Deceitful Vows (Marital Privileges #2)

73. Zoya

73

ZOYA

W ith my intuition screaming at me to get out of Boris’s van before it is too late for me to plead innocent, I ask Boris to pull over a couple of blocks away from Myasnikov Private Hospital.

He does so, seemingly relieved.

“Anywhere here is fine,” I murmur when he glides further and further down the alleyway.

The van’s speed has barely dipped below thirty when he commences removing his belt and unbuckling his jeans. “I’ve been dreaming about this for hours.” He shifts his eyes to me. They’re brimming with lust. “But I had to exercise patience. I didn’t want us to crash.” He wets his lips while eyeing mine. “Your lips look capable of instigating a crash.”

I laugh like he’s cute.

It is either laugh or puke. I went for the one that causes less mess.

“Uh-uh,” I tsk when he flops out his erect penis. It’s uncut and smells as funky as the white ooze dripping from it. “There could be cameras here, Boris. You don’t want your mother to see what we’re doing, do you?”

He tucks his penis away so fast that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn his zipper nipped his skin.

“What I need you to do is hop into the back of the van for me. There are no windows in the back.”

“You want me to hop in there?” He hooks his thumb in the direction he refused for me to look over the past several hours.

“Uh-huh.” I bring back the cutesy sex pot that had him eating out of my palm. “Because I’m really hungry, Boris, but I don’t want your mommy to hate me. She will never let me be your wife when she sees all the naughty things I’m going to do to you.”

He swallows harshly before nodding. “All right. I can do that.”

He nods like he needs more convincing before he climbs through the minute gap between our seats.

While he pushes aside a box leaking a weird watered-down red liquid, I pretend to fluff my hair in the rearview mirror. The instant his back turns to me, I snatch the keys out of the steering column, throw them into an overflowing dumpster at the side of the van, and then hightail it down the street.

“Zoya?” I hear Boris shout when I’m half a block down. “Are you coming back? My mom would really like to meet you.”

I increase my speed, my footing stumbling when a loud bang reverberates down the isolated alleyway.

As my eyes pop open, Andrik’s threat from weeks ago rings through my ears.

Don’t test me on six because I can guarantee neither you nor him will survive the outcome.

He couldn’t have found me already.

Surely not.

When I recall how unhinged Andrik has been of late, I push off my feet.

I barely make it two steps before my wrist is grabbed and I’m pulled into a side alley.

“Whoa. Hold on, Sunshine,” a familiar voice murmurs when my hand shoots for the letter opener I took with me for my safety, and I stab it wildly through the air.

After stepping out of the shadows enough to display his eyes, Mikhail says, “If you think I’m here to hurt you, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“I’m not worried about me.”

His eyes shoot down to my stomach before they return to my face. “I’m not going to hurt your baby, either. I’m not a complete fucking psycho.”

“After the way you reacted to our kiss, I’m going to hold my verdict until I’ve done some thorough research.” When he looks ill, bewilderment overtakes my fear that he followed me here to force me back to Andrik’s chop-shop doctor. “Seriously! It was the equivalent of a kindergarten schoolyard peck. I’ve gotten more action from Grampies. If I had a father, it would have been like kissing him.”

“What about a brother?” Mikhail says, his cheeks suddenly full of color again. “Would it have been like kissing your brother?”

“Yes! It was the equivalent of kissing my nonexistent brother. Happy?”

“Very,” he murmurs, winking. “Though I’d rather in the future if we keep our greetings to cheek kisses. I’m still a little traumatized.”

I stare at him, mute and confused. What the hell is he on about?

“I’d love to horrify you like all big bros should, but we don’t have time.” My heart gains an extra beat when he murmurs, “Zakhar is getting a new heart.” He checks his watch for the time. “From the last update I got, it’s probably pattering in his chest right now.” He moves for a blacked-out SUV parked a few spots up before spinning to face me. “Are you coming?”

I almost nod.

Almost.

Mikhail balks when I shake my head. “Why the fuck not?”

“Because your brother doesn’t have any issues killing babies.”

He appears lost—for half a second.

“Send it to me.” After nodding to whoever has him talking to himself like a mental patient, he heads my way while removing his phone from his pocket. “Take this as a lesson on snooping. If you don’t stay to get the whole story, you may as well not snoop.”

He plays a video that makes my blood boil… until it reaches the end.

“ Is that something you’re considering? ”

“ No ,” Andrik answers, loosening the valve in my chest. “ I was just curious. ”

Mikhail stops the video before it officially ends and then demands another. “Now play the one from earlier you told me about.” I can’t hear what his imaginary friend replies, but it pisses him off. The veins in his hand bulge as he works his jaw side to side. “I’ll deal with Andrik. Just play it.”

This one is from the same camera used to spy on Andrik and Dr. Leverington, but it only shows Andrik’s bedroom door.

I lean in close when a faint roar sounds from the speaker of Mikhail’s phone. It’s soft but undeniable. Andrik is chastising himself. If the faucet shutting off seconds into the footage is anything to go by, it was seconds before I lost my dinner in the downstairs bathroom.

I refuse to let my heart get ahead of itself, though. “Maybe he was angry his only source of relief was his hand.”

Mikhail laughs.

He. Fucking. Laughs.

Asshole.

“Mikhail—”

“Don’t Mikhail me. I’ve waited years for this. Let me relish it for a couple of seconds.” He sees I’m confused but does nothing to alleviate it. “Come on.” He nudges his head to the hanging-open car door. “I’ll fill you in on everything I know during the drive home.”

I hate how stubborn I am, but it isn’t solely my wants I need to consider now. “I don’t think?—”

“If you want answers, Sunshine, you need to trust me.” He twists around to face me, flashing both his dimples and his kind eyes. “You trust me, right?”

I shouldn’t, but I nod.

He grins at my grumble as I slowly trudge toward his SUV.

I’m bombarded for the second time three steps later.

Mara looks as if she’s seen a ghost, but her focus is on me instead of Mikhail.

“Your fr-friend works at Myasnikov Private Hospital, right?”

I nod, too panicked by the worry in her tone for a worded response or to chastise her for walking the streets alone this late. It is almost dawn.

“What does s-she look like?”

“Brown hair, around this tall.”

I hold my hand an inch above my head as Mikhail thrusts his phone into Mara’s face. “Like this.”

“Th-that’s her,” Mara shouts, her voice bellowing through the alleyway. “I saw her earlier. She was at our bus s-stop, dazed and confused.” My heart pains for her when she says, “I was hesitant to help because of the r-ruse they’d pull.” The person who assaulted Mara months ago used the I’m-hurt ruse. As she bobbed down to help him, he launched upward with his fists. “She wasn’t well. I-I think she was drugged. I tr-tried to call you, but I don’t have your number.”

“I don’t have my phone on me anyway,” I blurt out, unsure what to do.

“How long ago was this?” Mikhail asks.

Mara checks her watch. It isn’t as fancy or as expensive as Mikhail’s. “Around tw-two hours ago. Maybe a little longer.”

When my eyes shoot to Mikhail, panting and desperate, he nods like he knows exactly what we need to do. “Get in.”

His demand isn’t just for me. It is for Mara as well.

“It’s okay, Mara,” I assure her, feeling her scared shakes from here. “You can trust him. He’s one of the rare good ones.”

“When you can, tell him I’ve got her, but that we need to take a quick detour,” Mikhail murmurs as he opens the back passenger door of the SUV for Mara. “That’s good. I’ll tell her.” As he jogs to the driver’s side, he removes a bead-like device from his ear. “Zak’s surgery was a success. His body seems to be accepting his new heart.”

I sigh in relief. “That’s great. I’m so glad.”

“Di-did you say he got a new heart?”

After instructing Mikhail to go around the hospital’s perimeter that makes traffic shit no matter the hour, I twist to face Mara. “Yeah. Zakhar has a hereditary heart condition. He’s been in cognitive heart failure for the past twelve months.”

I’m truly stoked for Andrik and Zakhar, but I can’t fully express my feelings until I know that Nikita is okay. Mara made it seem as if she was found at our bus stop, which makes no sense. Maksim would never let her visit that side of town unaccompanied, and why would she be at a bus stop?

“Take Forty-Second Street. It will bypass the nonsense.”

Mikhail nods before turning down the street I suggested as I snatch up his phone from the middle console. It is still unlocked from when he showed Mara a picture of Nikita.

“We’re going to discuss this.” I twist his phone to display the album of photographs I’m referencing before hitting the call button. There are hundreds, and although I feature more than Nikita, I am not okay with his level of snooping.

I suck at interviews, but I am a whizz with numbers. I can remember most by heart. Since I have called Ano’s a handful of times since objecting to Aleena’s wedding, that’s the first number I call.

Ano is Nikita’s shadow. He sits in the hospital’s underground parking lot for hours every day, watching the live feed of the hospital surveillance. He wouldn’t just leave his post.

“Come on, Ano,” I murmur when my call rings and rings and rings. “Pick up.”

“Hey, you’ve reached Ano?—”

I hang up and try again as a soft voice from the back mutters, “Did you s-say Ano?” When I nod, Mara’s cheeks whiten before she shifts her eyes to Mikhail watching her in the rearview mirror. “You should pull over before it is too late.”

He does so without interrogation. The sheer panic in Mara’s gaze is enough to crumble the knees of the strongest man, let alone what she says next.