Page 69 of Ruin

I cannot blink, look away, my entire attention on his eyes. The sincerity in his gaze, the thrum of his words heightening the thrashing of my heart.

“Nothing is going to keep me from you.” It feels like a promise, and I am the one moving closer, my lips touching his, not kissing, just resting against his mouth, breathing hard. “You are mine. My little Ava. My pretty Baby Bird.”

He annunciates the ownership so beautifully that I almost forget how he does, in fact, actually own me.

And I find that I don’t mind that fact.

I don’t think I mind it at all.

Chapter30

Kazimir

Weeks have blurred past me, rapidly turning into months. My empire is growing, thriving, as everyone else’s around me seems to crumble and ash. Making me the obvious villain.

I have slaughtered more of my own men than I care to count as I search for a rat, a leak, a traitor, and I am still no closer to understanding what the fuck is going wrong. Who’s using me as a scapegoat whilst they fuck all the other players over, and I still don’t know who blew me the fuck up. My phone rang, the other line was dead and the warehouse exploded. It feels like yesterday since this all started happening, and yet, weeks rolled into months and I’m alone. Lonely. I have had zero contact with my closest friends, other than Dima, no word from my sister,him.

The meeting of leaders, earlier tonight, was absent of both leaders of The Firm, instead, it was chaired by Vito and one of Charlie’s brothers, Eli.

They look so much alike, but also not at all, bar the white hair and green eyes, there really are no similarities between the two. Yet, my gaze wandered onto my lover’s younger brother more times than I care to count, wishing the vision would change for one of my preference. Still, my thoughts did not summon him and neither did my calling him. A number that now tells me it’s disconnected.

It’s why I find myself here, once again, desperate for his attention at The Swallow family’s marble mansion.

I was buzzed right through the gates, driving to the front door at a speed much too fast for a driveway, but I have a weird feeling sinking in my gut and I can’t do anything until I see him. Everything will be better when I see him. I don’t care what he thinks, telling me he’s seeing someone else. It means nothing. He and I are something else. Different. He just needs to accept it.

Thoughts of me telling him I’m not gay rush through my brain and I feel the tips of my ears redden with a sudden wash of heat. I feel embarrassment like it’s a living, breathing thing, but we have seen each other in our most desolate of states. I do not know why something that is… true, perhaps, partly, makes me squirm with such uncomfortableness.

My shined dress shoes are splattered with murky raindrops as my feet hammer up the stone steps. Side of my curled fist pounding on the door. I hear voices, raised voices, a lot of them, and a rush of footsteps just before the front door is wrenched open.

The grand foyer is filled with people, all of whom fall into silence, eyes turning to me, as Kyla-Rose stands before me. Thorne Blackwell and his brothers, Charlie’s brothers, Eli and Cam. Kyla-Rose’s husbands, some of The Swallows’ closest soldiers. Charlie’s dad and his partner, Violet.

“Where the fuck is he?” Feral and feline in the way her top lip curls, her tongue rolling the words out in a wicked fast hiss between her teeth.

One clawed hand wrapped over the edge of the door, the other curled over her hip. She wears a knee length black dress, tight on her small pop of a pregnant belly. Black combat boots on her feet, arms bare, but the look on her face is what really draws me in, and I both want to smack it and question it all at the same time.

“What?” I spit back with distaste, hands fisted at my sides.

I don’t like her, and she doesn’t like me, but it is only really because we have both laid claim to the same man. One who likely wants neither one of us. Still, we will always loathe the other, it is just the circumstances we find ourselves in, a soul deep pain of possession.

She laughs hard, loudly, a pained sort of cackle thick in her throat. She releases the door, her hands trembling, one more than the other, and fists her hair. Strands tangling in her fingers, pulling at the root, and I feel compelled to just… do something.

“Kyla-Rose,” I say quietly, taking a single step inside the house, ducking my head to see her face buried beneath her hair.

She’s bent at the waist, a ragged sort of sound muffled behind her clenched teeth. My hand finds her upper arm, she flinches, hard, as my fingertips connect with her bare bicep, goosebumps ripping down the skin.

“What’s happened?” I ask her in a half-whisper, and I think the kindness is wrong, she doesn’t expect that sort of response from me and it just sort of fractures her apart.

“You,” she sweeps her hair back, waist-length strands tossed over her shoulders as she straightens. “You, Ivanov, you. You’re the problem,” she spits it in my face.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” it’s only now I think of her first words,where the fuck is he?“Wait, hold up, what do you meanwhere the fuck is he?”

Coming toe-to-toe with me, head tilted back, neck arched, I want to break her. Rip off her head, tear her spinal column out through her neck cavity. And I don’t give a fuck that her family are at her back, all off whom are staring at us, unmoving, unspeaking. I don’t spare them a second thought as I dip my head down, get right in her face. She doesn’t move this time, no flinch, a challenge. She thinks she’s the alpha as I breathe in her air, she breathes mine, and neither one of us says anything for long, slow seconds. And then she exhales, slow, deep, menacing.

“I am so going to enjoy ruining you, Kazimir,” her plump pout brushes over my bottom lip, but I do not move as she flicks her too big eyes up onto mine. “I will get him back, and when I do, I am going to fucking destroy you.”

I want to smile then, tilting my head to one side, a cocky smirk pulling so hard at my lips it makes my teeth ache.

“You think someone took him,” I whisper, licking my lips and tasting hers.

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