20. NIKOLAI
I pause outside Andie’s door, wondering if I would be better off just leaving her to rest.
But I know damn well I won’t be able to sleep tonight if I don’t check in on her first. I can only imagine everything that’s going through her head right now, and I want to put at least some of it to rest before I turn in for the night.
I thought I heard her passing by the office earlier this evening, but she made no effort to come inside or speak to me, so I figured that she must have wanted to keep her distance.
After our encounter earlier when she told me about the pregnancy, I don’t blame her.
I might not know exactly how, but it’s clear that I’ve screwed this up, and the best I can hope for is to find some way to put it right, even if that feels impossible right now.
There’s still so much I need to do, so much I need to take care of. Get a doctor in, first and foremost, to confirm that this pregnancy is actually happening—not that I think she’s lying about it, but the two tests could have come from a faulty pack, and I’m not going to put all my faith in them.
I can already imagine how my father is going to react. How excited he’ll be. I have been so dedicated to making sure his business has succeeded over here that I’ve hardly been able to share any of my personal life with him—not that there was much to share.
But this? This is the kind of thing I know he will be delighted about. As much as he is calculating and careful, focused on his business, he has done it all for us—for his bloodline, for his family. Even if Max seems incapable of seeing it that way.
I lift my knuckles to knock on the door quietly, and then push it open. I expect to see Andie curled up under the covers, but instead, I find the bed empty.
“Andie?” I murmur into the half-darkness, but there’s no response.
I glance to the bathroom, expecting to see light spilling out from under the door, but to my surprise, it’s dark.
I glance around, frowning. I move toward the edge of the bed, brushing my hand across the covers, but I don’t feel anything.
No warmth, no sign at all that she was there. It doesn’t make sense.
I reach over to flick on the bedside lamp, and find the room empty. I push open the bathroom door, but in there it’s the same dark, cold, nobody to be seen. Something grips at the back of my throat.
She’s not here.
I move through the house swiftly, calling out her name, waiting to hear her call back to me—for her to come wandering out of the kitchen, confused as to why I’m causing such a fuss, her hair a mess and dark circles under her eyes before she makes her way back to bed.
But there’s nothing. The place is empty, almost eerily still.
It’s not until this moment that I realize just how used to her presence I’ve become, because her sudden absence seems to stretch out in front of me for an eternity.
I call out a few more times, but my voice just echoes back on itself. No answer.
No Andie.
I stride to the front entrance, a growing sense of discomfort taking hold of me as I push open the door. The two night guards, Jakob and Vadim, are standing on either side of the door, and they both glance around as they hear me approaching.
“Pakhan,” Jakob greets me, rolling his shoulders back and standing up straight.
“Where is Andie?” I demand.
She wouldn’t have left, would she? Not after everything I told her, all the ways I tried to convince her that she would be in danger if she so much as set foot outside this place.
Jesus. That argument we had, was it this bad, bad enough that she felt as though she had no choice but to take off?
“She’s…in there with you, isn’t she?” Jakob replies, exchanging a nonplussed look with Vadim.
I grit my teeth. “Do you think I’d be fucking asking you where she was if I knew the answer?” I hiss back at him. “She’s not in the house. This is the only way out, which means you must have seen her if she left. So, where is she?”
“I…I didn’t see anything,” Vadim replies, and he looks to Jakob, who shakes his head too.
“Me neither.”
“When did you change shift? Midnight?” I ask.
They both nod.
I close my eyes for a moment. “Please tell me you kept someone on the door while you were switching out…”
They fall silent. I can tell neither of them want to be the one to admit that they made such a stupid fucking mistake.
But it’s done now, and I know it’s too late to undo it.
Andie is smart, she could easily have kept track of the fact that the guards changed shifts every now and then, and that she could slip out without being stopped if she just played her cards right.
But where the hell has she gone?
“Pull the CCTV,” I order them both. “Get everyone up. I want to know exactly where she went.”
They stand there for a moment, unmoving. I narrow my eyes at them. “What the hell are you waiting for?” I bark. “Now!”
They take off, rushing to do as I command, knowing full well what the punishment will be if they don’t.
Seeing them hurry to do as they’re told brings me some level of relief, knowing that at least she won’t be able to get far, but I will not be able to relax until I know for sure she is safe.
That she’s back here with me, where she belongs.
I head back to my office, pulling up the CCTV feeds around the building to try and figure out where it is she might have gone—and my heart sinks as I scrub back through it, watching her as she sneaks to the front of the house,
pushing open the door slightly to cast her eye around and make certain that she’s not going to be stopped in her tracks.
Those fucking idiots. They left her with no protection, no nothing. I clench my fists at my sides, telling myself that there’s not a damn thing I won’t do to make them pay for this given the chance.
She slips out the front of the house, down the path, and toward the gates, hurrying along as though she’s terrified that she will be caught and stopped if she slows her pace, even for a second.
She makes it out of the gate and takes off to the left, rushing away down the street and out of sight of the cameras.
My hand freezes over the computer. Is she gone?
I think back to our last conversation, the way she looked at me with such fury in her eyes, as though she could barely believe I had the nerve to meet her gaze. As though she thought I saw her as nothing more than a piece of meat, someone to carry my child, to do as she was told any time I wanted.
I should have done more to convince her otherwise. God, I should have done something.
I run through the rest of the footage, half expecting her not to turn up again. She could be gone by now. I’ll get my men out looking for her, but if she truly doesn’t want to be here, then there’s nothing I can do to?—
And then, in the corner of the frame, I see her emerge once more. My chest tightens. She’s looking back over her shoulder, seemingly nervous. About me? Worried that I sent someone out after her?
She reaches the gate again, and has her hand on it—when I see something else move at the edge of the camera.
Something dark. An image that, for a second, I can’t place.
I squint, watching as the dark shape moves toward her, and then, as they are illuminated by the light of the house, I see it.
A man. Closing the distance on her fast, faster than she can escape.
I grit my teeth, knowing there’s nothing I can do to change it now, taking in as much detail as I can in the hopes of figuring out what’s going on.
He grabs her, and fury courses through me. The thought of another man’s hands on her makes me sick to my fucking stomach. No matter what Andie thinks of me, she is my wife, and I hate the thought of anyone laying hands on her who isn’t me.
The man clasps something over her mouth, and she goes limp, slumping back against him helplessly.
I peer down at the screen, pushing all the anger from my head, forcing myself to try and figure out, instead, who exactly this man is.
Because someone making a move against my wife like this, they have to be pretty goddamn certain of themselves, and I don’t know who would be stupid enough to?—
And then he turns. Just slightly, just enough that I can get a look at his face. And when I see who it is, who is standing there with his arms around her, the glimpse of his narrowed eyes in the frame—it all makes sense.
It’s Max.
My fucking brother.
Taking what he clearly thought should have been his.
I pause the camera, zooming in to check that I’ve read this right, but there’s no way around it. It’s him. His eyes are nearly black with anger even on the fuzzy footage, the same way they were when he confronted me, drunk, in my father’s mansion soon before we left.
I should have known that he wouldn’t give up so easily. But that sure as hell doesn’t mean that I’m going to let him get away with it. No, he is going to pay for what he has done.
And I’m going to rain down holy fucking hell on his head for daring to make a move against my woman.