Page 5 of Tainted Empire

My hands, shaking and slick with a cold sweat, fumble for my phone. I need to hear her voice. But it’s just as my fingers brush against the cold metal that I freeze. Her phone — it’s right there, lighting up and ringing with a call she’s not here to answer.

The door creaks open, and Lee steps in, as calm as ever, but there’s a sharpness in her eyes that tells me she’s seen too much. I remember her from last night, her steady hands, her resolute voice as she led Gabriette away from the mess I’d become.

“Where is she?” My voice is nothing but a hoarse whisper, fear and desperation bleeding into each syllable.

“She’s safe,” she says, and it pisses me off how her voice doesn’t even waver.

I don’t want calm. I want the chaos, the screaming match that my soul is primed for.

“Where the fuck is my wife, Lee?” I demand. The anger, a desperate attempt to mask the desolation that’s taking hold. I need to see her, to make this right.

She raises an eyebrow, unimpressed with my tone. “Before we get into that, you need to calm down,” she says, and there’s a warning in her tone that I’ve learned to heed, but fuck if I’m not on the edge right now.

I take a deep breath, trying to steady myself, but the worry, the fear, it’s all too much. “Tell me where she is,” I demand, my voice firmer now.

“She’s safe, Mischa, that’s all you need to know for now,” Lee answers, and it’s pretty clear that’s all I’m getting out of her.

I’m about to argue, to demand answers, but she holds up a hand, silencing me. “First off, there’s something that you need to know. You’ve been out of it for the last few days, paranoid, jittery; basically strung out.”

I swallow deeply, unable to answer. The only one who could bust my balls like this is Lee, and she knows it.

Shaking my head, I scoff. “What are you talking about? I’ve been fi—”

“And last night you were the worst I’ve ever seen you, even after Dasha! You were violent and you fucking shot the son of an Underboss!” she exclaims, pacing. “Do you have any idea of the fucking strings I had to pull to bury your mistake?”

I watch her as she paces the room, confusion setting in. Have I honestly been so out of it and not noticed?

“Not only that, but that bullet could have easily missed him, then we would be having a very different conversation right now,” she says, stopping and pinching the bridge of her nose. “But I suppose I can’t take the blame out on you, not after what I found out.”

I frown at this. “What do you mean by that? This is all my fucking fault, I know—”

“You were drugged, Mischa,” she says, her words hitting me square in the chest. “Phencyclidine, also known as—”

“Fucking PCP,” I scoff in disbelief, shaking my head, her accusation hitting me like a fucking baseball bat to the gut.

“Any idea how someone could have slipped it to you?”

I’m momentarily stunned. Drugged? How? No one could have gotten close enough to drug me, so how could this have happened? I rack my brain, trying to piece the previous days together. I haven’t been around strangers, or eaten anything that I didn’t see made.

A cold sweat breaks out across my skin and a spike of clarity pierces through the fog— I’ve been feeling this way since the night I went out with Lorenzo.

The night I received that fucking video of Gabriette.

Right before then I was fine, drinking and laughing— wait.

My eyes widen, and that’s when it hits me—the bottle of bourbon, a ‘gift’ from the owner at the restaurant the night before my birthday.

“The bourbon,” I say through clenched teeth as I recall how I felt before receiving that video. “It must have been the whiskey I drank and the bourbon I got from the owner of the restaurant when I went out with Lorenzo. I started feeling anxious then… and there was a waitress, her voice sounded familiar, but I don’t remember her face.”

The realization sinks its venomous teeth into me. Someone tampered with it, and I... I became the monster they most likely wanted me to be.

“Thought so,” Lee nods, her expression grim. “We need to check the surveillance footage from that night. I’ll get it sorted and we can go from there. It’s clear someone wanted you to feel unhinged before sending you that video of Gabriette.”

Just mentioning the video has me bristling, and from the look in Lee’s eyes, it must show on my face. She walks over to me and places a hand on my shoulder.

“Before you get your panties in a bunch, you should know that the video they sent you was old. Probably three years old or so,” she starts, flooring me. “You should have known better, Mischa. You should have trusted your wife; the ones who wanted you to hurt Gabriette succeeded.”

I nod, my thoughts racing. But Lee’s not done. “But even so, you need to understand something. Regardless of the drugs, what happened has shaken Gabriette to her core. It’s best for you two to have some time apart.”

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