Page 36 of Ruthless Rustanovs

FRESH grenades of rage were still going off in Alexei’s chest by the time he exited his plane in Milan.

How could Eva have done this to him? Left him because she was pregnant with their child and didn’t want to be without her daddy’s money?

And why had she let him believe Aaron was her boyfriend rather than tell him the truth?

It said something about how far he had come from his criminal roots that his first instinct hadn’t been to call his uncle and have her disposed of as any self-respecting Rustanov would have done just a decade ago in this circumstance.

However, Alexei did spend the thirty minutes it took for him to get from the airport to the address in Milan concocting increasingly elaborate revenge plots.

Taking sole custody of Aaron wouldn’t be enough, he decided.

He’d also make sure she never saw him again.

He’d buy every judge from New York to Texas if that was what it took.

Business ethics, be damned. He’d use every underhanded tactic he could to ensure he robbed her of Aaron the way she had robbed him of his son all these years.

The thirty minutes passed by very quickly in this manner and before he knew it, the Bentley Emilio had secured to get him from the airport was coming to a stop in front of a mustard-yellow apartment building.

He knew this must be the right place, even without looking at the address Emilio had given him, because Eva and her brother were right outside the front door, so engrossed in conversation that neither of them noticed his car pull up behind them.

“I will let myself out,” he told the driver. “Stay here.”

He exited the Bentley with grim determination pumping through his veins. When he returned to the car, it would be with his son in tow.

“I’ll explain everything later. Right now, I need to help Aaron get his bags packed and we need you to get us some fake IDs,” he heard her say as he approached.

“Fake IDs? What?” A black man in glasses who stood only a few inches taller than Eva, took her by the arm. This must be her brother, the Foreign Service officer. “Eva, you need to tell me what’s going on right now.”

“That is precisely what I was about to say,” he said, interrupting their conversation.

When Eva gasped and turned to face him, he saw real fear in her eyes. Good, he thought. He wanted her scared. No, he didn’t just want her scared, he wanted her to rue the day she’d ever decided to cross him.

“Where is my son, Eva?” he said. “Take me to him. Now.”

Despite her initial moment of uncloaked fear, Eva stood her ground and folded her arms across her chest. “No, not like this.”

“You kept him from me for seven years and now you think you can just tell me ‘no?’” he roared, approaching her.

“Please calm down.” Her brother stepped in front of him and tried to stop his advance. “Let’s not cause a scene.”

But Alexei shoved him aside and pointed at Eva. “You will take me to him. Now.”

“No!” she said, her voice quivering in anger. “Leave us alone. You’re a bully and a liar and you need to go away. Now.”

“You call me a liar? You lied to me for seven years. You kept my son from me for seven years!”

Steve approached them again. “Wait a minute, Eva. You said he didn’t want anything to do with Aaron and that’s why you refused to seek him out for child support.”

Eva had the nerve to throw her brother a look of annoyance. “He didn’t want anything to do with Aaron. He didn’t even want children back then! He still doesn’t.”

“I said I didn’t want children,” Alexei said through gritted teeth. “That does not mean you have the right not to tell me I have one.”

Her brother came to stand beside Alexei and shook his head at Eva. “You cannot not tell a man he has a son!” Steve pursed his lips together in obvious disappointment. “And here I thought you’d grown up, that you’d finally gotten some sense in your head—”

She cut her brother off with a vicious glare. “I swear to heaven, Steve, if you take his side in this I will never talk to you again. You don’t know anything about me. Neither of you do! You don’t know why I did what I did, or what I’m willing to do to protect my son.”

Alexei once more stepped in front of Eva’s brother. “I do not care why you did it because trust me in this, Eva, when my lawyers are done, you will not have a son to protect. I will have full custody and I will never let you see him again.”

Eva swung at him, throwing a surprisingly adept open-fisted punch that connected with his face at just the right angle to send him stumbling a few steps back. “You can go to hell, Alexei Rustanov! I will never, ever let you anywhere near him.” Her voice sounded as vicious as she looked.

He recovered from the punch with a shake of his large head. And he was about to tell her exactly who could go to hell and whose lawyers would send her straight there, when small fists began pummeling at his mid-section.

“Leave my mama alone!”