Deceitful Vows (Marital Privileges #2)

70. Andrik

70

ANDRIK

“ Y ou fucking idiot,” I chastise myself as the fist circling my cock seconds ago slams into the tiled wall my cum is clinging to. “You’re a fucking idiot.”

I should be relishing the painful sob Zoya released seconds before she sprinted out of my room. It was the exact response I was seeking when I switched her name for her sister’s.

I wanted her to experience the torment I’ve been enduring over the past several weeks.

I wanted her to feel the pain I felt when my brain refused to function until it took care of the distraction in my pants from going through her personal things for hours before walking in on her in the shower.

Dina’s suburban mansion looked like no one had been there for months, but her daughters’ essences are very much imbedded in its bones. Zoya’s was more hidden than Arabella’s, but it was still undeniable. It was in the framed photos stuffed in the attic, and in the polaroid pictures Arabella had in a photo box under her bed. It was even in the clothes in the walk-in closet of a room I’m convinced was Zakhar’s.

The room I walked past a dozen times when I made my arrangement with Arabella was concealed by a bookcase. I wouldn’t have known it was there if the faintest chime of a snow globe hadn’t sounded with precise timing.

I had to kick down the door that was padlocked from the outside. The room had two beds. One was made up like a hospital bed. The other one had a familiar knitted blanket spread across it. It was the same design and color as the one Mikhail’s mother had draped around her shoulders in the photograph my father had showed me weeks ago.

I’ve initiated bloodbaths on less, but the final nail in the coffin was hammered when I found a box of Polaroid photos in the back of the closet full of teenage things someone had left untouched for years. They exposed that my intuition isn’t as faulty as believed.

Mikhail’s mother is Zoya’s mother as my father stated.

DNA can’t lie, and neither can genes.

Zoya looks identical to Stasy when she was in her twenties, and her childhood photographs are shockingly similar to how Zakhar looks now. He is just the male version of the Chesterton genes.

I guess that means I inherited more than a big cock from my father. We also have the same taste in women.

After shaking my head to rid it of the disturbing image my inner thoughts paint, I shut down the shower and step out. I don’t bother toweling off. The fury that I didn’t stop Zoya from joining me in hell will soon take care of the droplets of water coating my skin.

I’m hot all over, as burning now as I was when I couldn’t stop my steps after hearing trickling water coming from Zoya’s bathroom. I was there to find out how much she knew about Stasy’s past, not perve.

I shouldn’t have looked when I found her in the shower, but the visual was ten times better than my fucked head could have ever imagined. It took everything I had to walk away, and it was only achievable because of the face that flashed up on Zoya’s phone when it rang.

Konstantine has yet to find out any information about the man who sat next to Zoya before she objected, but Zoya knows him well enough to store an image of his cocky smirk under an anonymous listing in her phone.

I shouldn’t have taken her things like a jealous, neurotic jerk, but it was either leave her room with her belongings or accept Anonymous’s facetime request.

The latter would have resulted in more of a display of ownership than stroking my cock in what I believed would be the privacy of my shower to the image of her wet and enticing body.

It would have handed proof to my competitors that I’ve completely lost the fucking plot.

Since I can’t trust myself with the evidence I brought home with me, I gather up the photos of Zoya, Zakhar, and Stasy and shove them into the desk drawer in my room where I hid Zoya’s electronic devices.

I slam the drawer shut before shooting my hand up to my hair to tug it at the roots, hopeful a snippet of pain will stop me from reacting to the brutal heaves seeping through the floorboards.

This property is one of my grandfather’s estates. It is old enough to be classed as ancient, but worth millions.

As I slide my feet into some slacks, sans boxer shorts, I hear Anoushka knock on the door of the downstairs washroom. She asks Zoya if she is okay and if there is anything she can do to help.

When she gets no response, she tells Zoya that she is coming in and not to worry. She’s handled her fair share of puke in her past fifty-eight years.

My heart launches into my throat when a scream is the next thing I hear. It represents someone stumbling onto a murder scene and has me panicked as fuck that I took my effort to force distance between Zoya and me one step too far.

I race down the stairwell with no concern for the slipperiness, and then barge Anoushka out of the way.

Zoya is slumped on the floor of the washroom. Blood is oozing from her head.

“What happened?”

I skid to my knees next to her whitening frame before rolling her over. A deep gash starts just below her hairline and merges into her blonde locks, making them red. It is approximately three inches long.

“She stood too quickly and got woozy. I tried to grab her, but she fell too fast.” Anoushka’s eyes dart between the wash basin and Zoya. “She hit her head on the sink on the way down.”

I nod robotically before instructing her to fetch the doctor from Zakhar’s room. “Make sure he brings his medical bag. I have a first-aid kit in my bathroom, but I don’t think it will suffice.”

“Andrik,” Zoya mumbles painfully when I pull her into my arms before taking the stairs two at a time.

“Shh. You’re okay, милая . I’ve got you.”

After pulling back bedding similar to the one I forced Arabella to sit on for hours so the person controlling her strings would believe her ruse to seduce me had been successful, I place Zoya down and then cover her naked body with the bedding.

Her head wound is so bad blood trickles past her ears and puddles into the pillowcase quicker than the shirt I ripped off in a hurry can soak it up.

“Hurry!” I scream, confident I’ll murder everyone in this godforsaken town if their negligence kills Zoya, preferring to blame anyone but myself.

A stout doctor with a chin far hairier than his head wobbles into the room, warping the floorboards more than Zoya’s tiny frame did when she snuck across my room to watch me in the shower.

That’s when I should have stopped. The instant my instincts alerted me to the identity of my stalker, I should have removed my hand from my cock and ended the madness.

I should not have put on a show that encouraged Zoya to do the same.

“You need to hold her hands down for me.” I glare at the doctor like he’s insane and barely shake my head when he adds, “I need to stop the bleeding. I can’t do that if she fights me at every turn.”

I don’t get in a second headshake. “What the fuck?” sounds from outside my room before Mikhail races in to fulfill the doctor’s demand on my behalf.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” the doctor assures Zoya when she groans about him piercing the edge of her wound with a big-ass needle. “This will take away the pain and numb the area so I can close the wound with a handful of stitches.” He continues pushing down on the syringe until all the liquid inside is gone before he cranks his head to me. “Is she on any medication? Are there any medical conditions I need to know about? The wound is large, so she may need additional sedation.”

“It is a little late to ask now, isn’t it?” When Mikhail silently pleads for me to calm down, I shake my head. Its briskness slows when I remember what I unearthed earlier today. “Unless Zakhar’s heart condition doesn’t affect some siblings until later in life.”

“I don’t believe Zakhar’s condition is hereditary,” the doctor advises, straying away from Dr. Makarand’s theory. “But I will give her a full workup after I’ve cleaned and closed the wound.” He shifts his eyes to Mikhail, aware he is the more stable one of our duo right now. “Will you give us the room?”

“No,” I instantly deny, answering on behalf of Mikhail.

“Andri—”

“No,” I reply louder, glaring at my brother. “I’m not leaving her. Her injury is my fault, so I need to make sure she is okay.”

Anoushka reminds me that she is in the room with us when she squeezes my shoulder. “She fainted, Andrik. That isn’t your fault.”

She can say that because she doesn’t know how hard I pushed her—how much I hurt her.

When Zoya whispers my name again, her voice as pained as the remorse ripping my heart to pieces, the doctor grants me permission to stay.

It’s for the best. He’d be dead at my feet the instant he knotted his last stitch if he had attempted to force me from the room.

“Leave them. I will bring the dirty ones down in the morning.”

The housekeeper Anoushka sent up to change the bedding dips her chin in understanding before quietly backing out of my room.

The scent of Zoya’s blood seeping into my mattress is the reason I don’t want the sheets changed. I need the putrid scent to make it through the night unscathed as much as I need it as a reminder of how badly I fucked up.

When the mattress dips under my weight, Zoya groans before rolling onto the hip opposite her head wound, pulling the sheets away from her body. The doctor doesn’t believe she is concussed. She is merely sleeping off the sedation he gave her.

“She will wake when she is ready,” he said four hours ago.

I’m tempted to poke her, needing to see her eyes to know she is truly okay, but you can only be an ass every so often or it will become a permanent part of your personality.

I learned that the hard way too.

“Hush. I’m just making sure your wound doesn’t join your eyebrow to your hairline,” I tell Zoya when she protests to me pulling back the strand of hair draped across her forehead, needing something to distract me from her budded nipples. You would swear she can feel my beady watch for how erect they’ve become.

The doctor went with stitches instead of glue because a majority of the wound is covered by Zoya’s hair. To glue it together, he would have needed to shave her head. He changed his mind when I said I’d kill him if he altered her features even in the slightest.

An unexpected smirk curls my lips when Zoya murmurs, “You hush. I’m trying to sleep over here.” Her voice is groggy but sexy as fuck.

I should let her sleep, but as I said earlier, I’m desperate to see her eyes.

“Five hours not enough for you, милая ?”

“Depends. Are we still talking about sleep?”

Her lips curve upward when I growl.

Then, two seconds later, I get the quickest peek of her baby blues.

“Hey,” I murmur like a soft cock, slipping lower down the mattress so she doesn’t have to strain to meet me eye to eye.

“Hey,” she parrots. After swishing her tongue around her mouth to loosen up her words, she asks, “What happened?”

I sigh in relief before asking, “You don’t remember?”

She shakes her head before whimpering in pain. “Ow.”

“Gentle.” I pull her hand down from her wound. “You’ve got a ton of stitches in your head.”

“Oh god.”

Confident her hands won’t be as stabby this time, I release them so she can check her wound. She measures its length with gentle probes before guessing its invisibility powers by dragging her hair forward to cover it.

“I guess it could be worse,” she whispers after checking her reflection in a freestanding mirror in the corner of the room. “I could have been forced to wear bangs.”

“Bangs would suit you.”

She rolls her eyes. “I think you’re willing to say anything to lessen your guilt. Bangs don’t suit anyone.”

When she sits up, exposing more of her luscious body, I say, “Where are you going?”

She forces another groan to rumble up my chest when she replies, “Back to my room.”

When she stands and almost fumbles, I shoot out of the bed and catch her before she hurts herself again. My hands send goose bumps racing across her skin. Don’t ask me what it does to the rest of her body, or you’ll admit me for a psych evaluation.

“You can stay here. I have fresh sheets, and?—”

“No,” she murmurs, her voice announcing she is on the verge of being sick. “The memories will hurt less in my room.”

When our eyes align, shame almost folds me in two. Her memories are back, and they hurt her more than any knock to the head ever could.

“I fucked up?—”

I’m saved from forcing my shame onto her by a rush of vomit she can’t hold back.

As vomit sprouts from her mouth, numerous assurances from a familiar voice outside my room shout that I’ve got this.

Mikhail doesn’t do vomit. He hasn’t since he didn’t realize his mother had used a cereal bowl as a vomit bucket. He thought it was porridge. His instincts have never led him so badly astray.

“Take her into the shower,” Mikhail shouts from outside my room. “It is easier to stomp down chunks”—gag—“than wipe them up.”

After warning him that he’ll be cleaning up his own mess if he sympathy vomits, I scoop Zoya into my arms like my sleep pants aren’t covered with spew and then walk her into the bathroom.

“No,” she whines on a groan when I enter the shower stall and switch on the faucet. “Not this shower. I can smell you in here.”

“You’re puking enough to cover the scent of my cum, so suck it up.”

I almost laugh when her bottom lip drops into a pout.

A groggy Zoya is almost as fun as a drunk Zoya.

I dunk my head under the water that’s yet to reach a pleasant temperature to rid my head of the inappropriate thoughts bombarding it.

The coolness sees Zoya clinging to my chest more firmly and sends a second round of goose bumps breaking across her skin. They’re not the same type as earlier.

“Are you cold?” I don’t give her a chance to answer. I check her forehead for a temperature before sticking my head out of the shower stall and yelling, “Get the doctor! She has a fever.”

The doctor’s diagnosis this time around hits me like a bag of bricks. “Zoya is pregnant.”

“No.” If I deny the truth often enough, it will eventually make it untrue, right? “That isn’t possible. She’s infertile. She has endometriosis.”

The doctor pushes his glasses up his blackhead-covered nose. “Which makes conceiving difficult but not impossible. Her uterus is extended?—”

“Because her friend was giving her fertility drugs. That’s why the test came up positive.”

“I thought the same. That’s why I did an ultrasound with Zakhar’s portable heart equipment. The fetus is a healthy size for its gestation. She is approximately ten weeks along.” He shows me footage of a jelly bean-shaped blob before storing the tablet back into his medical bag. “With her condition, she still has a little way to go to be in the safe zone. Her uterus is badly scarred with fibroids, but from what I saw, her pregnancy looks viable. I will continue monitoring and keep you updated.”

Before he can leave, I snatch up his wrist. My hold startles him, though not as much as what I say next. “Is there a way to check if the child has anything… wrong with it?”

“You are both young and healthy, so the chances of an abnormality is low.”

He can say that because he doesn’t know why I’m asking.

Sibling relations ended centuries ago for a reason.

“But there’s still a possibility?”

The doctor slants his head. “A low possibility.”

I continue pressing until I get the answer I need. “But still possible?”

“But still possible,” he eventually parrots. “There are tests we can conduct to check, but that won’t be for a few more weeks.”

“What happens if it brings something up?” I ask, convinced a sick child is my punishment for lusting over my half-sister.

“There are a handful of options at your disposal.” When I glare at him, over needing to pry answers from him, he stammers out, “Mo-most couples choose to abort.”

“Abortion?”

“Yes.” He nods sternly. “The procedure is relatively simple. It can be undertaken at a doctor’s clinic, and she will be home within the hour.” He steps closer as if our conversation isn’t being held in private. “Is that something you’re considering?”

“No,” my heart answers before my head. “I was just curious.”

He smiles. “Good. Because I’ve already told them they were mistaken earlier, which means Zakhar is only days away from getting a new heart.” He slaps the tops of my shoulders before shouting, “You should be celebrating! This is the miracle they’ve been seeking. An heir and a spare to return the Dokovic bloodline to the glory it once held.” He makes a fatal mistake. “And I didn’t have to remove your swimmers from your sack under general anesthetic and steal her eggs to achieve it.”

“Her?”

His pupils widen so much, even with them not shooting to the door he walked through only minutes ago, I know who he is referencing.

A shocked gasp ripples his lips when an antique statue pierces his stomach well enough for its pointy tip to graze his spleen. Then he stumbles back when I remove the corkscrew-like artwork and aim it several inches higher.

I don’t stab him in his heart.

I want him wounded, not dead.

You can’t get answers from a corpse.

“I…” He gargles on the blood trickling from his mouth as he falls to his knees. “Please…” He grabs at the instrument he’s certain is seconds from being pierced through his jugular before lifting his pained eyes to my face. “I’ll… do… anything you ask.”

“I don’t want you to do anything.” My voice is incessant with rage. “But you are going to speak.” When his head flops forward, I bob down low, grip the measly strands of hair he has left, and then yank his head back to ensure he can see the sheer honesty in my eyes when I say, “You’re going to tell me everything . Starting with her…”

He follows the direction of my head nudge before returning his pained eyes to me.

He nods. It is for the best. I may have taken my time with him if he had tried to disagree.

Time isn’t in my favor.

It isn’t for him either, though he won’t know that until he’s given me answers to questions I hadn’t considered asking until now.