Chapter 30: Mikhail

“Ride me, baby,” I tell her, squeezing her hips as she straddles my cock and moves over me. She looks like a fantasy come to life when her hair bounces as she does, and her gorgeous tits move up and down in front of my face. “Harder, fuck me the way you want to.”

She does exactly what I tell her to do like the good girl she is, and the sizzling sensation that pours over my soul eradicates any thought and responsibility from my brain.

I have that mind-fucked feeling a drug would produce where I can’t think of anything that’s not her, and in the moments I do, I remember my threats to Ivan to watch himself. She wouldn’t have known what I was saying because I spoke in Russian. I didn’t want her knowing of the bad relationship I have with my brother just yet.

I’m sure she guessed, though. It wasn’t hard. And when I see him next, I’ll make sure he gets the message loud and clear to leave my woman alone.

I just need one more time before I leave.

One more time.

Seconds pass by, then minutes, then hours, and I can’t make myself stop.

It’s worse than the other night when we were like this.

We fuck until we fall into sleep, and all plans of what I had to do get pushed to the back of the shelf.

When the sun comes up and we open our eyes, I’m inside her again. I take breaks to get us food and water, and then I find myself back inside her.

I’ve lost my mind and given in to recklessness, taking comfort in the fact that my phone hasn’t rung, which generally means I’m not needed.

By no means does it mean I don’t have any work. There’s so much to do, but I can’t stop touching her.

The sun comes up again, and we’re the same.

I have her on her hands and knees, fucking her from behind in her sweet pussy and in her asshole.

The day ends the same way, and I close my eyes, feeling the changes and the gears shifting in my mind.

On day three, I wake before her, and when I touch her, she’s so exhausted she doesn’t move, which is what breaks the spell.

That’s what brings me back to reality and my responsibilities, and I make myself get off the bed.

Before I leave, I look at her and notice that she feels like she belongs to me. When I leave, I feel her everywhere, I smell the scent of her sweetness and taste her in the air.

I can’t control myself no matter how hard I try to bleed her from my mind. I can’t do it.

I feel some ounce of myself coming back, however, as I march down the hallway to Ivan’s office at Dmitriyev Ltd.

It’s early. He won’t be in yet, but I can wait.

He’s not going to get away with what he said to Adriana. I won’t allow it. Being away the last three days has given him the respite he didn’t deserve. Now he will feel my wrath.

Before I get to his office, I hear him inside, and he’s not alone. I was hoping for the element of surprise, but this is better.

I push the door open without knocking and find him fucking his new secretary over his desk.

Fucking typical Ivan. No wonder the motherfucker is early.

His secretary, who is completely naked, screams when she sees me and reaches for her clothes.

“Get the fuck out,” I tell her, and she quickens her pace in putting her clothes back on.

“Haven’t you fucking heard of knocking!” Ivan barks.

“No.”

His secretary scurries past me, and I slam the door shut behind me.

He starts saying some shit about privacy, but I march over to him and throw a punch in his face, sending him to the ground.

I split his nose and blood sprays over his white shirt.

He jumps up ready to fight me, but I grab him by the throat and slam him into the wall.

He grips my neck and squeezes tight, like he thinks he can kill me. I have news for him because I’ve tasted death and been to Hell. It’s going to take more to send me back there.

“Motherfucker,” he hisses.

“Yes, I fucking am,” I growl back in his face. “How fucking dare you tell my girl I’m going to fucking sell her?”

I knee him in his stomach, and he doubles over, releasing whatever grip he had on me.

“How fucking dare you, Ivan? Stay the fuck away from her.”

He starts laughing, and the sound throws me.

“What the fuck are you laughing at, prick?” I shout.

He laughs even harder, and I shove him away from me.

He stumbles back into the wall.

“I’m laughing at you, brother. Look at you.”

“What the hell is funny about me?”

“You can’t even see it, can you? You have the same flaw as our father, stupid over a pretty face. It only took less than two weeks for you to lose your mind over easy pussy, and that’s why you will never be a good leader.”

“Shut the fuck up.” I move to throw another punch, but he blocks me and catches my arm.

“Struck a nerve, have I? Look how long ago I saw you and said what I said to your girl. It took you three days to come and find me. She was upset when you left. I’m sure she would have told you right off the bat what your big brother said to her, and yet it took you three days to get here and kick my ass.” He pauses and laughs. “Newsflash, Mikhail, you stink of sex and love. You reek of it. Love is overflowing from your eyes. You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“How can you love the spawn of the man responsible for your mother and sister’s death? How can you think that’s okay? How, Mikhail? Look what they did to Talia, and yet you’ve come in here to beat me down. Me, your brother, your family. You’ve come to kick my ass over pussy. Shame on you.”

I wrench my arm free from him and glare at him.

I want to tell him to shut up again. I want to tell him he’s wrong about me.

I want to say I don’t love her and list all the reasons why I can’t be what he’s accusing me of, but my lips won’t move.

I step back and bare my teeth.

“Stay away from me and mine, brother. I mean it.”

He answers with a chuckle, and I leave before we can really get into it and fight like we’ve been known to in the past.

We were both holding back there, and if I fight like I want to this time, I’ll probably end up killing him.

I stumble into the atrium and find a corner by the water cooler where I can take a moment to myself.

I can’t be in love with Adriana.

Love was never in the cards, and I know better than to fall for her.

I can’t be in love because I know it will be my weakness, and I can’t be weak right now, or ever. Now is the time for strength.

What Ivan said regarding our father and my mother pricks at my mind. I can’t argue with him. Not when Father bared his soul to me nights before.

If anyone ever needed an example of what love should look like, all they needed to do was look at my parents. My father told me himself he was waiting for death.

I just had to fill in the blanks. Before my mother was killed, he looked forward to spending the rest of his days with her, however little time he had left.

Now he wants death so he can be with her.

Losing her destroyed him.

I can’t lose myself like that.

I’ve moved past the fact that Adriana is Raul’s daughter. That doesn’t bother me anymore. If I were hung up on that, I wouldn’t be contemplating anything right now.

This is about me. I can’t be me if I succumb to something I know will cripple me eventually. Doing so goes against me as a person.

The only thing to do to stop that from happening is to go back to the original plan of business. Marry the girl and take the cartel.

That’s all it needs to be. That’s all it should be. And the only way to free her from my mind is to avoid her and put that wall back up I had in place when we first met.

That is what I need to do.

I go through the day with that in mind, working until late in the night to catch up on my workload from the last three days.

Just before I pack up to leave, I get a message from Eric asking if he can meet me at home.

I realize he must have something for me to look at, but it’s the fact that he wants to meet me at home that piques my attention.

I head home as quickly as I can and find him in my office waiting for me.

He’s holding a manilla envelope.

“You better sit down for this,” he states the moment the door closes.

I release a tired sigh and sit opposite him on the leather sofa.

“What did you find?”

“It’s not good, but I’ll keep my opinions to myself and allow you to form your own.” He hands me the envelope. “That was in one of the emails. It was heavily encrypted. When I opened it, I saw the reason why. It’s the contract. Raul’s copy of the assassination contract.”

My scalp tightens with this information.

I open the envelope and pull out the three-pages long document.

I don’t need to read the whole thing.

The top paragraph tells me everything and changes the game entirely.

This contract is to secure the deaths of the following parties:

Elena, Talia, and Mikhail Dmitriyev.

Following their deaths, shares of equal values will be distributed to you once the ownership of Dmitriyev Ltd. and the Baranov Bratva are transferred.

I stop reading when a stone drops in the pit of my stomach and shock slams through me.

All this time, I believed the assassination attempt was on my family as a whole unit. I thought it was about all of us.

But it wasn’t.

It was just about my mother, my sister, and me.

Why?

“It was never about everybody.”

“No, Mikhail. It was not.”

I stare at Eric, but he looks like he’s already formed his conclusions.

“My past has taught me to keep my mind open. I told you that sometimes, the answer is right under your nose. You and I have been friends for quite a few years now, and we’ve done a lot together in that time, so believe me when I say I’ve been a friend to you and I’m doing exactly that when I say this.” He stops for a moment and presses his lips together. “Someone was watching you. They knew your every move. They think they have the power to do shit like transfer shares of the company equally, but only when the ownership is transferred. They also wanted you, your mother, and sister out of the picture. There’s only one person I can think of who would fit that description.”

There’s only one person I can think of who would do this to me, too, but I can’t believe he’d do all of this. Kill me maybe. But my mother and sister?

Why not?

He would do it if he stood to gain something and they were in his way.

We were all in his way.

“Ivan,” I mutter, and Eric nods.

“Yes, old friend.”