Chapter 26 Galina
Galina
The guest room is smaller than ours. No shattered glass. No bullet holes. No cold wind pouring through a ruined window. Just four walls, a bed that hasn’t been slept in, and the faint smell of clean linen.
I close the door behind me and stand in the middle of the room with the gun in my hand, listening to my own breathing.
My hands are steady. Someone tried to kill me, and yet I’m carrying on as if nothing happened.
The door opens behind me, and I jump a fucking mile, turning with the gun raised.
“Just me,” Laszlo says, entering the room and closing the door behind him.
He immediately moves closer, places his hand over the barrel and lowers my arm before taking the gun from me.
“Do you even know how to use this thing?” he asks with a cheeky smile, moving me into the corner of the room, next to the windows.
I arch one eyebrow and curl my lip. “Point and shoot?”
“Cute,” he says. “Sit.”
“On the floor?”
“On the floor.”
I lower myself and bring my knees up to my chin. He sits on the corner of the bed, both guns hanging from his hands. “It was Petyr,” he says. “Or at least he hired someone. He drew me away from you with a noise in the house and…”
“Bang,” I murmur, the single shot I heard from the stairs while I was trying to get around Grisha echoing in my ears. Execution. “Why?”
“Because he touched you, and I broke his arm.”
“So he blames me for that.” It’s not a question but a statement of fact. “Seems a bit excessive, doesn’t it? Having me killed in my own bed?”
He sighs and scrubs his hand over his face. “Russian men are proud, moya zhena. Bratva men are proud. They are also hot headed and reckless if they have not been brought up with a pakhan’s hand and guidance.”
“He really thought he could get away with it? Not just with you, but my dad?”
“He wasn’t thinking about your dad,” Laszlo says. “He was thinking about his pride and the fact that every man on this team watched me snap his arm like a twig. That’s what got to him. Not you specifically. The humiliation. You were just the easiest target to punish me through.”
I press my forehead to my knees and breathe. “So I’m collateral damage in a pissing contest.”
“Welcome to being a Voronov wife.”
“Wish I’d read the memo.”
“Different seat at the table now. He didn’t know. If he had, you would’ve been protected. He wouldn’t have dared.”
I lift my head and look at him. He is sitting on the edge of the bed with two guns in his hands, dressed in nothing but joggers and bare feet, and he looks exactly like the man I married this afternoon. Dangerous. Focused. Mine.
“You killed him,” I say.
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No justification. No softening of the word. Just the fact of it, delivered the same way he might tell me it’s raining.
I wait for the horror to arrive. The revulsion. The part of me that should recoil from a man who just put a bullet in someone’s head, but it doesn’t come.
“We are telling everyone right now,” he says, standing up. “This has gone above Yelena. This is about me protecting you. My wife. The hit is still out on you, but as my wife, they will think about it for a while before they back off. Especially with Petyr dead.”
My heart thumps. “But the church—”
“Viktor will find another way,” he says coldly. “My only concern is protecting you.”
“Laszlo,” I snap.
“Don’t,” he says, shaking his head, a warning if I ever saw one. “This could’ve ended up with you dead in our wedding bed. If you think I’m going to let this happen again by remaining quiet, you don’t know the man you married at all.”
I stare at him, and the argument dies on my tongue. Not because he’s wrong. Because he’s right, and I hate it.
“Fine,” I say quietly. “We tell everyone.”
He nods once, sharp and final. “I’ll call Baron and your dad to tell them change of plans.
” He leaves the room without another word.
I hear his footsteps on the stairs, then the low rumble of his voice as he speaks to Grisha.
I stay on the floor in the corner with my knees drawn up and my back against the wall and let the full weight of the last few hours settle over me.
Dad’s got this. Yelena and the kids will still be fine. He will just have to make another plan. I’m sure he has numerous contingencies, and if it comes to it, I’m pretty sure he will take Baron up on his offer to go in all guns blazing. Hopefully, it doesn’t come to that.
I press my face into my knees and breathe.
Count to four. Hold. Release. Then I stand up.
The curtains are closed, the remaining guards are on high alert, and Laszlo’s news will already have hit the Bratva gossip network, and families across the city will be getting it.
They will be getting the message that someone tried to shoot me and nearly succeeded.
The wagons will circle. My dad will have extra security here in under ten minutes.
Baron, too, probably, although more for his nephew than me.
If the marksman is still out there, he will think twice tonight about trying this again. I scrub my hands over my face and force myself to move.
Sitting in a corner waiting for men to decide the next move is how women end up buried.
I head for the bedroom door, open it, and step onto the landing. Grisha is now planted at the top of the stairs like a wall in human form. He shakes his head the second he sees me.
“No.”
“Move, Grisha.”
“No.”
I put my hands on my hips. “That wasn’t a suggestion.”
“It also isn’t your call.”
I stare at him. “Move.”
His expression stays blank. “Laszlo said you stay up here.”
I step closer. “If Baron or my father arrives and I’m hidden away upstairs like a frightened girl, I’ll make your life unpleasant.”
He exhales through his nose. “My life is already unpleasant.”
“Then let me improve mine.”
His jaw tightens. He is not enjoying this and looks over my shoulder, an expression of profound relief crossing his features.
I turn to see Laszlo emerge from the shot-out bedroom, fully dressed now in black trousers and a black shirt, his hair still damp, his jaw set in a way that says he has made three decisions and killed one man in his head since I last saw him.
Leonid arrives almost simultaneously, up the stairs, pale and furious, carrying a tray with tea, water, and what looks like brandy.
Laszlo shuts the door behind him and glares at me. “Back in the room.”
“I will tell you what I told your man over here. No.”
His eyes go flat. Not loud. Worse.
“Galina.”
“No,” I repeat, stepping out onto the landing properly. “You do not get to shoot a man in the garden, tell half of London I’m a target, and then stick me in a bedroom like a fucking ornament.”
Leonid goes very still with the tray in his hands.
Grisha looks like he wants to vanish into the wallpaper.
Laszlo moves towards me, containing violence. “Someone put a bullet through our window while you were naked in our bed.”
Grisha lets out a pained noise he tries to muffle, but I don’t think Laszlo is listening. His gaze is focused intently on me.
“Yes, I remember.”
“And you think this is the moment to test me.”
“I think this is the moment to stop treating me like I’m useless.”
His jaw ticks. “I am treating you like my wife.”
“Then speak to me like one.”
For one ugly second, nobody moves.
Laszlo holds my gaze, and I know exactly what he’s doing. Deciding whether to fight me on this or adapt. “You knowing what is happening and you standing in the middle of it are two different things.”
“I am already in the middle of it.”
His jaw tightens. “That is exactly the problem.”
Leonid clears his throat softly. “Perhaps tea first—”
“Tea can fuck off,” I say without looking away from Laszlo.
Leonid inhales like I’ve insulted his dead ancestors. “That is a deeply offensive thing to say in my presence.”
Under any other circumstances, I might laugh. Right now, I’m too angry.
Laszlo’s mouth flattens. “Back in the room. Now.”
“No.”
He takes another step toward me. “Don’t make me carry you.”
“Try it.”
Grisha mutters a prayer for the doomed in Russian.
I lift my chin. “You want me safe? Fine. Then stop issuing orders and start talking. Who knows? What did Baron say? What did my father say? Is the shooter identified? Are we staying here? Leaving? Are more men coming? You don’t get to decide I’m important enough to hide but not important enough to inform. ”
That lands. I see it in the tiny shift of his expression.
Good, because I am done being handled.
Leonid slowly lowers the tray onto a hall table with the care of a man who knows his crockery is about to become collateral damage. “If anyone would like brandy while they continue this marital discussion, now would be the moment.”
Neither of us answers him.
Laszlo inhales audibly and looks at me with a kind of restraint that should probably worry me more than it does.
“Fine,” he says at last, voice clipped. “You want information? You’ll get it.
Baron is on his way. Your father is sending men.
We are not staying here tonight. Dmitri and Sasha are sweeping the neighbouring houses and pulling footage from every camera on this street and the next two.
Petyr is dead. The man he hired is not yet identified.
Until he is, you do not go near an uncovered window, and you do not leave my sight. Is that clear enough for you, wife?”
“Yes,” I say. “Better.”
His nostrils flare. He hates that I’m right.
Leonid picks up the brandy and thrusts it at me with disapproval. “Drink.”
I take it because I’m not stupid. I’ve pushed Leonid as far as I can tonight. The irony that I’m more scared of the butler than my husband makes me press my lips together tightly. “Thank you,” I grit out.
“You may apologise to the tea later,” he mutters.
It takes everything I have not to burst out laughing. Only the thought that Laszlo might use it as hysteria and padlock me in a padded room stops me.
But damn him. He sees it anyway. “This isn’t funny.”
“I know.”
“Then stop acting like I’m overreacting.”
“I’m acting like I nearly died and would still prefer to know what the fuck is happening than be tucked away.” I take a sip of brandy. It burns all the way down. “Those are not the same thing.”
He stares at me for another second, then nods once. Not agreement but recognition.
“Good,” I say, because if I stop now, he’ll take the inch and turn it into a locked room.
His eyes narrow at the tone. “Do not push your luck.”
“I’m not pushing anything. I’m standing upright and asking not to be lied to. Apparently, that counts as rebellion in this house.”
“In this house,” he says, very quiet now, “it counts as surviving long enough to annoy me again tomorrow.”
That lands harder than it should, and I take another gulp of brandy.
Before I can answer, Grisha turns, hand to his weapon. Leonid doesn’t even flinch. He just lifts the tea tray again with offended dignity, as if armed men arriving at midnight are no reason to let Earl Grey go cold.
A second later, I hear car doors slam.
Laszlo looks at Grisha. “You are removed from wife duty. For now. Go.”
Grisha nods and disappears down the stairs so fast, I think he might take to the air.
I take another sip of brandy and hate that my hand shakes a little. Laszlo’s gaze drops to the glass, then to my face.
“You should sit down,” he says.
“I’m fine.”
“You are in shock.”
“I’m angry.”
“You can be both.”
Leonid clicks his tongue. “She is both.”
I glance at him. “Whose side are you on?”
He gives me an imperious look. “Not yours.”
“Ouch, Leo. That stings.”
His face goes puce, and he turns on his heel as Laszlo tries not to laugh. “I don’t think anyone in the history of the world has ever called him Leo,” he snorts.
When I catch his eye with a grin, his vanishes instantly. “Do not think this changes anything.”
The sound of heavy steps hits the stairs a second before Baron appears, black coat open, expression murderous as he passes Leonid. He takes in me on the landing with brandy in hand, Laszlo dressed to go to war, and his whole face hardens.
“Where is the body?” he asks.
“Being disposed of as we speak,” Laszlo says.
Baron’s gaze cuts to me. He scans me with those pale, laser-like eyes and nods when he sees I’m unharmed.
Another set of footsteps follows him. My father appears, with two men at his back, in a dark coat with no tie, his face so cold it nearly drains the air from the landing.
His eyes go straight to me.
I hate the rush of relief that hits me. I am a grown woman. Married, now. Nearly shot in my bed. But one look at my father still makes part of me want to exhale and let him fix it.
He climbs the rest of the stairs and stops in front of me. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
His eyes move over my face, my hands, the fact that I’m standing upright and arguing rather than collapsed. He nods once.
“Yelena,” I say.
“Don’t worry about your cousin. I have planned this for a long time, malyshka. I have contingencies.”
“Do they involve gunfire?”
“Not yet,” he clips out. “This is in hand. We focus on you now.”
I take another sip of brandy and nod, my gaze going to Laszlo.