Avenge :Romanian Mob Chronicles(52)

I thought I would faint from the force of my anger. I wanted to scratch my nails down his face. Gouge his eyes until they bled. Do something, anything, to make him feel even a fraction of the pain I had suffered.

“He brought it on himself. He used to complain about how secretive we were. Used to talk about us being a real couple, being together.” Christoph Junior scoffed. “Like that was possible.”

“So you tried to kill him?” I asked on a whisper.

He tilted his head, looked at me as if I were a being from some other planet. “Do you have any idea what they would do to me if they knew?” He paused, shook his head. “No. You don’t. Your pretty little brain couldn’t even begin to imagine. But I could. So Braden was a risk I couldn’t afford. It was self-defense.”

“But I… You and…”

“I fight it, but sometimes I slip, as you saw. And someone has to clean that up, something you also saw.”

“All I saw was a coward too ashamed to accept himself, so he got rid of the evidence,” I said with disgust.

“No, what you saw, lovely, was just the tip of the iceberg. The way I take out the trash. Or should I say the way Anton takes out the trash. He’s very good at it.”

“So that’s why you’re here,” I said, realization again hitting me like a sledgehammer.

“I don’t leave loose ends anymore,” he said.

Then, with a speed and power that was so at odds with his usual self, he launched at me.

The shock of his attack was overcome by the air whooshing out of my lungs when I hit the floor. My head bounced, and instantly a ringing began in my ears, low, insistent, but taking a backseat to the vise that crushed my chest. He was heavy atop me, and made no attempt to spare me any of his weight, which further twisted the last breaths out of my lungs.

I squirmed beneath him, trying to throw him off, mind racing with the thought that I wouldn’t let him leave me like he had left Braden. So I pushed, twisted, clawed at anything I could find. I grabbed a handful of his hair, pulled with what strength I had until he yelped.

He smacked at my arms, the break giving me just enough time to breathe deep, gasping lungfuls of air.

But it was only temporary, and soon Christoph Junior had his hands wrapped tight around my neck.

“Anton’s going to feel so terrible that this happened to you. He’s so responsible for everyone, everything, and even after a few rolls with you, he’ll think it’s his job to protect you. So when they find you, a poor, innocent woman strangled in her home by some monster, it will destroy him.”

I would have marveled at his calm ordinarily, but right now, I was too preoccupied with fighting for breath, each tiny little burst of oxygen a lifeline that I grasped for with all my might. Pinpricks of light danced behind my eyes, the surest sign that I was losing this battle. My vision blurred, darkness dancing at the edge of my sight and threatening to overtake me.

If that happened, I wouldn’t wake up again. Would be like Braden, worse.

So I fought like my life depended on it, and it did.

I slapped at his thick wrists, tried to pry his fingers from around my throat, tried to kick, punch, fight.

It was fruitless.

I looked into Christoph Junior’s crazed eyes, saw the determination in them. Saw his satisfaction as he squeezed the life from me, as he heard the wheezy, choked breaths that got shorter and shorter. Saw how he smiled as my punches lost their strength and my body went still.





Nineteen





Anton





The drive to Lily’s was nerve-racking, more intense than anything I had ever experienced.

Christoph Junior had gone there to kill her.

Maybe he wanted to hurt me, was lashing out after his father’s death. Maybe he’d figured out who she was, wanted to finally see something through. I didn’t know the why, and it didn’t matter. All I knew for sure was that he did intend to kill her. I knew that as much as I knew that I loved her. And even now, there was no doubt that I loved her.

I hadn’t known it, not really, not when I had threatened to kill her, not even as she had shattered my heart with her betrayal. But knowing she was with Christoph Junior, knowing what he could do, had crystallized the truth of it.

I loved her. More than my clan, my family, far more than myself.

When I saw Christoph Junior’s car in front of her building, I felt it even more. And felt an urgency that made me move faster than I had ever thought possible.

But even as my rational mind processed what I saw around me, the familiar concrete steps, the third one with a deep crack, my heart raced, urged me to move faster. Faster.

I aimed my shoulder at the door, barreled toward it at full speed, the flimsy wood giving way under my force. But I wouldn’t have let anything stop me.