Page 49 of Ruby Menace

“I do.” His voice is expressionless, but a muscle flickers in his jaw.

“But they weren’t planning to get me away from you. Quite the opposite. They wanted me to go back to you. To…” I hate this part. “To spy on you. To get information so they could make a case against you.” I pause, waiting for Kirill to say something. To explode, to lose it. He doesn’t do any of those things. He does nothing. Which is worse.

“I didn’t want to do it! I swear I didn’t.” Fear has me babbling. “But they threatened to prosecute me if I didn’t cooperate. They said they had enough evidence to charge me as an accessory.”

“An accessory?” His eyebrows furrow.

“They told me it was a flimsy case and that it wouldn’t stick. But they said that your organization wouldn’t believe that I hadn’t turned you in, so I’d be targeted.”

Kirill continues to be silent, but I can feel his touch tighten on me. He’s trying to hold back his anger. But I have to keep going.

“They offered me protection if I turned state’s evidence against you and the Bratva. They said you would want me dead if you found out and that I would need to go into witness protection.”

“I would want you dead?”

I can feel tears starting to well up in my eyes, and I take a deep breath to steady myself. “I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to betray you, but I didn’t want to go to jail, either. I didn’t know who to trust.”

Kirill shifts, and again I can feel how he’s still inside me, but there’s a stillness to his posture that’s scaring me. I can feel his heart beating against mine, and I know he’s trying to process what I’m saying.

“I’m sorry, Kirill. I never wanted to hurt you.” I stroke his damp hair from his face, searching his eyes, desperate to find the intensity of emotion we’d just shared. “I didn’t know what choice I had. I kept hoping that I’d find a way to get out of it. And you need to know that I never told them anything about you or your business.”

“You know nothing about my business,” he replies smoothly.

“Exactly. I told them that from the start, but they didn’t believe me. They said that I’d need to make a plan to get them what they needed.” Tension is coiling inside me like a spring.

“You weren’t planning to cooperate.”

“No! Of course not!” I need him to know this. “Maybe I didn’t want to be a part of this world – your world – in the beginning. But I’m here now, and I don’t want to be anywhere else. I don’t want to leave you. I mean it when I say that I love you.”

“And that is what you needed to tell me?” He tilts his head, his beautiful eyes inscrutable.

“Yes that,” I say. “And…”

“And?”

Just get it over with, Tee!

You’re over the worst part.

I take in a breath that swells my lungs. “Kirill, I’m pregnant.” I blurt before I can change my mind. I don’t know which was harder to admit – the fact that I was being forced to betray him or that I’m expecting his child.

His dark brows pull together, and I hold my breath, trying to figure out what’s going on in his mind. Again, he doesn’t give any clues. Instead, without speaking, he shifts his hands to my hips and lifts me off of him. I feel a small pang as I feel our bodies disconnect. It’s like he’s cut a bond that held us together.

“Kirill?”

He glances at me while adjusting his clothing, putting himself away, and zipping his fly. I flinch when he leans down and then reaches past me, but he’s just handing me my clothes.

“You should dress,” he says before dropping my bra on my lap. It’s bundled with my panties, which are still damp and fragrant with my juices.

“Fine,” I say hoarsely, fumbling to get my clothes back on. I feel my face heat as I get my panties halfway up my legs, then lift my hips to pull them up. He’s watching me. He keeps watching as I hook my arms through my bra straps and reach behind me to do up the clasp.

It’s only when I’ve managed to do a makeshift job of getting my dress closed around me that he turns away and raps firmly on the dividing window. It glides down silently, and he snaps out a string of Russian words to the driver, who keeps his eyes fixed on the motorway ahead of us. The man nods curtly, then takes the next slipway, guiding the car in the opposite direction.

“Kirill, I’m sorry. I should have told you before.” Anxiety is surging within me. “I didn’t mean-”

He raises a finger, stopping me as he puts his phone to his ear, seemingly waiting for a call to ring through. A tiny voice comes over the line, and then he’s rattling off in Russian again.

I still don’t know enough words to make any sense of it. I could kick myself. In the weeks that I’ve been with him, the only thing I’ve picked up is “ptichka,” which I think means “little bird.” And that “ty moya” means “you’re mine.”

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