Page 136 of Tarnished Queen

“Don’t bother trying to fight,” Xena murmurs, brushing my hair away from my forehead in a weirdly tender gesture. “The medicine is already taking effect. You’ll be gone in a couple seconds.”

Gone?I want to ask what that means, but I can’t ask anything. Even thinking is becoming difficult. My thoughts float behind a gauzy veil I can’t seem to break through.

But one thought is crystal clear, even as my vision goes dark: I wish Nikolai was here.

38

NIKOLAI

“What do you mean you don’t know where she is?” I growl.

A crowd of nurses and orderlies are cowering around me. They’ve been scurrying around like mice for the last few minutes, trying in vain to figure out where Belle might be. But no one has a satisfactory answer.

“She was here when I left,” I snap. “Belle was in that bed when I walked out of her room. I talked to a hospital executive for ten fucking minutes, and now, she’s gone? Where the fuck did she go?”

No one has any answers. The only reason I left Belle when I did was because I thought it was her doctor calling, but instead it was some C-suite idiot calling to kiss my ass and apologize for a clerical mistake. I was on my way back to the room to tell Belle the news.

But now, she’s gone.

She’s gone.

For fuck’s sake, she’sgone.

“I checked the cameras,” a scrawny male nurse stutters, squeezing his way into the panicked circle. “A woman in a nurse’s uniform walked into her room minutes after you left, Mr. Zhukova. She wheeled Mrs. Zhukova out a minute later.”

“Which nurse was it?”

His face pinches into a grimace. “I didn’t recognize her. She wasn’t even wearing a badge.”

And instantly, I know.

"Mr. Zhukova?" The head nurse calls after me, but I'm already pushing through the double doors at the end of the hall. "Where are you going?"

My answer is too low for anyone to hear.

"I'm going to kill her."

* * *

Xena isn't stupid enough to move into her brother's old house—not while I'm still alive, anyway—but there are lights on inside nonetheless.

Considering she killed her own brother inside these walls, any sane person would think she'd sell the place or demolish it. But Xena isn't sane. And soon, she'll join her brother.

There's only a single guard in a shack near the front gate. When I approach, he isn't even watching the monitors. His eyes are trained down at his phone, and based on the moans coming from the tinny speakers, I've caught the man with his pants down.

“Security is a little laxer now that Giorgos is dead,” I remark.

The man whips around at the sound of my voice, his hand wrapped around his dick. His eyes are wide and terrified. He opens his mouth to say something, but I don’t have the time for banter. I shoot him between the eyes and reach over his slumped body to disconnect the perimeter cameras.

Xena may control the Simatous and the Battiatos alike, but even she can’t win a war with zero soldiers. When I’m done sweeping this place, that’s exactly how many she’ll have left.

I storm down the walk. The front door is locked, but it’s pitiful protection. One kick and the wood swings inward and careens against the wall. Hinges break.

A Simatou man is standing in the middle of the entryway, a cellphone pressed to his ear and a smile frozen on his face. He blinks in confusion, and then he’s on the floor, too. Blood pools around where his head once was. I step over the mess and keep going.

Everything is white and bedazzled with gems or covered in mirrors. I see the reflection of my feet in the mirrored entryway table pressed against the wall. I also see the shadow of a man closing in from the living room behind me.

He lunges just as I turn around and catch him in the chin with an elbow. His head whips to one side, and I follow the blow with a kick to the side of his knee. He buckles, hitting the floor with a pained groan. It gives me enough time to aim and fire.

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