Deceitful Vows (Marital Privileges #2)

72. Andrik

72

ANDRIK

A s I exit the basement, I scrub Dr. Leverington’s blood off my hands with a rag.

I sense I am being watched half a second before a familiar voice says, “If you tortured him for the whereabouts of Zoya’s mother, you’re wasting your breath.”

I test how much Mikhail knows by saying, “Dina?—”

“I wasn’t talking about Dina.” He arches a brow and stares me dead set in the eyes. “Though she will get hers,” he snarls, “when I find her.” His expression softens again. “I was talking about my mother, the woman who birthed both Zoya and me.” He takes in my bloodstained clothes and sweat-dotted hair. “When the pieces started falling into place and I realized how fucked up this situation was, I found her and moved her to a safe location.” A scoff rustles his hair sitting flopped across his eye since it is overdue for a trim. “I can’t believe all this time she was in the same town as me.”

“Not always,” I advise, lessening his guilt. “According to him”—I nudge my head to the stairwell of the basement like there is only one body down there—“they moved her from location to location to keep her hidden. She’s traveled the globe over the past thirty years and birthed numerous children.”

“Including Zakhar.”

He looks set to go on a rampage. To hunt down the people who kept his mother hidden from him, but there’s more to this story than he knows. Stuff that will flip his life plan on its head. But right now, my focus can’t be on him. I have far more pressing matters to attend to, so I keep my reply brief.

“No.”

He balks before he sucks in a shocked breath. “She didn’t birth Zakhar?”

When I nod before pushing off on my feet, he follows me. “Are you sure, Andrik? He looks identical to her, and he believes she is his mother.”

I bite back my wish to retaliate to his confession that he interrogated my son without me being present before saying with a laugh, “For good reason.”

I must be in shock. I don’t usually laugh after a lengthy torture session. I’m not that insane. But there’s no doubt laughter is rumbling in my chest.

Or perhaps it is relief that the concrete slab that’s been sitting on my heart for the past few weeks has finally lifted. I honestly don’t know, though I intend to find out. Soon.

With Mikhail too shocked to help me move forward with my plans, I say, “Stasy is Zakhar’s grandmother.”

He chokes on his reply. “What?”

I am definitely in the throes of lunacy. Laughter thunders in my chest before it fans Mikhail’s white cheeks.

“Why are you laughing? Doesn’t this make things worse for you?”

“No,” I reply, smiling. “It makes everything better.” So. Much. Better.

Still grinning, I make it to my bedroom in record-setting time, throw open my door with force, and then stray my eyes to the bed Dr. Leverington left Zoya resting in after assessing her.

My mattress is as bare as my bathroom.

“Where is Zoya?” I ask when Anoushka appears out of nowhere with a bowl of porridge, a large glass of orange juice, and pregnancy vitamins.

She shakes her head, but before a word can leave her mouth, Mikhail asks, “Who’s pregnant?” His pupils blow wide as the truth smacks into him. “Zoya is pregnant!” Since he isn’t asking a question, he doesn’t wait for me to answer him. “Won’t that create… issues for the baby?”

His horrified expression exposes that he is as worried as I was last night that our unborn child would have a genetic deformity since its parents were alleged siblings. But once again, I don’t have time to sit him down and step him through this.

I have a shit ton of groveling to do, and the woman deserving of my grovel is nowhere to be seen.

After requesting Anoushka to check Zoya’s room before her choice of breakfast for Zoya causes Mikhail to hurl, I shift my focus to the voice of reason in my ear.

“No one came in or out of your room since Dr. Leverington left it last night,” Konstantine announces, his words as fast as his fingers flying over his keyboard. “Shit.”

“What is it?”

He breathes out heavily. “It could be nothing, but there was a breach of an exterior perimeter late last night.”

I brush off his worry. If Zoya wanted to flee, she would have done it when she believed I had cheated on her with her baby sister. She wouldn’t have stayed for another thirty-six hours.

The cause of Konstantine’s worry is unearthed when he says, “It was approximately ten minutes after the shadows beneath your door disappeared.”

My eyes shoot to the camera above every door in my family’s numerous estates as I murmur, “She heard my exchange with Dr. Leverington.”

I’m not asking a question, but Konstantine replies as if I am. “Yes.” He doubles the load on my shoulders instead of lightening it. “From the timing of the shadows’ appearance and disappearance, she only heard the abortion part of your conversation.”

“Fuck.”

“What?” Mikhail asks, his gills still green but desperate for answers.

I hold my hand in the air, requesting a minute before asking Konstantine to bring up footage of the security breach from outside the compound’s main walls.

The footage is playing on my phone screen before I remove it from my desk drawer. Zoya dodges the camera’s focus, but I know it is her sneaking out of a gardener’s shed on the west side of the grounds. I’d recognize those curves anywhere.

Mikhail grimaces with me when she almost slips while scaling the stone wall bordering the manicured lawns. We weren’t so lucky twenty-six years ago. I split my head and Mikhail broke his wrist.

“Track her movements with any cameras in the area and forward them directly to me.” Before Konstantine can hum in agreement, I add, “Be discreet. We need to find her before anyone else.”

The way I say anyone announces who I am referring to. Dr. Leverington’s bedside confession ramped up my efforts to stay on the federation’s good side, and quadrupled my wish to protect Zoya from their madness.

Aleena was the federation’s first choice because the timer on Zoya’s head is almost as minute as Zakhar’s.

“I’m coming with you,” Mikhail says when I remove a gun from the safe in my walk-in closet. “She’s my sister too.”

As I grab extra ammunition, I mutter, “She’s your sister. Period.”

He wants to ask a million questions, but the urgency of the situation sees him taking another direction. “Once she’s safe, we need to talk.”

I nod. “We do. But not now. Not until I know she is safe.”

His quick check of his gun announces he’s on board with my plans, not to mention the wave of his arm across his body. He’s giving me the lead and, for once, plans to follow my orders.

He may even kill for me. That’s how badly he wants to protect his baby sister.

It is almost on par with the lengths I will go to bring my wife home safely.

“Wait. Hold up,” Konstantine murmurs a second before I gallop down the stairs. “You can’t go.”

“Is she here?” My gut is picking up something, but I can’t quite work out what it is. I sense Zoya’s closeness, but is that because her son is sleeping only doors down from my location?

“No,” Konstantine replies. “But Zak’s new heart is.”

His swallow matches the heavy sentiment on Anoushka’s face as she races to the bottom of the stairs at the speed of a bullet. “We need to go now, Andrik. His new heart is already hours old. It won’t hold out for much longer.”

I look at Mikhail, then back at Anoushka, lost on what to do.

My eyes veer back to Mikhail when he says, “Go with Zakhar. I will find Zoya, and I will keep her safe. I promise you.” He steps closer before sealing my fate with the only pair of eyes ever able to pull me out of the madness until Zoya was introduced to my life. “This is what she would want, Andrik.”

I nod, conscious he is right.

“When you find her, tell her I?—”

“You can tell her yourself when I bring her home,” Mikhail interrupts before removing the bead from my ear, stuffing it in his, and then requesting directions from Konstantine for Zoya’s last known location.

Whatever Konstantine relays to him gets his feet moving as quickly as the wheels on Zakhar’s bed. His medical team wheels him across the foyer of the home I tried to escape more than once when I was his age.