Page 28

Raidon

A nger.

It coils tight in Raidon’s chest—a venomous thing slithering through his veins, constricting his chest like barbed wire. It thrums in his skull, the pressure so sharp he fears it might split him in two. With his jaw locked, pain snapping at his temple, he clenches his fist, nails digging into his palm until the scent of copper tings the air.

There’s a body at his feet, mangled beyond recognition. Abbey Markov, the soldier who ran away with his ledger, the same one he has been turning Russia upside down, searching for. He was the only lead he had. Now he’s dead.

But no, his death isn’t the reason his vision is currently blurring at the edges. That isn’t why his breath is razor sharp, pulse hammering like a war drum. He can barely even register the body, or the negative impact of his death…the danger that looms ahead.

He’s furious, not because his vengeful brother, while in charge last night, killed the soldier who could have led them to the stolen ledger.

Not at all.

He’s angry because he touched her. Kael touched her. Veronica.

And she wasn’t his to touch. Yet he was inside her last night, felt her in a way Raidon never did. That thought alone festers inside him, filling him with a possessiveness he never realized he was capable of.

The moment should have been his. She should have been his first.

If she moaned, it was supposed to be for him. If a name slipped out of her lips as she unraveled with pleasure, it should be his name. It should have been his name. But Kael took it. It was sacred, the memories should have been his, yet Kael took it.

The idea sickens him. Jealousy burns through his veins.

A muscle feathers in his jaw, his breath slow, controlled, forced—because if he lets go, if he so much as exhales wrong, the fury might devour him whole.

No matter how he tries to shut his eyes to the image, he can’t help but picture it, imagine it—Kael’s hands all over her, his naked body pressed to her naked one, his name on her fucking tongue.

The image sickens him. Sends something dangerous crawling beneath his skin. It fuels him with something—a desperate need to rewrite what Kael did. To erase him. To take back what he stole.

Over the years, Kael has stolen a great deal from him, and he allowed it. His choices. His control. But not this.

This? No, it’s unforgivable.

“How did this happen?” Finally, he asks about the body at his feet, his voice calm, betraying the chaos in his head. He already knows what happened to the soldier. Who killed him. But maybe if someone else says it out loud, the story will be different.

Alex Sokolov, his second-in-command, steps forward, stiff-back. His gaze flickers to the corpse, then to Raidon. “I returned late into the night with him, boss. Sent you a message that I was back, but before you got here, I had to go check on some suspicious activity at the port. When I got back—” he gestures at what’s left of Abbey Markov. “He was like this.”

Silence thickens.

The soldier hesitates. “The boys said you were pissed that he was withholding information. So…you handled it.”

“What time?” Raidon grinds out.

“Around eleven, sir.”

Raidon’s pulse stutters.

Eleven.

Kael slit a man’s throat, severed his Achilles tendons, shattered his fingers into splintered bones, then went back upstairs and fucked her like nothing happened, held her with the same hands that were soiled with another man’s blood, and made her call his name.

His stomach lurches.

Kael’s signature is carved into the corpse, deep and unmistakable. A message in blood and torn flesh.

Raidon inhales sharply, but air does nothing to cool the fire licking at his insides.

He should care about Abbey Markov. Should care about the stolen ledger and what it could do to his empire.

But he doesn’t. Not nearly as much as he should.

All he can think about is Kael’s hands on her skin.

His fingers twitch, a violent itch traveling up his arm, a need he’s never felt before. Not like this. Not this consuming, this raw. He has never wanted to kill before, never wanted to destroy someone completely as much as he does now.

“He was a soldier after all,” he murmurs, his voice eerily even as he turns his back to the body. “Bury him like one.”

When he begins to head out of the torture chamber, weaving his way through curves and arches of his manor, he has no clue where else to go other than to her.

He needs to see her.

She mustn’t harbor any thought of leaving him. He was at war with himself before, to be selfish and keep her, or do the honorable thing of letting her go?

But not anymore.

He has decided to be selfish. To claim what belongs to him.

And that’s her.

As for Kael, he’s done condoning him. He’s done trying to right the wrongs he committed when his heart had barely developed in his mother’s womb.

He’s done giving him chances.

Bonds will be severed. Fight for power will ensue, blood might even spill. Someone must have the ultimate control. And that someone won’t be Kael.