Page 137 of Tarnished Queen

“Three down.”

The sound drew some attention, so by the time I get back to the hallway, two more men are there, trying to figure out what is going on.

“Sh-she isn’t here, N-Nikolai,” the shorter man stammers as I approach.

“I don’t know if you’re talking about Xena or Belle, but it doesn’t matter.” I raise my gun and fire just as he dives to the side. The shot catches him in the shoulder, and he roars in pain as he hits the ground. “You will die either way.”

The second man scrambles for his weapon, but I kick his right arm and his gun goes flying across the floor. It fires as it hits the tile, shattering a nearby mirror into jagged shards.

“We didn’t take her!” he cries. “No one here knows where she is.”

I knock him to the floor, stand over him, and press my boot into his chest. He wheezes against the crushing weight, but he’s too busy staring at the barrel of my gun to be overly worried about breathing.

“I’m not here to find Belle. I know she isn’t here.”

The other man drags himself against the wall, his right arm hanging limply. “Then why—”

“To kill you,” I sigh. “As if I need a better fucking reason.”

Before either of them can argue, I pull the trigger on the man under my foot and then turn to the man slumped against the wall. He raises a hand to hold me off, as if that might help.

It doesn’t.

The rest of the house is easy to clear. It’s embarrassing how inadequate the security is. If I wasn’t already certain Xena wouldn’t bring Belle here, I’m positive by the time I comb through the final wing of the sprawling mansion.

“Anyone back here?” I call, kicking open a door to a linen closet. “I’m sure you’ve heard your friends die by now. So if you are back here, it’s because you’re a fucking coward.”

No movement from within. No sirens from without, either. Maybe the neighbors know to keep their mouths shut about strange happenings inside these grounds. I peek into an empty bathroom and keep moving.

Yuri and Christo are separately searching for where Xena may have taken Belle. I called them both on the drive here. But I couldn’t go home and wait. I couldn’t sit in my empty house while I knew Xena had my wife.

Every time I think of the way she looked at me in my bedroom—the same way she looked at me in the hospital—I feel sick.

She looked utterly broken. Because ofme.

And in a clumsy attempt to convince her I cared, I made it all worse.

I tighten my hand around my gun. The heat burns into my palm. I’ll tear the Simatou mafia apart limb by limb before I let Belle die thinking she has lost everything.

My phone rings. At the same time, I hear movement in the room to my right. Looks like I do have one final coward on my hands. A soldier who would rather hide than come out and face me. Pathetic.

I answer my phone as I tiptoe around the corner of the doorway. “What do you have, Christo?”

“Nothing,” he growls. “I’ve looked fucking everywhere, Nikolai. Wherever Xena has taken her, it isn’t one of the usual spots. It’s somewhere new.”

“She doesn’t want me to sneak up on her.”

“Or she doesn’t want to be found,” Christo suggests.

I shake my head. “Xena always wants to be found. The woman needs an audience. She just wants to control the performance.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I need to send her a message.”

“What kind of—”

I hang up before Christo can finish. With one swift movement, I kick the door to my right wide open. It bounces off the wall, and I hear a yelp from deeper in the room.

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