Chapter Nineteen
Tiana
I take a deep breath, my heart pounding in my chest.
I can still feel Kirill, hard and hot inside me. It’s both comforting and terrifying. But there is one thing I’m certain of: whatever happens, I have to tell him the truth. Maybe if we’re still connected this way, he’ll be less inclined to react badly.
“You need to tell me something?” he presses, brushing away stray strands of hair that are clinging to my damp face.
The smell of the leather seats of the SUV mingles with the scent of sex hanging heavy in the air.
The engine rumbles beneath us, a constant reminder of the world outside that’s waiting to tear us apart.
“Well… a number of things,” I whisper, my voice shaking. “It’s important.”
He doesn’t say anything, but I can feel him tense up against me. He knows something’s wrong. He nods for me to go on.
“I was approached… by the FBI,” I say in a rush. “They picked me up that night I left the estate.”
“The night you ran away.” He says it as a statement of fact.
“It was a mistake, I know. I was an idiot.” I gnaw on my lip, waiting for him to say something.
He doesn’t. “First, I thought they were there to rescue me – they knew about the auction, what my father had done. They knew that I hadn’t gone to you willingly.
” I stroke his face. “But that’s different now. You need to know that.”
“I do.” His voice is expressionless, but a muscle flickers in his jaw.
“But they weren’t planning to get me away from you.
Quite the opposite. They wanted me to go back to you.
To…” I hate this part. “To spy on you. To get information so they could make a case against you.” I pause, waiting for Kirill to say something.
To explode, to lose it. He doesn’t do any of those things. He does nothing. Which is worse.
“I didn’t want to do it! I swear I didn’t.” Fear has me babbling. “But they threatened to prosecute me if I didn’t cooperate. They said they had enough evidence to charge me as an accessory.”
“An accessory?” His eyebrows furrow.
“They told me it was a flimsy case and that it wouldn’t stick. But they said that your organization wouldn’t believe that I hadn’t turned you in, so I’d be targeted.”
Kirill continues to be silent, but I can feel his touch tighten on me. He’s trying to hold back his anger. But I have to keep going.
“They offered me protection if I turned state’s evidence against you and the Bratva. They said you would want me dead if you found out and that I would need to go into witness protection.”
“I would want you dead?”
I can feel tears starting to well up in my eyes, and I take a deep breath to steady myself. “I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to betray you, but I didn’t want to go to jail, either. I didn’t know who to trust.”
Kirill shifts, and again I can feel how he’s still inside me, but there’s a stillness to his posture that’s scaring me. I can feel his heart beating against mine, and I know he’s trying to process what I’m saying.
“I’m sorry, Kirill. I never wanted to hurt you.
” I stroke his damp hair from his face, searching his eyes, desperate to find the intensity of emotion we’d just shared.
“I didn’t know what choice I had. I kept hoping that I’d find a way to get out of it.
And you need to know that I never told them anything about you or your business. ”
“You know nothing about my business,” he replies smoothly.
“Exactly. I told them that from the start, but they didn’t believe me. They said that I’d need to make a plan to get them what they needed.” Tension is coiling inside me like a spring.
“You weren’t planning to cooperate.”
“No! Of course not!” I need him to know this. “Maybe I didn’t want to be a part of this world – your world – in the beginning. But I’m here now, and I don’t want to be anywhere else. I don’t want to leave you. I mean it when I say that I love you.”
“And that is what you needed to tell me?” He tilts his head, his beautiful eyes inscrutable.
“Yes that,” I say. “And…”
“And?”
Just get it over with, Tee!
You’re over the worst part.
I take in a breath that swells my lungs. “Kirill, I’m pregnant.” I blurt before I can change my mind. I don’t know which was harder to admit – the fact that I was being forced to betray him or that I’m expecting his child.
His dark brows pull together, and I hold my breath, trying to figure out what’s going on in his mind.
Again, he doesn’t give any clues. Instead, without speaking, he shifts his hands to my hips and lifts me off of him.
I feel a small pang as I feel our bodies disconnect.
It’s like he’s cut a bond that held us together.
“Kirill?”
He glances at me while adjusting his clothing, putting himself away, and zipping his fly. I flinch when he leans down and then reaches past me, but he’s just handing me my clothes.
“You should dress,” he says before dropping my bra on my lap. It’s bundled with my panties, which are still damp and fragrant with my juices.
“Fine,” I say hoarsely, fumbling to get my clothes back on. I feel my face heat as I get my panties halfway up my legs, then lift my hips to pull them up. He’s watching me. He keeps watching as I hook my arms through my bra straps and reach behind me to do up the clasp.
It’s only when I’ve managed to do a makeshift job of getting my dress closed around me that he turns away and raps firmly on the dividing window.
It glides down silently, and he snaps out a string of Russian words to the driver, who keeps his eyes fixed on the motorway ahead of us.
The man nods curtly, then takes the next slipway, guiding the car in the opposite direction.
“Kirill, I’m sorry. I should have told you before.” Anxiety is surging within me. “I didn’t mean-”
He raises a finger, stopping me as he puts his phone to his ear, seemingly waiting for a call to ring through. A tiny voice comes over the line, and then he’s rattling off in Russian again.
I still don’t know enough words to make any sense of it. I could kick myself. In the weeks that I’ve been with him, the only thing I’ve picked up is “ ptichka ,” which I think means “little bird.” And that “ ty moya ” means “you’re mine.”
He ends the call and puts his phone away, leaning back against the seat and looking straight ahead. His jaw is tight.
I hold my breath until he slants a look at me. “What did Petrov’s men do to you?” he asks.
“I… they…” I wave my hand in the area of my chest. “They cut me. It stung, but it wasn’t unbearable. It was mainly to scare me, I think.” And to amuse themselves, but I don’t go into that.
“That was all?” He’s still looking at me.
“They put a plastic bag over my head and stopped me from breathing,” I say hoarsely. The thought still makes fear surge in me. The helplessness. The terror.
Kirill’s expression darkens. His hands, which are resting on his thighs, clench into fists. Then he nods and leans back in his seat again.
What does this mean?
Is he pleased that it wasn’t worse? Does he care? I wish I understood what he’s thinking right now. I can’t pick up even a hint of what’s going on beneath his impenetrable exterior.
For the next few minutes, I sit in silence, casting furtive glances at him, my heart pounding as I try to figure out what’s about to happen next. But some tiny part of me is starting to develop some troubling suspicions.
He doesn’t trust you.
He thinks you betrayed him.
And I have no doubt about what Kirill does to traitors.
He kills them.