Page 61 of The Russian's Revenge Bride
“I’m not sure about anything anymore. But I’d rather be wrong and alive than right and dead.”
After ending the call, I locked the office and made my way back upstairs to Eleanor. She was exactly where I’d left her, curled up in our bed with one of my shirts wrapped around her.
“How did it go?” she asked as I undressed.
“Complicated.”
“Want to talk about it?”
I slipped into bed beside her, pulling her against my chest and breathing in the scent of her hair. “Tomorrow. Tonight, I just want to hold you and pretend the world isn’t trying to kill us.”
She settled against me, her body warm and soft and alive. “I can work with that.”
But as I lay there in the darkness, listening to her breathing even out into sleep, my mind continued racing through possibilities and contingencies. Somewhere out there, an enemy wearing a friendly face was planning the next move in a game I was only beginning to understand.
And Eleanor was still in the crosshairs.
Chapter 17 – Eleanor
The smell of coffee and fabric softener hit me the moment I stepped into my office building, a combination that usually meant home and productivity and everything good about my fucked-up life. But today it felt different. Today, it felt like stepping back into a world that existed before bullets and blood and the realization that someone wanted me dead. It was hard to convince Maxim to let me come in with the looming threat, but my security detail was even larger, and we figured another attack wouldn’t be sprung so soon.
“Eleanor!” Zara’s voice cut through my thoughts like a blade through silk, and suddenly she was there, arms around me, squeezing tight enough to crack ribs. “Jesus Christ, I was so fucking worried. When Anya called and said there’d been an incident….”
“I’m fine,” I said, pulling back to look at her. Zara’s usually perfect makeup was slightly smudged, her designer blazer wrinkled, and her honey-blonde hair was escaping its ponytail in ways that screamed stress and sleepless nights. “How bad was the media coverage?”
“Bad enough. Your husband’s people are fucking scary good at damage control, though. The official story is that you were caught in the crossfire of a gang-related shooting. Random violence, wrong place at the wrong time.”
I almost laughed. Random violence. If only it were that simple.
“What about the show? Please tell me we didn’t lose everything.”
Zara’s expression shifted, and for the first time since I’d known her, she looked almost shy. “About that. You might want to sit down.”
“Zara.”
“Eleanor, I swear to God, we had it under control. When you disappeared for that week after the wedding, and then with the shooting, we thought maybe we should postpone, but then Anya showed up and….”
“Anya?” I turned toward my office, where I could hear the sound of rapid-fire Russian mixed with what sounded like someone coordinating a military operation. “What the hell is Anya doing here?”
“Managing your life better than you do, apparently.” Zara grabbed my arm, steering me toward the chaos. “She’s been here every day since the shooting. Coordinating with vendors, managing model fittings, dealing with venue logistics. Eleanor, she’s fucking brilliant at this.”
I pushed through the doors to find my office transformed into something that looked like mission control for Fashion Week. Anya stood in the center of it all, phone pressed to her ear, speaking rapid Russian while simultaneously gesturing at three different assistants holding fabric samples, scheduling tablets, and what appeared to be architectural plans.
She looked up when I entered, her hazel eyes bright with something that might have been excitement or caffeine overdose. “Hold on,” she said into the phone, then covered the mouthpiece. “Eleanor! Perfect timing. I need you to approve the final lighting design, and we have a problem with the model lineup that requires your immediate attention.”
“Anya, what…?”
“I know what you’re thinking. Why is Maxim’s sister running your fashion show? Valid question. Short answer: because I’m good at it and you were indisposed with nearly getting murdered.” She went back to her phone call. “Da, da, I understand. But if the flowers aren’t there by tomorrow morning, you’ll be explaining to my brother why his wife’s event was ruined. Do you want to have that conversation?”
Zara leaned close to my ear. “She’s been like this for three days. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t slept. Also, I think she threatened to have the lighting technician’s family deported if he didn’t get the angles right.”
“She threatened deportation?”
“In three languages. It was beautiful and terrifying.”
Anya finished her call and immediately started walking toward us, moving with the kind of focused energy that reminded me uncomfortably of Maxim when he was planning something violent.
“Okay,” she said, clapping her hands together. “Crisis update. The good news is everything’s on schedule. The bad news is three of our models got poached by Milan Fashion Week, the venue’s sound system is apparently held together with prayer and electrical tape, and someone leaked photos of your designs to a competitor.”