Chapter 16
Aurora~
The drive over had been uncomfortable, but I hadn’t minded it.
Conflict didn’t bother me, and it wasn’t like I had come into this marriage thinking that everything would be peaches and cream anyway.
Nonetheless, I really didn’t want to spend the rest of my life fighting with my husband every day, regardless of our last names.
I just didn’t know how to get him to take me seriously, and that’s what was at the heart of our problems. For most of my life, I’d been granted a freedom based on trust, and I didn’t have that here, and I was struggling with that at the same time that I was falling for my husband.
Seriously, it sucked
At any rate, now we were walking into one of the wharf buildings, and I could only imagine how much blood was embedded in the cracks of the concrete flooring. While this warehouse looked legitimate, I knew better, and I’d be willing to bet my last name that so did the police.
With his hand on the small of my back, Viktor led me to a room in the back, and once he pushed the door open, Kasimir was on the other side, grinning like a loon.
With him was a man, and not only was he tied securely to a chair, but Kasimir had gotten it right.
He was the man from the night of my attack, and I supposed that having a photographic memory was a plus in this instance; no innocent person would be getting hurt tonight.
“Good of you to come,” Kasimir grinned, and the man really was a psychopath.
Ignoring him, I eyed the prisoner, and it wasn’t a few seconds before he recognized me, his dark eyes growing wide with disbelief. He had left me there to die, certain that I couldn’t survive such an attack, but I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t dead, and that didn’t bode well for him.
“Surprise,” I said as I walked over to step in front of him.
He immediately started shaking his head. “This can’t be.”
“Oh, but it is,” I chuckled humorlessly.
He continued to shake his head. “But...but I saw...I saw them shoot you.”
“Yeah, well...you should have stuck around to see the grand finale,” I drawled out.
“My sister-in-law is pretty badass, something that you’re going to learn the hard way,” Kasimir quipped, and not only had I not been expecting the compliment, but the pride in his voice was also another surprise.
Viktor’s body heat coated my back as he came to stand behind me, and I couldn’t lie and say that I didn’t like it, and I wasn’t talking about the united front that we were showing.
I could admit that I was already addicted to my husband’s sexy body, and it did things to me whenever he was this close to me.
“Look, we don’t have time to fuck around,” he said, his voice cold and hard. “You’ve got two choices here, both which will end up with your death, but how you die will be completely up to you.”
“I don’t know anything,” he lied.
“That’s all he keeps saying,” Kasimir remarked disappointedly. “I gave him the same speech when we got here, but he’s sticking to his story of ignorance.”
In a surprise move, Viktor leaned down, kissed the side of my neck, then said, “Ask him whatever you want, zhena.”
Kasimir let out a happy laugh before grabbing an extra chair for me, bringing it over, so that I could get comfortable for this, and it was clear that I was never going to understand what went on inside Kasimir Korolev’s head.
With Viktor holding the back of the chair, I sat down as I placed my purse down on the floor beside me, putting myself directly across from the man who’d been involved in the attack or had simply chosen not to help me.
Either way, I was going to get answers, and if I had to skewer him alive to get them, then that’s what I was going to do.
“If it is true that you had nothing to do with what happened that day, then why did you leave?” I asked. “Why didn’t you call the police or come out of hiding to help me?”
His eyes widened again, not having expected to answer for his actions that day. “Wh...what? What are you talking...talking about?”
“I saw you,” I informed him. “I saw you, and that’s why you’re here. There’s also no mistaking that it was you, so don’t insult my intelligence by trying to suggest otherwise.”
“Plus, you already confessed to seeing her being shot,” Kasimir chimed in, the happy tenor of his voice creepy as hell.
“I...I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to you,” he swore. “I...I was just-”
I put my hand up to stop his rambling. “That’s not what I asked. I asked why you left and why you made no move to help me.”
“I...I thought it was too...too late to help you,” he stammered, and this could take days if I continued to entertain his bullshit.
So, standing, I walked over to a pile of stainless-steel pipes-which weren’t there by coincidence-then walked back, slamming the metal baton against the man’s right knee, and his agonizing scream vibrated all throughout the room, and if he thought that was the worst of it, he was wrong.
Sitting back down, I said, “I was shot and stabbed on Korolev territory, and if you don’t want me to drag you down the street, so that everyone can get a good look at you, wanting a piece of you for themselves, then I suggest you start talking.
I feel the need to also warn you that I’m not in the mood for bullshit.
You lie to me one more time, and I will pull your penis through your nut sack, then break every single one of your ribs by making you choke on your bloody dick. ”
“Well, fuck,” Kasimir muttered, but even Viktor let out a low whistle.
The man was sputtering in pain, but it wasn’t enough to render him speechless, which was a good thing when you considered that I wasn’t bluffing. “It...it’s not...not the Korolevs,” he finally said.
“Who was it?” I bit out, twirling the pipe in my hand.
“Oh, God...” he sobbed.
“I’m warning you right now, if you have any family members that you care about at all, then you better start talking before death becomes the least of your problems,” I spat.
“It was...it was...it was the Marchettis,” he finally said, making my heart stop cold, making Viktor and Kasimir freeze in place.
“What?” I hissed.
“The order came from...from the Marchettis,” he repeated, but I didn’t believe him. There was no way in hell that my family would order such a thing.
“You’re telling me that Roman Marchetti ordered a hit on his own daughter?” Viktor asked, finally snapping back from his shock.
The man shook his head. “No...I...I don’t know,” he cried. “I just...Armen said that...that the Marchettis were paying...paying good money for...for us not to fuck...fuck up.”
I stood up, then slammed his knee with the pipe again. “I want a name!”
“I...I don’t know...” he wailed, his cries piercing. “I...I was...”
“Why did you leave before the job was done?” Viktor asked.
“I didn’t think that...that she’d survive after...after the gunshot,” he admitted.
“But once you saw that Armen was dead, how did you plan on collecting your money?” I asked.
“I thought...I thought the other guys would...would get it,” he said, his lips sputtering, saliva dripping everywhere.
“How do we know that you’re telling the truth?” Kasimir asked.
“He...Armen said...he said that...that we couldn’t mess up...up because...because of your photographic memory,” he said, making my head jerk back, shock hitting me hard. “That...that you...you could identify us if...if you lived.”
“Holy shit, you have a photographic memory?” Kasimir blurted. “What the fuck else can’t you do?”
“Focus, Kasimir,” Viktor replied, leaving me to deal with what I’d just heard.
“I’m sor...sorry,” he finally sobbed. “I’m so sorry...sorry...”
I reached down, pulled my favorite gun from my purse, then aimed the barrel at the coward, wasting no time pulling the trigger, hitting him square between the eyes.
Now, the Marchetti in me should have kept him alive long enough to get more details out of him, but I was too enraged to be strategic at this point.
I’d been betrayed, but not by the Korolevs; I’d been betrayed by my own people, and I could scarcely believe it, though the proof was in how he’d known about my photographic memory.
Only a handful of people knew that about me, and apart from Viktor, they’d all been Marchettis.
Well, and Kasimir now.
“What now?” Viktor asked, letting me lead now, which was surprising.
Instead of answering him, I reached down, grabbed my purse, then traded my gun for my phone, and I wasted no time calling my father. Family or not, just like I wasn’t going to cower from the Korolevs, I wasn’t about to retreat from any Marchetti.
As soon as my father picked up the phone, I said, “I’ll be at your house in one hour, and you’d better makes sure that Santino and Stefano are with you.”