Page 38 of Crowned

I take her shoulders in my hands and pull her closer. “What happened tonight?”

Lilia flinches and looks away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Detka,” Kirill drawls lazily, but with a dangerous inflection to his voice. “Whoever you killed probably has friends. Maybe they followed you. Perhaps they have found the body. What will they do to you and that baby if they find you?”

Lilia swallows hard. She needs our help, and she knows it.

“I was working today. I’m a waitress near Wenceslas Square, and a man came in at lunchtime. Someone who knew me from my old life.”

“Who was it?” Elyah asks, stepping forward.

“Maxim Vavilov, the son of a friend of my father’s.”

A member of the Bratva, I presume. Someone who is going to be missed by powerful people. “He tracked you down here?”

She shakes his head. “He was in Prague on business, and he came into the restaurant where I was working. After my shift he insisted on taking me to dinner, and then after…” She trails off with a shudder.

I feel that shudder through my fingers as I’m still holding on to her shoulders. I’ve thought of no woman but Lilia since I first laid eyes on her. Curious about her. Suspicious of her. Dedicated to outwitting her. Hating her.Wantingher. She became my obsession with every passing day, and now I find out another man got to her while I was mere hours away and put his filthy fucking hands on my pregnant woman?

Through clenched teeth I grind out, “Let me get this straight. You ran into an old friend, and even though you’re pregnant, he forced you?”

The world turns red before my eyes. I’ll kill his entire fucking family for what he did to Lilia. Elyah and Kirill close in on Lilia from either side, their expressions incandescent with fury.

“He tried, but I had a knife in my purse.”

Elyah’s shoulder’s slump with relief and he reaches out and touches Lilia’s cheek, murmuring words of relief and gratitude. Kirill’s body relaxes, but only a little.

From the looks of Lilia, she fought with everything she had to protect herself and the baby. My woman and child, out there in the streets, vulnerable and unguarded. I won’t stand for it a moment longer. She’s never leaving our sight again while she carries this child.

“Konstantin?” she asks, and I realize I’m digging my fingers into her shoulders.

I release her immediately. She wasn’t forced. He tried, but she stopped him, just as I would expect a wife of mine to do.

The blood streaking her face and arms looks suddenly beautiful.

I reach out and caress her cheek. “You did well,milaya. You were perfect.”

Just as she did when I praised her during the pageant, calling her perfect, my angel, Lilia looks as if I’ve pulled the ground out from beneath her. Her lower lip trembles and her face creases like she’s about to cry.

“I shouldn’t have got into his car. I shouldn’t have even gone to meet him. He could have hurt the baby. I wanted to pack up and run far away, but I made a home for us here, and—”

Elyah looks pained and motions for me to move aside so he can take her in his arms.

Like hell I will. He’s not the only one who wants to protect Lilia.

I draw her against me, maybe a little hard because she gasps when her cheek hits my chest. With her folded in my arms, I can feel how she’s trembling with cold and shock. Her belly is pressed against mine, curved and solid. Five and a half months she’s been carrying my child. She’s big enough to notice that she’s pregnant, but she’ll get much bigger.

For a moment, Lilia is tense, and then she burrows her face into my shoulder, still shaking.

“Where is the body?” I murmur into her hair.

“In his car behind a restaurant called Nechci. I just walked away and left him there. I was in a daze. I’ve never killed—” She shudders and falls silent.

I look at Elyah and Kirill over the top of her head. “Can you both go and sort that out? I’ll stay here with Lilia.”

Kirill nods, his expression set and determined. Elyah seems more reluctant to leave, but the longer that corpse sits out there, the more chance there is that someone is going to find it.

“We will be back soon,” Elyah promises her, brushing his knuckles across her cheek.

---