30
Rafael
Jakob Tessin’s office surrounded me as my allies gathered up the men they’d brought along with them to prepare for the attack we would launch to get Isa back. I stared at his computer screen, the image of Pavel’s antique bookcase all I could see in the moments since he’d left to find my wife.
The fact that he’d left her alone with Dima Kuznetsov didn’t speak highly of what she might have already suffered, and my hands clenched the arms of my chair tightly. My skin vibrated with the need to have her safe in my arms, my body pulsing with the thirst for the blood of my enemies.
Everything she’d suffered, I would ensure they felt it more. If she’d been raped, I would watch as men took turns shoving their cocks so far up Pavel and Dima’s ass that they tickled their brains. If she’d been hurt, I would beat them bloody and cut them apart piece by piece while they watched.
“I don’t understand,” a feminine voice said so softly I could hardly hear it. I leaned toward the laptop, straining my ears to listen more intently. Pavel filled the screen, taking the seat behind his desk and settling in as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He didn’t bother to look at me, continuing to ignore me in favor of whoever stood behind the camera.
There was the sound of shuffling, and then a woman who was not my wife brought in an antique chair to sit beside Pavel’s. Dima took the seat, smirking at me arrogantly despite the blood staining his mouth as he met my eyes in the camera.
“Did you just get a sense ofdeja vu?” he asked, the humor lighting his eyes as he considered just how the tables had turned. “Come here, ??? ?????.”
Isa stepped up to the edge of the desk, her eyes landing on my face. A shudder rippled through her body, her chest sagging forward as she raised a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she murmured, a bitter smile on her lips when she drew her hand away. “You’re okay.”
My jaw clenched with the realization that they seemed to have led her to believe I’d been hurt, and my palms twitched with the need to reach out and touch her. To brush her hair back from where it fell into her face and reassure her that it would be over soon.
The swelling bruises on each of her cheekbones did nothing to soothe my ire and convince me that they might not have harmed her. Despite the rage simmering in my veins, I did everything I could to keep my face impassive.
Disinterested in a way that it pained me to do. I had to hope Isa would see through the act and know it was for her benefit. The edges of my short nails dug into my palms with how hard I squeezed them together to keep the emotion off my face.
Dima reached out, grasping Isa around the waist and pulling her toward him. She slapped at his hands, twisting her body to try to avoid the contact as he manhandled her between his spread legs. His hands drifted lower, until his fingertips brushed the fronts of her thighs. “Return my wife,” I ordered, the low bite of my words the only thing that even remotely conveyed the storm churning inside me.
I wanted to destroy everyone who stood between us. Needed to watch them burn on the pyres of Hell for taking her from me and for daring to touch what was mine. Dima tugged her back until the backs of her legs touched the edge of the chair, the force of his hands on her maneuvering her until her legs were swept out from under her and she fell into his lap.
She squirmed in his grasp, touching her hands to the arms of the chair to try to lift herself out, but Dima held her steady. Pavel’s gaze was amused as he watched her struggles, somehow at odds with how I’d always envisioned the way the man would perceive defiance fromanyone,let alone the wife of his enemy.
He pulled out a drawer, the squeals of the slides sounding impossibly loud. Isa went solid, her body freezing in place as Pavel drew a knife from that drawer. He touched the tip of it to the floral fabric that covered my name carved into her skin, cutting it delicately and letting the knife slip just enough that a bead of blood welled where he’d nicked her.
My teeth ground against each other with the need to withhold my reaction, to leave any hint of doubt that I would come for her. It was in Isa’s best interest if they thought they had time with her.
When Pavel dragged the knife down over her breasts and pressed it to her stomach, I realized that they already knew about the pregnancy. I’d hoped to have more time before they discovered the truth of that realization, because with it came power and control over me.
Children may not be valued in the same way by men like Pavel, but even he understood the importance of a man’s sole heir. Mine was so vulnerable, trapped inside the body of the woman I loved.
I’d killed all but one of his, and now he had mine at his disposal.
“But she’s such a good kitten for Dima,” Pavel said, catching the fabric of Isa’s dress with the tip of his knife. Dima grinned over her shoulder, leaning forward to run his tongue over the bead of blood at the scar of my name on her neck. Isa shuddered in revulsion. “She even brought him a gift.”
As Pavel guided the knife away to set it on the desk, Dima’s hands glided up to her belly. Cupping the swell of her stomach, he put his hands on everything that was mine.
“You’ve made your point,” I grunted.
“After everything your father loved to do, it seems only fitting that we have your child to control your wife. Life has a funny way of coming full circle, no?” Pavel asked. On the other side of the room from the place where he observed the call and paid witness to his failure, Joaquin went solid. He stared blankly ahead of him, undoubtedly lost to the memories of his mother’s screams and everything she’d endured to protect him and his brothers.
“You will not touch her,” I warned, leaning closer toward the camera until my face undoubtedly filled his screen. I wanted nothing more than to drink in the sight of my wife, of her mostly unharmed body and take comfort in the fact that as we spoke, I gathered an army to take her back.
She was less than three hours away by plane. She only needed to hold out for a few more hours, and then in the cover of darkness I would take back what was mine.
In fire and blood.
“It would be incredibly foolish of you to waste your bargaining chip by harming her or the child,” I said, feigning casualness. My eyes drifted over to Isa, taking in the shock on her face at the indifference she must have seen when she watched me and listened to the heartless words.
Just hold on a little longer. I wished I could tell her.
Instead, I studied the bandages on her wrists and noted every injury she’d suffered, cataloguing them for the suffering I would force on those who had harmed her.