Dropping the hand that he’d shoved into the thick dark hair on the top of his head, he stared down at me, looking tortured.
“Nell—” His phone ringing again interrupted him, but this time he bellowed, “Fuck!”
Looking at the screen, he rejected the call and then moved toward the door. “Don’t leave the house,” he told me over his shoulder, before walking out and slamming the door behind him.
Staring at the scans on the coffee table, I felt the first tear fall, but didn’t feel the others that followed it.
He was married. I had to remember that and not let him get too close to me.
Love was nothing without pain, but the light that’d been shining brightly at the end of the darkness for me had started to fade.
Chapter Sixteen
Taras
“Well, then,” a voice I didn’t recognize muttered.
Normally hearing a strange voice in the same room you were sleeping in would evoke a reaction like jumping up and reaching for your gun. But I’d been born into a life where I knew that doing it would give them the opportunity to attack, so I stayed breathing shallowly, and did what I’d been taught.
The energy given off someone was readable, and what I was currently reading from the stranger was neutral.
Knowing this, I cracked open an eye instantly knowing where I was, and took in the brunette who was staring at the woman in my arms with a small smile on her face.
Shifting her gaze to me, she raised a dark eyebrow. “I’m assuming you’d be the asshole.”
“Lena.”
It wasn’t a question because I knew who she was. I’d done some digging into Nell’s time while she was away, wanting to learn everything I could. I’d discovered her close friendship with her friend Bella’s cousin, who was now in the room with us.
With a long sigh, Nell started to wake up, and I felt it the second she realized she wasn’t alone in her bed, as every muscle in her body tightened up.
“What the hell?” she whispered, pulling away slightly and looking up at me. “What are you doing here?”
“I came back last night.” Technically it’d been early this morning.
“Why aren’t you with your wife?” she growled, trying to increase the space between us, but my arms stayed firmly wrapped around her.
Ignoring the question because it would mean lying to her, I looked up at the visitor in the room that she hadn’t noticed yet. “You have a guest.”
Her head snapped round to look beside us, and the tension left her when she saw who it was. “Lena!”
“Hey, Nelly belly,” Lena muttered back, looking between the two of us. “Got here early, and one of the dudes outside said they were expecting me, so he let me in. Didn’t expect to find this, though.”
“I showed them a photo of you,” Nell explained, and I reluctantly released her this time when she moved to sit up.
Seeing the time, I rolled out of bed and stood up, both women continuing to talk as they watched me walk out of the bedroom toward the bathroom.
Shutting the door behind me, I did my business while I thought over last night.
When I’d left, I’d been headed to Donna’s to hear what bullshit she had to say to me. But on the way there, I’d gotten a call from Vadim saying I was needed at the warehouse.
Changing directions, I’d gone to see what was up, and had found one of the men we’d been suspicious of at the meeting tied to a chair, his face a bruised and bloody mess. I’d recognized him immediately as one of my good soldiers, Kuznetsov.
Bruce and Hunter had also been there, waiting for me to arrive so we could all hear what the guy had to say at the same time.
In the end, he’d given up small snippets of information, like the fact Donna was paying him to feed shit back to her, but none of it had been what we were looking for.
Which, if he’d known us at all—which he should have by now—he would have realized.
He also would’ve realized we were men who’d stop at nothing to get the information we knew he was hiding out of him.
With a nod to Vadim, he’d untied the guy from the chair. The bastard had looked relieved that he was being let go, which really proved he should’ve done his homework on us.
Moving him back toward the wooden wall behind him, Vadim, Bruce, and Hunter had distracted him with small questions, while I’d retrieved the kit Dmitri had arrived with. Once I had what I wanted on a small table beside me, I’d cleared my throat, and they’d moved away.
That’s when I threw the first knife, the blade going through his shoulder and pinning him to the wood behind him, making him scream and try to move away.