Page 39 of Shattered Empire (Shattered World)

“Shit,” Matthias groaned as he emptied himself inside me. He braced himself over me, panting and sweaty, his face buried in my neck. “Good girl.” I groaned lightly, those two simple words causing my pussy to pulse, even after the beating it had just taken.

I came down from my high, the orgasm I had just given myself nothing compared to the one in my memories. Tears slid down the side of my face and onto the pristine white pillow beneath me. Matthias was my first. There was a time when I had hoped he would also be my last. He’d ruined me in all the best ways. How was I supposed to forget that and move on?

There would come a day I would have to. If I survived the war ahead, I would need children to secure the Dashkov line, but they wouldn’t be his children, and I doubted I would love any man as deeply as I loved Matthias.

Only time would tell what the tide of fate had in store for me.

Children were the last thing on my mind when vengeance was so much closer.

Closing my eyes, I let my mind wander to the past and the security it held. Because the future was nothing but a distant unknown.

* * *

This sucked.

Really. Really. Sucked.

“Can we do something now?” The petulant sound of my voice made me cringe. Not that I cared. The car was small and cramped, and the muscles in my legs were screaming at me in protest from not having moved in over an hour.

“You asked that twenty-minutes ago,” my father scolded. Huffing, I blew a strand of hair out of my face.

“Get used to it.” Vas smirked. “The word patient isn’t in her vocabulary.” The men in the car snickered.

“No, but the word beheaded is.” I stuck my tongue out at him. It was official. I was a child. “As well as castrate.” Vas widened his eyes in mock horror.

“Settle down, children,” Sully scolded playfully. “We need to wait here until he arrives, otherwise, he will see us coming.”

“You sent him a note that said, ‘We know your secret. Do you really think those files are safe? Give them up or your family dies,’” I reminded him, with air quotes and everything. “He probably already knows we’re waiting for him.”

“He’ll think we’re at the meeting point I designated,” Sully explained. “Dr. Martin believes he will have the drop on us, but in reality, we hold all the cards.”

I shrugged. “If you say so.”

“He will never give us those files,” my father pointed out.

“Speak of the devil,” Vas murmured.

Dr. Abram Martin was a tall, gangly motherfucker with round wire glasses, wearing a tailored Armani suit and driving a Benz. Two things a medical examiner shouldn’t be able to afford with his salary. A dive into his financial records indicated he had received a two-point-five-million-dollar payout three days after my mother’s death and smaller subsequent payouts throughout the years that we tracked back to the suspicious deaths of local trucking company owners and even a few cops.

The man looked over his shoulder nervously, causing him to take several extra moments to properly unlock the doors with his shaking hands.

“That’s a go.” Sully nodded his head the moment the good doctor stepped inside the office. He hadn’t locked the doors behind him.

“Bet you the first things he goes for are the false files.”

Vas scoffed at Sully. “I’m not taking that bet. Do I look stupid to you?”

Sully’s mouth turned down as he thought about that. “Eh.” He made a so-so motion with his hand. “A little, yeah.”

“Fucker,” Vas growled and grabbed his gun from the trunk before handing me mine.

“Come on.” I nudged his shoulder with mine. “You can hit him for that later.”

Vas grinned. “Promise?”

Laughing, I nodded and assured him, “Yep. All yours, big guy.”

“Dreams really do come true.”

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