Page 91 of Exacting Vengeance

Stalling for time until an avenue of escape presented itself was critical, because no way was she going to stay with him. Soon she’d begin to show. How would she explain her pregnancy when Yuri wasn’t capable of siring a child? Miraculous conception?

Again, she nearly vomited. The idea of being with him nauseated her more than the worst morning sickness in history.

“You will never try to escape from me. Do you want to know how I know that?” His lips upturned in a triumphant sneer. “You are carrying Gates’s brat. You little whore.”

Her blood turned to ice.

He must have seen the pregnancy test in her bathroom. Did he really want to keep her alive, knowing that, in less than nine months, she’d be giving birth to Kyle’s baby? That didn’t sound like the Yuri she knew and detested with every fiber of her being.

Rather than flying into another fit of rage, as she’d expected, he chuckled. “You have two choices, my beautiful Vika. Come with me willingly, and I will let you live to give birth to the little brat. After that, if you want to live and be his mother, you will continue to be my wife. Willingly.” The grin now splitting his face was filled with a mixture of evil and sick joy. He dipped his gaze to her belly. “I have Gates’s woman, and soon I will have his child. I will raise him as my own.”

Victoria could only stare into the face of the violent man she’d once mistakenly married. Now wasn’t the time to tell him the baby might not be a boy. The psychologist in her could easily diagnose the source of his unjustified assumption. As a teenager, he’d been abandoned by his parents. Ironically, family was important to him. That, combined with egocentric patriarchal pride, he wanted a son to carry on his bloodline. Begging the question…

What will he do to my baby if it’s a girl?

Regardless of the sex, if Yuri tried hurting her child, she’d tear him apart with her bare hands.

He hauled her off the bed, shoving her to the floor. “That’s where you belong—on your knees at my feet.” He leaned in and got in her face. “Don’t you see? Everything is the way it’s supposed to be. Fate has provided me with a beautiful gift. I will exact vengeance for all Gates and the FBI took from me.”

This time, she didn’t have to fake the tears streaming down her face. They were as real as her dire situation.

The door slammed shut, the twisting of the key reverberating in her ears, incarcerating her as surely as if a judge had just given her a life sentence. Death would be preferable to a life with Yuri, but she could never take life away from her baby, and he knew it.

Nearly choking on sobs, she climbed onto the bed and curled into a ball, hugging her arms around her legs and gripping the chain in her closed fists.

Her spirits sank lower than she thought possible. She would have done anything to reverse time and play things out differently. To tell Kyle about the money. To tell him how much she loved him. How much she had always loved him.

Now she would never have that opportunity.

Chapter Thirty-Six

The floor groaned as Yuri paced back and forth in front of the window, staring at the abandoned dirt airstrip not fifty feet from the front door of this shithole. The field was set in the middle of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, far away from anything and anyone. Low clouds still hovered above the field from the rainstorm that had pounded the area overnight.

He shoved a hand through his hair, disturbing the gel that held it perfectly upright. The short strands crunched beneath his fingers.

“Blyat. Yobany v rot.” Fuck. Shit. Fucking shit. Things could not suck worse. The pilot was late. Getting to Chicago before anyone figured out his destination was essential to his plan.

He glanced at his shitty old Rolex. Nine a.m. They should have taken off by now. Five thousand dollars was all he had left. He’d paid that pilot half in advance to fly him and Vika to Chicago. If he didn’t show, he’d hunt the motherfucker down and shove a propeller up his ass.

Still pacing, he growled and plowed both hands through his hair this time. Maybe he should have gone with his original plan to use Vika as bait to lure Gates in, so he could kill him before her very eyes. That would have been poetic justice, too, and Russians were nothing, if not poetic. Pushkin, Pasternak, Brodsky. See, he was not the uncultured heathen Semyon and Nikki always thought he was.

Part of him wanted the opportunity to kill Alex Tarankov himself. Sadly, the risks were too great. Gates would never come alone. Feds were like tundra wolves. The beasts traveled in packs. Hitting up Nikki for men wasn’t an option, unless he was prepared to hand over half his cash.

Yuri snarled. He would never give Nikki a dime of what he’d hidden in that bank.

The sound of an airplane filtered through the old farmhouse’s walls. He rushed to a window, rubbing away the century-old grime with his fist. A small plane flew overhead but kept going. “Fuuuck!” he roared and pounded the wall next to the window.

He whipped his head around, staring at the door, behind which his treacherous wife lay. Flexing his fingers, he breathed in and out through his nose to calm his rage. Failing at that, he yanked the clear plastic baggie of Anadrol from his pocket and dry-swallowed the last two pills.

Minutes ago, he’d barely resisted the urge—no, make that the need—to strangle Vika, but he needed her. For now.

The urge to take her held no interest. With Gates’s bastard inside her, she was soiled. Maybe she always would be.

He pulled a pack of Java’s from his pocket and lit one up, inhaling the potent, unfiltered smoke into his lungs as he peered through the dingy window again and looked up at the empty sky. This was supposed to be the easy part.

Relying on someone else was screwing with his plans.

Getting Vika out of her building unseen had been easy in comparison. Stupid feds. The fire distraction had worked like a charm on the one in the front. Then he’d carried Vika down the back stairs and dumped her in the stairwell while he’d dealt with the fed guarding the back of the building. He grinned, remembering the shocked look on the agent’s face when he’d tased him. Less than a minute later, he’d tossed Vika on the back seat of the sedan he’d parked on the street not three vehicles in front of the fed’s car. Russian Spetsnaz special forces these guys were definitely not.