Page 190 of Deceitful Vows

“No,” I reply, shaking my head, unwilling to do his bidding. “He needs to hear it from you…”

My words trail off when he makes sure there’s no possibility of him facing his mistakes head-on. He raises a gun I didn’t realize he was holding until now to his head and fires one shot.

“No!”

The scream didn’t come from me. It came from someone behind me, and the familiarity of her voice has me spinning so fast my legs almost buckle out from beneath me.

Zoya is standing across from me. Her hair still has a tinge of red coloring from where she split her head, and her clothes are two sizes too big, but I would recognize those curves anywhere. And that face…fuck.

Her wide eyes drift from my grandfather, slumped over the edge of Zakhar’s bed with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, to me. I assume her cheeks whiten because she’s never seen a dead body before, but remorse pulls her in another direction.

“I’m so sorry.” She strays her eyes around a mansion now in ruins. “This is my fault. I caused this. I?—”

“No,” I cut her off, my one word as fast as the steps I take to bridge the gap between us. “This is not on you,?????.”I weave my fingers through her hair nowhere near her wound and breathe in her scent before aligning our eyes. “This wasneveron you.”

“But—”

“No buts. No ifs. Life is too short for doubts.”

She is as stubborn as a mule. It is one of the things I love about her the most. “I?—”

“Do I need to take you over my knee,??????”

I should have known lust would force her from her stupor state before anything else. It blazes through her veins, making her hot, but before I can pretend the casualty of our battle isn’t in the thousands, a childlike voice interrupts us this time.

“Daddy.”

Zoya’s pupils blow wide before her motherly instincts kick in even with her being unaware of her connection to Zakhar. She races into this room and places herself between him and a scene that will scar him for life before his eyes are halfway open.

“You can’t open your eyes yet, Zak, or you’ll ruin your surprise.”

He swishes his tongue around his mouth to loosen up his words but keeps his eyes so tightly shut that wrinkles spread across the bridge of his nose. “You got me a surprise?”

“Uh-huh,” Zoya lies before gesturing like a badass mafia boss for me to remove the dead man at the foot of the bed. “But I forgot to wrap it, so I need you to keep your eyes closed for a little bit longer. Okay?”

“Okay,” Zakhar replies as Konstantine assists me in carrying my grandfather out of the room. The doctors Henry ordered to monitor Zakhar’s recovery do nothing but stare. I’m not even sure one of them is breathing.

“We’re almost ready.”

Zoya grunts and groans while using some of the supplies we left the hospital with to clean up the brain matter splattered across the bottom of Zakhar’s bed.

Now is not the time to admit this, especially since I am hiding the body of the man who saved my life in the closet of my son’s room, but I’m hard as fuck.

I knew Zoya had the gall to take down a kingdom, but I had no clue it extended this far.

“Okay.” She breathes out heavily when I return to the room before she scans the stark confines. Henry’s crew destroyed ninety-eight percent of this compound, but Zakhar’s room is basically untouched. His control shows you can be a man of mass power without being heartless. I plan to mimic his constraint as I rebuild.

After snatching up a clean bed sheet from a stack of many, Zoya curls it around her shoulders before giving Zak permission to open his eyes.

He does, albeit a little hesitantly. He is still in a lot of pain, but he’s willing to endure it for the chance of sneaking in some sweets before dinner.

When his eyes land on Zoya to silently demand she cough up the sweets he’s seeking, she throws out her arms and jumps in the air. “Ta-da!”

Zakhar clicks on to her ruse faster than me. I’m not surprised. He is as smart as his mother. “You’re my surprise?”

“Uh-huh.” She steps closer to his bedside, kicking away the gun my grandfather used to kill himself. “I know there is a bit of a difference in our ages, but age-gap romances are all the rage right now. If you can overlook myfuturewrinkles, I can pretend you’re a lot taller than you are.”

Zakhar sounds disgusted when he asks, “You want to be my girlfriend?”

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