Page 102 of The Marriage

The woman smiled and looked in the direction of the room at the far end of the entry, down the hall beyond the winding staircase. “That’s his office—if Dima’s distracted, his boys think it’s time to play. I always bring them a little something, too.”

Karine raised a brow at that.

Cherie only shrugged. “I do what I’ve got to do. I laced the coke with fentanyl. You’re a mess.”

She didn’t know what to make of this woman.

Or was that entirely the point?

“Do you know who I really am?” Karine asked the madame, ignoring the way her hands stung and ached from the many cuts that crisscrossed her palms and fingers.

Cherie was already heading for the office, pulling the guns from beneath her coat. “Of course I do—a long time ago, Maxim paid well, too.”

Just like Cherie said, the three men in the room were already high.

And starting to nod off.

For the first time in her life—Karine wasn’t afraid of walking in through a door without knowing what she would find on the other side. The men who should have been watching Dima’s back barely reacted to the women slipping inside the room, and one even started to lift his head up where he’d slumped in a chair.

That was the man Cherie shot first.

Right between the eyes.

Only then did the other two move.

“Holy fuck—”

Karine ignored the brain matter spattered up the wall as she took the high-back chair behind the large, old desk and sat down, declaring as she did, “Chicago is being taken over by the Avdonins.”

She kept her back straight in that chair and spoke in the same manner she had witnessed her father use all her life. Back when all she could do was observe him from afar because she wasn’t a part of his circle.

Now she was in the center of it.

In fact, she might have always been.

“And we’ll be staying right here until they arrive,” she continued.

The men had nothing to say, barely able to keep their heads up or their eyes open. How many lines had it taken before they realized it wasn’t just coke Cherie snuck them—or did they just not care because high was high?

What did it matter?

Karine had to make a phone call.

TWENTY

“Are you going to tell her?”

Across from where his father sat on the private jet, Roman’s gaze drifted away from the porthole window and the flickering lights of a city he’d hoped to never see again.

“Tell her what?” Roman asked.

Demyan shrugged as he murmured, “That it was me who killed him.”

Frankly, Roman’s mind had been running a million miles a minute from the moment he’d gotten word from the bull driving his car that Maxim Yazov was at his parents’ home.

Blatantly.

Once upon a time, Roman might have believed he was a bold motherfucker, but compared to Karine’s father, that just wasn’t the case.