Page 47 of Kidnapped By the Boss
“You have a husband who loves yousomuch, yet you doso much complaining,” she said. “I may have wanted to seduce him for Ant’s benefit at first, but now I know that what I really want is to be thenewMrs. Costello. A better one.”
“Over my dead body,” Katya growled.
Lyn smiled. “That can be arranged.”
I took off from the security room and ran down to Lyn’s cell, where she and Katya were now wrestling over the gun. My hands were shaking, but I quickly entered the code to let me in, then I simply reached in, grabbed Katya and yanked her out. I slammed the door shut just in time for Lyn to gain control of the gun and fire it, ricocheting the bullet off the glass in the process. Katya fell back against me and we both went tumbling to the ground outside the cell. Inside, Lyn suddenly splashed on the old, innocent Lyn face and looked me square in the eyes like she was terrified. She set the gun on the ground and pushed it towards the pass-through window and backed up.
She didn’t realize I’d heard everything and was trying to convince me that she was attacked for no reason and scared.
“Thank you,” Katya whimpered. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
I was so livid with the entire situation, that I could barely respond. I settled for just saying, “Let’s get out of here.” Then I reached inside the window, rapidly retrieved the gun, and locked everything up tight.
I helped Katya up off the floor and we made our way out of the containment unit, and I directed her to our house. We needed to have a serious discussion, and not as boss and capo, but as husband and wife.
Once we got inside our bedroom, I sat Katya down on the bed and crouched in front of her so I could look her over. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “I didn’t expect her to lunge at me like that.”
“Yeah, Katya, that’s what prisoners do when they don’t want to be prisoners anymore, or if someone walks in and starts waving a gun around in their face,” Vincent said.
Katya’s eyes widened. “You’re blamingmefor what happened in there?”
“I’m saying you played a role!” I stood up and backed away from her. “What the hell were you thinking going in there like that? Do you have any idea how dangerous and reckless that was?”
“You were going to let me take her all the way out of her cell earlier today!” She fought back.
It felt like steam should be coming out of my ears. “Yeah, for astroll, not to shove a gun in her face!” I crossed my arms. “Katya, I know that you’re upset that I didn’t give you any tasks to help sort out The Wreckers, and I actually regret that—I was being selfish—but that doesnotgive you the right to overrule me and go do something like that.”
“You didn’t even hear what she said!” Katya screeched. “That’s not the girl that we thought it was. She was just pretending to be naive and stupid. She’s been doing this for Antonio the entire time!”
“I heard,” I growled at her. “Because I came to investigate after I heard that you were waving guns around at my staff.”
“I wouldn’t have to do that ifyouweren’t running around restricting me from doing anything. I’m not just some weapon that you can wield when you want! You’re treating me like my dad did!” I took an actual step back at that last statement. It hurt and sunk into me like a jagged blade. I’d been working so hardnotto treat Katya like that, and I could agree that I’d stepped wrong along the way, but she had to know that her father and I weren’t even in the same league. “If you heard what she said, how can you even be here talking to me like I did something wrong? If I hadn’t done what I did, we wouldn’t know what we know! We’d still be lost!”
“It’s been twenty minutes since I sent out the cavalry to getmoreinformation! You didn’t need to do something so out of line.”
“Out of line?!” She stood up off the bed. “You know what’s out of line, Vincent? The fact that you can’t fucking decide what you’re expecting of me. I’m raising your child. I’m helping lead your empire. I’m trying to keep you happy, and the thanks I get for it is house restrictions and being scolded for taking matters into my own hands because you randomly fucking decided you’d lost faith in me? That’s what’s out of line.”
Hearing the pain in Katya’s voice brought my temper down in an instant. I had no idea that she felt that way, but hearing her lay it out that way, I had been a little unreasonable. “Kat.”
I reached for her, but she wrenched back from me. “Don’t! Don’t touch me!”
“Katya,” I whimpered. “I shouldn’t have yelled, okay? I’m sorry. Let’s talk about it.”
“Now you want to talk?!” Katya snapped. “When you’ve pushed me to the breaking point, that’s when we talk? Not before you’ve embarrassed me? And insulted me? And ridiculed me?” Tears started to well up in the corners of Katya’s eyes and my insides shattered.
“Please don’t cry,” I said in nearly a whisper. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” I tried to reach for her again, but she pulled away again. “Katya.”
“No!” she yelled. “I know what all of this looks like, Vincent! I’ve been through it before! You say what you want. You do what you want. Then you think an apology just takes care of all of it. That’s not how it works! You need to do someseriousthinking about the man you’re turning into, because if you’re leaving behind the one I fell in love with, you’re going to need to leave me behind with him!” Katya stormed around me for the door of our bedroom, and I tried to grab her hand to stop her, but she clawed me off again. “Leave me alone, Vincent. I don’t want to talk to you right now.” She opened the bedroom door and then looked back at me. “You were so worried about trying to figure out if I was your wife or your capo, that you stopped treating me like either.”
Leaving me with that gut-wrenching thought, Katya left the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. I sat down on the bed, deciding not to leave the room and just wait for her to come back once she’d calmed down, but she never did. I checked with security, and she didn’t leave, and right around the regular time, Sascha’s nanny left, which meant Katya must have gone to relieve her. At one point, I checked our baby monitor and saw Katya sitting in the chair in Sascha’s room rocking him gently without saying anything. Eventually she put him down to sleep and that was the last I saw her for the night.
She didn’t leave the house, but she certainly didn’t come back to our bedroom that night.
Not once since I brought Katya back from Russia after the deaths of her father and brother had we slept apart.
It meant that I had a very restless night, without much sleep to speak of at all.