Page 64 of Marrying the Mobster
He furrows his brow and glances at the monitor. “If someone’s coming, they have to be vetted. Diego’s orders.”
“Diego isn’t here,” I snap, growing impatient. I can’t predict how long Viktor will wait before getting annoyed. “Do it. Now.”
Nicolas clenches his jaw and gives me a defiant look, but he keeps his tone level as he reaches for his phone. “I’ll just call him first, to make sure—”
“And how do you think it’ll go over when you tell him you refused to accommodate his wife? I’m not a fucking prisoner here, I’m the goddamn queen of this castle. When I say tell the guards to stand down, you do it without making me wait. Got it?”
Nicolas grinds his teeth but looks uncertainly at his phone, second-guessing his instincts. I hold my breath, hoping my bravado will be enough to earn his compliance.
With an annoyed huff, Nicolas plops down at the desk and calls up the line feeding into the guards’ earpieces. I don’t wait around to listen, confident Viktor will be able to pass through unimpeded.
I leave my phone on the entryway table and pause to look at my reflection in the mirror. I look like shit—as worried and frightened as I feel. Squaring my shoulders, I smooth my face into a blank slate. It’s a skill I learned while playacting as Diego’s girlfriend, and one I hope will come in handy now. I’m playing Viktor’s game only long enough to figure out where Diego is and whether he’s still alive. From there, all bets are off. I might have been unsuccessful in escaping Diego, but then a part of me eventually lost the will to fight.
To get back to Diego, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do. There’s no way in hell Viktor can stop me once I’m ready to run.
By the time I make it down the front steps, a silver Audi is rounding the driveway toward me. Viktor sits in the driver’s seat, staring at me through the open window. A pair of sunglasses are pushed low, his piercing blue eyes boring into me over the rims.
“Get in.”
I obey, pushing aside the urge to look back at the place that’s become my home. I won’t let myself think I may never see it again. For the sake of my sanity as well as the hope pushing forward, I choose to believe I’ll be back by the time the sun sets.
I slip into the car, slowly putting on my seatbelt and glaring at Viktor from the corner of my eye. He takes off, racing down the driveway so fast I’m thrown back in my seat. Hostility radiates off him, and when I turn to fully look at him, I notice his mouth is pinched and his hands are clutching the steering wheel in a death grip.
“Where the fuck is my husband?” I demand.
Viktor glances at me with a chilling smile, then reaches out to grip the back of my neck. I rear against his hold, snarling and batting at his arm, but his grip is too tight. His fingernails bite into my nape, and moving my head sends a sharp ache down my spine.
“Don’t worry,dorogoy,” he says, his voice all hard steel. “You’ll be reunited with your husband soon … on the other side of life.”
I’m catapulted forward with the flex of his hand, and my head slams against the dashboard hard enough to make me see stars. Viktor releases me and I slump, swiftly losing my grip on consciousness. My face is throbbing and my visions swims in a frightening haze.
My final thought before losing my hold on wakefulness is that Diego is likely dead. There’s no need to fight the blackness blotting out my vision and pushing me under.
30
Diego
Four hours. That’s how long it took Elena to make her escape while my back was turned. After combing the city for any sign of Viktor and turning up nothing, I returned home hoping to regroup and come up with a new plan. Viktor’s on the run and finding him before he can do more damage is my number one priority—after assuring Elena that I’m all right.
Only, I’m greeted at the door by Nicolas, who can’t look me in the eye while relating the story of how Elena came into the control room and ordered him to have security back off. Not long after, she walked right through the front door, leaving her cell phone behind—likely so she couldn’t be tracked. I’m on the verge of ripping Nicolas’s eyes out of his skull, when Jovan yanks me off him and reminds me that my men were ordered to cater to Elena’s every demand. After the wedding she stopped being a prisoner and became my queen. The entire thing is my fault, and everyone knows it. I was too free with my affection, too loose with security, and too stupid to see that she was playing me all along.
I leave Nicolas with nothing worse than a busted lip and a black eye—his reward for letting Elena talk him out of calling me to verify that her orders were legit. Then, I storm into the control room and have Jaime pull up the security footage from every camera leading the way from my bedroom to the front door. Gripping the back of the chair as I stare at the squares lined up on the screen, I watch as she walks the hallways with the phone to her ear. She stops on the stairs for a few seconds to chat with Marcella, still giving the impression that everything is as it should be—and she’s not about to tear my heart out of my chest and feed it to me. The cameras follow her to the control room, then to the foyer—where she takes a moment to check her appearance in the mirror, set her phone on the decorative table, and walk out.
The front cameras capture the car and the driver from enough angles that leave no question or doubt. She left with Viktor … purposely, willingly.
My fist crashes into the nearest monitor and I tear from the room, feeling as if I could pull the entire house down brick-by-brick. Jaime and Jovan follow but I ignore them, making my way straight to the bedroom. While they stand in the doorway, watching me with pity all over their faces, I strip off my leather jacket, rolling my injured shoulder and cracking my stiff neck.
“Boss,” Jovan ventures. “What do you want us to do?”
The obvious answer is to keep trying to find Viktor. His cell phone isn’t trackable, and none of his contacts seem to know where he is—either that, or they’re covering for him. Even knowing that Viktor’s life is forfeit, thebratvawill be loyal to him out of love for Oleg. He won’t be shunned until the manner of his punishment has been made public … if he even survives it.
There’s another question beneath the one Jovan poses out loud, and it’s whether I want Elena back. Part of me hasn’t changed—raging that she belongs to me and always will. It wants to finish Viktor off and drag Elena back here by her hair, throw her on the bed, and remind her that she will never be without me.
But the part of me that fell in love with her rebels against the idea. If knowing I love the shit out of her isn’t enough to convince Elena to stay, then no amount of force or security is going to keep her here. She wanted to be away from me bad enough to plot with an enemy behind my back; the person who nearly got me killed and caused the deaths of my loyal soldiers. I feel sick thinking she might have been in on that plan. Were her tears and declarations that night all part of an act meant to lull me into a false sense of security? Has she been seducing me into letting my guard down so she could make her getaway?
It’s too likely not to be true, and knowing that only makes me feel like a first-class idiot for falling for it. Falling forher.
“Diego!” Jovan snaps, jolting me out of my own toxic thoughts. “What the fuck are we gonna do? They couldn’t have gotten far. Timestamp on the security video shows they’ve barely been gone an hour.”
