Chapter 25
Aurora~
It was ten-thirty at night, and I knew that I was going to catch hell from all the voice mails and texts that Viktor had left on my phone, but things had gone a bit sideways, and so a job that would have normally taken me no time at all had taken over an hour, and there’d been a little more blood than I’d been planning on.
As soon as Timothy Cotton had left work, instead of going straight home, he had decided to stop at Ventura Street, looking to pick himself up a little strange before calling it a night, and when I’d seen him scoping out the younger-looking girls, instant loathing for the man had taken over.
So, not wanting to spend the rest of my life in prison, I had waited until he’d found his victim, then I had followed them to a local motel, which had turned out to work in my favor.
Motels that charged by the hour never had cameras on their property, and if they did, they were only in the office to protect the employees and money.
However, the rooms and parking lots never had surveillance.
Timothy had also been in too much of a hurry to vet his surroundings, and so it’d been nothing to park right next to the idiot as he and his date for the night had entered one of the rooms. Now, knowing that he couldn’t make a night of it, I’d known that I would have to act fast, but it hadn’t been that much of a concern.
After all, no one at the motel had been paying attention to anything that hadn’t concerned them, and a non-descript grey sedan with a fake license plate was boring as hell.
At any rate, as soon as they’d gone inside, I had dusted his car door with a little bit of white powder, and with the sun already down and the lights to the motel barely working, it’d been a given that Timothy wouldn’t even notice it before grabbing onto the handle.
Yeah, his death had been a painful one, but nowhere near what he had deserved.
If I’d still been living as a Marchetti, I would have hidden him away for days, torturing him until his soul finally left his body.
Anyway, between him taking a detour and waiting for him to get his rocks off, the job had taken a lot longer than I had planned, and that was saying something, because as soon as I’d gotten to Santino’s this afternoon, we’d gone over everything.
Still, the job had been a successful one, but once I’d gotten back to my place, I had grabbed my purse, turned on my phone, and that’s when I’d seen all the missed calls, had read all the angry texts, then had listened to Viktor Korolev’s raging voice messages.
Yeah, to say that my husband was pissed would be a huge understatement.
So, now I was finally walking into the house, the Uber driver dropping me off in front of the huge gates, and luckily, Viktor had given me the code when he had given me a tour of the grounds.
He’d also been kind enough to make a note of all the codes with entry and exit instructions, and the paper was still safely tucked away in the nightstand on my side of the bed because I didn’t need it with me to remember what was written on it.
It wasn’t until my feet hit the bottom of the stairs of Viktor’s two-story mansion that I heard my name being roared throughout the house, and he must have been watching the cameras from inside his office to know that I’d arrived.
Great.
With that photographic memory of mine coming in handy, I was able to make my way to Viktor’s home office, and when I walked through the door, to say that he looked pissed was an incredible understatement at the moment; the man looked murderous.
“It’s taking everything in me not to strangle the life out of you right now, so you better have one hell of an explanation, zhena,” he said through clenched teeth.
I walked towards his desk, and once I was close enough, I pulled ‘my phone’ from my purse, then placed it in front of him. “My phone died.”
Luckily, I’d been anticipating something like this, though I hadn’t expected Viktor to be this pissed, but still.
So, after turning on my phone to see what I’d be up against, I had quickly drained the battery before heading back, and I’d also had the foresight not to charge it last night, leaving the battery holding a minimal charge at best.
Not even bothering to look at it, he asked, “You expect me to believe that?”
I shrugged. “It’s the truth.”
“I also called your brothers to find out where you were,” he said pointedly.
“My brothers aren’t obligated to you,” I quickly reminded him. “They owe you nothing.”
“So, that’s how you want to play it?” he asked as he stood up from his chair.
Ignoring his threatening stance, I said, “Carlo had a lot more questions than I’d been expecting, and I just lost track of time.
By the time that someone mentioned it already being ten o’clock, that’s when I noticed that my phone had died, and it hadn’t occurred to me that I might need a charger because I hadn’t planned on staying this long. ”
“You’re not a very good liar, zhena,” he said. “But that’s okay because I have something for that.”
“I’m not lying,” I lied. “You can check the phone yourself.”
“Oh, I’m sure that it’s dead, but that’s the only thing that’s probably true,” he shot back, and it looked like I was going to be in for a long night.
“What do you want from me, Korolev?” I asked, lifting my chin. “I lost track of time, and my phone died. It’s not that complicated.”
His hand immediately reached up, then circled around my neck, and he looked mad enough to snap it in two. “Never again will I not know where you are,” he seethed down at me. “Do I make myself clear?”
“But you did know where I was,” I semi-lied. “I went to go see my family.”
“Chush'!” he yelled in my face.
“It’s not bullshit,” I almost yelled back. “It’s the truth.”
Then, before I knew what was happening, Viktor let go of neck, and then I felt a strap around the column, a loud click following afterwards.
My hands immediately flew up to feel a collar wrapped around my throat before I raced to the mirror behind the bar.
I stared in horror as a diamond-incrusted choker decorated my neck, and when I reached back to unlock it, I couldn’t find any lever or button.
I whirled around, anger licking at every inch of my body. “What is this?”
“It’s a necklace,” he deadpanned.
“What the fuck is this, Korolev?!” I yelled.
“It’s a tracker,” he announced, and I could feel all the air in my lungs freeze in disbelief.
“What?”
“The necklace has a tracker in it,” he explained like it was no big deal. “I had it made when I was told that we’d be marrying because it occurred to me that your safety might become an issue. However, now that it’s a matter of not being able to trust you, it still comes in handy.”
“Take it off,” I snarled.
“No,” he immediately answered. “If you want it off, then tell me the truth about where you were tonight.”
“I already told you!”
“You’re lying!”
With desperation crawling up my spine, I said, “If you don’t take this thing off me, then be prepared to never touch me again.”
That set a fire alive in his eyes, but I didn’t move as he stormed his way over to me. With my neck already being occupied by the collar, Viktor grabbed a chunk of my hair, then yanked my head back as he stared down at me, and it really was a toss-up on who was angrier.
“I’ll will burn this house down with both of us in it before I ever go a night without touching you,” he hissed. “If you think that I won’t take what already belongs to me, then you’re wrong, zhena.”
“Be careful who you threaten, Korolev,” I warned him. “I’m not like other women.”
“You’re like nothing that I’ve ever seen before in my life,” he agreed. “Nonetheless, you are mine, and it’s about time you finally grasp exactly what that fucking means.”
“Take this thing off me, Korolev,” I said again. “Now.”
“No,” he repeated. “It stays on until you can learn to tell me the truth.”
Anger like I’d never felt before reached up to grab my heart, but I wasn’t going to let it cloud my reason.
After all, it wasn’t like I was alone in the world.
I had an entire army of people ready to take a blowtorch to this fucking thing to get if off my neck if I asked them to.
Besides, even if Viktor now had the ability to track me, it’d be his life if he ever followed me into Marchetti territory.
“You might think that you’ve won, Korolev,” I told him. “But you haven’t won a thing.”
“Keep telling yourself that, zhena,” he bit out. “But if I have to handcuff you to my leg to always know where you are, then that’s what I’ll do.”
Before I could say anything to that, Viktor was releasing my hair, stepping back, and then I watched as he stormed out of his office, slamming the door so hard that the paintings on the wall shook with just how furious he was.