Page 55 of Darkest Game
“Sure. Yeah.” Let her think that. It’s easier than trying to explain how I was forced into my marriage by Jack, who I ended up killing on my wedding night, so he wouldn’t rape my wife.
“Is it serious?” she asks.
“I barely know the girl. But I am married now and I have that to deal with it so we can’t be together.”
“At all? Or just for now?”
I hesitate. Irina and I do not have a future. But when I think of her, she’s all I can think of. She’s the kind of woman that makes you lose your mind for.
“I can’t make any promises,” I say. “For now. But… this might be the end for us. So if there’s anyone else you like, go for it. Don’t let me stop you.”
“Wow. Huh.” She huffs. “You’ve changed. You barely seem like the man I know and it’s only been a few days since I last saw you.”
“A lot can happen in a few days. I’ll see you around, Amanda.”
“See you around.” She leaves the club, thinking I got married from a drunk night in Vegas, and just made three hundred dollars without having to do any work. She’ll be fine.
As for me? Fuck. I’m a total mess right now. I’ve always been calm, cool, collected. Now I’m a raging fucking inferno.
Jimmy rounds up my closest allies – ten men in total – to discuss our plans to go after Elaine.
“Where could she be?” Mark asks. He’s the idiot who stole Irina in the first place when it was supposed to be her sisters.
“Start looking up all the properties Jack or Elaine own. Chances are, she’s at one of those. We’ll start looking at them all. We’re going to find her, kill her, and end this fucking war. I’ve barely slept in days and I’m fucking tired.”
And angry that I lost my wife to Mikhail and Nico. There’s no point in denying that I wanted to keep Irina, even if it was a stupid idea. But I have to let her go. I’m only going after Elaine so she can’t keep coming after me and Irina any longer. That’s it. And then once Elaine is dead, I can wipe my hands clean of Irina and move on. Maybe Amanda will take me back.
Fuck. I don’t want Amanda. I feel it in my gut.
“Get to work,” I snap at the men and they all do as I say.
It takes us around a few hours to compile a list of properties owned by Jack and Elaine and once we have that, we take off to find her.
The first few places we check are empty. An empty apartment. An empty business building full of offices.
The third place we check is a hair salon that looks abandoned. Mark opens the door… and that’s a mistake.
The building explodes into a gush of fire, sending Mark flying backwards. I land on my back from the force of the explosion but fortunately, I’m far enough away from the blast to not have been burned.
But Mark is not so lucky. A couple of my other men are also hurt.
I crawl over to Mark and see his lifeless eyes. “Fuck. She had it rigged with a fucking bomb.”
Jimmy comes over to me, having been behind me when the blast went off. “Are you ok, boss?”
“I’m fine. But we need to get out of here. Mark is dead.” I stand up and stumble away from the hair salon. “Elaine can’t keep getting away with this shit. She needs to die and I need to personally be the one to kill her.”
“What are we going to do with… the bodies?” He nods at Mark and the other two men who didn’t make it. Fuck. Now I’m down more numbers.
If Irina were here, she’d ask me where my humanity is. I just lost a few friends and I don’t even care. The selfishness in me is coming back.
All I care about is killing Elaine. Nothing else matters.
Chapter Eleven
Irina
“Interesting… dogs,” Mom says, trying to smile but it only comes across as a grimace. The two dogs are seated at the bottom of my bed in the guestroom.
