Page 49 of The Russian's Revenge Bride
And God help me, it was my way now, too.
The SUV’s engine purred as we drove away from the scene, leaving behind two dead assassins and three dead Bratvasoldiers, and dissolving any illusions I might have had about the life I was leading. This was my world now. Violence and blood and men who killed without hesitation to protect what was theirs.
I should have been horrified. Should have been planning my escape, counting the ways I could distance myself from the brutality I’d just witnessed.
Instead, I squeezed Maxim’s hand tighter and let myself feel what I’d been fighting against for months.
I felt safe. Protected. Claimed.
I felt like I was exactly where I belonged.
The drive back to the house passed in contemplative silence, both of us processing what had just happened, what it meant, what it changed. Maxim’s thumb traced patterns on my knuckles, and I found the gesture more comforting than any words could have been.
When we finally pulled through the gates of home, I saw Anya waiting on the front steps, her face pale with worry. She ran toward us before the SUV had fully stopped, her composure cracking when she saw the blood on Maxim’s shirt.
“Jesus Christ, what happened? Are you hurt? Is Eleanor….”
“She was ambushed,” Maxim said, stepping out and pulling me with him.
Anya’s eyes met mine over his shoulder, and I saw the questions there, the fear, the guilt at having let me go. I gave her a small smile, trying to reassure her that I didn’t blame her for what had happened.
As we walked toward the house, I felt the weight of my new understanding settling around me like a cloak. This was my life now. Beautiful and terrible, dangerous and intoxicating, built on a foundation of violence and bound together with something that might have been love.
And for the first time since this all began, I wasn’t fighting it anymore.
I was embracing it.
Embracing him.
Embracing the woman I was becoming in the crucible of his world, finally ready to claim my place in the darkness beside Maxim.
Chapter 14 – Maxim
I drove faster than I should have, the speedometer climbing past ninety as Chicago’s streets blurred into streaks of gray and gold in my peripheral vision. Every thirty seconds, my eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, scanning for threats that might be following us, for motorcycles that might emerge from the traffic behind us like metal predators hunting wounded prey.
The silence in the SUV was deafening, louder than the growl of the engine or the whistle of wind through the bullet holes in the rear windshield. Eleanor sat beside me, her body pressed against the passenger door like she was trying to disappear into the leather upholstery. She hadn’t spoken since I’d pulled her away from the carnage, since she’d touched my blood-stained cheek and called me hers.
In the harsh light filtering through the windshield, I could see the damage the ambush had done to her. Blood had dried in rusty streaks along her neck where flying glass had found its mark. Her tank top, the soft pink one I’d watched her put on that morning through the security feeds, was torn from the back where she’d scraped against the car door. Dirt and debris clung to her hair, and her hands trembled in her lap like autumn leaves in a bitter wind.
But she was alive. Breathing. Whole.
That was all that fucking mattered.
My knuckles were still crimson with the blood of the men who’d tried to take her from me, the skin split where it had connected with bone and concrete during the brief, brutal fight. The blade I’d used to open that bastard’s throat was cleaned and back in its sheath, but I could still feel the weight of it in my palm, still hear the wet sound it had made sliding through flesh.
I’d killed for her. Without hesitation, without mercy, without a single goddamn second of regret.
And I’d do it again. A hundred times, a thousand times, until every threat to her existence was buried in the ground where it belonged.
The gates of home appeared ahead, wrought iron and security cameras and armed guards who nodded in recognition as we passed. Safe. We were safe. But the word felt hollow in my mind because safety was an illusion in my world, a temporary reprieve between battles that never truly ended.
I pulled into the circular drive with a screech of tires on stone, the SUV’s damaged engine coughing like a dying animal. Before I’d even cut the ignition, I saw Anya burst through the front doors, her face white with panic and something that looked like guilt.
She’d let Eleanor leave. She’d covered for her, made excuses, probably thought she was doing the right thing by giving my wife the freedom she craved.
She’d almost gotten Eleanor killed.
We stepped out of the SUV, and I watched Anya take in the sight of us. Blood-stained. Dirt-covered. Eleanor wrapped in my jacket like it was armor, her eyes hollow and distant. The sound of our approach echoed, footsteps that spoke of violence and narrow escapes and the kind of luck that didn’t last forever.
