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“Not me.”
“Why do you think the Volkov man wants you, made you his little whore of a wife?” His eyes drag the length of my body, and I feel sick with the thought that my half-brother is undressing me with his gaze.
“He doesn’t want the money, either.”
“That’s funny. I’ve just learned that The Volk Vault Bank bought yet another of Russia’s banks, and his latest just so happens to be the bank where our father stored his fortune, a fortune that is now in your name.”
My head reels. My thoughts splinter. Kirill told me he would never take my father’s dirty money.
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?”
I think I’m going to be sick. “Excuse me.”
It’s as I begin to try to escape that Artyom reaches out for me. He grips me hard around my arm, his voice filled with deadly loathing. “He is dead in the ground, but I will have you. I will shred the wings of his little angel until you are a whore not even the devil will welcome. You will know the pain my mother knew—the pain I knew. And I will have that fortune. It is my right.”
“Take it.” I shudder, revolted. “I don’t want anything from him.”
My half-brother laughs. “Oh, but I want more than the money.”
Just when I think things can’t get worse, Anya, the beautiful, hateful woman from the bathroom, slides into my half-brother’s side. Her lips curl into a hateful smile as she says, “He’ll have his pound of flesh, Ruby. One way or another.”
Certain I’m going to faint, I flee. I run straight for Pavel’s arms, pushing into his chest as he tries to block me from the cool air I so desperately need. “I need out, Pavel. Now.”
He must read something desperate in my eyes, because he relents. With his hand at my low back, he guides me into the night.
Thirty-Four
Kirill
Where the fuck is my wife?
Pavel’s name flashes on the screen as I lift my phone to my ear. “What?”
“Ruby is in the car.”
“What?”
“Something happened. She’s unwell. She won’t talk to me.”
I say nothing to the men I’d been talking to as I begin to move to the exit, my strides long and quick. Sliding my phone into my pocket, I make my way into the lot, quickly finding Pavel behind the wheel of my car, my wife in the passenger seat.
He exits, telling me he will follow me home as I slide into the driver’s seat. She’s pale, but there is a sticky sheen to her skin that makes me think she’s been sick. But she’d been fine when she’d left me for the bathroom. Gently, but firmly, I ask, “Are you well?”
She looks away from me, but I can see that she’s been crying. I think she might start again. “Ruby, what happened?”
“I want to go home.”
“Talk to me,” I demand, and when she refuses, simply sitting in silence beside me, I’m forced to move the car.
I drive home trying, and failing, to make her tell me what happened. By the time I pull into the driveway, I’m edging on livid. What the fuck happened to turn my warm wife ice cold?
I stop the car and am about to turn to her when she flees from the passenger seat, slamming the door behind her and racing for the house.
“Oh, fuck no,” I mutter aloud, chasing after her. “Ruby!”
She ignores me, billowing cream and gold racing through the house.
