Chapter 34

Thirty-Four

K irill

Where the fuck is my wife?

Pavel's name flashes on the screen as I lift my phone to my ear. "What?"

"Ruby is in the car."

"What?"

"Something happened. She's unwell. She won't talk to me."

I say nothing to the men I'd been talking to as I begin to move to the exit, my strides long and quick. Sliding my phone into my pocket, I make my way into the lot, quickly finding Pavel behind the wheel of my car, my wife in the passenger seat.

He exits, telling me he will follow me home as I slide into the driver's seat. She's pale, but there is a sticky sheen to her skin that makes me think she's been sick. But she'd been fine when she'd left me for the bathroom. Gently, but firmly, I ask, "Are you well?"

She looks away from me, but I can see that she's been crying. I think she might start again. "Ruby, what happened?"

"I want to go home."

"Talk to me," I demand, and when she refuses, simply sitting in silence beside me, I'm forced to move the car.

I drive home trying, and failing, to make her tell me what happened. By the time I pull into the driveway, I'm edging on livid. What the fuck happened to turn my warm wife ice cold?

I stop the car and am about to turn to her when she flees from the passenger seat, slamming the door behind her and racing for the house.

"Oh, fuck no," I mutter aloud, chasing after her. "Ruby!"

She ignores me, billowing cream and gold racing through the house.

Adrenaline thunders in my veins as I chase her to our room. She slams the door in my face, and I roar as I thrust it open to find her already at the bed, a pillow between her hands and fire in her eyes.

She throws it at me. I dodge it, but she's already lifting another. The second pillow sails by my head, and when I get close, she abandons the pillows to slam her fists into my chest. The last time I'd seen her like this had been the day she'd destroyed the room I'd first put her in. She'd been a wild thing then, too. A spitfire of temper and fear.

There is no fear now. Just rage.

Why? Why won't she talk to me?

"You asshole!" Unfallen tears glisten in her eyes.

"What the fuck happened?" I roar, catching her wrists in my hands. She's so tiny, so breakable. And I'm so fucking mad.

She lifts a knee, grazing my nuts before I block her. Rage flares inside me and I twist her around, pinning her back to my front as I demand again, "Tell me what happened, Ruby."

"Fuck you."

I don't know that I've ever heard her curse. Not even in the beginning.

"Wife," I warn. "I'm at my limit."

"What?" she smarts. "Are you going to throw me back in the cellar?"

"No," I say with a calm I don't feel. "But I will throw you over my knee, and beat your sweet ass until it's ruby fucking red. You won't sit for a week. And when I fuck you, I'll make sure I fuck you from behind to remind you what happens when you act like a little brat."

"I hate you."

"You love me," I growl, not caring that she hasn't said the words yet, I know it's true. My grip on her tightens. "Now, what happened?"

She throws her head to the side, glaring at me over her shoulder. She's a spitfire. Exquisite and damn infuriating. "How many times did you fuck Anya while I was in the cellar."

I stiffen with realization. The fucking bitch. If I got my hands on Anya ever again…

"I never fucked her while you were in the cellar."

"Liar." Her body is trembling with the potency of her emotions. Or maybe it's my own body.

"The last time I fucked her was the day before you arrived."

It's her turn to stiffen. "How serious were you?"

"It is in the past."

She tears her face away from mine. "She was to be your wife, wasn't she? Before me?"

As angry as I am with her behavior tonight, the quiet pain in her voice now dismantles my rage. She's been difficult lately, emotional and sensitive.

I want to tell her no, that it had never been my intention to make Anya my wife. But that wouldn't be true, and I don't want to lie to her.

"She wasn't supposed to be there tonight."

"Oh, God." She sucks in desperate gasps of air. "You were going to marry her."

"I hadn't proposed to her."

"But you were going to." Her knees buckle, but I catch her, sitting on the bed with her body captured in my lap.

"I was, yes. But not because I ever loved her. She was—she fit a mold."

Quietly, brokenly, she says, "She is beautiful."

Fucking hell, her voice is so small. So broken. I want to fix it—this— her . "She is nothing compared to you. I have been enthralled with you since the first moment I saw you, Ruby. You've been mine since the moment you arrived."

"And yet you were with her."

"I was in denial. Being with her was never right. I felt it the moment you arrived, and I've been yours since."

For long moments, she sits in my lap and cries. Finally, she speaks. Her words send shards of ice-splinters into my veins. "She was with my brother. With Artyom."

The ice bursts, frozen shrapnel spearing my heart with fear. "You saw him tonight?"

He wasn't supposed to be there, either.

She nods. My heart contracts. "He spoke to me." I let her twist in my arms to face me. "He said my father left me a large sum of money. A fortune, he said."

"What else did he say?"

"He implied that it's the only reason you married me. Because you want access to the money—that you bought the bank where the money is being kept."

"So, he knows I bought it," I mutter, making a mental note to call Ilya.

"So, it's true, then?"

My eyes snap to hers. "I bought the bank, yes. But I don't want or need his money." She deflates, and I realize there was a part of her that believed him.

I catch her face in my hands. "I need you to listen to me very carefully now, Ruby. Artyom isn't to be trusted. If he is ever near you—ever comes close to you—you run. You run to me and you tell me, do you understand?"

Her brows furrow, the little wrinkle of uncertainty deepening as she searches my eyes. Then, to my relief, she nods. "Okay."

"You're never to be alone with him."

"You act like I want to be alone with him," she says softly, disbelievingly. "I was there for that phone conversation where he threatened to sell me, Kirill. Until I was too used to be sold again—then he would put me down. And I was there tonight when he told me?—"

"What did he tell you?"

"He wants to destroy me. To hurt me. To leave me broken in the way I suspect my father—Ivan—broke his mother."

She shudders as I gather her into my arms. I vow, "I'll never let anyone hurt you."

"I'm so tired," she whispers, and for the first time, I can literally hear the exhaustion in her voice.