Chapter 7
seven
Freedom has never tasted so damn good.
The rich amber liquid slides down my throat, and I savor the subtle taste of vanilla and notes of caramel as it assaults my senses. After weeks of fucking stale water and the FBI considered food, this is heaven. Or as close as I will ever get.
I should be celebrating my release with my comrades.
Instead, I am pacing the length of my office behind my desk in an attempt to burn off some of the anger I have building thanks to the five idiots in front of me. The grip on my tumbler is so tight I can feel the crystal beginning to crack under the pressure.
“I gave you an explicit order not to use any of our men to rescue her,” I snarl at Vas. “Is that not what I fucking told you?”
I expect my Sovietnik to be chastened, not smug.
“What do you mean, Pakhan?” Vas sits easily in his chair, relaxed, one leg crossed over the other. “I obeyed your instruction to the letter.”
“You call shotting up Elias Ward’s funeral to retrieve Ava obeying my orders?
” I roar, throwing the crystal in my hand into the lit fireplace.
The glass shatters against the marble; the fire shoots.
Up as it laps at the liquor. None of my men blink.
None of them flinch. They aren’t afraid of my ire.
Maybe I should change that. Make them cower beneath my blows for defending me Whip them until they understand my word is law.
Blyat.
Where did those thoughts come from?
I shake my head to clear the darkness that seeps in from beneath the barrier I erected so long ago. That is not me. My father is the one who beat his men into submission. It was the same for Elias. They rule with fear and pain.
I am not them.
I will never be them.
Tomas showed me a different way.
A better way.
“We didn’t know Ava would be there,” Nicolai speaks up, eyeing me warily as I resume my pacing.
“Our sources told us he wouldn’t be stupid enough to drag her out in public.
Then again, he wouldn’t have known our plan for getting you released.
He probably thought it was safe to parade her around like she was a spoil of war, and he was Caesar. ”
My jaw clenches, fists tightening at the thought of that pervert’s hands on her, touching her. I shouldn’t care about that. She betrayed me. Ava has sealed her own fate.
Or so I want to tell myself.
The minx is still under my skin, affecting me in ways no woman ever has. And many have tried. Ava was never meant to mean anything to me. I meant to keep my distance. To keep her at arm’s length, but even the best laid plans pave the road to hell.
I ordered Vas to abandon her. That decision tore me down to my very core. I was torn between my duty to my men, my empire, and the woman who is my wife. The woman who betrayed me.
Except she hadn’t.
Not really.
That failure is making me bitter and irritable.
“If you didn’t rescue her,” I question my men, “then who did?”
The five of them eye each other, their faces twisted with guilt, like toddlers with their hands caught in the cookie jar.
“Well, when you ordered me not to use our men to rescue her, we might have used a…mutually interest party instead.”
I raise a brow at him. “Mutually interested party?”
Dima covers a laugh with a harsh cough.
“Are you pausing for dramatic suspense?” I question. “Or are you too afraid to tell me?”
Vas mumbles something beneath his breath I don’t quite catch.
“I’m sorry. What was that, Judas?”
Everyone but Vas snickers.
“The Kavenaughs.” Vas clears his throat. “We struck a deal with the Kavenaughs.”
“And you found her how?” I have my suspicions, but I want him to come clean. They burned an asset to get her back. They would have had to. The only place for Christian to hold her would have been where Elias kept his women, and only a handful of people know where that is.
The question is whether burning that asset is going to hinder us.
“We didn’t have a choice, Matt,” Nikolai speaks up from his spot near the fireplace. “About a week after Ava went missing, he started sending us photos. He said if we didn’t get her out soon, she’d be dead, and he made sure to show us exactly what Christian was doing to her.”
The older Russian drags out his phone, fiddling with an app before he hands it over to me.
Blyat.
I wanted so badly to believe she hadn’t betrayed me, and this proves it. The gruesome evidence before me causes my stomach to churn and bile to rise in my throat. Ava’s body is covered in bruises, her fair skin cut in several area. Blood drips down her pale, nearly lifeless face.
The more I scroll, the worse the evidence becomes, until I am forced to look away.
I am no stranger to violence. I’ve cut, stabbed, hacked, and maimed more men than I can remember, but never a woman.
And this is my woman.
My woman.
I swore to myself a long time ago that I would never let a woman get close to me. Not after Katerina, whose deception I’d been so blind to it had nearly cost me everything. I’d let my emotions blind me to her betrayal, and I promised myself that I’d never feel that way again.
And then came Ava.
Ava, who wears her emotions like a shield. Whose emerald eyes are a sea of torment and innocence that can swallow anyone whole. Unlike Katerine, Ava isn’t practiced in the art of seduction. She’d never been taught how to lure men to her bed. Hell, she was a virgin on our wedding night.
Still, she betrayed me in the end. Even if she didn’t mean to. Even if it had been to help someone else, she ultimately deceived me, and that is something I can’t easily forgive. Vas is sure there must be another way the FBI agent knew my brother’s name, but I’m not sold.
The real problem is that as much I want to pretend that Ava means nothing to me beyond a pawn I can move around the chessboard, it know it isn’t true. Even after her apparent betrayal, I feared losing her.
Ava is the chink in my armor.
My Achilles heel.
That must change.
She can stay with the Kavanaughs for all I care because there is no way in hell she is coming back here. The last thing I need is a weakness, and Ava is the greatest weakness of all.
I won’t let a woman destroy what I have worked so hard to build.
Even if that woman is my wife.