Deceitful Vows (Marital Privileges #2)

21. Andrik

21

ANDRIK

“ W hat is the predicted annual revenue?”

When my question is drowned out by the belittled huff of my brother for the umpteenth time this morning, I sling my eyes to Mikhail before arching a brow. He’s been pushing my buttons nonstop over the past hour, testing the elasticity of my leniencies more than ever, and it has reached a point I can no longer ignore.

He’s being rude, and I’m seconds from teaching him some lessons with my fists.

A bullet would be cheaper, but since the cleanup bill will be about the same, I may as well get some enjoyment from it.

“Do you have something you need to get off your chest, Brother ?” I spit out his title with the same abhorrent disdain he uses anytime he’s addressed me over the past two weeks. “You seem… frustrated.” I almost say on the verge of death, but I hold back the verdict I want to rain down on him since we’re surrounded by the equivalent of the help.

The Broadbent Hotel has been in official operation for three months, so we’re crunching numbers to calculate the timeline from deficit to profit. I, too, would like to be anywhere but here, but when business responsibilities are sidestepped, personal endeavors soon follow.

I can’t allow that to happen, so I arrived for our meeting within a respectable time frame considering the commute and have kept an open mind.

Mikhail has not.

“What could possibly be bothering me?” Mikhail’s tone is as arrogant as his expression.

“I don’t know.” Each of my words are punctuated. “Hence me asking if there is anything you’d like to share.”

He’s here because I gifted him the majority share in Brody’s as promised, yet he’s acting like I reneged on my offer as quickly as I tried to annul my marriage.

He’s being a dick, and we’re going to have words sooner rather than later if he doesn’t pull his head out of his ass.

“Maybe you’re projecting, Brother ?” He speaks as if we’re not in the same room as another thirty people. “You seem to do that a lot lately. Forever pushing your shit onto everyone else.”

“Mikhail—”

I cut our father off by slicing my hand through the air.

“Let him speak.” I glare up and down at him, doubling the firmness of his jaw. “It’s about time he acts like he gives a fuck about anything but the millions I’ve made him.” I lean back in my chair before folding my arms in front of my chest. “The floor is yours, Mikhail. Use it for whatever the fuck you want.” I continue talking before he can accept the imaginary microphone I’m handing him. “But don’t you dare say I’ve pushed my shit onto you. I have sheltered you from it for years, shielded you from the brunt of what it takes to lead this family. I’ve protected you?—”

“I don’t need your protection!” he shouts, standing to his feet and banging his fist on the boardroom table between us. “I can take care of myself.”

“Then what the fuck has your panties in such a twist?” I mimic his pose. My feet plant to the width of my shoulders, and the veins in my muscles bulge as I lean over the table like I’m not seconds from dragging him across it and pummeling some sense into him. “What more can I do for you that I’m not already doing? I’ve given you everything you’ve ever wanted.”

Several shocked huffs sound when he mutters, “ After taking it away.”

I stare at him in bewilderment. I’ve never taken a single thing from him. I’ve given him everything he has, so why would I then take it away? His claim of thievery is unfounded. Not solely because it isn’t theft when you’re the rightful owner, but also because I would never steal from him.

He is my blood. My brother. He comes before anyone— except her .

My inner monologue trails off when my final two words ring through my head on repeat.

Except. Her.

Dozens of eyes snap to me when my low tone replicates the deathly warning of an imminent hurricane. “Get out.”

“Boss—”

“Now!”

Female staff members race for the door first. They’re overtaken before they break through the conference room doors by cowards who’ll never have the balls to run a company like mine, let alone puppeteer it.

The knowledge sees me flicking my eyes to Konstantine a second before he follows the stragglers out. I don’t need to voice my command. He can smell the wish for carnage wafting from my pores, and the rancid scent doubles when I lock eyes with my brother pacing the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the Chelabini business district.

“Speak. Now.” I walk around the conference table before butting my ass against the antique trim I wring with my hands. I need to do something to stop them from colliding with Mikhail’s face. “And before you give me any shit about projecting, remember who the fuck you are speaking with. I will not be disrespected on my turf by anyone. Particularly when that man has no claim to the person he’s crowding the plate for.”

The tightening of Mikhail’s fists during my last sentence tells me everything I need to know. He isn’t pissed at me for himself. He’s fighting the battle for a woman who hasn’t left my mind for a single second over the past two weeks.

I just can’t tell him that because it wasn’t solely the identity of the man with the ruby ring that tossed my game into an entirely different code. It was what he said while I was proving to him that I’m no longer a kid he can push around anymore that flipped my ruse on its head.

When Mikhail remains quiet, protecting Zoya from me as readily as I’m endeavoring to protect her from my enemies, I get to the point. “Zoya?—”

“Got jumped this morning.”

I grip the conference room table so firmly that my fingerprints will never be removed from its curved edges.

“She was catching the bus home and got robbed by a punk-ass fucking weasel with an ugly face tat.”

I try to speak.

I try to reply.

Nothing comes out but angry bubbles of air.

I discover the reason for Mikhail’s anger being directed at me when he sneers. “I tried to call you five times this morning. Five. Fucking. Times.” He steps closer, his chest raging with anger. “Where the fuck were you when I needed you? Where were you when my life was turned upside down?”

“I was?—”

“Playing house with your pretty little bride in your big ass mansion?” His gall when he steps up to me impresses me. That’s no easy feat. “I was there for you, year after year, Kazimir ”—he spits out my given name with disgust—“but the one time I needed you, you were nowhere to be found.”

“Because I have responsibilities you don’t have! Obligations I can’t get out of. But you wouldn’t know about any of that, Mikhail, because I shelter you from that.”

I want to pummel some sense into him. Or better yet, force him to walk the halls I must walk for his freedom, but since I can’t shift my focus from his confession, I veer the conversation away from my frustrations and devote it to my fury.

“Was she hurt?” My voice is nothing like I’ve heard before.

I’m shocked I can talk. I’ve never felt the range of emotions that are walloping me now.

Hate. Fear. Vengeance. They all smack into me. But since this is about the first person since my mother to remind me that I have a heart in my chest, words make it through the rumble crashing down on me and burying me whole.

“Was she fucking hurt, Mikhail?” I scream my question so loud being on the top level of the hotel won’t save our guests from hearing my roar.

He waits until my nerves are kneeling on tacks before shaking his head. “No. But?—”

“There are no buts… because I leave nothing to chance.”

When I spin on my heel and race for the door, my little brother is hot on my tail. He jabs his thumb into the elevator call button when we reach the corridor, assuming I’m heading for the foyer. He’s dead fucking wrong. There’s only one way I am going. Up.

My chopper pilot is already buckled in the cockpit, ready for immediate transfer as requested, but with Mikhail shadowing me, I signal for him to move before I veer for the pilot side of the helicopter instead of the co-pilot’s seat.

I’ve always operated on the notion “the fewer witnesses the better,” so this morning’s endeavor will follow that concept.

“Fucking Christ,” Mikhail shouts when I fully open the throttle and pull up the collective before he’s buckled in. “You almost shook me out.”

“That was the point,” I mutter as I depress the left pedal to counteract the torque produced by the main rotor.

If my blood weren’t too hot to think rationally, I’d return to the helipad and force my brother’s removal from the cockpit with the same level of violence his confession flooded me with. But since the control I govern my life with has been completely obliterated, I continue en route, making a three-hour commute in barely thirty minutes.

Mikhail doesn’t speak a word the entire time. He knows how short my temper is and just how furious the inferno is when ignited. He doesn’t want to get burned.

One of Konstantine’s subordinates meets me on the helipad of a building in the middle of Myasnikov’s business district. It is approximately half a mile from Zoya’s apartment.

“Who was assigned watchman of the target last night?”

I stop walking toward Daniil when the familiar scent of the shadow I’ve struggled to lose for a single second after my mother’s disappearance wafts into my nostrils.

It still has that chocolate frosting scent from when he found me hiding in the closet I wish I had made it to before being found by Anoushka. Mikhail was only two, so he didn’t understand why I refused to eat the cake my mother had encouraged me to take a bite out of only hours earlier. He devoured his slice before bringing the second biggest piece to me.

He's done the same every birthday since. I just no longer hide in a closet in my room.

Underground fight clubs are more my scene.

After working my jaw to loosen its stiffness, I shift on my feet to face Mikhail. I could order his removal from the rooftop. Since that will steal time away from my objective, I threaten him instead.

“If you breathe a single iota of this to anyone, I will bury you. If it goes beyond this group of people”—I point to Konstantine’s lackey, Mikhail, and me—“I’ll bury you.” Jealousy talks on my behalf during my next warning. “And if I find out you said anything inappropriate to her during what I promise was a brief reintroduction into her life, I will bury you.”

Mikhail stares at me for several seconds longer than I’m happy about before a sly grin stretches across his face. “You know whoever said absence makes the heart grow fonder is full of shit, right?” My gun already feels heavy on my hip. He doubles its weight by proving he still has a lot to learn about the woman still unknowingly plotting my demise. “I also don’t think she’s a girl who’ll wait around for you to get your shit together.”

“I don’t think she’ll wait for me, Mikhail. I know she will.”

He looks set to argue, but my patience is stretched too thin. I make a beeline for the steel emergency exit stairwell on the side of the building, grumbling under my breath that Zoya’s count will only ever travel one way.

After calling me a cocky fuck, Mikhail assists me in unearthing the identity of the fool who made an erroneous mistake last night. “Who was the watchman in charge of Zoya’s surveillance this morning?” He jogs to catch up to Daniil and me before he pulls out his phone and brings up a blurry image of a man who wouldn’t rank any higher than a low-ranking gangster. “And has anyone in your crew seen him before?”

“We were assigned this case two weeks ago, but we’ve not yet had the chance to introduce ourselves to the locals,” Daniil replies, his tone a mix of sarcastic and truthful. “I’ll run his image through a program to clean it up before completing facials.” He scans the image into a black tablet before tapping on the screen. “When do you need it by?”

“Yesterday,” I answer on Mikhail’s behalf, my voice tainted with guilt.

I fucked up by not personally overseeing the team in charge of Zoya’s surveillance, but I wasn’t lying when I said my entire plan was flipped on its head. I’ve been scrambling to make sense of everything since the press conference at the front of Mikhail’s building. It’s been one fucking thing after another, so I let what I thought would cause minor implications slip.

I won’t make the same mistake twice.

“I’ll have you a name in under an hour.” Daniil’s sly smirk matches mine when he says, “But until then, how about we go pay him a visit?”

He double taps the screen, bringing up the name of the man rostered to watch Zoya last night.

I hope Luka Traite kissed his family goodbye before accepting the security contract Konstantine offered him two weeks ago, because it would have been for the final time.