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Mistake? Alena!
“You’ve come all this way for nothing. I’ll die before you get anywhere near Alena,” I hiss, surging forward, only to be hauled backward by the armed man at my back.
“Ooh, so protective,” Mara purrs. “We could have had a beautiful partnership, you know, if you’d had eyes for anyone but my daughter. Whom, by the way, my men are already on their way to pick up. Don’t you see?”
She walks two pointed fingers up my chest, and it takes all my survival instinct not to wrench myself away.
“This was part of the plan all along.”
“Stop speaking in riddles, woman!” August snaps suddenly. “Talk plainly!”
Her dark brows lift in surprise, then her lips twist. “August, you could have been on the winning side if you hadn’t been so blinded by Kristof.”
She flicks open one button of my shirt, then turns away with a bored sigh.
“Fine, you’re no fun. This was the culmination of a plan I had to change several times thanks to you, Kristof, but the goal was always the same. I would always be on top. See, the wedding for Alena was supposed to secure an Orlova and Kuznetsov union where Alena would be Mikhail’s toy, and Aleksander would meet a strange fate that would have me, his grieving widow, stepping into his shoes.” Mara chuckles softly.
An odd pain lances through my mind as I try to follow her confession. This went all the way back to the wedding?
“You were planning to kill Aleksander?”
“Goodness, no.” Mara smirks. “I’d never lift a hand to hurt my husband.”
So, she’d get someone else to do her dirty work.
“When Alena vanished, Aleksander was hell-bent on getting his daughter back, and my desire to see him cold in the ground had to take pause. Then a tail on you, Kristof, got me dirt that you were meeting with the Irish leader, Seamus, and a new plan was formed. A way to kill two birds with one stone—I would let slip to the Irish that Alena was missing, make the Russians look weak and provoke an attack where the Kuznetsovs would wipe out the rival Irish—only the Irish didn’t attack.”
Mara pauses and dabs at her lips before continuing.
“Now I know it’s because Seamus is too loyal to the old ways and his deal with you. So, I persuaded Aleksander to call a ceasefire and turn that meeting into a bloodbath, destroying the Irish. That honestly went better than I expected once I planted a seed of the possibility that they had harmed Alena.” Mara chuckles. “Then I sent Aleksander here where I knew you would be fueled by that sexy, protective love for Alena. You’d kill him. Excellent job with that, by the way. And now?—”
“Now you and Mikhail have open thrones,” August interjects, putting the pieces together faster than me.
The Kuznetsov men here now make a whole lot of sense.
“None of the Families will follow you,” I spit out, my heart racing as the truth weighs down on my shoulders. It was Mara all along? “You’re the widow of a Pakhan and the Kuznetsovs don’t have the backing they need.”
“Ahh but you see, you’re helping me there too.” Mara smirks. “See, poor Aleksander came to Russia to deal with a traitor and succeeded but succumbed to his wounds, the poor soul. And now, here I am, pregnant with his child and seeking a hand in marriage to keep the Family strong. No one questions a baby.”
My eyes drop to Mara’s pancake flat stomach and nausea floods up my throat. “You’re not pregnant.”
“No.” She laughs. “But Alena is. And that baby is mine.”
Her words ring in my ears like a curse as Mara pulls a gun from the nearest guard and shoots me. Pain explodes through my body like a fire-hot poker, and darkness consumes me with one last weak thought in my mind.
Alena.
27
ALENA
It’s late.
There’s no sign of Kristof or August, and I’m starting to worry. There’s no expected time for this sort of thing, I know this, but the longer it takes, the more my stomach churns with anxiety and doubt. I can’t tell if I’m going to throw up or shit myself. Both, judging by how violently unsettled my stomach has become.
I pace back and forth, wearing a hole into the rug as the only nearby sound is the churn of the coffee maker. Katja, to her credit, has been doing everything she can to keep me calm and distracted, but it’s not working.
“Alena, you need to try and remain calm,” Katja says softly, setting another mug of herbal tea down on the counter near me. “Think of the baby.”
