Page 110 of Married with Blood
Elena shook her head. “But then that means he’d have to kill you, too.” She looked near tears with an angry press of her lips as she placed her hand over her baby bump. “And our child.”
“He’d have to kill Maksim, Viktor, and Nikolai as well,” Carina added before chuckling darkly. “And I’m not going to letanyonehurt my husband.”
I kissed her cheek, turned on with how possessive she could be over me.
“I know, but?—”
Adrik took her hand. “It won’t come to that.”
“It won’t,” Lev said. “That man will never succeed in ruling this family. He tried once and failed. If he tries again, he’ll wish he were really dead all this time.”
Lev was closest to my father, and it didn’t come as any surprise that he wouldn’t refer to Gregori Volkov as his father. He was just the enemy. The villain. The one to fight.
“All that we need to keep in the forefront of our minds right now is that thisiswar. Yusef Antonov will get our attention first since he’s acting in Gregori’s steed while he hides, but regardless of who reveals themselves as a member of this network designed to compete and end us, they will not succeed,” Adrik said.
Between the sabotage through John Morovov and the discovery of Arturo Garcia’s lies, we had two strikes to tally so far.
So long as we stood together as a family in this time of saying goodbye to our Pakhan, we would never let such an end to our legacy happen.
War with Gregori was no longer a theoretical what-if.
It was here.
It was coming.
And with Carina in my life, I couldn’t be more confident that all would end well.
40
CARINA
Maksim and I headed home from Adrik and Elena’s house.
No matter how busy we got, we always made sure to check in on the progress of the nursery. Soon, we would be spending every night here, hopefully putting our son or daughter down in the crib for him or her to spend peacefully through the night.
I wasn’t getting my hopes up high. From all that Elena and I were reading up on, we’d be in for sleep deprivation. So would our husbands.
Maksim leaned against the doorframe, as he usually did in this nightly routine of ours. He crossed his arms and eyed the unfinished room. From his perspective, he was likely envisioning what could go where.
Me? I was scrunching my face and debating the colors. Again.
“Carina.”
“Hmm?” I glanced at him.
“We have months to pick a color for the walls.”
I nodded. “I know. It would just make the room more like a room if the walls were done.”
“How can you say that?” He laughed and gestured with his hand. “That wall hasn’t even been installed or finished since you asked last-minute for a bay window.”
I smiled. “Maybe it can be a balcony.”
He shook his head, smiling with amusement. “Just make up your mind and we’ll get it done.”
My phone rang, and since it was Jorge, I took it while we checked on the progress of the nursery being added on. Adding on to this large home was a little over-the-top, but since we both wanted the nursery on this side of the house, it made the most sense to renovate to make it a reality.
Jorge greeted me warmly, but he wasn’t calling to chitchat. He updated me about the movement and surveillance that his spies were bringing in. Unfortunately, it wasn’t good news. Fortunately, it was intel that we could both benefit from in this war against the network Yusef Antonov and Gregori Volkov were behind.
