Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 94436 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 472(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94436 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 472(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
No, I hadn’t. But I certainly hadn’t expected this either.
“What are your terms?” the old man asked, chin lifted up, eyes not simmering with the fear that should’ve been living there.
“You will kill your son,” Jay said.
The old man stared at Jay without emotion, without surprise. “Very well.”
Dimitri gaped at his father, face turning various shades of red and purple as he struggled in the arms of the man who held him. “You cannot be serious! I am your son, I am the heir—”
“You are nothing!” Dimitri’s father roared, crossing the distance between them. “You are the reason I am standing here, with my men, my friends and brothers killed because you had to swing your dick around. Because you saw the most powerful man in town and wanted to prove you were stronger than him.” He stepped forward, almost nose to nose with his son. “What I have been trying to teach you all of these years, is that the second you need to prove your strength, you no longer have any.”
Dimitri was breathing heavily now, fear transforming his face into something small, weak, pathetic. “Father,” he whispered.
He cupped his son’s cheek. “I love you.”
Then he lifted a gun and shot his son in the temple.
I didn’t scream, though I did on the inside, unable to look away, the second man I’d seen die tonight. This one I was much, much gladder to see.
The old man stared down at his son’s corpse without emotion, though he stared at it for a long time. No one else spoke. We just waited.
Then the man lifted his head, face scrunched in fury and hatred. “It is done. You have your vengeance.”
Jay nodded to the man who had been holding Dimitri. He jerked forward and snatched the gun the old man had been limply holding. It wasn’t very impressive; I would’ve thought the commander of a Russian crime syndicate would fight to avoid being defeated so easily and without any kind of resistance.
He looked very much like an old man now.
Jay stepped forward, holding his own gun.
The old man didn’t retreat. “Men like you think they can hurt us,” he spat. “Think you can bring down my family. You want to show the old family what strength you have. What power you wield. You—”
“There are no men like me,” Jay interrupted him. “There is only me.” He raised his gun to the forehead of the old man. Then he pulled the trigger.
The shot echoed. The body fell to the floor with a thud.
Chapter 19
I didn’t get a second alone with Jay.
I wasn’t quite sure how that had happened, but it did. Karson drove the SUV that we left the mansion in. Jay barely looked at me except to run his hands over my body, checking for injury. His hands paused over my stomach for less than a second then moved over my swollen cheek. His face was inscrutable, eyes dead.
Not one word was spoken. No heartfelt reunions, no declarations of love, absolutely nothing. Then again, I’d known Jay was not a man for heartfelt reunions, though I had expected something. I didn’t speak because I was afraid. Not of the blood that covered him, not because I’d just seen him kill a man. That mattered surprisingly little. I was afraid of the anger that was humming through him, that was a physical thing, brushing against me the entire ride home. I ached to at least take his hand in mine, initiate some kind of contact between us, but something stopped me. He stopped me.
I settled for his body next to mine on the ride home, settled for his mere presence, albeit a furious one, my heart beating in my throat.
Once we got home, things didn’t exactly get better. Jay did not speak, though he opened the door for me, helped me out of the SUV. I cherished the fleeting brush of his hand against mine, but it was quickly gone.
When we got home, there was a strange woman in our living room wearing a white coat and a kind smile. A doctor. There was also a makeshift bed made from the sofas in the living room. And an ultrasound machine. Or I was pretty sure that’s what it was. There mere sight of it stopped me in my tracks.
I wasn’t sure how Jay had managed to get an ultrasound machine delivered to our house by the time we got home. But then again, I didn’t quite understand how he and an unknown amount of his men and women seemingly defeated the Russian Mafia. It shouldn’t have been surprising.
I hadn’t had an ultrasound yet. Hadn’t even seen a doctor about the baby. There was no way I could do that without feeling like I had truly betrayed Jay. Being faced with the machine, I was suddenly overcome with terror. What if something was wrong? What if that screen showed nothing? Or even worse, what if it showed something, something that had been created with love yet had died somewhere in the midst of all of this?