Chapter 24 TWENTY FOUR

Chapter 24 TWENTY FOUR
     Sergei threw one look at the door. 

Eyes off me.

His jaw tightened, his brows creased like he wanted to slit the throat of whoever had dared to interrupt the moment. 

I dragged the sheet over my chest as he started getting off the bed.

“Bathroom,” he ordered, “You can walk… right?”

I nodded quickly.

He hesitated, threw one look at the door, then back at me.

Then he turned and ripped the door open.

“Sergei!” A man wheezed. 

He stopped dead in the threshold, his massive frame blocking the person entirely from my view. His fingers curled around the edge of the door, knuckles white, effectively also shielding me from the hallway.

“You better be fucking dying,” he gritted. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Sergei… I… we… At the—” The person sounded like he’d just sprinted a marathon with a gun to his head but the door slammed shut, cutting off the frantic wheeze with a loud bang before I could fully grasp anything.

I basked in silence for a few seconds.

What the fuck was happening? Where the fuck were we?

Cold hit my feet as I swung my legs over the edge.

Bathroom.

I slid off the bed and nearly went down with it. My legs felt like jelly, and I wobbled with every step closer to the door. Just as my fingers brushed the knob, I paused. My head turned sharply, as if nudged by an invisible force.

On the table, right next to the crystal ashtray, was a gun.

Sergei’s.

A shudder ran down my spine. I’d recognize it from amidst a thousand after the assault. 

But… wait.

My eyes slanted into a squint.

Something wasn't adding up.

Was this a joke? He just left it laying there?

Men like him never just left their guns laying around recklessly. They always had it on them. Always. It was an extension of their hand.

Go for it. A small voice immediately whispered behind my mind. Take it. End this. End him.

I swallowed down the bitterness in my throat. My head swerved in the direction of the door, then back to the gun just laying there, taunting me.

Leave it.

The inner turmoil lasted only a few seconds as I weighed the options—kill and escape, or survive?

But the dangerous option seemed like a one-way ticket to hell. We were surrounded by his men.  I just knew that. Whoever had been just outside the door now seemed on the edge. 

And even Sergei himself, the boss, was unstable. He acted like he hadn’t fully decided what he wanted to do with me yet. 

To kill me or let me maintain my position as his bride. 

His emotions were all over the place when it came to me. It was messy. He was messy.  A difference between him and the Vescovi men I’d grown up with. Neither Father nor Judea was ever messy when it came to choosing between emotion or revenge. For them, it was never a mix. It should never be in the life of a mafia man. That was the rules. Work is work. Il lavoro è lavoro. Revenge is revenge. La vendetta è vendetta.

But, I suppose not for Morozov.

One second he’s hurting me, the next he’s acting desperate for me. Like he can’t breathe without Anya Vescovi in his arms. 

Maybe that crack in attitude was going to be a ticket and advantage for me to gain an upper hand. It was pretty clear he was holding up a facade. Does Sergei Morozov, the son of Aleksei Morozov, the most feared Mafia don before father took him out, actually like me? I almost laughed. Does he trust me? Or is he testing me? Maybe the marriage for revenge was a facade to the obsession he had for me?

Even if I did go for the gun, picked it up, killed him, there was no way I was making it out of here without hundreds of guns drilling into my skin before I could pinpoint wherever the front door was. 

His men already wanted me solved.

Only Sergei hadn't solved me.

If I killed him, I was going down immediately.

Still dizzy, I stepped into the bathroom, slammed the door shut, found the lock, and clicked it right into place.

And when I turned around, the sight before me ripped a scoff out of my lips.