53. Kirill
Kirill
Dread clings to the back of my throat as I kneel in front of Sandrine, passed out in the interrogation room. I watch her breathe, just lying there on a cot I keep for the men who like to pull all-nighters here with their prey.
Two months of therapy are gone.
Across the room, Adrian Chernov sits in chains, flanked by two of my men. He watches with the dull, calculating patience of a man who believes he still has leverage.
He doesn’t.
Sandrine stirs, a small, fractured sound escaping her lips as consciousness returns. My heart leaps in my chest in response. Her lashes flutter, and her breath hitches as her gaze struggles to focus. It settles on me first, soft and searching.
I lean down and kiss her lips. A smile creeps across her mouth. She’s back. She’s mine. Suddenly, she sits up in awareness and scans the room.
When she looks at Adrian, her entire body locks.
“You…” The word scrapes out of her throat again. Her hand grips mine, in a painful squeeze. Violent. “You pushed me.”
The room goes silent.
I don’t move. I don’t speak. Something inside me fucking dies. I orchestrated this for Adrian to tell me what happened. I assumed her father did something to her when she got home, and Chernov helped Thomas cover it up.
Turning to Sandrine, I stroke her jaw. “You remembered?”
She nods, her eyes wide and glassy. Her chest rises and falls in choppy breaks. She speaks, revealing the vital memory that returned to her during her anxiety attack.
The night she left me. Starting with how the baby wouldn’t stop crying. She repeats the conversation we had five years ago nearly word for word.
It’s been etched in my brain.
She remembers!
She keeps talking, clarity coming on strong.
Filling in the pieces after she left the penthouse.
The way her father didn’t let her leave.
The way he spoke about our daughter like she was nothing.
The way Chernov stood there with my father’s men, the plane waiting, and the new name already picked out.
The way she tried to escape to get home to me, the phone that wasn’t there, the broken lamp, the knife in her boot.
The struggle with Chernov and then… Her fall.
My stomach threatens to revolt as I listen.
I stand up and face Chernov, lips snarling. “You tried to kill my wife?”
Jagged pieces of the past slide into place with a precision that makes my pulse hammer against my chest so hard my ribs might break.
Drago pulls out a knife and puts it to Adrian’s throat.
The man has a tell I’ve picked up on. Every fucking word out of Sandrine’s mouth is the truth. The truth I have been denied for five years.
The truth Chernov buried, so I was left with nothing but anger and betrayal and the assumption that my wife had chosen to walk away from me. They let me think that. He and my father.
“You slept with Tamara?” Sandrine asks me.
I go still. Of all the things she could have pulled from that moment, from that memory, it’s that dreadful truth. Not the fear. Not the fall.
Tamara.
I see Sandrine’s gaze lock on to mine, raw and wounded. That’s how much she still loves me. Then I glare at Chernov, thinking how low it was for him to boast about his daughter’s sexual behavior.
“Yes.” My chest tightens as I say it out loud, acknowledging the truth I never gave Sandrine the chance to hear before everything went to hell. “It was a one-time thing. Before I met you.”
I don’t deserve her forgiveness. Not after the terrible thoughts I had of her for the five years that she’d been missing. Thinking she abandoned me. It was easier to hate her than to love her, to think she didn’t love me back.
I reach for her before I can stop myself, my hand coming up to cup her face. My thumb brushes over her cheek. She’s real. She’s here. And she remembers.
She fought for me. Fought to get home to Violet. With a knife.
I help her to stand and wrap my arms around her, holding her against my chest with a force that cannot be gentle right now. She fits in my arms like she always has. Like she always will.
“I had no idea any of that was happening behind my back,” I say between us.
And I was right about not trusting her father. But I can’t rub this in her face anymore. We both paid a tremendous price for that mistake in her judgment.
“I wanted to come home,” she says quietly.
Our eyes locked, we’re silently acknowledging everything we lost and everything that was stolen from us.
“This gives me such peace.” I press my mouth to her temple.
Behind me, Chernov shifts, the faint scrape of chain against the chair breaking the moment. He’s trying to stand up. He’s about to attack.
Just like that, the softness inside me calcifies into deadly violence.
I ease Sandrine away from me, from the animal I am about to turn into. The look I give her now is to brace herself for what she’s about to see. And she needs to see this.
I turn slowly to face the man who thought he could rewrite my life without consequence. I step in front of him, and he flops back down into the chair.
Feeling nothing but vile hatred inside, I say, “Look at me.”
His head tilts back to meet my gaze, and I draw my gun with a smooth, practiced motion.
“Is she telling me the truth?” I ask, my voice devoid of any grace or forgiveness.
He smirks, or tries to, though it falters at the edges. “Why would I give you that mercy?” he says, his tone laced with brittle irony. “You’re going to kill me anyway.”
“Yes,” I agree easily without emotion. “I am going to kill you.” I let that settle, let him feel the inevitability of his death. “But telling me the truth will save your daughter’s life. Even though you threatened to kill mine.”
His eyes flicker enough for me to see that level of fear seep in. The fear he put me through by taking my daughter. It’s subtle but unmistakable.
“I can end the Chernov line tonight,” I add, softer now, as if I’m not threatening to completely dismantle his world.
His breathing changes. Faster. Shallower.
“She tried to escape,” he snaps, the words tumbling out, desperation cracking through at last. “She came at me with a knife—”
I fire a bullet into one kneecap before he can finish.
The shot echoes through the room, loud and violent. The recoil bites sharp in my hand as the bullet tears through his knee. He screams, the sound raw and animalistic. His body jerks forward against the restraints as pain explodes through him.
“I don’t care if she came at you with a knife,” I say evenly, stepping closer, keeping the gun trained on him. “Say it again.”
He gasps, his head hanging for a second before he forces himself to look up at me. Sweat beads along his forehead, and his breath comes in broken pulls.
“Please,” he chokes, the word barely audible. “I was serving your father. Doing what he wanted.”
“That I believe,” I scoff and shoot his other knee.
He screams, “Okay. Yes. She didn’t want to leave you.”
Whatever pride he has left bleeds out with the admission.
There it is: She didn’t want to leave you.
I straighten, the tension in my shoulders easing in a way that has nothing to do with forgiveness and everything to do with finality.
“Thank you. You tried to take everything from me,” I say, my voice soft considering my words are meant for a dead man.
“Kirill…” Chernov makes a final plea to me. “Tamara. Don’t hurt her.”
“Your daughter will live. But with the shame that you’re a traitor to my crown.” I smile. “I have no intention of ever touching her or even going near her.”
Chernov relaxes. “Thank you.”
“I doubt I’ll be able to get anywhere near her when Eduardo shows up.”
“What?”
“I know about her and the Mexican Cartel King. And apparently you knew about it, too. Are you picturing what he’ll do to her?”
Chernov’s eyes widen, and I love that his final seconds will be horror-filled, thinking of what awaits Tamara.
“Good.” Smiling, I pull the trigger again.
The bullet finds its mark between his eyes, and his head snaps back. His body goes slack almost instantly. The room stills around us, the aftermath settling like dust.
I lower the gun slowly, my gaze lingering on him for a beat longer before I turn away.
I glance back at Sandrine, at the woman who was stolen from me and found her way back.
For a second time in a lifetime.