Chapter 1
Zoya~
I knew that I couldn’t pretend to stay asleep forever, but I also knew that Kasimir was sitting in my hospital room, waiting for me to wake up, but that wasn’t all.
Throughout my random bouts of consciousness, I’d been fully aware that Viktor Korolev had also been visiting my hospital room, and it had to be because of his brother, not me.
In no world would Viktor ever care about what might happen to me.
I was also very aware of why they were here, and it wasn’t because they’d been overcome with concern about my wellbeing.
Yeah, Kasimir might care some, but not as much as he cared about who’d done this to me.
They were also here to control the narrative of what had happened, making sure that I told the police only what they wanted me to, which wasn’t surprising.
So, knowing that they weren’t going to go anywhere until they spoke with me, I finally opened my eyes, the bright lights from the fluorescents overhead sending a sharp spike of pain that hit the back of my skull, but I did my best to fight it off.
As much as I wanted to, I knew that I couldn’t hide forever.
However, when I tried to sit up on my own, a crippling pain erupted across my chest, and that’s when I remembered that I’d been kicked a few times in my ribs, and the worse thing about cracked or broken ribs was that there was nothing that could be done for those types of injuries.
Apart from scheduled pain management, you just had to suck it up and hope that you didn’t have to sneeze or cough, and God forbid you should get the hiccups.
Suddenly, the sounds of the hospital bed coming to life filled the room, and I looked over to see Kasimir standing next to me, manipulating the buttons to help me sit up some.
While it still hurt, the support helped a bit, and right now, I was willing to take whatever little bit of help that I could get.
“Take it easy, lepestok,” Kasimir ordered firmly but quietly.
Before I could say anything, Viktor Korolev was walking forward to stand on the other side of my hospital bed, and like his brother and father, Viktor’s reputation preceded him, and so it was hard not to feel intimidated by him being here.
Yeah, Kasimir was known to be a bit of a psychopath, but Viktor was next in line to take over the Korolev Bratva, so I could only imagine how ruthless the man could be.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, his voice just as soft as Kasimir’s had been. “Do you need us to call a nurse for any discomfort you may be dealing with?”
“N...no,” I stammered, my chest hurting with a tightness that had nothing to do with my cracked ribs. “I’m...I’m fine.”
Eyeing me with that same cool gaze as his brother’s, Viktor said, “You will need to give a statement to the police once they are aware that you’re awake. With the news coverage that your attack has been given, there is no way around that, Zoya.”
“N...news coverage?” I echoed.
“The police cars and ambulances brought all your neighbors out, and with everyone quick to embody everything on social media these days, it wasn’t long before news reporters were on the scene,” Viktor explained.
“They reported what they could, and that was how you and your mother had been shot inside your home in a possible robbery gone wrong, but no other facts have been available.”
“Oh...okay,” I whispered.
“Zoya, while I understand that you must be in a lot of pain, and while I can even understand how exhausted you must be feeling, you need to tell us what happened,” he ordered. “We need to know everything that happened, and then we will instruct you on what you can and cannot tell the police.”
I glanced over at Kasimir, and while he was letting his brother lead the conversation, his one blue eye looked like a dangerous dark pit of anger, but it was his white eye that actually looked eerily violent.
Normally, it had a little scrap of blue on the outside corner, but right now, the orb was completely white, looking empty and soulless.
Staring into his eyes, Kasimir gave me a quick nod, urging me to listen to his brother, and while his cold gaze looked unnerving, his right hand was softly running over my matted hair, his thumb adding a little touch of tenderness each time that it danced across my forehead.
I looked back over at Viktor, and you’d think that it’d be easy enough to blurt out Marcelle’s name, but it wasn’t.
Telling them everything would be signing her death warrant, and I wasn’t sure if I could live with that just yet.
Yeah, she’d been the one who had kicked off the chain of events, but she hadn’t been the one who had shot me and my mother.
While I knew that she had sent those men to rob me, I wasn’t entirely certain that she had also sent them to kill me.
Marcelle had just wanted the money, so was it fair to make her pay with her life when she hadn’t been the one to shoot us?
Plus, I knew Kasimir well enough to know that the Korolevs wouldn’t just kill her if they found her at fault for all of this.
Even if I hadn’t gotten to know Kasimir better these past few days, the Korolev Bratva didn’t run the underground streets of St. Moran because the family was soft.
They’d risen to power through a violent thirst for blood, and that’s why they were still in power.
It also didn’t help that they were now family to the Marchettis through marriage, empowering them more than should be wise.
So, needing more time to figure out the best way to handle this, I decided to tell him just enough.
“I got home from...from work, and I saw the light in...in the kitchen on,” I said.
“With me and my mother at...at odds these days, I figured that she...she must be waiting up for me, so I...I went into the kitchen to see why she was still awake.”
“Then what?” Viktor asked softly.
“As soon...as soon as I rounded the corner, I got hit in the head, and it was hard enough to...to send me flying against the refrigerator,” I went on, stopping to catch my breath.
“It’s okay, lepestok,” Kasimir remarked quietly. “Take your time.”
I gave him a terse nod before looking back at Viktor, and it surprised me that he was pouring me some water from the necessity tray, and I never would have expected Viktor Korolev to know what it was to be thoughtful of another person who wasn’t his family.
Nonetheless, grateful for the small measure of consideration, I took the cup from his hand, then drank it down greedily, not realizing how thirsty I’d been until the water hit my tongue. Of course, swallowing hurt like a bitch, but I wanted the cool liquid enough to deal with the pain.
When I was finished drinking it all, Viktor took the cup from my hand, then placed it back on the tray.
“If you drink too much or too fast, you may get sick, and I don’t imagine that you’d want to experience vomiting while having cracked ribs,” he stated, explaining why he wasn’t going to pour me a second cup.
I just gave him another nod. “Thank you.”
After a few seconds, he said, “Go on.”
“When I...when I got over the shock of the...the attack, that’s when I looked up to see my mother tied to a chair, and she’d been gagged with duct tape,” I went on.
“There were two men, and one was...I don’t know, standing guard next to my mom...
I guess. He just...he continued to stay next to her while the other guy started... started questioning me.”
“Questioning you about what?” Viktor asked.
“Money,” I sighed.
“Money?” he echoed.
I started nodding repeatedly, but then I let out a quick gasp as pain stabbed me in the back of the skull again, and Kasimir was right there, kissing the side of my face. “Easy, baby.”
After giving me a few seconds to collect myself, Viktor asked, “So, you’re telling us that they were there to rob you?”
“Yes,” I whispered, still trying to work through the physical pain.
Viktor’s brows immediately furrowed, and he was looking at me like he could see right through me, and it was the creepiest thing that I’d ever experienced.
Even though everything that I’d just said was the truth, it was still all a lie, and I had a horrible feeling that Viktor was aware, though I didn’t know how he could know such a thing.
Viktor’s blue gaze shot over towards his brother, and there was a silent exchange between the two of them, and I’d thought that stuff like that only happened in the movies.
Granted, Viktor and Kasimir probably had a sibling relationship that wasn’t like normal people’s, but to know each other well enough that you didn’t have to speak to communicate was rather daunting.
Looking back at me, Viktor asked, “Then what happened?”
“I told them that...that we didn’t have any money, but...
but they didn’t believe me,” I answered.
“They thought that...that beating us would...would make some money magically appear, but...but when it didn’t...
” I had to take a second, the image of my mother getting shot making it harder to breathe.
“They shot my mom first, thinking that it would make me talk, but...but when it was clear that they had robbed the wrong...wrong house, that’s when they shot me, too. ”
“What did they look like, Zoya?” Viktor asked, his tenor still calm, but his blue eyes didn’t match the tone of his voice.
“They were both dressed all in black, and...and they both had masks on,” I replied tiredly, and I almost closed my eyes, but I knew that they weren’t finished with me yet.