It was goodbye.
“No,” I growled, starting forward.
The gun at my back cocked, the sound chilling in the quiet night, and my basic survival instincts wouldn’t allow me to move one more step.
She hesitated one second before stepping back and blending into the shadows of the forest.
Gone.
* * *
“If you thinkI’m going to sit here and play house drinking tea with you while Molly is out there alone—”
“Running away?” Nikolai supplied when words failed me.
I glared at him. We were sitting by a hearty fire, Ivan on one side, Nikolai across from us, and a row of armed motherfuckers keeping us in place standing behind us. My skin crawled with the need to be out there looking for her.
“She wouldn’t run away from me. Not again.” I maintained. She wouldn’t. Not after everything we’d been through since I’d found her again. Not after the damage that was done the first time.
“Wouldn’t she? I suppose you need to ask yourself if you’ve done anything to warrant her abandoning you.”
“Such as?” I demanded.
“Such as chipping her. She didn’t like that,” Nikolai continued conversationally.
“It was necessary to keep her safe,” I ground out.
Nikolai smirked. “Yes, it was very effective. How about Henry? You didn’t tell her.”
“I didn’t tell her you—the man holding her—killed her father? I hardly had time. Henry is on you.”
“Hmm, okay. I’ll take the hit for that one. How about Sofia De Sanctis?” Nikolai raised a rakish brow at me.
His words were a blow to the gut. “You know I’m not marrying her.”
“Yes, but no one else knows that. To everyone else, you’re engaged.”
“Thanks for telling her,” I bit out. “I should have shot you dead like a dog when I had the chance.”
“Regrets are for bitches, Kirill. And if you have them, start with yourself. That’s what hurts, doesn’t it?” Nikolai had the audacity to chuckle. “The last thing . . . I didn’t plan on telling her. It was a happy by-product of getting her medical file from Doctor Petrov. I got it for the tracker at first. I had no idea you were sneakily trying to knock her up.” He leaned forward in his chair, his dark eyes sparkling. “Tell me the truth. You enjoyed knowing she could get pregnant by coming inside and filling her up. I’m sure you tried hard to keep her leaking cum whenever you could.”
“Enough,” I said, my voice chilling. Cold dread seized my spine, wondering what Mallory thought of me.
The worst and most damning part was that it was all true. I had fucked Mallory and wanted to breed her. I wanted her pregnant and tied to me forever. Even more, I wanted a family with her and children who looked like her. A tiny part of goodness in the black world I lived in. I was a selfish bastard, but that wasn’t news to me.
Since Henry revealed how Mallory had looked for me and suffered without me, I’d known my revenge was unjustified, but I’d enjoyed keeping her all to myself. My obsession. Molly and I could have discussed everything Nikolai had leveled at me, but once again, Molly had run. The thought of her out there alone in the woods was driving me to distraction.
“Don’t worry. She has money, transport, and food. She’s better prepared this time than last,” Nikolai said, reading my thoughts.
“And I suppose you gave her all that?” I demanded as fresh fury flooded me.
Nikolai shrugged. “Better she has it than not. She was always going to run, Kirill. I thought it better she did it comfortably and not painfully.”
“Why the consideration? It isn’t like you. Or were you happy to see me suffer?”
“If I wanted to see you suffer, I would have killed her like I was supposed to. None of this needed to happen. And I helped her because”—he turned his head, focusing on an ugly oil painting on the wall—“she reminded me of Irina.”
“Your mother?”