Page 181 of Cashmere Cruelty

I rise to my feet, ignoring April’s tug on my hand. “You.”

Petra opens her mouth, hesitates. Then she croaks, “Is she okay?”

“Is sheokay?” I snarl, pressing up into her space. Julia tenses at her side, but I don’t give her the time of day. If she so much as thinks about drawing her gun, I’ll put a bullet in her eye before she can fucking blink. Her first, then her mistress. “You think you have any right to ask that? After all you’ve fucking done?”

“Motya…” Yuri puts a hand on my shoulder. “Maybe we should?—”

I shake it off, hard. “There’s only one thing we should do,” I grit. “Only one thing traitors deserve.”

If we weren’t in public right now, I would’ve done it already. The second I saw her, I would’ve put a bullet in her head. No last words. No excuses. Just death, swift and merciless.

She tries to go around me. “April?—”

“Do not fucking talk to her!”

I almost push her, but Yuri gets between us. “Matvey, let’s not be rash. Think about the consequences?—”

“Consequences?” I snap. “She should’ve thought about the consequences when shekidnapped my woman!”

“You broke our deal.” Petra trembles. “What did you expect?”

“I expected you to be an adult.” No matter how badly I want to keep yelling in her face, I’m aware people have already started to stare. So I lower my voice and spit, full of barely-concealed fury, “I expected you to keep your shit together. Most of all, I expected you not to abduct a pregnant woman and force her into a goddamn heist.”

Her eyes widen at my words. “That’s right,” I say, twisting the knife. “She didn’t even have to tell me anything. It took me five minutes in my penthouse to figure out your plan. Only, you didn’t actually have one, did you?”

“Matvey…” April tries to interject.

I steamroll right over her, never taking my eyes off Petra for a second. “You thought you could ride the coattails of someone better than you, again. You thought you could makevoron somebody else’s dime. So much for doing it yourself, right?”

“Matvey.”

“And for what?” I roar in Petra’s trembling face. “All this, and you haven’t got a thing to show for it. No diamonds, no title, no nothing. And not a single person willing to help you out of it.” I look down on her in disgust. “So congratulations, Petra Solovyova: you’re finally on your own.”

“Matvey, enough!”

That’s when I finally turn to the source of those words.

I find April standing, struggling to stay upright. “Don’t,” I warn, rushing to help her back down.

But she grips my arm and refuses to sit again. “No one’s innocent in this,” she breathes through the waves of pain. “Not you, not Petra—and not even me. So please, just… stop.”

“She kidnapped you,” I growl back. “She endangered our child.”

“And I haven’t forgiven her for that,” April retorts. “But haven’t we suffered enough?” Her eyes fill with tears. “Hasn’t our baby suffered enough?”

That’s when I hear it: sirens, again. An ambulance.

Thepakhanin me is screaming with bloodthirst, clamoring for revenge with every breath. But I can’t be another reason April gets hurt today.

I pull her close, then turn to Petra. “The Groza Bratva is done with you. I’m done with you. And if I ever see you again near me and mine, I will kill you. So don’t even fucking try.”

I can’t read Petra’s face at all. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’s holding back tears.Realtears, of pain and regret.

But this is Petra Solovyova we’re talking about. If she ever had a heart, it’s been frozen over long ago.

She straightens herself up. Even now, she tries to make herself look dignified. “I’m sorry,” she says to April and April alone.

April doesn’t reply.

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