31. Kelly
31
KELLY
E va and Irina comforted me by asking me for more details. They didn’t interrogate me while the men spoke, but they kept me preoccupied explaining more and more about the secret I never wanted to share with them—with anyone. It was just too gross and morbid.
Oddly, the push to keep talking turned into venting. As I unleashed years of pent-up guilt and anger and fury, I felt freer and lighter, no longer weighed down.
Then Rurik came and told me he would take me home. All three men in the room expressed the same clear statement, though. Under Oleg’s command, a hit had been placed on Mayor O’Malley.
At home, instead of having to explain all the shame that kept me in the habit of shielding my secret and the horror of being afraid to trust anyone for so many years, Rurik fucked me.
Hard and fast, with lots of anal play just to shock me.
Then slow and tender, with so many sweet words of praise and devotion that I was moved to happy tears.
All night, into the next day, and following into the night. Like rabbits, we fucked on every horizontal surface in the apartment. In the wake of finally shedding all the stress of hiding that I’d killed—or thought I’d killed—a cop, I resorted to a marathon of sex.
It distracted me from thinking too much at the same time it pushed me to just get over it with my loving husband at my side.
We avoided talking about it for long, and I tuned out when Rurik got calls from the others. I’d ripped the Band-Aid off, and now, with this promise that a hitman would take care of O’Malley, all I had to do was endure this waiting game until the news came that a professional killer had succeeded in something I’d failed to do as a child.
Days passed by, and I trusted Rurik to be the commander of this situation. I wouldn’t have to remain locked up to the point of being stir crazy forever.
“You’re restless,” Rurik commented one afternoon when I was pacing.
I nodded, not bothering to argue it. I was restless. And excited. It seemed almost like fate that such a huge and good thing could come to my life so soon after the hell of exposing my horrible secret.
But I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just thinking too much and projecting my dreams into what could end up being nothing.
I also might be pregnant.
He deserved to know, but until I had a test, I didn’t want to get his hopes up for them to be dashed or for him to be disappointed if I was wrong.
We had been practicing making a baby. All week, we’d been in bed with each other. While it might not have been the healthiest diversion to rely on, it was how we’d coped.
“Are you too restless to come with me to the campus?” he asked.
I raised my brows. “Seriously?” I almost wanted to jump at the idea. I bet he’d let me grab a test from the drugstore on the way. I was under the assumption that I’d be under house arrest until O’Malley was killed.
“Yeah. You’re clearly getting cabin fever.”
I laughed, amazed that I could be amused after learning I’d still have a target on my back from the man I thought I’d killed but hadn’t. “Trust me, I haven’t been bored.”
He smiled as he stood. “A little fresh air would do us good. Now that it’s actually looking like spring out there.”
“Sure. It would be nice to have a change of scenery.” I tilted my head to the side. “But what do you need to go to the campus for?” I wasn’t taking classes anymore. It sounded like the drug distribution had ticked down.
“One of the soldiers is having issues with a security guard.” He rolled his eyes. “Another power-tripping idiot who needs to be taught a lesson.”
I nodded, unfazed by the fact that this meant my husband had to go beat the shit out of a punk who’d deserve it. The world was too full of idiots who needed to be given what they deserved.
We changed and got dressed, surprised that we were overdressed for the night air. Spring had sprung, or it wanted to with back-and-forth forecasts ahead of us. Tonight was balmy and warm, and it was with a strange sense of humor that I considered the irony.
“It felt like winter would never end,” I told Rurik as we walked through campus from the parking lot. “And I was so sick of walking everywhere in the snow and cold.”
“So now that it’s pleasant weather to walk through, you don’t need to?” he guessed, alert and scanning our surroundings.
I knew he was nervous because I’d been captured just like this before, walking alongside him. But I wasn’t as worried. Jerome was dead. No one else knew me on campus. And Eric Benson seemed too nervous to use me as a mole or spy or whatever he’d wanted to consider. It was clear that he viewed the Baranovs as foes, but he wasn’t acting on that disagreement.
“I’m just so used to walking everywhere,” I said with a shrug.
“We’ll get you that vacation home somewhere,” he promised. “And a honeymoon,” he added with a wink.
Maybe it’ll be more like a babymoon, a real vacation before the baby comes…
I resisted the thought of it, not wanting to get my hopes up high.
We entered the other side of the admin building, where the campus security and operations departments were, but I didn’t see that one student worker who’d thought he had been so helpful in giving me the heads up that Jerome was stalking me.
“You can wait here,” Rurik suggested, pointing at the unoccupied office room with lots of monitors. “I’ll have a guard posted outside the door while I tend to business.” He cracked his knuckles.
“Okay.” I glanced at the guard standing there, and he nodded at us. “Just don’t take too long, okay? I was hoping we could stop at a store on the way home.”
He kissed my cheek before he left. “Yes, dear.”
I laughed at his silly endearment that he only used mockingly. We had a whole inside joke running about that being such a cliché term of domestic life.
Sitting in the chair and scrolling on my phone, I whiled away the time and tried not to get ahead of myself thinking about whether I could be pregnant. I Googled symptoms, though, unable to get it off my mind.
Missed period. Fatigue. Nausea. Feeling more out of breath. Some cramps.
I’d had all of those on and off lately.
I bit my lip and swiveled in the chair, getting giddier about the chance that I could soon be a mother, just as I’d always dreamed of. Because the cycle would be broken with me. No generational trauma would carry over to my kids. I had seen what not to do as a parent, and I vowed to pay back ahead and be the best mother possible for my kids.
Oh, that too. Needing to pee. I shook my head at how I met every symptom on the list I’d found.
Getting up to see if the guard would come with me toward the bathroom, I looked both ways down the hall.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“Can you lead me to the bathroom?” I asked. A teeny part of me loathed having to ask that. Before Rurik, I would just walk myself to the bathroom any damn time I pleased. But also, before Rurik was in my life, I had to exist in constant fear and anxiety.
“Sure thing, Kelly.” He walked with me toward the bathroom, and I did my business, but when I exited, he was no longer the only person in the hallway. He faced me upon my exit, smiling. Turned this way slightly, he missed the two men entering at the other end of the hallway.
Eric Benson didn’t look different. He appeared as put together and polished as the last time I saw him.
But the monster walking next to him…
“Fuck.” I whispered it as soon as we made eye contact. He narrowed his eyes at me, then grinned, pulling a gun to shoot the Baranov guard.
He’d lost weight and lots of hair, almost bald. In a fancy suit instead of his police uniform, he still had the same cruel, heartless eyes.
“You!”
He ran forward, leaving a bewildered Eric behind. “Hey, what?—”
As soon as Eric spotted me and the guard who’d dropped from O’Malley’s shot, he muttered something under his breath and ran away down the hall.
Muscle memory kicked in. It didn’t matter how many years had passed, the second I saw his cold eyes, I knew that it was time for me to tune out the panic and run. It was time to run as hard as I could and hide.
“You!” he repeated, charging toward me.
“Fuck!” I jumped into action, sprinting down another hall. I hated to leave the guard dead like that and not help him. But I had to get out of here alive. That sadist could not win.
Once gunshots were fired, no doubt from O’Malley chasing me, I regretted not stopping long enough to take the Baranov guard’s gun before running.
I had to run and hide just like old times, because it wasn’t just myself that I was saving but my love for Rurik and now, potentially, a new life in my belly.
Pushing through different doors and cutting around corners, I hid from O’Malley as he chased me. He was older now, and I had enough experience with hiding from him that he wouldn’t be able to rely on hearing me creeping around to track me in this building.
I passed no one. Not a single soul was in the offices, and even if they were, I couldn’t be sure if that would mean they’d help me or not. Even though I was alone at the moment, it wasn’t the same as that desolate loneliness I struggled against before.
Rurik is here. Other guards are here.
“Little Kelly, all grown up,” O’Malley teased as he crept down the hallways.
I hunkered down behind a filing cabinet in a small office I’d snuck into. Breathing as steadily as I could so I wouldn’t pass out, but also not pant loudly so he’d hear me, I waited for him to go by.
“I couldn’t believe my luck, seeing your pretty little face on all those pictures shared by the police departments in the area. All these years, I wondered if I’d get a chance to find you again…”
Dammit. He was after me because I’d been connected to all the trouble on campus, trouble due to Jerome.
“I just had to pay Eric a little visit here and ask around for a little help in finding you, honey.”
I cringed at his sing-song voice. All that mattered was that his footsteps carried further away from me in this itty-bitty closet. He had to be looking further down the hall of many doors to consider. But this one was dark and secure for now. It’d be risky to run and stay mobile, like I was used to doing around him.
Besides, as I stared in the room and let my eyes acclimate, I saw something I couldn’t pass up on. Beneath the table I was hiding under was a tablet. Someone must have dropped it with how it was lying back here to the side, face down and its battery dying.
But the brightness of the screen was what snagged my attention. If O’Malley walked back by, he could notice the light despite it being under the desk. I couldn’t take that chance. I picked it up to turn it off and stopped when I realized the black and white camera feed was of a familiar place.
That office. Jessica Nolan’s office. The camera had to be a hidden one, positioned in there, and I gaped at the tiny date reading on the frame.
The night of that meeting. The night I was attacked and saved by Rurik.
The night Marcus James was killed. It was what the cops supposedly wanted to bring me in for questioning about, even though that had to be a ploy.
Someone had been spying on the activity in that office with this secret camera. And as I replayed the footage, I witnessed another death on the screen.
Marcus James had been killed in that office, but it wasn’t by Eric Benson’s hands, like some of the Baranov men were thinking. It wasn’t one of the drug dealers either.
It was a stranger. A tall man with a dark beard. No tattoos or anything else showed on his face, neck, or arms, and I had no clue how to identify him. He was good-looking, but in such an unsuspecting way that he seemed like he could be any random person walking down the street.
He put his gun to Marcus’s head, and the politician wannabe dropped out of the camera’s view.
Holy shit!
I had evidence that would officially clear my name from anyone thinking they could arrest me or bring me in for questioning about a death I had no clue about.
But as I got my phone out and took a video of the video, I knew the only “authorities” I’d be sharing this with were my husband and his Baranov brothers.