Page 93 of Crowned

“Sorry about this, Konstantin. You’re a clever man. A handsome one, too. If I had one piece of advice for you, it’s that you underestimate women. We’re not as stupid as you think we are. Not all of us, anyway.”

Everything turns white.

Blinding.

Screaming.

There’s a roar of anger and then a feminine scream of pain. Elyah is pinning Valeriya to the wall by her throat, and Kirill is looming over me, his face chalk white as he rips off his T-shirt and holds it to my head. He’s shouting at me, but I can’t make out what he’s saying.

The world fades away, and my last thought is that Elyah was right all along.

Not about Valeriya.

About everything.

* * *

The steady bleeping of a machine.A dry mouth with a chemical taste coating my tongue. Grainy eyes. I fight through the strange sensations and open my eyes.

My gaze fastens on an unfamiliar, institutionally stark ceiling, and something’s strange. Half my vision is black.

I clumsily reach up to my face, wondering where the fuck I am and what’s happened. Wasn’t my wedding day—

My fingers touch a bandage on my face, and I freeze. Valeriya. She was sitting on top of me and holding a gun to my face. Did she blow my head off? Half my head? How am I still thinking if I’m dead?

I don’t know what’s happened to me, but I understand what Valeriya was now.

She was a fucking assassin.

My arm tangles in something, and I grab a plastic tube and rip it from my arm. Pain explodes in the back of my hand, but I don’t care. I just want to find Valeriya and choke the life out of her.

“Konstantin.Konstantin. Lie still.”

Someone tries to push me back into bed, but I don’t let him. My head is throbbing, but I still have the use of my legs.

“What are you doing, you crazy asshole? Get back into bed.”

“Where’s Valeriya?”

“You’re going to hurt yourself. We do not even know what you have. Ten concussions. Brain damage. You have been shot in the head.”

“I said,where’s Valeriya,” I snarl.

Elyah keeps arguing with me, so I walk out of the room, straight down the corridor, and out of the hospital. Swearing at me and telling me I’m a fool, Elyah helps me into his car.

By the time we reach my home, I’m sweating and shaking, and my skull feels like it’s going to split open. I have no choice but to let Elyah haul my arm over his shoulders and half walk, half carry me to bed.

“Kirill is with Valeriya in the basement. We’ll know why this happened soon enough,” Elyah assures me.

I must fall into a doze. I don’t know how much time has passed, but when I open my eyes, the light doesn’t seem to have changed. Maybe a whole day has passed.

Kirill enters the room behind Elyah, covered in blood. It’s spattered over his chest and throat and caked on his knuckles. “I have been talking to Valeriya.”

“Looks like it was a good talk,” I mutter.

“Her name is not Valeriya. It is Oksana. She was hired to spy on you and then assassinate you. She missed. If Elyah had not been standing outside the door when she shot you, she would have finished you off.”

I close my eyes. No one told Elyah to stand outside my door. He should have been drinking vodka with Kirill and relaxing, but he listened to his suspicions, and I should have listened to him.

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