Whenever Aslinn’s rage was sparked, it produced more than just fireworks in my mother. I had heard the horror stories. Like how she had planted a bomb in a pregnant woman’s car when she had thought the woman had been flirting with my father. Or the time a friend had reneged on a friendly bet that Aslinn had won, and she had burned her friend’s house down as payment instead.
Right then, in that moment, I wanted to embrace the darkness that was my mother’s legacy to me. I wanted to make Adrian Volkov, the wolf of the Russian crime world, hurt as he had made me hurt. As I still hurt.
I wanted to tear his heart—his fucking soul—from his body and feed it to his wife. Everything he held dear, I wanted to destroy.
Forcing myself out of bed, I walked into the bathroom. After checking my glucose levels then giving myself a shot of insulin, I showered. The water was hot, but I welcomed it, imagining it scalding away the imprint of Adrian’s touch. As steam lifted from my skin, I pictured the mark he had left on my body, proclaiming me as his, fading into the air with it.
My face had never needed makeup more than it did that morning. My concealer was needed in abundance with the dark circles that made my eyes look bruised. Eye drops helped with the redness, and I had a special, and very expensive, serum to help with the puffiness from where I had cried so much the day before.
By the time I was done, my face didn’t reveal the tolls the events of the day before had taken on me. My face looked young, refreshed, but the smile I normally wore was long gone. I didn’t think it would ever grace my face again.
Adrian had killed something inside me with his lies, his games that he had sworn repeatedly the night before he wasn’t playing. I hadn’t believed him.
I wasn’t going to believe a word that came out of his lying, cheating mouth ever again.
I dressed in one of my newer outfits, a gray dress that had a lace overlay. I smoothed silky, thigh-high stockings over my legs and pinned them in place with a garter belt. A new pair of open-toed heels completed the outfit.
When I looked at myself in my floor to ceiling mirror on the back of my closest door, I had to admit, I looked hot. However, I took no satisfaction in my appearance.
For a single moment, I simply stood there, examining myself closely. Was there something in my appearance that suggested to the world that I really was brainless? That I was an airhead who would allow anyone to play with my emotions and turn me into something as degrading as a man’s mistress?
I clenched my teeth and shook my head, my sweet smelling and perfectly styled hair falling over my shoulders. It didn’t matter if I appeared like that or not. No one was ever going to make me feel that way again. No one was ever going to get close enough to even try.
I picked one of my favorite purses, a metallic silver handbag that I easily put all the things I needed inside with room to spare. My insulin and glucose meter, extra syringes, and a few packets of alcohol swabs that I knew I would need were on top so I wouldn’t have to search the deep bag for them later. Pulling the strap over my shoulder, I grabbed my phone, ignoring the full-screen of alerts to missed calls and messages, and left my bedroom.
Downstairs, I told my usual security detail that I was leaving after I had breakfast, and then I walked away before they could so much as nod. I knew they would get the car ready and be waiting when I left the house.
Papa and Cristiano were in the dining room, their murmured voices ceasing when I entered. I didn’t pay either more than a flicker of a glance as I went over to the long buffet and poured myself a coffee before sitting at the table with them.
“Going out, sweetheart?” Papa asked as he pushed away his empty breakfast plate.
“I have a few meetings with my charities, Papa. We’re organizing a get-together at an art gallery to raise money to help provide inner city children with iPads for school,” I told him without looking his way, instead turning my attention to the platters of food set out on the table.
There was bacon and sausage, eggs three different ways, buttery croissants and toast, even a few fruit-filled pastries that my brother preferred. I took a slice of toast, buttered it lightly, and then nibbled on it between sips of coffee. I could feel both his and Cristiano’s gazes on me, trying to read me, but my face was completely emotionless. That in itself was cause for their concern.
I was normally so happy in the mornings. Hell, all the time really. Scarlett had once likened me to some Disney princess who sang so gaily the birds would fly through my open window and perch on my finger.
Right then, there wasn’t a single drop of happiness inside me.
“Are you feeling okay, tesoro?” Papa asked with concern darkening his eyes.
“I’m fine. Really,” I assured him when both he and my brother continued to watch me.
Wiping my mouth with a linen napkin, I stood then walked around the table to kiss first my father then Cristiano on the cheek. “I’ll see you both later. Play nice.” I tried to smile down at them, but my face felt tight and ready to break from the pressure of using muscles that didn’t want to work.
Ignoring their continued frowns, I grabbed my purse and headed out.
As I left the dining room, my phone went off with an incoming text. I didn’t bother to pull it from my bag as one of the guards opened the front door for me. I felt like a robot as I descended the front steps then stepped into the already waiting car.
The drive into the city was quiet. Neither of my guards spoke to me, and I was perfectly okay with that. I pulled my phone out of my bag, ignoring the newest message alerts, and pulled up my emails. My emotionless mask tried to break when I saw that I had another email from my grandmother, but I didn’t open it. I knew if I did, I was going to once again be lost in the pain that had tried to destroy me the night before.
I had other emails that needed my attention, and I quickly dealt with the ones that involved my charities. I sat on the board of several of the charities and was supposed to attend a meeting for the one I had told Papa about. I didn’t want to go, couldn’t find the pleasure that I usually felt when I got to contribute to such a worthwhile cause, but I knew if I didn’t, my father would be upset.
Emails weren’t the only thing I used my phone for on the drive into the city, also doing a background check on Adrian. I had googled him the day we had met, but that was all. I should have done more, should have covered every base. But even as I moved through one digital back door to another, I found very little. Mostly just the basics: his birthday, what part of Russia he was from—St. Petersburg—and the few businesses he owned that he wasn’t a silent partner in. He had a lot of small businesses. Just like Papa.
There was a brief article on his arrest, and then his sentencing from some bullshit murder rap that even I could see was a setup, yet there was nothing about him being married, not even a marriage license on file. There wasn’t a single trace on the internet that even suggested he had a wife. Hell, there was barely anything about his family, other than what little I had already found out about Anya the day I had first met him.
It was frustrating, but I really wasn’t expecting to find much. Hoped, sure. Expectations weren’t hope, though. They were reality, and the reality right then was that Adrian Volkov worked hard to keep his private life private.
I knew I could have asked Ciro for the information since he was the one who had found it out for Scarlett. At the same time, I knew if I asked him, then he would tell Scarlett, and I didn’t want to pull her into this more than she already had been. I could have asked Cristiano, but then he would want to know why I needed information about a man he had warned me off in the first place. He would spend hours scolding me, but in the end, I knew what would happen.
He would kill Adrian.
Chapter 14
Victoria
The texts and calls wouldn’t stop. They were constant, never ending, and with each one that made my phone go off, the ice wall I had built around my heart tried to crack.
At first, I refused to read them, but as more and more came in until my voicemail was full and wouldn’t accept any more, I realized that maybe there would be something in one of them that would point me in the right direction of my goal hurting him as he had hurt me.
Making sure that door was locked, I buried myself under my covers in an attempt to protect my heart from the pain I was about to inflict upon myself.
The first crack came as soon as I heard his voice. The deep, slight huskiness still had the ability to caress every inch of my body. But there was something different in his voice, too.
Pain.
No, I refused to believe that the answer was that simple. That my walking away from him two nights ago had caused him anything more than a small irritation.
The second crack came at the use of that damn nickname he had given me. Kotyonok. It tried to warm me, but my heart was too frozen to be moved by something as little as a pet name. It pissed me off that he had likened me to a kitten. A defenseless, meek little kitten. That was how he had seen me, and what I had let him believe.
He was wrong.
I wasn’t meek, and I sure as hell wasn’t defenseless.
I wasn’t a kitten. I was a motherfucking tigress.
I erased the voicemail before he could get out more than a handful of words. The next message instantly began.
“I know nothing I say will make you forgive me, kotyonok. I have no excuses for what I did. None. I kept Klara from you, and I would do it again. Because it gave me a moment in time with you that I will never regret.”
He blew out a breath, and at the sound, the third crack hit my ice wall, vibrating through my entire chest and out into all my limbs, making me tremble. My chin began to wobbly, but I clenched my jaw and closed my eyes.
Delete! my mind screamed at me.
Listen, was my heart’s demand through the mile-thick layer of frozen wasteland I had spent the last two days erecting around it.
With fingers that shook, I hit delete.
“Please, just tell me you’re okay. I haven’t heard your voice, other than this goddamn voicemail recording in two days. I need to know you’re safe, kotyonok. A two-word text; that’s all I’m asking for.”
The combination of plea mixed with commanding authority shouldn’t have made my heart squeeze, but it did.
A dozen more messages said the same thing, each one growing more demanding. I told myself that it wasn’t desperation I heard in his voice. That after what he had done to me, he couldn’t possibly care if I was alive or dead in some back alley. Our time together might have been short, but it had been magical for me. Whereas it had only been a little bit of fun for him.
Tears burned the backs of my eyes as I remembered telling him I loved him, though he hadn’t once said how he felt about me. I hadn’t thought he could fall for me as hard or as quickly as I had for him, but I had thought I saw genuine affection and infatuation in his dark eyes.
Fuck, how could I have been so goddamn wrong?
“Victoria.” There was hoarse break in his voice. Then there was a static-filled pause. I could almost picture him having trouble swallowing around an emotional lump in his throat. “I miss you. I miss the smell of your daisy perfume. The sound of your laugh. The way you would look up at me with love shining out of your beautiful brown eyes. Love for me.”
There was another pause, and when his voice came back, it was as if there was no hoarseness to his tone. It was strong, commanding, and it was like a physical blow to my abdomen.
“I know you still love me. I know that this … It didn’t completely kill that love. I accept that you need time, kotyonok. I will respect that. But know that I will never let you go. Never.”
I couldn’t listen to the rest of the messages after that. Not when he was able to so clearly predict that, even though I hated him now, I hadn’t stopped loving him.
That wall of ice I had built wasn’t able to kill the love I had for my Russian wolf.
Nevertheless, I was sure I had found the key to hurting Adrian. The emotion in his voice couldn’t be an act. Maybe he hadn’t been in love with me, but he had cared. And from the desperation I had heard, I realized I was able to hurt him as deeply as he had hurt me.
I was what could hurt him.
***
“Let’s get a drink,” my sister urged as we stood in the middle of some new nightclub called Red Prism. It was wild in there, but the music was good and Scarlett had promised me it wasn’t in any way associated with Adrian. “We need a good buzz going on.”
Earlier that night, she had come into my room and conned me into going out with her. I knew she was trying to pull me out of my funk, but I couldn’t seem to help it. I was committed to my plan to make Adrian regret ever hurting me. At the same time, I missed him like an amputated limb. He had become a major part of my life—myself—and I was finding it hard to deal without him.
No matter how much I missed him, though, I wasn’t going to fall back into his arms. I wasn’t going to let him pull me into becoming the one thing I had always sworn I would never be. A mistress.
When Scarlett had come into my room and asked me to go out with her, it had pulled my head out of my own ass for a minute. I had realized she was no happier than me. Whatever was going on, or wasn’t going on, with Ciro was really messing with her. If she was willing to go out, when any other time I would have to beg, plead, and bribe her with really good coffee to even get her out the door, that told me she was having a hard time dealing.
Feeling like the worst possible twin in the history of twins, I had given in and dressed up for the first time in days. There was no enthusiasm in it, though; none of the joy I would have normally felt over the idea of a night out dancing with her. I was only there for her. If given the option, I probably would have pulled a page out of her book and been in bed sleeping right then.
My phone kept going off with the same texts and voice messages from Adrian. I erased them every night, but he had filled it up again since I had purged the inbox the night before. I didn’t dare listen to them, not until I knew I was strong enough to dish out the revenge I was planning. My heart was way too weak where he was concerned to even attempt it right then.
At the bar, Scarlett ordered us both double shots of tequila. I tossed them back without feeling the sting of the silver liquid as it rolled down my throat. My second shot had barely landed on the bar top when she grabbed my hand and pulled me with her onto the dance floor.
It took a few songs, but I soon let the music take over, relaxed enough to enjoy the music.
I felt Scarlett’s hand on my shoulder, her laugh in my ear making me smile for what felt like the first time in a million years.
I got lost in the music, pushing everything out of my mind except for the rhythm and how good it was to do something I had always loved with the one person I knew loved and supported anything I did.
“Hey, beautiful ladies,” a deep voice spoke loudly over the music, and I lifted my head to find some guy in skinny jeans and a black button-up only halfway done, dancing to our left. “Can I join you?”
Scarlett acted as if she hadn’t seen or heard him. She turned her back to him, rolling her eyes at me.
This was the norm for us when we were out like this. Guys wanting to chat us up, or the bolder ones asking us if we wanted to have a threesome.
Swinging her arms out, she “accidently” clocked him right in the balls. With his skinny jeans so tight, I was pretty sure his boys were already taking a beating. When she connected with his man parts, he bent in half like someone had just stabbed him in the belly.
A giggle tried to burst from my lungs, but I held it back, not sure I remembered how to giggle anymore. Meanwhile, Scarlett kept dancing like she hadn’t just crippled some stranger.
Two songs later, another guy with frosted tips and cologne so thick it burned my eyes tried to push his way between us. I watched as my sister narrowed her eyes and lifted
her knee before the guy could even open his mouth. He gasped and fell to his knees, while Scarlett just took my hand and we went back to dancing several feet away from the downed man.
After that, no one else was brave enough to even attempt approaching us, and I wrapped my arms around her waist in a hug of thanks.
We danced in peace for over an hour. All the while, I kept feeling my phone vibrate with more and more messages.
“I need to pee,” Victoria said at my ear just loud enough for me to hear her over the music. “And you look like you need a break. You get some water, and I’ll go to the powder room. Then we can get out of here. Maybe grab something to eat. And a coffee.”
Of course, coffee. She was addicted to coffee.
She walked with me back to the bar where I ordered two bottles of water while she headed off in the direction of the bathroom. As soon as she was out of sight, I pulled my phone from my dress pocket. I wasn’t surprised to see the number of texts I had from Adrian any more than I was the few lines I could read without unlocking the screen.
For several minutes, I just looked down at the words, not really seeing them. He missed me, he said. I saw the words, over and over again in almost every text he sent me. He missed me. And fuck, I missed him, too.
I pathetically traced my fingers over his words then forced myself to delete them, one by one.
Swallowing hard, I picked up one of the bottles of water and took a small sip, glancing around for Scarlett. Even if there had been a long line at the bathroom, she should have been back by now. I glanced down at my phone, my eyes widening when I realized she had been gone for over ten minutes.
Moving away from the bar, I hurried through the crowd toward the bathrooms. I figured I would meet her along the way, but there was no sign of her. I knew she wouldn’t have left without me, and I doubted she would ever go out onto any dance floor without me or someone she trusted with her.
Maybe she had gotten an upset stomach, I told myself to ease the twisting nerves in my own stomach right then. Scarlett was fine. There was probably just an overly long line in the bathroom. Some girl had probably drank too much and now had her head in a toilet.