Chapter 15
Viktor~
I sat in my office, not even knowing where to begin.
While Kasimir and our brigadiers were doing a good job of handling the day-to-day bullshit of our family’s operation, I was second in charge, and I should be doing a better job of acting like it.
Nonetheless, all I could think about was my wife and what had happened to her, and it didn’t matter that she was safely upstairs in our bedroom right now.
Aurora wasn’t happy, and it was fucking killing me.
It also didn’t matter that she’d given us the picture of the sketch and had told her father that we’d all be working on this together, proving that she was willing to compromise to a degree.
When she had reminded me of her photographic memory, it had stopped me cold.
In a bid for petty revenge, I had put an image in her head that she’d never be able to get out, and not knowing that she had a photographic memory was no excuse.
It was also a harsh reminder that I had to treat my wife with more delicacy.
She wasn’t like other women, and I couldn’t forget that.
I needed to make sure that everything that she saw, heard, and experienced didn’t hurt her for a lifetime.
The drive home from my father’s had also been a brutal one.
Instead of hashing things out, Aurora had spoken about all her theories on the fifth man, and I’d had no choice but to listen since finding this man had become my top priority.
Even if he hadn’t been involved, he could have seen or heard something that could help us find out who was behind this fucking mess.
Then, once we’d gotten home, she’d said that she was tired, going upstairs, leaving me to head to my office to take care of all the shit that I’d been neglecting for the past couple of weeks, and that’d been almost ten hours ago.
To her credit, when I’d gone to check on her, she’d been asleep, and though I’d wanted to wake her up to feed her, with her refusing to eat anything in the house, I had decided to let her get some rest versus dragging her out to go get something else.
At any rate, while Aurora was sleeping peacefully upstairs, I was down here, regretting almost every decision that I’d made since our wedding day.
Even knowing what I’d known about her before we’d gotten married, I had still gone into this underestimating her, and it was surely biting me in the ass now.
Just then, my phone rang, and I answered it simply just to get my mind off how I’d been doing a terrible job of being a husband. Of course, seeing Kasimir’s name flashing across the screen would have had me answering it anyway, but still.
“Yeah?”
“We found him,” Kasimir announced. “We found the fifth guy. We just need Aurora to confirm.”
I immediately sat up straighter. “What?”
“We found him,” he repeated. “We found the bastard, and I thought it’d be fitting to hold him at the pier, though I’ve got him in the Yaney building.”
“Is he coherent enough?”
“I haven’t touched him,” Kasimir answered, but his definition of not touching an enemy differed from most normal people’s.
“Has he said anything?” I asked, my heart racing in my chest.
“No,” he replied, though he sounded happy about it. “He’s acting tougher than he really is.”
“I’ll be right there,” I said as I stood up from my chair, everything else forgotten. “Who else is with you?”
“No one, though I did call Otets to keep him informed,” he said, which was understandable.
“Of course,” I replied automatically as I headed upstairs. “I’ll get Aurora, and then we’ll be on our way.”
“I’ll keep him company until you get here,” he gleefully remarked, and I could only imagine how that quality time was going to be spent.
Hanging up on my brother, I slipped my phone in my pocket as I reached the bedroom, but when I walked in, my wife wasn’t asleep on the bed anymore.
So, walking over to the bathroom, I pushed the door open to find her splashing water on her face, and I was glad that Aurora was confident enough to go without makeup if she wanted to.
It meant that she was going to be happy to grow old naturally, and I preferred that over what a lot of women were doing to their faces and bodies these days.
I didn’t say anything as she grabbed a towel to dry her face, but once she was finished, I said, “Kasimir called. They found the fifth guy and need you to verify if it’s him.”
Aurora placed the towel on the counter, eyeing me. “Where are they?”
“They’re at the pier,” I answered. “Kasimir’s version of poetic justice.”
“How did they find him?” she asked, almost as if she was doubtful.
“We’ve been kicking over stones since the day that it happened,” I explained. “I guess he finally kicked over the right stone.”
Straightening, she asked, “So, what? You’re here to tell me how you’re going to run off and save the day?”
“Jesus Christ,” I bit out as I raked a hand through my hair. “Why can’t it ever just be a conversation with you? Why does it always have to be this?”
“Because you don’t play fair,” she answered honestly. “Because you’re Viktor Korolev.”
I stepped forward until I was towering over her.
“When it comes to you? You’re right, I don’t play fair, nor will I ever.
When it comes to you, I will do whatever it takes to win, Aurora.
So, whatever is pissing you off, get over it.
Get over it, because your combative nature changes nothing.
We are forever, zhena. We are forever, and if you want to spend that forever fighting like cats and dogs every damn day, then I’m game because, believe it or not, I’d rather fight with you every second of every fucking day than ever touch another woman.
So, I’ll leave it up to you on what kind of marriage you want, but for now, get ready because Kasimir is waiting for us, and he made no promises about keeping the man alive until we get there. ”
Instead of strangling her like I wanted to, I left the bathroom, then dialed my father.
Even though Kasimir had already done so, I still wanted to touch base and let him know that I’d be preoccupied with the guy until he confessed or his soul left his body.
Plus, I needed to distract myself from the maddening woman in the bathroom.
“Viktor,” he greeted as soon as he answered the phone.
“Kasimir already informed me that he’d spoken with you, but I just thought I’d let you know that I’ll be meeting him as soon as Aurora is finished getting dressed,” I replied, getting straight to business.
“Has she called her father?” he asked. “Am I to expect a bunch of Marchettis to descend onto our territory?”
Little did he know that Roman Marchetti and his sons were perfectly fine with the only Marchetti daughter and sister taking care of shit on her own.
Of course, there was no way that I could tell him that without making the Marchettis look heartless or divulging Aurora’s secrets, and that was a situation that I hadn’t ever imagined myself in.
Whichever way you looked at it, I was keeping secrets from my father and brother, and I didn’t like it, even if it was necessary.
“She’ll probably call him once we’re on our way, but she knows better than to ask them to come here,” I answered, semi-truthfully. “The objective is to find out who is behind this, not to have a bunch of Korolevs and Marchettis killing one another.”
“Very well,” he replied. “Keep me informed.
He hung up on me before I could say anything else, but the need for small talk wasn’t necessary. While my father was the Korolev Pakhan, he still trusted me and Kasimir to handle business, even if Kasimir could go off the rails every now and again.
I turned when Aurora walked out of the bathroom, and it was incredible how she made my heart hurt every time that she entered a room.
It was also clear that she was God’s way of punishing me for all of my past and future sins.
I was in love with a woman who was never going to love me back, and if that wasn’t living a life of hell on earth, then I didn’t know what was.
“You might want to take a change of clothing,” I suggested as she walked past me like I didn’t even exist.
“Why’s that?” she asked as she reached her side of the closet.
“Because we’re not leaving there without answers, and the interrogation might get a little messy,” I answered, something that she already knew.
Turning around to look at me, she asked, “Are you going to let me question him?”
I said the one thing that was probably going to seal my fate, but I wasn’t about to lie to her. “No. You’ll be there to identify him and that’s it.”
“Why?” she asked, her voice tight. “Just have Kasimir send you a picture of the guy if that’s the case.”
“Because your photographic memory could come in handy,” I answered, my back straightening in the way that it always did with this woman.”
“I don’t-”
“Get fucking dressed!” I roared before storming out of the room, refusing to engage any longer.