But the text messages had talked about what they’d whispered about in bed last night. And she knew Dimitri was dangerous. Nothing could scrub the first day out of her mind, when they’d gotten here and he’d shot that man in cold blood. If Nicholas said he was in danger—
A horn honked and Sloane looked up, her heart fluttering in panic, her breaths starting to come shorter and shorter.
She didn’t recognize the car, but she recognized the driver.
Sloane looked back down at Nicholas’s last text, and the words he always asked her, and thought about how he’d been pressing her this week. Almost as if he’d been preparing her for something.
Do you trust me?
She lifted a foot to step out, then drew it back inside, slamming her eyes shut. She couldn’t do this. Or could she?
I’ll do whatever you say.
He’d been training her, training her for this very moment.
Do you trust me?
She lifted her foot again.
Chapter 25
Nicholas
Nicholas kept his face neutral as he turned off his phone and shoved it in his pocket when he jumped out of the SUV with an umbrella to hold over Papa Dimitri’s head. He and Natasha had just appeared at the airport arrivals sidewalk and held Papa’s door open, keeping the umbrella over the boss’s head while he climbed up into the back seat. Natasha let herself in the other door.
Alexei was sitting up front—he’d ridden with Nicholas to pick up his father from the airport. “How’d the business go, Papa?” he asked.
Papa Dimitri just grunted, then pulled out his own phone once he was settled in the back seat and began scrolling through it. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought greeting you at the airport might be a nice gesture.”
Papa Dimitri scoffed. “What do you want?”
Nicholas hopped back in the front seat. He put the vehicle in drive.
“I know how busy you are is all,” Alexei said. “And I wanted to talk to you about an idea I had for the club—”
“The club is for laundering the fucking coke money,” Papa Dimitri said, rolling his eyes. “Why do we keep having this conversation. Do I stutter?”
“No, Papa,” Alexei said, obviously trying to keep his cool, “I’m just suggesting that it will be a better front if it’s making its own decent money. Which it is now. It’s less suspicious. And if I can keep increasing that profitability by—”
Papa Dimitri waved a hand as if dismissing an annoying gnat. “I’ve just got back from doing business. Now it’s time for pleasure. Speaking of—”
As Nicholas pulled out into the traffic leaving the airport, Papa Dimitri looked up, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror. “—I must say I’m looking forward to tonight. Anticipation is something I rarely get to enjoy at this point in my life. She better not fucking disappoint.”
Nicholas had to fight to speak past the rage clogging his throat. “I’m sure she won’t. She’s a… good woman.”
Dimitri frowned. “You didn’t warn her what was coming, did you?”
Nicholas shook his head, feeling sick to his fucking stomach at having to speak of his wife this way. “No, sir. I didn’t tell her a thing.”
“Good.” Dimitri smiled and went back to his phone, effectively dismissing any more conversation.
Nicholas bit his tongue. He’d gone back and forth about whether to try to give Sloane any warning or preparation for his plans. In the end, he thought that giving her the opportunity to anticipate would just amp up her potential for freaking out and lessen the likelihood of her success at getting the fuck out of there before Papa Dimitri ever got his goddamned hands on her.
But even now as Nicholas drove them all back home, he didn’t know if his training had been successful. He could only hope and pray that Sloane was strong enough in the end. He knew she was. But did she believe it in the end? Please let her have believed it. Let her have gotten the fuck out of there.
Whether Nicholas got out of this alive or not… Well… Of course he’d lied to her about that. It was just another reason not to talk plans ahead of time. He didn’t want her dealing with the mind-fuck of knowing the actual terms of Vasiliev’s ultimatum. And while she might not have run for only herself, for him… She was too empathetic for her own good.
Nicholas was the one who’d dragged her into this. It was up to him to get her out of it. As to whether he himself got out of it, well…
They hit morning traffic and Nicholas was glad. More time for Sloane to get away. It galled him, though, every stoplight he hit, not knowing if she’d made it or if she was still stuck petrified in the bakery. There was no way to check his phone without bringing potential eyes on him. He’d turned off notifications and had all calls sent to voicemail since he was with his bosses and couldn’t afford to have his phone beeping from Sloane constantly calling or messaging.