Chapter 35
elaine
I clung anxiously to the car door as I saw them, two guns pointed at the ground, close to one another’s feet. Two gazes pointed fiercely at each other.
Yulia. She’d been waiting for us here… she must have escaped the event and come straight here to catch us.
Yulia flicked her gaze to me, and back to Vera.
“The Whitecliffs gave a strict order,” she said.
“Make sure the Blackbirds couldn’t get their hands on the South Yard…
at any cost. But now you and the Blackbirds are fighting.
Quietly. In the shadows.” She fingered the trigger. “You betrayed the family.”
Vera tightened her grip on the gun. I spoke for her. “She didn’t betray the family. The family betrayed her.”
“You trust her,” Yulia said, looking back at me. “Even knowing she married you to kill you for your inheritance.”
I swallowed hard, but I nodded. “She’s protected me. And she’s put so much at risk to keep me safe… to keep all of us safe.” I stepped a little closer, and Vera moved to stay in front of me. “That’s what real loyalty is,” I said. “To the people you choose… and the people who choose you, too.”
Yulia scoffed. “I hadn’t thought you would go soft, Wolf.”
“I can’t abide by the Horizon project,” Vera said. “And I’ve made an oath to protect my wife.”
Yulia narrowed her eyes, studying us. Finally, she looked at me. “Out of all the families in Merona, there are many dangerous wildcards. Myself. Vera Farkas. Quayle. But I suspect the most powerful of them all, Elaine Whitner… is you.”
“Me?” I drew in a sharp breath.
“Few could ever dream of taming the Wolf. And few… could make me falter when given the chance to kill a target.”
Slowly, in the deathly silence of the front yard, Yulia holstered her gun. The motion was small, the sound just barely a click of metal, but in the silence, it was deafening.
“If you betray this family, too, Vera Farkas—if you hurt Elaine after all—I will kill you.”
“I’m not the one who had a knife pointed at her. Keep talking to my wife and I’m going to get possessive. You know what happened to the last person I had to get possessive of Elaine over?”
I blushed, drawing into myself. “Vera…”
“Yes,” Yulia deadpanned. “I heard the report about him. Do you not think that was excessive?”
“On the contrary, looking back, I was too kind. I should have tied him up, cut his dick off, shoved it down his throat, closed him in the trunk, and driven it into the river. But hindsight is twenty-twenty.”
Yulia scoffed, walking past us. “Take care with that one, Elaine. The Wolf has been dangerous since the day her trainer first branded her.”
“What?” I frowned. Vera waved her gun in Yulia’s direction.
“You’re just walking away? Give me a reason not to put a bullet in the back of your head right now.”
“You can hardly afford to balance the ire of the Blackbirds and the Whitecliffs right now. I’ll take my chances. Until next time.”
With that, she was gone, disappearing around the corner. Vera scoffed, putting her gun away.
“Figures. Always posturing.”
“She’s right, though,” Petra said, leaning against the car behind us. “If Yulia is going to step back and play wait-and-see, that makes our job easier. If a whole host of Whitecliff assassins took her place, that’d be a different story.”
“What if she tells the Whitecliffs about us, though?” I said. “If it gets out that we’ve formed our own family…”
“She won’t.” Vera nodded back to the house. “She’s a standoffish one. Always wants to be the main character. Can’t stand her. C’mon, let’s get inside, my feet are killing me. Especially the one Yulia stabbed.”
“Vera—” I caught up with her as she started for the front door. “Was it not her who gave you that scar? You said it was her, but she said…”
She stopped, looking back at me, and her eyes gleamed with something I didn’t recognize, a dark intensity that sent fear rippling through me. “Don’t,” she said, voice low. “We do not discuss that topic.”
“I-I’m sorry,” I breathed, voice shaky. Her expression softened suddenly, shaking out of a trance, and she took my hand.
“C’mon. Don’t make that face. I can’t stand to see my wife sad.”
“Ah…” I blushed, swept off my feet as she tugged me along towards the house.
Petra chuckled behind me, something about the Wolf turning into a puppy, but I was swept up in Vera’s rhythm as we got into the house, as we saw Jenna and got a stern talking-to about risky activities, all of which Vera ignored.
The manor was clear. We’d made it back in one piece.
But the question remained.