Chapter 26
Murder. That was the only thing running through my mind—cold, hard murder. Killing the man who took everything from me, who thought he could cross the Reaper and live.
I would bury him alive if that was what it took to get her back.
I would crown him with his own blood, watch it fall down his temples while my lips found hers again.
I would burn everything and everyone he thought he could hide behind.
I would destroy him.
Two weeks had passed since Eva had been taken from me.
Two weeks since I was knocked out in the Vallen house and dumped in a warehouse like I was fucking garbage.
Nikolai found me shortly after I woke up, storming into the building, his gun raised.
But I was alone, tied up in a pile of my blood, sweat, and drool.
The only thing truly wounded was my pride.
“What the hell happened?” Nikolai had asked, helping me up, his face unusually serious.
And for once, I couldn’t answer him. Because I didn’t know. My mind couldn’t think of anything but one word:
Eva.
I would do anything to get her back. Anything.
Because I was fucking obsessed with Evangeline Vallen. I didn’t care about what kept us apart. Her brother, my dangerous life, our families’ feud, anything.
Despite all of the rules, I wanted her. And I wouldn’t stop until I had her.
This was merely a temporary setback. I had lost my Queen, but a King could still win the game.
I just had to think through a strategy—after I slept away some of the ringing in my ears.
Now that I’d gone fourteen days without my sunlight, the darkness was taking over my mind, my thirst for blood even stronger than before.
It wouldn’t be satisfied until I got her back.
“Kill,” the monster within me hissed. “Fucking kill.”
“Alek!” a voice shouted through my fog. “Alek, stop! You’re going to kill him!”
Good, I thought. I will fucking murder this city if I’m away from her any longer.
I was becoming feral, the urges inside of me growing and growing. How dare Julian Vallen think he was enough to stop me? How dare Evangeline jump in front of that bullet for me? How dare the world think it could keep her from me?
“Alek! Jesus Christ, dude, stop!”
Two arms shoved me to the ground, a knee pressing down onto my back. I snarled, turning to face the person who thought they could restrain me.
Only to come face to face with my cousins’ bright eyes.
“Dude, you need to fucking calm down,” Nikolai said before gesturing to the bleeding man in the corner. “You could have killed Pavel.”
I blinked a few times, my monster receding from the surface, simmering deep inside of me.
Looking around at the ring I was standing in, the horrified faces around the room, I finally remembered what I was doing.
Nikolai had brought me to the gym where many of my men practiced their hand-to-hand combat skills.
I rarely came because I rarely needed it, but my cousin thought I should blow off steam.
Hence, the unconscious man who sat in a puddle of red.
The man blinked a few times, looking at me with fear.
“Sorry, Pavel,” I said gruffly, though I didn’t mean it. I was only sorry because I wished it were Julian Vallen I’d almost murdered instead.
Nikolai sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face like it would help wipe the tension from his bones. I knew he felt it. We all did. Everyone was uneasy, afraid I would decide enough was enough and go on a killing spree, uncaring of whether the men I was shooting were Vallens or Drakovs.
I was still toying with the idea.
“This isn’t healthy,” Nikolai said quietly. “You can’t keep sending every man to the hospital. We’re going to run out of people, people you need, by the way. And anyway, you can’t keep fighting like this. This fire inside of you is going to burn you alive before you even get to her.”
I rolled my shoulders, blood drying on my knuckles, my pulse still roaring in my ears. My body buzzed like I’d been plugged into a live wire, every nerve screaming for release.
“I don’t care,” I replied flatly. “If burning myself alive gets me closer to Eva, then I shall burn.”
“Aleksandr, you know what I mean.” He stepped closer, lowering his voice so the others couldn’t hear. “You’re not yourself right now. You’re not thinking anything through. This is going to get all of us killed.”
I laughed, sharp and humorless. “No. This”—I gestured vaguely to the rage still clawing at my chest—“is me thinking very clearly. Julian took something that belongs to me. There is only one outcome for that: his head mounted in my fucking living room.”
Nikolai held my gaze for a long moment before exhaling deeply. My cousin rarely argued morality with me. We’d been raised in darkness, bathed in blood for as long as we could remember. Neither of us pretended we were anything but dangerous monsters lurking in the city’s shadows.
But now, there was something cautious in his expression. Not fear of me—but fear of what came next. Fear of what I would be willing to do to get to her.
“You have to be smart,” he said. “I’m all for getting her back.
You know that. I like Eva, and when you told me who she was, my opinion didn’t change.
She’s a sweet girl, and she brings out something soft in you that I haven’t seen since Liza died.
I want to help you get her back, but we can’t do this if you don’t have some sort of strategy, and storming the Vallen house, guns blazing, isn’t the right one. It’s going to get you killed.”
“I don’t care if I get killed.”
And I meant it. Because this half-life I was living—this miserable existence spent clutching the pillow she slept on to my face, hoping to smell her shampoo again—was nothing. I would rather have died than move on without my Eva.
“You should care. Because right now, if I know Eva like I think I do, then she’s just as miserable without you, pining and waiting for her Prince Charming to rescue her.
But if you die, if you let your thick skull get yourself fucking killed, then she will be forced to move on with another man.
And I’m going to guess you don’t want that. ”
No.
No.
The thought of Eva with another man, smiling, laughing, kissing, fucking, drove me mad.
She was mine. She would not marry another, would not fuck another, would not even look at another man.
I would bury myself so deep into her soul that roots would grow.
Any flowers she bloomed would bear the scent of me.
The darkness inside me roared. Find her. Take her. Find her. Take her.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
I slammed my fist into the ground, my jaw clenching. “There will be no other man,” I growled, my voice colder than the Arctic. “Never.”
My cousin crossed his arms, lifting me off the ground and leading me toward the locker room. “I agree.”
“She is mine.”
“I know.” Nikolai leaned in and smirked. “So what are you going to do about it?”
The men flinched as I passed them, the air tightening with every one of my steps. But unlike before, my mind wasn’t fogged with rage. It was clearer than ever, sharper than a razor’s edge.
I showered in the locker room, watching Pavel’s blood swirl down the drain, overlaying it with the memory of Eva’s wound.
Fuck, I didn’t even know if she was okay.
I didn’t know anything. All of my messages were going undelivered, and my attempts to drive past her brother’s house were always swiftly thwarted by Nikolai.
He’d sliced the brakes to my car, so that was currently sitting in the shop, waiting for a distant cousin of mine to pick it up.
Before, I’d debated killing him for all of his intervention. But now, I was grateful for it. He kept me from getting myself killed before I could come up with a better plan.
After I dressed in my signature suit—my plan solidified from the time spent standing in the hot water, letting the droplets fall down my spine—I found Nikolai waiting by the exit.
“So,” he said, twirling his car keys in his hand. “What’s the plan, cousin?”
“I need the Company’s rehearsal schedule.”
He smiled before reaching into the glovebox and shoving a packet of papers into my hands. “Already got it. Now what?”
“Now,” I said, gritting my jaw, “I go to the damn ballet.”