Page 47 of The Russian's Revenge Bride
“Then what’s the problem?”
“He doesn’t know how to let me love him back.”
Arlette leaned forward, her expression serious. “Eleanor, I’ve known you since we were teenagers, and I’ve never seen you back down from a challenge. Why are you backing down from this one?”
“I’m not backing down. I’m just…I don’t know how to fight for someone who won’t let me in the ring.”
“Then drag him in. Men like your husband—likeourhusbands—they don’t know how to ask for what they need. They burn cold, Eleanor. If you want warmth, you’ll have to pull him out of the fire yourself.”
“And if I get burned in the process?”
“Then at least you’ll know you tried. But first, talk to him. Really talk to him. Not around the problem, not over it, but through it. Make him see that you’re not going anywhere, no matter how hard he tries to push you away.”
We finished lunch talking about safer topics, her new job at an art gallery, mutual friends from college, her children, thekind of surface-level conversation that felt like a luxury after months of navigating the depths of Bratva politics.
When she hugged me goodbye outside the hotel, I felt something settle in my chest. A resolution, maybe. A plan.
“Thank you,” I said against her shoulder.
“For what?”
“For reminding me who I am.”
The ride back to the house started peaceful enough. Viktor navigated Chicago traffic with professional efficiency while I stared out the window, rehearsing what I wanted to say to Maxim. How I could make him understand that I wasn’t some fragile flower that would wilt at the first sign of his darkness.
We were twenty minutes from home when everything went to hell.
The first shots came from nowhere, bullets spider-webbing the rear window in a crystalline explosion of safety glass. Viktor cursed in Russian, yanking the wheel hard to the right as more gunfire erupted around us.
“Get down!” he shouted, but I was already diving for the floor, my heart hammering against my ribs as the world outside turned into chaos and violence.
Two motorcycles had flanked our car, riders in black masks and leather unloading automatic weapons like they were spraying water from garden hoses. The sound was deafening, a metallic symphony of destruction that seemed to go on forever.
Viktor tried to accelerate, to outrun them, but they’d chosen their ambush point well. Construction barriers forced us into a narrow corridor with nowhere to escape. I felt the car shudder as bullets found the engine block, heard the sickening hiss of punctured tires.
Then Viktor’s window exploded inward, and blood painted the dashboard in abstract patterns. His body slumped forward, and the car veered toward a concrete barrier with theinevitability of gravity. Distantly, outside my window, I saw the two other guards who had accompanied us going down in a shower of bullets, having gotten out of their own car to attempt to engage the attackers.
The impact of the collision threw me against the door, my shoulder screaming as we came to a grinding halt. Steam rose from the destroyed engine, and in the sudden silence, I could hear my own ragged breathing and the distant sound of motorcycle engines circling back.
They weren’t done with me.
I fumbled for the door handle with shaking fingers, knowing I had to move, had to run, had to do something other than wait for them to finish what they’d started. The door was stuck, warped from the impact, and panic clawed at my throat as I threw my weight against it.
Finally, it gave way, and I tumbled onto broken asphalt, my palms scraping against the rough surface. I could hear the motorcycles getting closer, could see the shadows of the riders moving through the smoke and dust.
This was it. This was how Eleanor Beaumont Voronov died, not in her bed at ninety surrounded by grandchildren, but on a Chicago street with bullets in her back and blood on her wedding ring.
Then the sound of screeching tires cut through my despair.
A black SUV materialized through the smoke like something from a fever dream, doors flying open before it had fully stopped. And stepping out like an avenging angel wrapped in expensive wool and lethal intent was my husband.
Maxim moved like death given form, his gun already in his hand, his face a mask of cold fury that would have terrified me if it had been aimed at me instead of the men trying to kill me.
The first motorcyclist never saw him coming. One shot, clean and precise, and the rider’s head snapped back in a spray of crimson before he crumpled to the ground.
The second rider saw his partner fall and tried to flee, spinning his bike around with a squeal of rubber on asphalt. But Maxim was already moving, pursuing him with the patience of a predator who knew his prey had nowhere to go.
He caught the fleeing assassin at the mouth of the alley, moving faster than should have been humanly possible. The motorcycle went down in a screaming slide of metal and sparks, and the rider rolled away from the wreckage with practiced skill.