Chapter 40 FORTY
Chapter 40 FORTY
I found my way through the house, and the moment I was behind the closed doors of a room, I paced. My heart was still thudding in my chest, but I was more baffled by the fact that maybe I’d overreacted, stuck between going after him to demand answers or just staying by myself since he was stubbornly pushing me out.
If there was anything I’d learned about Morozov since I got married to him barely two days ago, it was that he was a hard man. He did what he wanted to do, and nobody could change that.
But then, the girl on the phone—Cheryl—she had barely been on the phone with him for a few minutes and he’d immediately changed his mind for her. And now, I couldn’t tell if he had let us turn around because of her or if he had done that because something crucial had happened.
I couldn’t help that there was a knot in my chest from wondering if my mother was fine or if something had happened to her.
And most importantly, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was something wrong with Sergei. I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t. But he’d looked far from okay in that elevator, and his men had endlessly shielded him from me, the same way he’d hidden his eyes from me.
I didn’t want to spend time thinking when I could be acting.
One second, I was still pacing in the room, light filtering in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and next, I found myself in the darkness of the hallways and the entire house, a contrast to the room I’d been in just a few seconds ago.
There was no sound.
Not even the sound of guards.
Or Sergei barking orders at them.
Instead, there was this darkness and this silence that made my ears almost feel heavy as I walked around in search of him.
The living room was empty, and so was the open-plan kitchen, which left my options to one place. The only door in the corner of the house. My spine tingled like I had whatever senses Spider-Man could have had that alerted him of danger. Because as soon as I stood in front of that door, all I could feel was the danger of the man behind the door. Sergei. And for what felt like forever, I contemplated just barging in.
But then I knocked... the first mistake.
And then, I didn’t wait for a response before I threw the door open—the second mistake.
The room was pitch dark, leaving only one lamp in the corner.
There were figures in the room, people I realized were the guards from earlier. There was the sound of chattering teeth. Sergei. It just had to be him. Sergei. He was still shaking. He was still shaking so bad, I could hear his teeth chattering so loud it echoed through the entire room, alongside the sound of groaning and grunting. Like he was in pain. No, he had to be in pain. I could hear how hard he was trying to keep his voice down and stop the gnashing of teeth. But before I could even pinpoint where the fuck the sound was coming from, a guard was in my face. Not just any guard. This man had to be about 7 feet tall and the same one I’d punched in the elevator earlier. His entire frame blocked the room from my view, his voice gruff. “Hey, miss! You shouldn't be here!”
The feral instinc that immediatlely filled my veins told me to hit again. To claw at his face with the same anger I’d used in the elevator, but I was too distracted by briefly looking over his shoulder to Sergei Morozov slouched in the corner of the room, right next to the lamp, on a couch. It was a brief look. Very brief. But I could have sworn I caught the sweat on his skin even in this very cold room. He was shaking so hard, but I saw what he had in his hand. I saw his sleeve bunched around his forearm, and I saw the way he trembled trying to stab a needle into his vein.
I wasn’t thinking. My lips were just moving. “What is wrong with him?” My voice in a pant. “What is wrong with him? Can someone just say something?” I was panicking now, trying to push past the guard. “What is wrong with him? What is he doing? What is he—”
He shoved against my resistance. “Ma'am...”
“What is wrong with him?!”
“He’s fine.”
“He has a fucking needle to his arm, shaking that hard and you say he’s fine?! He’s clearly not fucking fine if he’s shaking that hard... Look at him, JESUS CHRIST! DO YOU NOT HEAR HIM?!”
“Ma’am—”
“Don’t ma’am me!”
“MA’AM!”
I slapped his hands off my shoulders.
“DON’T. MA’AM. ME!”
He only pushed harder. Every one step I took, he made sure he was shoving me two steps back. Grunting and squirming, I wanted to reach around him to get plain, direct answers from his boss. On the tip of my toes, I turned and twisted and tried to get around to Morozov, just slouching on that couch, covered in sweat, his fingers trembling too hard to stay still, wheezing like he was about to lose his mind. I felt my head spinning and my eyes burning in a way I didn’t understand. “He’s clearly... he’s clearly not fine. HE’S CLEARLY NOT FUCKING FINE! HELLO? DON’T YOU SEE?! HE'S NOT FINE."
My voice echoed off the walls, and this time, the guards got hold of me.
“Well, ma'am if you must know, your screams are only going to make him feel worse!”
I could almost see the guard's eyes blazing in the dark. He didn’t even give me time to process what I’d just seen or what the fuck might be happening to Morozov, just lying immobile on that couch, before his fingers tightened around my arms.But this time when he pushed, it wasn’t soft like he’d been doing: it was so hard, so hard I stumbled back into the hallway, my fingers clawing at his biceps to steady my steps, but one more shove sent me falling backward.
The door slammed shut before I could even hit the floor, leaving me trembling by myself in the darkness of the hallway.
For the longest time, I remained sitting on the floor, telling myself I had to be overreacting. Asking myself why the fuck I was even acting this way over a man that had done the most horrible things. I shouldn't care. I didn’t care. I didn’t care. I didn't care. I DIDN'T CARE. At least I tried to believe I didn’t care enough to understand what the fuck was happening.
He was a mafia boss. Mafia bosses had needles to their arms all the time. But I certainly couldn't scrub the sound of his wheezing out of my head. The raspy, wet gasps that sounded like he was drawing his last breathe. It was horrifying that a man like him could be reduced to almost nothing in a blink of an eye. I remained sitting there, feeling my ass hurt from where I'd slammed it into the floor when I heard the muffled sound of struggling inside the room, followed by a man grovelling for his life.