Deceitful Vows (Marital Privileges #2)

74. Andrik

74

ANDRIK

I pull off the hairnet flattening my hair and then remove my face mask, unmuffling my voice just as Konstantine answers my call.

“Did he find her?” I ask before he can speak a word.

“Yes,” he replies, his pitch high. “But we’re fucked.” My heart rate surges as erratically as it did when Zakhar’s new heart took its first pump hours ago. “I said this was fucking suicide. They’re coming at us from all angles. Henry’s army is too big. They’re going to wipe us out.”

“They?”

“The Gottles and the Ivanovs.” It sounds like his finger jabs a trigger more than a keyboard. “Zakhar’s heart didn’t come from the fe?—”

Our connection is lost before he can finalize his reply. I don’t need his words to understand what is happening, though. It is midday, but even if the sun wasn’t bright enough to light up the street, I couldn’t miss the swarm of armed men racing toward the main entrance of the hospital.

The front runner is gunning for blood, and that is precisely what I’ll give him if he’s here for what I think he is.

As I return to Zakhar’s room to protect him from the hellfire about to rain down on him, I remove my gun from its holster and point it at Maksim Ivanov’s head.

My fighting stance scares away the nurses settling Zakhar into his room after a few hours in the recovery unit, but since their cowardice won’t affect Zakhar’s rehabilitation, I let them leave.

Machines are no longer the sole thing keeping my son alive. His new heart is—a heart I am suddenly fretful Maksim is here to collect.

Maksim enters Zakhar’s room without fear for his life, like I won’t gut him where he stands if his sneer is anything to go by.

I understand his cockiness when I recognize the face of the man who enters next. He’s bigger than the federation. More feared because his army isn’t confined to one country.

He rules them all.

Henry Gottle the Third is the boss of all bosses and the very man I’d hoped would take the bait I dangled in front of him weeks ago. He has the power to dismantle the federation, but at the moment, his expression announces the only head on his chopping block is mine.

Maksim’s deep snarl is picked up by Zakhar’s heart monitor. “We had an agreement.”

“Which I have maintained.” My words are for Maksim, but I keep my eyes on Henry since he is clearly the least unhinged of the two.

Maksim scoffs before he signals for a man I swear I’ve seen before to move forward. He’s dressed in the same riot gear as Maksim’s and Henry’s crews, but he is without a gun. Like Konstantine, he prefers fighting with a keyboard.

Without moving the scope of my gun from Maksim’s head, I peer down at the document the dark-haired man brings up on his tablet before silently cussing. The email Konstantine failed to send weeks ago sits in the outbox of my email server. It was forwarded two days ago, minutes before Zoya uploaded the footage she had unearthed onto the USB she gifted me.

She got Zakhar a heart and broke my promise to him at the same time.

I can handle the fallout of her mistake, but only if the crumble of my demise doesn’t affect our son. “He is a child. You cannot hurt a child. Have a fucking heart.”

“So you admit it?” Maksim shouts, his nostrils flaring. “You admit you ignored my direct order to keep this type of shit out of Myasnikov Private?”

“Yes,” I lie, willing to fall onto the knife for Zoya. I shift my eyes back to Henry, once again confident he is the more stable of the duo. “I didn’t have a choice. My son was going to die.”

“Then you should have given him your heart!” Maksim snarls, returning my focus to him. “You shouldn’t have ordered the murder of an innocent child?—”

“He didn’t.”

“No!” I scream when Mikhail enters the operating theater from the entrance the doctors used to escape. He didn’t get here easily. He’s bleeding from an obvious bullet wound in his midsection and his body is housing numerous bruises. But he is standing—just. “Stay out of this, Mikhail. This has nothing to do with you.”

Blood smears his teeth when he gives me a look as if to say, She’s my sister, so she’s my responsibility , before he throws himself into the fire without the slightest bit of coverage to protect him from an inferno hot enough to melt his skin off his bones. “I sent the email. It was me.”

“He’s lying,” I deny, moving half of the lights dotting up his chest back to me.

He’s pissed, and I hear it in his tone. “What reason do I have to lie, Andrik?”

“Because you’re trying to protect her like you think you failed to do twenty-eight years ago.” His silence speaks volumes. He’s also willing to fall on the knife for Zoya. I just refuse to let him. “You didn’t fail her, Mikhail. Your father did. If you want to blame anyone, blame him.”

“Zoya is my baby sister! It was my job to protect her.”

“Zoya?” Maksim stammers out, his confusion as paramount as his anger. “What has she got to do with this?”

“Nothing,” I snap out before glaring at Mikhail in silent warning to keep his fucking mouth shut. Henry is here to take down the federation. That automatically drags Zoya into the mess because she is a Dokovic as my father announced.

I am the one missing the royal blood the federation was desperately seeking to reestablish when they stole Zoya’s eggs.

My father didn’t lie when he said my mother fooled them all. She had them so convinced that I was a Dokovic, by the time my true birthright was exposed, the public had already fallen in love with the idea of me being their future president.

My family’s reign would have toppled if the secret ever got out, so the federation buried the evidence before putting in plays to eventually smooth out the kink my existence caused.

Aleena’s prime fertility record made her their first pick, but just like Stasy, her age went against her. She suffered numerous miscarriages before news of Zoya’s egg donation reached someone high up in the federation.

Aleena carried that surrogacy without incident.

Zakhar was stripped from her seconds after birth and given to his grandmother to raise. The parts between his birth and his introduction to my life were above Dr. Leverington’s pay grade.

I will get answers, but it will take time.

Time I don’t have if the raised voices outside the operating theater are anything to go by.

Law enforcement has arrived, and they don’t seem as willing to seek answers as Henry is.

“Bring them with us.”

When one of Henry’s goons approaches me, I shift the direction of my gun to his head. “Do not touch my son.”

“Andr—”

“No,” I growl, cutting Henry off with the rumble of a madman. “He will die without proper medical assistance.” I shift my eyes to Maksim. “The host of the heart you came here to collect is already dead. Don’t make my son suffer the same fate.” After recalling the promise he made to Zoya before he wed her best friend, I have no choice but to toss her into the fire with me. I will get her out, as I will Zakhar and Mikhail, but when you’re clutching at straws, you have to let some guards down. “Don’t make Zoya’s son suffer the same fate.”

Mikhail gasps in shock as Maksim calls me a liar.

He eats his words when I snatch up Zakhar’s medical chart and thrust it his way. I told Zakhar the truth as the doctors were sedating him, not wanting him to face the possibility of going to his grave without knowing the true identity of his mother. The nurse updated the parental details of his patient record as he was wheeled into the operating theater.

It is there, in thick black ink for the world to see.

Zakhar handled my confession better than Maksim does. He groggily muttered that he knew there was more to Zoya turning down his offer to be his girlfriend than a difference in age before the anesthetics took hold.

He’s been under sedation ever since.

After raking his eyes over my face, Maksim shoots them to Zakhar. It only takes him three seconds to see what I should have seen in a nanosecond. Same eyes. Same facial structure. It is just his mousey-brown hair that pulls you off the scent since Zoya’s is several shades lighter than mine.

“He’s—”

Before Maksim can finalize his sentence, gunfire rings out.

The putrid scent of bullets shredding through skin streams into my nose as I dive across Zakhar’s body to protect him for what could possibly be the final time.