world who can do that without being killed.
“Scava,” I bite out. “What the fuck?”
Nico Scava, the head of the Las Vegas Cosa Nostra, stands there with an irritatingly amused expression, as if this is all a game.
“I heard you were transporting something from the desert,” Scava says casually, his gaze flicking past me as he tries to see inside the SUV. “It piqued my curiosity.”
“It’s nothing. Go home,” I grit out. “This doesn’t concern you, or your house.”
“Go home?” He raises an eyebrow. “We’re closer to my home than yours. You should know better than to come this far south without my permission.”
“I heard what you did in Miami,” I say, buying time for Drago to get a signal to one of our men. “You’re consolidating, too.”
Ignoring me, Scava glances in the SUV. “What’s up, Volkov? You don’t traffic women. What changed your mind?”
“None of your business,” I snap. “Get the hell out of here. I’m serious.”
He pushes his head inside to get a better look at my cargo. His eyes land on the brunette, and his jaw drops.
“Wait, Volkov, that’s—”
I don’t let him finish. I shove forward out of the car and tackle him onto the gravel.
Around us, chaos explodes into motion. Shouts, the sharp click of weapons, the scramble of bodies colliding. Drago is out of the front passenger seat and blocking the open rear door to guard Sandrine and the brunette. Only, my mammoth brother-in-law is too slow for these two.
Elodie dives out, practically trampling me. “Jessica, Come on!”
I lift off Scava and grab Sandrine, hauling her up against me.
Her body fights and twists, her hands pushing against my chest as she tries to break free. “Let me go.”
This is definitely her.
I knew the day would come when I would rule and my wife would be a target. I trained her to be tough, to resist, and to fight.
“Elodie, help!” she yells.
“She can’t help you.” I carry Sandrine toward the airstairs of my jet, her weight familiar and foreign all at once.
My men have regained control and have pushed Scava back. He didn’t come to attack. He came to steal my cargo.
“Elodie!” Sandrine screams, her voice tearing through the air to the woman being carried away by Nico Scava.
“Jessica!” the brunette shouts back, as I drag Sandrine in the opposite direction.
I’m regretting not agreeing to bring dart guns.
At the plane, I climb the airstairs with Sandrine over my shoulder. Drago and my guards scramble into the cabin behind me, while a ground force stays behind to give us cover.
I shove Sandrine into a seat and sit next to her. No one will ever fucking take her from me again.
“Let me out of here.” She kicks, her nails scraping against my arm.
It should irritate me. Instead, it does something else entirely. Something dark. Something erotic. God, the fun we used to have once I made her love the kind of sex I needed.
I grab the rope we brought and secure Sandrine into her chair. “That could have gone smoother.”
Drago snorts, glancing out on the tarmac and the chaos we left behind. “You think?”
“Get this plane in the air,” I bark to the pilot, my voice cutting through the engines.
Sandrine is still struggling, still shouting, her breath coming in ragged bursts. She’s even pulling at my mask.
Smiling, I take it off and wait for her to shit herself. But when it’s peeled cleanly from my face, and I shake out my hair, she just…
Stares at me. No expression.
Drago and I exchange looks. I tilt my head toward her. “You have nothing to say to me? Me?”
Breathing heavily, she swallows, then utters, “Who are you?”