Page 82 of Shattered Empire (Shattered World)

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“This guy’s a douche,” Dima growled into the comm line as we watched Ava’s dinner with Conrad O’Neill. He wasn’t wrong. The man reeked of the worst kind of narcissism and misogyny. They had barely sat down before he started into his personal exploits about sheiks and presidents.

It was nauseating.

“Can I kill him?” Andrei growled when the man had tried to order my wife a salad.

“Only if you can make it look like an accident in front of all these people.”

“Poison always works.” Kenzi smirked. “I’m sure I could sneak some in. Also, these people are Sully’s men. Wouldn’t matter if we made it look like an accident or not.”

“Right then,” Andrei chuckled. “This will be good.”

“I have to admit,” Maksim grinned, taking a sip of his wine as he watched the video screen of my wife dining with that fucking bastard, “she has definitely turned into a badass.”

“Must run in the family.” Dima winked at Kenzi, who rolled her eyes dramatically at his poor attempt at flirting.

“So does the sudden urge to murder people.” She winked right back at him and ran a finger across her throat.

It wasn’t too long before their dinner arrived. Pride swelled within me as I watched Ava break down the O’Neill boy bit by bit. She wasn’t the kind of woman he was used to dealing with. They were just empty, airheaded bimbos looking for their next sugar daddy. It didn’t bypass my attention that he wasn’t aware she was the CEO.

He thought we’d sent him the company whore.

A mistake he was currently regretting as Ava laid into him about his company’s sudden drop in shares and his habit of overspending.

“Oh, shit.” Dima guffawed. Conrad O’Neill had gone to leave, but my wife wouldn’t be dismissed so easily. Without blinking, she’d dug her steak knife into his hand, cutting through the skin like it was supple leather.

“Did I say you were dismissed?” She crooked her head to the side, her eyes wide and innocent. My cock jumped to attention. He called her a psychotic bitch, but my body and mind were calling her perfect.

My perfect little psycho.

I didn’t think my cock could get any harder.

Then I watched her knife his other hand. I lied. I was harder than granite now. Fuck.

“Let’s go,” I said abruptly, standing from the table in the small room we’d rented to run surveillance. “Now.”

Maksim stood and murmured to Dima over the comms to follow.

“Are you seriously going to leave?” Kenzi darted in front of me, blocking my path.

“Yes,” I growled. I wasn’t about to explain to her why I needed to go. That seeing her sister like that was driving me to the point of madness.

“No.” She stood in front of me, arms crossed against her chest, eyes adamant. “You need to wait and own up to what you did.”

I stared down at her in fucking disbelief. Is that what she thought I was running away from? She thought I felt guilty about leading Ava to believe I was dead? Or that I didn’t want to face her wrath?

The woman couldn’t be more wrong.

It had nothing to do with either of those things.

What I didn’t want to face was the one thing I had always refused to. My feelings for her.

My love for Ava bordered on possession and obsession. The more I fell for her, the harder it was to keep control of the animal inside me. I didn’t call her Little Red for no reason. I was the Big Bad Wolf, and I wanted to devour her.

Every. Single. Inch.

But the more obsessed I became with my love for her, the more I was afraid of losing her. Not her love, but her life. Every woman I had truly cared about had either died at the hands of an enemy or at my hands for betraying me.

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