I turn on my heel, leaving her to hurry after me. It should be satisfying, but instead, I just feel cruel, especially since Sonya's pregnant. After only a few strides, I slow down.
Evgeny and Kelly are waiting for us in the bullpen. Kelly says something to Sonya about how she has to stick around town, but I can barely hear because of the blood pulsing and rushing angrily through my ears. I watch, waiting for the official okay to take her home. When it comes, I leave Evgeny with Kelly to finish the paperwork.
I march Sonya out to the parking lot in total silence, the frost between us matching the frozen, icy ground. Sonya finally speaks once we’re driving away.
“Maybe it's time you apologize.” Every word is tinged with anger and hurt.
“Apologize?” I bark a scornful laugh. “Apologize for expecting you not to lie about working with the Mancini crime family?”
“Client-attorney privilege still matters, even when the great, mighty Matvei Volkov is involved. That's how it works.”
“You shouldn’t be working with one of my enemies, Sonya. That's the problem and you know it.” The words are a raw confession.
Sonya is quiet, both of us seething as we pass through the dark, quiet streets, downtown Chicago rising tall on either side to block out all but a strip of late evening sky.
After several minutes of silence, Sonya finally speaks. “You need to accept that I am who I am, too. I'm not going to stop being a lawyer just because we're together. And by the way, the firstthing you should have done when you got there was ask me if I was okay. You couldn't even do that.”
It's all I can do not to shout at her that she's not grasping the point of my anger. I am trying to change. I'm trying to learn to be the man Sonya and my twins need me to be, the man I need to be for the success of our future.
“Are you alright?” I grind out from between clenched teeth, the leather creaking as my hands tighten around the steering wheel.
“That sounds genuine,” Sonya huffs.
“I'm trying, Sonya. What the fuck do you want? I'mtrying,damn it!” I pound the steering wheel with my fist, bringing the car to a jolting stop at a red light. I whip toward her, and she presses herself back against the window, her tight-lipped expression dropping from her face immediately.
“What you don't seem to understand is that you knowingly went to my enemy's home, by yourself, without anyone aware of where you were. You put yourself in an incredible amount of danger. Genevieve Mancini can have any lawyer she wants, lawyers who would bury Samson so far underground he would never recover. She has the money and the resources, and so did Rodolfo. You don’t think it’s odd she hired you? The closest person to me besides Evgeny? And now you’re being looked at for murder!”
She doesn’t answer me, just opens and closes her mouth like a fish out of water. For some reason, that pisses me off more than if she’d screamed at me.
We can't get home fast enough. I need a gym session to work out this anger. I gun the engine when the light turns green, my furyfollowing the odometer numbers as they rapidly go higher and higher.
“I told you to keep your head down. I told you to stay under the radar so we could keep you and your pregnancy a secret for as long as possible. Now everyone will know, and they're all going to be coming for us. And if you think the police won’t come hard at you just because Kelly is on your side, you are wrong.”
The sound of squealing brakes is the only thing I hear before metal crashing into metal jolts me. Glass shatters and rakes across my skin as a sharp metallic scent fills my nose. I'm jerked one way, then another, and the world spins. Sonya is screaming. I reach for her, but my brain can't even comprehend where she is.
I'm jerked to the side again, then forward. My head hits the steering wheel, and then there is nothing.
28
MATVEI
In my dream, voices are speaking—too many voices, talkingtooquickly with words my brain can't understand. Lights flash painfully through my closed eyelids, aheadache pounding in timeto the pulses of light.
When I crack open my eyes and shut them again quickly, I realize thisisn'ta dream. Memories seep back in, fuzzy and fragmented—the crash, the soundof glass breaking,iron squealing and crunching,screaming and darkness.
Sonya—
I try to form words, to say her name, but nothing comes out. I try to reach for her, but everything hurts.
Nowsomeone is shouting, but I still can't understand the words. Another, deeper voice is shoutingtoo, in Russian. I try to respond, but again, all I can manage is a groan as I try to pull myself out of the blacknessthreatening to pull me under again.
There is more yelling, the flashing lights are getting brighter, the sound of sirens closer. Someone's pounding on the car door, yankingatit.
“Don't touch him,” the other voice hisses. “His neck could be broken.”
“Boss, is your neck broken?”
It takes me a moment to understand the question, and another to get my body to move at all. It hurts, but I can at least move my neck, followed by my hands.