Beautiful Revenge (A Good Wife #1) - Sienna Blake Page 0,10

lied to me before.

I don’t confront her. Instead I pretend to go to work as usual even though it’s my rostered day off. I wait around the corner from our crumbling brick apartment building.

Finally, she appears at the front door of our building. Her hair looks thick and styled as it tumbles over her fur coat, the same fur coat she wore when we met Isabelle. I squint as she steps out into the grey morning. Is that…? Her eyes are done up and she has red lipstick on her mouth. She has makeup on, real makeup. Where did she get makeup from?

My stomach drops. I think I know where she’s going.

I hang back, watching her stride down the street a decent distance before I follow her, my collar pulled up around my jaw. Her walk is different. Her hips sway like she’s suddenly become aware of them and the power they hold. The way she’s holding her shoulders is different, thrown back to showcase her blooming chest. Men blatantly check her out, heads turning as she walks past them, weaving her way through St Petersburg. A group of men call out obscenities to her from across the street, grabbing their dicks and thrusting. My vision bleeds. She’s just a child, I want to scream. It takes every inch of my willpower not to run over there and beat the living shit out of every single one of them.

The Alena-who-doesn’t-look-like-my-Alena continues on. And on. Until she stops at the black painted door of a six-storey grey Gothic building trimmed with stonework arches, all the windows at the front looking out like dead black eyes.

On the doorstep, Alena presses the buzzer and fluffs her hair as she waits. The door opens. My gut twists as I watch her disappear inside.

I wait a few excruciating seconds before I sneak up to the door. There’s a single buzzer with just two taunting letters against it:

GW

Isabelle’s agency. My worst fucking nightmare. Dear God. What are they doing to her in there?

I get a flash in my mind of Alena inside, stripped to her underwear, a collar around her neck, being paraded up and down a row of old seedy, grabby men like some kind of sick dog show. Sit. Stay. Roll over…

Something snaps inside me. My vision bleeds red. I’m slamming my fist against the door before I know what I’m doing. “Alena,” I scream. I keep banging, the door reverberating in its frame, my voice going hoarse from calling her name. I’m going to beat this fucking door down if someone doesn’t open it soon.

The door swings open. I barely notice the wide-eyed woman standing in the doorway. “Can I help—?”

She jumps out of my way as I barge past her, stepping into a stylish lobby area of white and cream. There is a cluster of girls, all young, all pretty, crowding around the top of a set of stairs, whispering to each other and watching me with startled doe eyes.

“Where’s Alena?” I demand.

The whispers heighten as they glance around at each other.

I grind my teeth. “Where is she? I know she’s in here.”

“Dimitri?” Alena’s voice calls over the murmuring. Her voice sends another wave of fury through me. The crowd parts. She appears on the top step, her features morphing somewhere between mortified and furious.

Frankly, I don’t give a shit that she’s embarrassed.

“It’s okay,” she says to the bleating ninnies around her. “He’s my brother.”

Her brother?

I stomp up the stairs, sending some of the girls scattering. Alena races down to meet me halfway. “What the hell are you doing here?” she hisses.

“I should ask you the same fucking question.”

“Let’s talk somewhere else, Dimi. Please.” Alena glances over her shoulder. She’s nervous. She’s afraid that we’re making a scene.

The scene hasn’t fucking started yet.

A wave of madness comes over me. I tackle her around the waist, hoisting her over my shoulder, setting off a round of gasps. I spin, careful not to bang her against the wall, and carry her down the stairs.

“What the fuck are you doing?” She beats at my back and kicks at the air. I am too damn furious to feel anything. I am numb with fury. I’m practically vibrating with rage. “Put me down.”

I storm out the door, no one daring to stop me. “No fucking chance, sweetheart.”

8

____________

Alena

The present…

I wake reluctantly, because in my dreams is where Dimitri lives. I’m a fish on a hook being dragged ever closer to the surface, while I struggle to remain in