Chapter 7
Viktor~
I hadn’t heard from my wife in two fucking weeks, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could go without burning this entire motherfucker to the ground.
While I understood that Aurora needed to feel safe in order to get all the rest that she needed, there was still no reason why she couldn’t answer my goddamn phone calls.
The only good news was that we’d been able to find out the names of the other three men in the video, and none of them had been Korolevs, one more step to proving to my wife that I’d had nothing to do with her attack.
Unfortunately, we hadn’t been able to get anything more from their families, no matter what we’d done.
After it’d all been said and done, one had been an only child, estranged from his parents, so they’d been no help.
The second had actually come over from Russia about six months ago, and so that had been a dead end almost immediately.
As for the third guy, he’d had an ex-wife, but that’d been it.
No blood family to speak of, and he and his ex-wife had gotten divorced over five years ago, so she hadn’t known anything, either.
So, leaving us with only Armen’s family, I’d given Kasimir permission to question the sister and niece, but that had been another dead end as well.
Apparently, this whole time, they’d been under the impression that Armen had worked as a driver for some tech CEO, and so when Kasimir had shown up at their doorstep, it’d been a real eyeopener, and not a good one.
In fact, they hadn’t even known that he was dead until my brother had informed them of Armen’s final resting place.
Now, granted, we’d been able to find out a lot, but without Aurora’s help, we were still no closer to finding out who was behind the hit, and it was slowly eating me alive.
I knew that she’d never come home as long as she didn’t feel safe, and that just wasn’t an option for me.
I wanted my wife back, and I wanted her back now.
Just then, my phone rang, and instead of throwing it against the wall like I wanted to, I picked it up to see ‘Mafia Princess’ flashing across the screen. With my heart in my throat, I answered it, already pacing my office floor.
“Hey, baby,” I greeted, not caring that I sounded like a lost puppy.
“So, this is how it’s going to go down,” she said, getting straight to the point.
“I’ll be headed back to your house in about half an hour.
If you don’t want me shooting you where you stand, then you need to let your guards know that I’ll be coming, so that they’re prepared to defend the Korolev Sovietnik at all costs. ”
I wasn’t sure what I was feeling, but whatever it was, it wasn’t healthy. “Do you really think that I’m going to give the order to shoot you on sight?”
“If you want to live, you will,” Aurora replied evenly, and I hated how she didn’t care about her life. I hated how serious she sounded, and how I knew that she wasn’t bluffing. “Now, there are four weak points of entry onto your property, so I suggest that you let them know to be on full alert-”
“Wait,” I said as my feet stopped in the middle of my office. “How do you know that? How can you possibly know that? Especially, since my house is guarded better than the governor’s.”
“That’s what you’d like to think,” she replied drolly. “However, that’s not the case.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” I insisted.
“Okay,” she said flippantly. “If that’s what you want to believe, then I’m certainly no one to tell you any differently.”
“Knock it the fuck off,” I bit out, not appreciating how she was treating her return as if it were no big deal.
Aurora let out a lyrical laugh, and I’d never heard a sound so laced with coldness before, and that was saying something, considering. “As I was saying, be sure to instruct your guards properly, and I’ll also be the only one coming for you.”
“I’m not going to instruct my guards to do anything,” I informed her recklessly.
“You say that as if I’m bluffing, Korolev,” she said, her voice showing no signs of weakness. “I’m not bluffing.”
“Then is this your way of saying that you really think I’m behind your attack?” I asked, my chest tightening in such an unfamiliar way.
“I already told you that I was going to finish what you started, so that should be answer enough,” she said, and I’d never felt so livid with the world. “It’s also not my fault if you choose not to take me seriously.”
“Oh, I take you seriously,” I bit out. “I take you very fucking seriously.”
“See you in about an hour, Korolev,” she said before hanging up on me, and left with little choice, I walked over to my desk, then dialed my father.
“Yes,” he answered almost immediately.
“Aurora is on her way here to kill me,” I informed him straightaway.
“How can you be so sure?” he asked, not sounding surprised at all.
“She called to warn me,” I drawled out.
There was a heartbeat of silence before he asked for clarification. “She called to warn you?”
“Yes,” I sighed. “She thought that I should get my guards prepared.”
“Viktor, what is it with this woman?” he asked. “The blatant disregard for her life is not only troublesome, but also quite astonishing.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve never encountered such a thing before. Hell, even Kasimir takes better care with his life.”
Moving on from all the things that were wrong with Aurora Marchetti, he asked, “So, what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to let her come for me,” I answered honestly. “I won’t have my guards harming her.”
“Did you miss the part where she said that she was going there to kill you?” he drawled out, clearly not happy with my decision.
“I can hold my own,” I reminded him.
After another heartbeat of silence, he said, “Killing each other will not solve the problem, Viktor. We have a traitor in our midst, and we cannot flush him out without your wife’s help.”
“I can handle Aurora,” I semi-lied.
“Very well,” he replied, though he didn’t sound happy about it. “However, if you survive the night, then I want a meeting with the both of you first thing in the morning.”
“Of course,” I automatically replied, and I had to give him points for not trying to talk me out of it. As my father, I could only imagine how he was feeling. However, as my Pakhan, there were always sacrifices to be made.
After getting off the phone with him, I left my office in search of Kir. Kir Morolov was in charge of the house guards, and he’d been with me for years, to which I trusted him completely. Well, as much as I could trust someone that wasn’t blood, at any rate.
When I finally found him, he was in the security house, just off to the east of the west wing, doing whatever it was that he did in here, and despite what Aurora had said about the weak entry points, there’s no way that Kir wouldn’t see her coming, alerting everyone else.
The second that I entered the room, Kir was on his feet. “Sir.”
“My wife should be arriving in about an hour, and I want to make one thing absolutely clear,” I informed him. “I do not care if she’s carrying more weapons than all of the country’s military forces, you are not to stop her.”
Kir’s eyes widened in surprise. “I’m sorry?”
Ignoring his incredulousness, I said, “I want my instructions relayed clearly to everyone on the premises, and I want to make it especially clear that it’ll be their life if anyone harms her in any way.”
“Sir-”
“Have I made myself clear?” I asked sternly.
“Of course, Sovietnik,” he replied dutifully.
“If you hear any gunfire, you are to remain at your post until you hear from me or she leaves,” I went on.
Still wide-eyed, Kir just nodded, and that was the good thing about loyal soldiers; they obeyed.
I was also thankful that, in addition to my bedroom lacking surveillance, there were no cameras in my office.
Those two rooms were sacred, and though I did have a private camera that I turned on during meetings in my office, the room still wasn’t on routine surveillance.
With that taken care of, I sent my wife a quick text.
Me: I’ll b n my office waiting 4 u
With nothing left to do but wait for Aurora to come to me, I returned to the house, hoping that she didn’t kill me, but not being able to blame her if she did.