Page 131 of Sinister Promise

If this was about the US government taking issue with what we’d been doing, the FBI would have brought in Gregor or Artem. Not my fucking wife.

Did they think they could get her to turn on me?

The thought made my vision go red. If some rookie cop thought he could use her to make a name for himself, I was going to teach him exactly what happened to people who touched what was mine.

The second the Range Rover pulled up to the police station I got out, not even waiting for the car to come to a complete stop. I marched in, right past the receptionist and into the bullpen, where a dozen officers stopped and stared.

"Where is my wife?" I said. I didn't yell. There was no need to. Everyone there knew who the fuck I was and what I was doing there.

Two men in suits approached me, detectives, most likely.

"Mr. Ivanov–"

I didn't stop to listen to them. I pushed right past them and went to the corner office where a portly man with a pockmarked face was sitting behind the large desk.

"Where the fuck is my wife?" Anger and promises of violence were laced into every syllable.

He looked up, ready to yell at the interruption until he recognized me. The blood drained from his face as I stalked into his office. His jowls trembled with fear.

"Bring me to my wife, or I'll start with your fingers and work my way up until there's nothing left of you but screams and regret. Then I'll do the same to every cop in this building while your families watch."

He nodded, his eyes wide.

Shaking, he stood and led me through the bullpen and down a long, bland hallway with doors on either side.

"She's in here, just answering a few questions forDetective Cortez. I was just about to come down and check to see if she needed anything, water or?—"

He took a ring of keys from his belt and started fumbling with them.

"Is she?" I asked.

"Is she what?" He stopped and looked up at me.

"Is she answering any of your questions?"

"No, actually. The only thing she has said was to call you. She has been very uncooperative."

With no patience for his fumbling, I took a step back and kicked the door in.

Alina sat in the small, sterile interrogation room. She was pale and trembling, her wrists bound in metal cuffs, red where the metal bit into her delicate flesh.

Anger flared in me.

Then when I met her eyes, and she turned her head to the side to show the red handprint across her face, I fucking lost it.

I walked over to Alina and tilted her chin up so I could see the impression on her face more clearly. It wasn't a crisp single handprint—there were several that overlapped. Someone had dared to strike her multiple times.

"Pavel, I didn't say anything." She turned her head to look me in the eye, pleading for me to believe her.

"You need to teach your bitch some fucking manners," the detective sneered.

In a glance, I took in the man’s stance…and his hands on his belt buckle.

A howl of rage was torn from me as I pulled my hand back and slammed my fist into his face, the crack of his jawbone beneath my knuckles satisfying.

He spun and collapsed on the floor, out cold.

Fucking pussy.

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