26. Rurik
26
RURIK
W ord spread of my marriage, and it seemed to have the impact that we hoped it would. If any cop or personnel from the college were interested in talking to Kelly about those drugs planted in her locker, or anything else about her time on campus, they’d have to come to the Baranov mansion to find her. And no one got past the guards at the gate.
When she was at home with me, at my penthouse, we could rely on the same distance from the law. No one would just breeze up to the door and arrest her. We’d already contacted the legal team to be prepared for any pending arrests. Not a single cop would interrogate her on my watch.
Still, she had to tie up loose ends on campus. For that matter, we kept her apartment as is. The lease wouldn’t be up for a couple more months, so it could just sit there as a decoy. Our cameras would show if anyone broke in, anyway, but for all other purposes, it would provide the illusion that she was still reachable there.
“So we just need to return these books to the lab instructor?” I asked her after I parked and then walked toward the building with her.
“Yes.” She nodded, seeming to look around with a new filter. No longer stressed and weary, she stood tall and proud, healthy and rested. It pleased me to no end to see her thriving and so much more at peace to not have to struggle for money to eat or time to sleep around working overtime.
“Are you sure you’re not going to suffer from whiplash at how quickly everything is changing?” I asked her. “You won’t regret not finishing your degree?”
She smiled, holding my hand as we walked in the warmer, yet still chilly, spring air. “No. No regrets.”
“None?” I had to check with how quickly our relationship progressed once we were reunited that night I saved her. “Eva wanted to go to college to feel like a ‘normal’ woman. She wanted some independence before she would be arranged in a marriage. But you started your classes to get a job.”
She looked at me seriously. “And why would I want a job if you and I are going to try to start a family?”
“Start a family?” I teased. “We already are one.” I squeezed her fingers for emphasis.
“But we’ll try to have children soon,” she said with a smile. “ That is what I’ve always dreamed of. Having my own family. Something I’d never experienced before. Yes, I know. Your family and organization are the family, but I mean a little family. Our family.”
I would do all I could to make that happen for her because it was a dream of mine too. Just so long as she wasn’t sad to lose her independence by just being a mother and wife.
If she starts to seem like she’s upset about not graduating and having a career, then we’ll adjust later. It wasn’t like there was a rule prohibiting her from being a mother and a career woman.
“I’ll be happy not to be here on this campus anymore, though.” She snapped her fingers. “Ah, crap. I’ll still need to return my employee badge.”
“Do we need to do that tonight?” I asked. It would make sense to, since we were here.
“No, it’d be too late to do that now. And I don’t even have it on me right now, anyway. It’s back at home.”
I shrugged. “Okay, then we’ll handle that another time. Sorry.”
She gave me a funny look. “Why would you say you’re sorry?”
“Because you’re talking about not wanting to be here on campus anymore and we’ll have to come back again.”
“But just to wrap up loose ends. I can handle that.”
She could. She could handle anything that came her way.
After we entered a narrower walkway near the library, I felt my phone buzz and checked the screen. I didn’t have a chance to really get a look at the text, though, because Kelly screamed.
“Look out!”
I tensed, bracing for attack and reaching for my gun. From one of the arched nooks cut into the exterior of one of the buildings that ran perpendicular to the one we walked along, a couple of men burst out from the shadows. They’d been standing there, clearly waiting to ambush us, not merely hanging out in the carved niche of brickwork but idling at the intersecting pathway.
“Get back,” I ordered them both. Holding on to Kelly’s hand, I tugged her closer so I could hug her and block her from these guys.
They were too quick, though, barreling into me. And they were too efficient, having someone ready on a moped to blast through and snatch Kelly by the waist.
One moment, we were walking and talking, carefree as only a couple in love could be. Then the next, she was flailing and bucking to break free from the man riding the moped and speeding away.
In a flash, everything had blurred with too many actions at once. Fury filled me, and I couldn’t try to bottle it in. Snatching the closest man to me, I started a gruesome, no-holds-barred fight. Punching, kicking, and trying to slam this asshole to the ground, I resisted the stone-cold instinct to end his life now. Right here and now.
People scattered from the nearest building, hearing the sounds of the fight, but that didn’t matter. It couldn’t. The second I choked this fucker into submission and pinned him to the cold ground, I fished my phone out and called for backup.
“Find her. Find her now!”
“We’re tracking her already. It looks like she’s heading toward the building.”
“Which fucking building?” I roared, tightening my fingers on the man’s neck on the ground. He wasn’t a Petrov. I didn’t think he was an Ilyin, either. Whoever he was, he’d screwed up big time in collaborating with someone who dared to take my wife.
“Where Marcus James was killed. The admin building that has the dean’s office in it.”
“Dumbasses,” I muttered. “They took her there?”
Seeing a Baranov soldier running up to me, I ended the call and let him take over handling this punk I’d grabbed. “They took her to the admin building. Handle him.”
He nodded, and I sprinted in the direction of where my wife had been taken.
I wasn’t losing her. Not like this, right after we talked about the future.
I wasn’t losing her ever.
I’m coming for you. I promise. I won’t fail you, Kelly. I won’t.
I clenched my teeth and ran harder. From my left, another Baranov man showed up and ran with me, almost racing me to reach the building where she had been taken. When he got close enough, I saw that it wasn’t just another soldier as backup, but Vik.
“What the fuck is going on?” he said. “I just got the alert from the crew that something went down and I see you running.”
“Someone drove by and took Kelly.”
It wasn’t easy talking while running, but we weren’t amateurs.
“What the fuck? Who?”
I shook my head the best I could while running. “I didn’t see. It happened too quickly.”
Guilt crept in that I hadn’t been more alert. Already, I was lowering my guard too much. I was slacking. Slipping. I had let myself assume that I could have the privilege of enjoying my time with her and that no danger could reach her when I was right next to her, but that was an illusion that I would never let get the better of me again.
I had to stay on guard and alert, now more than ever. Counting on having Baranov men nearby would go a long way in seeing to her safety, but being here wasn’t smart.
Someone had something against her, and it wasn’t a simple little issue that could be swept under the rug. Something was going on, and I had to wonder whether she was being open with me about whatever secret she still wanted to keep.
Now that we were married, now that we were excited about the future, it was more imperative than ever that I finally shed this suspicion that she was hiding something from me. Her nervousness faded since she’d pulled off that one time of spying that resulted in nothing. Her skittishness had receded in the aftermath of that security guard springing on us in the basement and my act of killing him to get away.
In the blur of activity that followed that kill, the drugs being planted in her locker, the attention on Kelly from the cops, and now this ambush and capture, it was my mistake to lose sight of the possibility that she might have been hiding something from me.
As soon as I found her, and as soon as she was safe again, I would have to ask. Because the closer I came to the building where too many bigger secrets were discussed and where deals were arranged, not to mention where so many individuals were killed, the more my suspicions mounted and escalated into a heavy pressure weighing me down.
No more time to keep secrets, wife.
No more hiding from me.
I respected that she’d managed with an isolated sense of survival since her childhood, but now that she had me, she had to let me in and help.