I come down from my high, the orgasm I have just given myself nothing compared to the one in my memories. Tears slide down the side of my face and onto the pristine white pillow beneath me. Matthias was my first. There was a time when I hoped he would also be my last. He ruined me in all the best ways. How is someone supposed to forget that and move on?
There will come a day I will have to. If I survive the war ahead, I will need children to secure the Dashkov line, but they won’t be his children, and I doubt any man I marry I will love as deeply as I love Matthias.
Only time will tell what the tide of fate has in store for me.
Children are the last thing on my mind when vengeance is so much closer.
Closing my eyes, I let my mind wander to the past and the security it holds. Because the future is nothing but a distant unknown.
eleven
This sucks.
Really. Really. Sucks.
“Can we do something now?” The petulant sound of my voice makes me cringe. Not that I care. The car is small and cramped, and the muscles in my legs are screaming in protest from not having moved in over an hour.
“You asked that twenty minutes ago,” my father scolds. Huffing, I blow a strand of hair out of my face.
“Get used to it.” Vas smirks. “The word patient isn’t in her vocabulary.” The men in the car snicker.
“No, but the word beheaded is.” I stick my tongue out at him. It is official. I am a child. “As well as castrate.” Vas widens his eyes in mock horror.
“Settle down, children,” Sully scolds playfully. “We need to wait until he arrives here; otherwise, he’ll see us coming.”
“You sent him a note that told him, ‘We know your secret. Do you really think those files are safe? Give them up or yourfamily dies,’” I remind him, with air quotes and everything. “He probably already knows we’re here waiting for him.”
“He’ll think we are at the meeting point I designated,” Sully explains. “Dr. Martin believes he’ll have the drop on us, but in reality, we hold all the cards.”
I shrug. “If you say so.”
“He’ll never give us those files,” my father points out.
“Speak of the devil,” Vas murmurs.
Dr. Abram Martin is a tall, gangly motherfucker with round wire glasses, wearing a tailored Armani suit and driving a Benz. Two things a medical examiner shouldn’t be able to afford with his salary. A dive into his financial records indicates he received a two-point-five-million-dollar payout three days after my mother’s death and smaller subsequent payouts throughout the years that we tracked back to the suspicious deaths of local trucking company owners and even a few cops.
The man looks over his shoulder nervously, causing him to take several extra moments to properly unlock the doors with his shaking hands.
“That’s a go.” Sully nods the moment the good doctor steps inside the office. He doesn’t lock the doors behind him.
“Bet you the first things he goes for are the false files.”
Vas scoffs at Sully. “I’m not taking that bet. Do I look stupid to you?”
Sully’s mouth turns down as he thinks about that. “Eh.” He makes a so-so motion with his hand. “A little, yeah.”
“Fucker,” Vas growls and grabs his gun from the trunk before handing me mine.
“Come on.” I nudge his shoulder with mine. “You can hit him for that later.”
Vas grins. “Promise?”
Laughing, I nod and assure him, “Yep. All yours, big guy.”
“Dreams really do come true.”
“I heard that,” Sully mutters as he walks past.