Page 27 of Secret Baby for the Bratva Boss

Or is there another way to take care of all of this?I feel my blood start to cool, and my tears slow and stop altogether. I pull out my gun. I’ve turned off my phone light, but my eyes are adjusted to the dark now, and I can see every ridge and divot inthe gun. Despite being small, it has a hefty, solid weight to it; it always feels just right in my hand.

I think of Konstantin. Having only met him the once, his face is a little foggy in my mind: piercing blue eyes, white-blond hair. A cocky smile. I threatened to kill him if he so much as spoke of my son again. I felt in that moment like I could do it, I could really take care of him, and take care of myself. That was before Aleks came back into my life, with his threats and his assurances, with his contingents of men and their guns and trucks.

Is it really so complicated as all of that? Konstantin wants an eye for an eye. That means I either give him that eye—myself—or I fucking take his.

Heat beats through my blood. I stroke the trigger, turn the pistol in my hand, watch the dull light of the night sky skate along and off the barrel. And I make a decision. I don’t need Aleks. I don’t need his marriage. I don’t need my son in this dangerous man’s life…as much as my naïve, traitorous heart might feel otherwise.

What I need to do is take care of this myself.

It’s with a cold, steely confidence that I stand and slowly descend the ladder, back into the dark forest. I know the property better than anyone, and I know the exact route that will take me around front to the drive, to where I can sneak past Aleks’s men. I’ll have to go on foot—taking a car would be too time-consuming and attention-drawing. Weirdly, I feel just like I did that first night, walking in the rain and darkness, all alone as ever.

But little do I know that I am not alone. I’m walking when I start to get the strange sense: an itch behind my ears, and at the base of my spine. An eerie sensation that not only am I being watched…but I’m being followed.

Crazy, I tell myself.You’re just psyching yourself out.But my footsteps quicken all the same. And a moment later, I see a shadow move in my periphery, a dark silhouette detaching from the trees.

I turn toward it, fear bursting through me, and raise my pistol. But before I can fire, before I can even take aim—a hand comes up around my mouth from behind me.A second assailant. My mind cycles through ways to escape, how to break holds, where to strike, how to disarm—but I already know it’s too late.

There is something in the hand that’s pressed to my mouth: a rag, damp, and smelling only ever so faintly of something chemical, like bleach, or cleaner. I know before I really know that it’s chloroform—what else could it be? And almost as soon as I think it, a horrible weakness washes through my body. My knees give first, but the rest of me gets heavy just as fast, and the gun slips from my hand as I pitch forward like a ragdoll.

Any hope of the shadows belonging to Aleks’s men dies right there. Strong arms catch me before I hit the ground and sweep me up. I watch the night sky, the spear-like trees, wheel above me. I am being carried away, spirited through the dark. I have walked into a trap that has probably been laid since the day Konstantin got into town.

Patience,I think tremulously.He has real patience.Somehow, he knew that all he had to do was wait. And look—it worked. I walked right into the belly of the beast.

Forgive me, Adam,I think. I try in vain to keep my eyes propped open. I lock onto the formless, fast-moving clouds; I try to focus on the thrashing treetops. But it’s no use. My body is heavy, weighted as lead, and my eyelids are so heavy I have no hope at all of keeping them open.

A half-second later, or it could be an hour or an eternity, the world goes black and still.

I don’t dream.

Chapter Twelve

Aleks

“Where?” I repeat, through gritted teeth. I can barely see straight. The world at dawn is white with my rage. I am looking through a tunnel of it, at Yuri. “Where?”

But there is no answer. I know there is no answer. They won’t be at the inn; that would be the most obvious place. They could be anywhere else. Anywhere. Right under my nose. She could be a body already, a corpse, cold and blue, caught in the river somewhere or dumped in the woods. She could be gift-wrapped, stolen away in my trunk like a perverse present left by my enemy.

But I don’t know. I have no way of knowing. Konstantin avoided being seen by even one of my men, or the surveillance we have set up around town to track him. But we know for certain one place he and his men have been. I don’t give a fuck if Kat isn’t there. If it wouldn’t make sense for her to be.

“We’re going to the inn,” I say, my voice ice, splinters. I grab a rifle from the back of my truck, Yuri on my heels as I get into the front seat. “Everyone here is going. Get one of the other surveillance teams to this house to guard it in case they come back, or she escapes and thinks to come here. The rest of you are with me.”

Yuri doesn’t say a word. He only nods once, and in his eyes, I see a delighted, violent gratification; it is finally time to spill blood over this.

I’d be lying if I said I too wasn’t eager for it.

For real revenge.

Oh, Konstantin—if your goal was to hang yourself, to dig your own grave, you have succeeded. If you think you survivethis, you are stupider than you look. If you think you get mercy for this, you are a true fool.

A dead fool.

Fuck playing it safe. Fuck being careful. I think that, deep down, I knew this moment was coming. I was a fool not to lock Kat down better, more thoroughly; I gave her far too much freedom. And I forgot—that beneath that cheery, sometime anxious exterior, Katerina May is stubborn and rebellious. She slept with me, after all. And she did so wildly, and with abandon. And then with such conviction, she walked away from me. Or maybe, really, I walked away from her.

Is this all my fault? That night, did I not know I would be endangering her? Did I not know that something like this could happen?

What the fuck am I going to do if I leave her child motherless?

But no—I can’t think like that. I can think only of getting her back, and of getting even. Making Konstantin pay for this. For every threat, every trespass. For the fucking gall to cross the sea and come here, to come after her.

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