Chapter 39 #2
“It’s nothing you need to worry about.” He gives me a reassuring smile and then drops his phone back on the nightstand. “Just a loose end that might have to be tied up.”
He slides back into bed beside me and wraps his arms around me, hugging me close to his chest. I still feel exhausted, emotionally more than physically, so I don’t press him any further for answers.
I’m not sure, right at this moment, that I want to know what “tying up this loose end” might entail.
I try to put it out of my mind and just enjoy the serenity of the two of us alone together.
Sleep drags me straight into a nightmare: I’m back in the junkyard, standing over Kirill with my pistol.
I pull the trigger and a thick cloud of smoke pours from the barrel, choking me.
When it clears, it’s not him on the ground, it’s me, broken and bloody, clutching a swollen belly.
A scream rises up in my throat that jerks me straight up in the bed.
“Whoa, Constance, it’s okay. You’re okay.” Maximo grasps my arm and nearly sends me tumbling out of the bed. “You’re all right. You must have been having a bad dream. Come on, breathe, you’re fine now.”
I take a gasping breath and slide my back up against the headboard, letting the sweaty sheets fall away from me.
“It was just a nightmare,” I choke out as I try to get my breathing under control.
“I was back in the junkyard, but when I shot Kirill, it wasn’t him.
I was the one lying in the dirt,” I try to explain.
That’s when I glance over and notice that Maximo has his laptop open, and I see what he’s watching.
What looks like surveillance footage from the junkyard is divided up into four different streams on the screen.
Each of them has a different angle of the meeting with Salvatore and the Bratva leaders.
Maximo has it paused on a shot of me, raising my pistol as I stand above Kirill Volkov, right before executing him.
The grainy images make my stomach roll with nausea. “Why do you have that?” I whisper past the bile rising in my throat. I slide out of bed and start to make my way towards the bathroom.
Maximo looks up at me in concern, then smiles faintly. “Because you were fierce. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you more beautiful. Watching you in that moment, as you get your revenge, let me know that we did the right thing.”
I hear the admiration and pride in his voice as I go and close the bathroom door behind me, but it doesn’t help the chill crawling up my spine.
Maximo told me about the files he keeps on his computer on all of his associates.
He told me that they were blackmail, leverage, and insurance.
Is that why he’s keeping it? Another file to keep me in line if he ever needs leverage?
I use the toilet and then wash up, splashing some water on my face. When I come out of the bathroom Maximo is still sitting on the bed looking at his laptop. I don’t try to see what he’s doing. Instead, I pick up my phone from where it was charging and make a phone call.
“Everything all right?” Maximo asks me with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes, I’m just scheduling a follow-up with my primary care doctor. My arm is doing better, but it’s still bothering me.”
“That’s a good idea. My leg still twinges whenever I put weight on it, and my ribs have been a real bastard.
We’ve been through a lot the last couple of weeks.
Things will be better from here on out,” he says confidently, but I find that hard to believe.
“Maybe you could think about going back to school now. You need a new goal…”
“Maybe,” I agree absently.
I schedule the appointment for four-thirty tomorrow afternoon, giving a vague reason for the visit.
Once that’s done, I remember what the Bratva leader, the man named Sergei, had said about making a deposit into the business account for Monroe’s.
I pull up my father’s banking information and sure enough, five hundred thousand dollars of blood money has been transferred to the account.
Just the sight of it almost makes me run back to the toilet.
The dollar figure I was staring at is more money than I’ve ever had at once, and I have no idea what to do with it.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Maximo asks me again from where he’s still sitting on the bed. “You look really pale.”
I give him another half-truth. “My body just hurts. I’ll get checked out at the doctor to be sure everything is okay.
Can you take me back to the estate in the morning to get my car, or have someone drive it over here?
I want to see my friend Melissa for dinner and catch up with her, let her know I’m still alive.
” I pick up my phone to text Melissa and make sure she’s available.
Maximo raises an eyebrow at me, but he doesn’t argue. “Of course I will. We need to go swap out our clothes again anyhow, and we have the memorial for my cousins at two tomorrow.”
I climb back into bed with Maximo as he closes his laptop and lays it on the floor. Moments later I’m wrapped in his warm embrace, trying to put all the thoughts of violent retribution and upcoming funerals out of my head.
For the first time in our relationship, I’m keeping a piece of myself separate from him and wondering if I can trust him not to use evidence of my crime against me.
And though holding back my secret from Maximo scares me, it also feels… necessary, for reasons I can’t yet fully explain to myself.