Page 40 of Ruby Menace

All male, it’s tinged with smoke, sweat and gunpowder, but it’s still him. Still my man.

My man?

Just hours ago, I wanted to destroy him. I’ve been told so many things and have so many conflicting emotions, that I don’t even know what to think about him now. But one thing is for sure: he came for me. He put his life on the line to save me. And he doesn’t even know that it’s not just me he saved today. He saved our child too. And right now, that’s all that matters.

“Kirill,” I murmur, dragging myself from what feels like a darkened pit. I don’t know what happened, but for a moment there, I was out of it. I hyperventilated, maybe. I never thought of myself as the type who goes around swooning in men’s arms. Then again, these have been extreme circumstances. I guess being tortured by Russian mobsters is a good enough excuse to pass out.

Kirill pulls in a breath as he looks down at me. “You are safe.”

“You said that already.” I half-smile at him because I do feel safe. Even after watching him wreaking bloody hell in here, I know that I’m safe with him.

“We’d better get her out of here,” Dima says to Kirill. Instinctively, I pull closer. I’ll put up a fight if they try to take me from him.

This is the man who saved my life.

The father of my child – a child who would have had no chance at survival if those animals had had their way.

I turn my eyes to where Boris is sprawled on the floor, his throat slashed open. I’d watched him gasping for air as Kirill had taken down Aleksei behind me. I should have felt bad for the man, but there was some sort of twisted justice in seeing him fighting to breathe after he’d spent the past hour suffocating me… torturing me. Not only had I not felt bad, I’d wanted him to suffer.

Does that make me an awful person?

I decide that this is not the time to think about it.

But what I can’t ignore are the conflicting emotions that are churning within me. Because as much as I want to cling to Kirill, there is something I must know.

I must find out if what Zoya told me is true.

All of this is making my head hurt. Between what I’ve just been through and what I was told about the man I love… I feel wrung out. My limbs feel weighted. I realize I’ve gone limp again when Kirill looks down at me.

“You okay?” He frowns.

I nod. “Just tired.” And confused. And angry. And relieved to be alive. And trying to find a way make sense of the man who just came to my rescue despite the danger to himself.

I can see that he must have been through hell to get to me. His face is streaked with dirt and blood. And from the look of his ripped and bloody clothing, some of it is his own. I think back to that day my father died and how Kirill had been injured then, too. It hadn’t slowed him down. He took it in his stride. The man’s a machine.

I squeeze my eyes shut as pain threatens to overwhelm me, my chest tightening and my breath hitching. Except it’s not physical pain now. It’s the hurt that comes from the warring in my heart.

What if the transcript was telling the truth?

What if he really killed my mother?

I could never look at him again?

Kirill and Dima are still talking, so I focus my attention on that rather than waiting for my chest to implode.

“We can’t let this pass,” Dima is saying. “He took…” he glances at me from the corner of his eye, “he took your woman. We have to retaliate and quick.”

“Da.” Kirill’s arms tighten around me. “Today, Vlad Petrov threw down the gauntlet. He knew this would mean war.”

I listen to Kirill and Dima as they talk in hushed tones, their voices low as they discuss their next move. It involves bloodshed, that much is clear. I know that I should be horrified, but all I can think about is how much safer we’ll be when this Petrov guy is gone – my baby and I. The men who took me knew about my pregnancy. They know how to attack Kirill where it hurts the most – by going after me and our unborn child.

Except, Kirill doesn’t even know it yet.

But someone else does.

And I am certain I know who that someone is.

“We need to strike before they find out we made it out alive,” Dima growls, his eyes darkening with determination. “We can’t let them regroup.”

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