Chapter 30
Viktor~
My first instinct had been to jump in the water to look for my wife, but when Kasimir had pointed out that there was no saving her if the time on the tracker was to be believed, I’d had no choice but to worry about what I could control versus going out of my goddamn mind.
However, when my brother had reminded me that the observation decks were equipped with surveillance cameras, we had immediately broken into the nearest office. Since we owned the watery territory, we could easily have the locks repaired tonight, so that was the least of my concerns.
So, now we were inside the deserted room, the pier off-limits to the public, which made Armen driving here just that much more suspicious.
Upon the territory power grabs early on, we had acquired the four piers that bordered the river, and we had immediately shut it down to outsiders, access only available to us and our people.
“Okay, we’ll rewind to when you told Armen to drive Aurora home,” Kasimir said as he began fiddling with the security setup.
I stood behind my brother as he did his thing, and it wasn’t but ten minutes after I had sent Aurora home that the black sedan became visible on the screen before us.
I could feel blood rushing through my ears as I watched the scene unfold in front of me, and unadulterated rage coursed through every inch of my body as I witnessed two men come out from behind the stacks to approach the vehicle.
“Holy shit, is that what I think it is?” Kasimir asked, though he wasn’t really looking for an answer when we saw a flash of light brightening the tinted windows.
However, before I could say anything, the two men pulled both backseat car doors open, and after another quick flash of light, I watched Aurora being drug from inside the vehicle, and it was everything that I could do not to tear this place apart with my bare hands.
For no more than a few minutes, we watched Aurora fight off two more men, one coming out of nowhere to stab her with a quick flick of his wrist. It wasn’t until he realized that she wasn’t going down that he then shot her, and I knew that I’d never get these images out of my head for as long as I lived.
“Jesus Christ,” Kasimir muttered. “Who the fuck is this woman?”
Even with my heart in my throat, it was hard not to be impressed with how well Aurora had defended herself against four grown men. Now, while I didn’t know the other three on sight, it wasn’t going to be hard to find out who they were, and I already knew who Armen was.
“She’s bleeding out,” I stated evenly, refusing to let my fear take over.
Just then, we watched Aurora get to her purse, and when she put her phone to her ear, it wasn’t hard to figure out who she’d been calling. In a situation like this, she could only be calling her father or one of her brothers, because she sure as fuck hadn’t called me.
She hadn’t called me.
After watching Aurora bandage herself as best as she could, and after an entire twenty minutes later, we watched as another black sedan pulled up, and I wasn’t surprised to see Santino Marchetti and another man race out of the car to get to my wife.
As soon as they did, Santino picked up his sister, then took her to their car where the other man stayed with her, and while I couldn’t see what was happening inside the vehicle, I could see Santino Marchetti clear as day.
Silently, we watched as Santino tied each man to the axel of the car by their belts, he had even pulled the guy from the backseat to do the same.
However, for whatever reason, he’d left Armen in the driver’s side seat of the car, but then it all made sense when the car drove itself into the river, dragging the other three men with it.
Santino had propped Armen up in a way to make sure that the car could be driven off the pier but had made sure that all the windows were down to keep it from floating in any way.
When he walked back to his car, he stopped to pick up his sister’s things, and then there was a few minutes of interaction before he walked back to the end of the pier, and that’s when I saw him throw the necklace in the water.
For all that Aurora had gone through, she’d still had the presence of mind to have him bring something that could remove the tracker from her neck.
Fucking Christ.
“Do you want us to fish the bodies from the river?” Kasimir asked as we watched Santino’s car leave the area.
“No, the video quality is good enough that we don’t need to,” I replied, still trying to keep my enraged emotions in check. “I want the other cameras checked, and all video evidence scrubbed from the feeds after you’ve made copies.”
After a few seconds of silence, Kasimir said, “They’re Russian, Viktor.”
“I know,” I said, barely able to get the words out.
“If she’s alive, she’s going to think that you were behind this,” he pointed out, though it really hadn’t been necessary.
“I know.”
Suddenly, all I pictured was Aurora seeing me with that blonde and thinking that I’d finally found the perfect way to get myself out of an unwanted marriage, and it was like everything in my chest refused to function.
Aurora believed that I was off fucking someone else while sending some of my men to kill her, and I had no idea how I was going to be able to live with myself after this.
“What do you want to do?”
“Find out who each man is, then pay a visit to their families,” I ordered. “I want to know every-fucking-thing there is to know about each and every one of them.”
“And what about Otets,” he asked. “Since there’s a very good chance that the Marchettis are going to be out for our blood, he needs to know.”
“I’ll call Father and tell him what’s happened,” I told him, still trying to wrap my mind around what was happening. “Either way, I’ll still need his approval to go after whoever orchestrated a hit on my wife.”
“Like he’s going to deny you that,” he snorted.
“He’s still our Pakhan, and despite being our father, there’s still a hierarchy to respect,” I countered.
After another few seconds of silence, my brother turned around in his chair to look at me. “We’ll find out who did this, Viktor.”
Ignoring that, I said, “I need to know if she’s alive, and I can’t see any of the Marchettis taking my calls.”
“Then call her,” he suggested. “After all, she’s ballsy enough to answer.”
He wasn’t wrong, so that’s what I did. After I left Kasimir to secure the video feed and scrub the evidence from all the surrounding cameras, I’d driven straight to my father’s house to tell him what had happened, and as predicted, he’d given me permission to do whatever necessary to find out who’d been behind trying to kill my wife.
Now, the problem with that was that it could be anyone.
No one had been happy about the marriage, so all of this could have been orchestrated by any number of people.
However, I couldn’t ignore how the men had been Russian, easily identified by their tattoos, though I couldn’t be certain if they worked for us directly or not.
There was also no arguing that this was all my fault.
Instead of handling Aurora like a man, I had become distracted by my feelings for her, and while she’d been fighting for her life, she believed that I’d been fucking another woman, and if she died because of my decision to let Armen drive her home alone, then I welcomed a war.
If the Marchettis succeeded in taking me out, then that was preferrable to living the rest of my life, knowing that I was the reason why my wife was dead.
It was also taking everything in me not to invade my in-laws’ territory to demand access to my wife.
However, though I knew that they had her, I had no idea where they had her.
I had no idea what their setup was for something like this, so she could be anywhere, though I seriously doubted that she was at a legitimate hospital.
If the Marchettis were anything like us, then they had private clinics and sketchy doctors on their payroll, so Aurora could be anywhere.
Leaving me stuck to go out of my mind in peace.
As I walked into my office, I grabbed the first bottle of liquor that I saw, then made my way to my desk, feeling helpless in a way that I hadn’t ever felt before.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t have a plan or know what to do.
For the first time in my life, I was at a fucking loss, and the stakes were the highest that they’d ever been.
I knew that I had to re-group mentally, but not knowing if my wife was dead or alive made that fucking impossible; it made everything feel impossible.
So, now it was two in the morning, and I was still calling my wife’s phone, praying against all hope that she answered. The bottle of whiskey on the nightstand was nearly empty, but luckily for me, there was plenty more where that came from.
Just then, after hundreds of calls to Aurora’s phone, someone finally answered, and I could feel blood rushing through my ears painfully, my heart beating like it was about to explode inside my chest.
“Baby?” I asked, not recognizing my own voice.
Then, clear as day, my wife said, “The next time you try to kill me, don’t send amateurs.”