Page 49 of Deception

Pale and bruised. Battered. Red looks a shell of herself. I never wanted it to be this way. From the moment I laid eyes on her, I knew I could never let her go. However, looking at her now, maybe my father was right. I should have sent her to one of the clubs. Had I listened, the girl wouldn’t be close to falling apart, and for that…

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, tugging the blanket higher.

The vision of the bruises on her neck makes me physically sick. It doesn’t matter that Sergi is dead because what I did to him was too easy compared to what he’s done to her. Slender legs are mottled purple and blue, and I keep asking myself why I sent for her.

Why?

“If I could bring him back—” Pausing, I sink back into my seat and drink down what’s left of my vodka. The burn growls at the back of my throat with the need to destroy. “You’re better than this,” I tell her, knowing that she’s not listening to a word I’m saying. “Stronger than you or I or anyone knows.”

Nothing but the hum of the engine murmurs back, taunting me with the fact she hasn’t moved a limb since I laid her down. Her heart is beating. Her lungs are working. Yet she refuses to wake.

With a low knock, Anton opens the bedroom door. His arm is in a sling after the doctor took care of his gunshot wounds back at the hotel.

“You should have let the doctor look at you,” he says with a fleeting glance to the bed.

“They’re only bruises.” And nothing compared to hers.

“It’s going to get messy now. You realise that, don’t you? You killed the Sarapov heir, and they will not stop until?—”

“If she doesn’t wake up soon, the Sarapov won’t need to worry about getting to me.”

Standing beside me, Anton nods with a narrowed stare at the girl. “When she wakes up, you’re going to have to decide what happens next. Dimitri is furious.”

“Is my father ever anything other than angry?” The hoarse scoff rumbles to a chuckle that sounds nothing like me.

“Not even your mother will save you grief this time.”

“Have you ever known anyone to withstand so much?” Pouring myself another drink, I hand him the bottle so that he can do the same.

“I’ve never known you to risk so much for anyone.” He blows out a breath, pouring himself half a finger and gulping it. “Is she worth it? To you?”

“I hate her.”

Anton laughs, making me look up at him. “She hates you too.”

“She constantly makes me want to punish her. I don’t know whether I want to kill her or…”

“Because you care.”

“Who the fuck do you work for?”

Pouring me another drink, he shakes his head at me. “I’m not in the business of lying, and neither are you. The girl is a weakness we need to address. You either claim her and make her one of you so that everyone knows who she belongs to, or you kill her. Those are your only options now.”

“I kill her, or we kill each other.” I don’t see us ending in any other way.

We are volatile. The push and pull between us weaves between lust and hate. It’s vicious and unrelenting, beautiful in all its toxic glory. But it will always end in destruction because love, in its purest form, is devastation.

“Good luck figuring that out,” Anton chuckles as he puts the bottle down and heads back out of the bedroom, looking back at the bed. “If you die happy…maybe it’s not a bad thing.”

The door clicks closed, and I check how much longer we have left of the almost eight-hour flight to our compound in the Russian mountains. It feels like we’ve been in the air for longer than two hours, and as I settle back into my seat, I pull out my phone to call Mom.

It barely rings once before I end the call with the girl’s soft, pained groan. I watch to see if she goes back to sleep, but her eyes blink open, squinting in the dim light as though it’s too much for her. Without a second of thought, I stand and reach over to the bedside table to turn the light off.

“Tomasz,” she croaks when I sit on the edge of the bed.

Even dry and rough, her voice makes my pulse race. “Red.”

A long sigh of relief pushes from her, and while I’m still staring in awe that she is awake, a tear rolls down her temple, followed by the tell-tale quiver of her grazed chin that warns me of her breakdown. Tears upon tears sluice down her temples, drenching her hair as sobs rip from deep inside her.

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