Vow of Deception (Deception Trilogy #1) - Rina Kent Page 0,92

if they do, they don’t comment on it.

I force myself to walk at a moderate pace until I reach the main house. I sprint up the stairs, barge into the bedroom, and hide under the covers.

My hand is still wrapped tightly around the phone as if it’s a safe line from the ghostly fingers I feel trying to peel the covers off me or the marionette strings attempting to direct me to a dark tunnel.

What if Lia followed me? What if she’ll kill me now?

Sweat covers my brow and my fingers are stiff as I stare at the phone’s light under the darkness of the covers.

The texts from the unknown number glare back at me. He knows something. He said I took her place for a reason. But what? Aside from being coerced by Adrian into this, I had no reason to be Lia. I don’t want to be Lia.

Then the realization of what I saw hits me like a sledgehammer.

She’s alive.

Lia Volkov is alive.

I was barely hanging by a thread before, but now that I know she’s alive, I feel tenfold worse than I did this morning.

Everything Adrian did to me has been fucked-up, but I thought I was up against someone dead, someone who doesn’t exist. But she does exist. She breathes. She’s right there, in the same damn house while a homeless lookalike is fucking her husband day in and day out.

I took her life, her son, her husband. Everything.

I think I’m going to throw up.

No wonder I had nightmares about her killing me or attempting to. I would’ve done the same. If my husband, the man I love, brought another woman to fuck under my roof, I would murder him with my own hands.

I wouldn’t care that he calls her by my name or that he only brought her as a replacement. She’s not me.

It’s cheating.

It’s fucking wrong.

I might have stayed quiet about it before, but now that I know, I can’t go on like this.

I’m not as sick as Adrian. I’m not a homewrecker.

The other woman.

Bringing out my conversation with the shadow, I know that he’s the only one who can allow me an escape.

After all, he kidnapped me from that birthday party, in the midst of all that security, just for a talk. He can do it again if I lie and say I know the mission.

This time, I won’t go back to Adrian’s side and his sick, twisted games.

This time, I’ll need to fucking leave.

30

Adrian

When I step into our bedroom, the first thing I smell is…roses.

There are a few candles lit on the nightstand, their lights flickering in the otherwise dark room.

I pause at the entrance as I shrug off my jacket. Today has been tedious as fuck and the meeting at Sergei’s table was all about throwing jabs. While I don’t usually bat an eye at that, the visible threat Vladimir and Sergei are showing toward me have made me wary.

Thankfully, the cameras in Sergei’s mansion caught nothing about that night’s kidnapping. I watched them myself, pretending I’d lost my card, but that part was completely cut off from the footage. The last thing it showed was Yan ushering Lia inside my car before she grabbed his shoulder and pulled him in with her.

I watched the footage from the opposite cameras, then paused and zoomed in to see the faces of the attackers, but they both wore masks. The driver had a hat on and he never raised his head enough for me to get a glimpse at his face.

The other one wasn’t so careful, and that makes sense since I assume he’s the one we found at the bottom of the cliff. He was a Spetsnaz turned assassin. A mercenary through and through, without any actual alliances, and like most professional Spetsnaz, it’s impossible to track how he got in contact with his clients.

I was—and still am—more interested in the motherfucker who hid his face the entire time, because he seemed like he held the reins of this entire operation. I watched all the footage from the parking lot that day and even took a week’s worth with me. He didn’t appear on the camera. At all. Which means he knew all about them and made sure to go in their blind spots.

He also knew how to shoot Yan in a way that wouldn’t be caught on camera, then used roads that have no surveillance.

Now, that’s the part that makes zero fucking sense. Why did he go through all that trouble