Trey - Shandi Boyes Page 0,85
spot, freeing up some privacy. I use the time well. I drink in K’s perfectly straight nose, her plump lips, and eyes as calm as an ocean.
She stares at me just as intently, however, her eyes don’t blink or move. They don’t even gloss over. They just stare and stare, even more so when I track my thumb over her lips to remove her ruby red lipstick.
“You don’t need all those gimmicks, do you, Duchess? You’re regal even with your crown missing unnecessary jewels.”
I stop staring at my reflection in K’s pupils when Mikhail pulls up beside one of the Popovs’ many private jets. I wasn’t staring at myself because I’m a pompous prick who thinks he’s pretty, I was striving to work out how a man I’ve never met before was staring back at me in K’s eyes.
I’m a monster, a cheat, a thief, and a liar. The man staring at me from K’s eyes was none of those things. He was a stranger, but a man I’ve always hoped to become.
Dok dips his chin when I nudge my head to the stairs of the private jet. Our mode of transportation is heavily guarded to ensure nothing will come between Nikolai and his Ahren at the end of our raid, however, I don’t want Dok examining K with a heap of witnesses.
While I place K down in the middle of the double bed at the back of the jet, Dok digs a stethoscope and a thermometer from his medical bag before pivoting around to face me. “Can you give us a minute? I don’t work well under pressure.”
I want to tell him to go to hell, I want to smash his teeth in, but instead of doing either of those things, I grip the lapels of his jacket and drag him to within an inch of my face. “Make it quick.”
I’m not bowing under pressure, I am taking a breather before I do something I’ll regret. K hasn’t budged an inch in over ten minutes, hasn’t murmured a peep. I can’t even hear her breathe. It’s as if I was too late, and the mirror ripped through the vein in her neck instead of my hand, and don’t get me started on what the sick fucks did to her to have her so desperate to die.
She’s been a sex slave for six years.
What could be worse than that?
I’m pacing the floorboards of Nikolai’s private jet when he arrives off the battlefield. His grubby face reveals he got in the nitty-gritty, much less his smirk. He loves killing fuckfaces as much as me. “How is she?”
I wait for his eyes to stray from the closed bedroom door to me before shrugging. “Dok is with her. She’s… ah…”
“Quiet?” Nikolai fills in when I fail to find the right word. When I jerk up my chin, he scrubs a hand across his before he plops into a cream reclining chair like his pants aren’t covered with blood. “I was worried about Justine’s mental stability after our raid of Vladimir’s compound too.” He undoes the laces on his boots before raising his eyes to mine. “Little did I know, my panic hurt her more. They’re stronger than we think, Trey. They have to be if they want to be queens.”
After three years of working under him, it should seem foreign that he continues talking about me as if I’m his equal, but since it’s coming from Nikolai, it doesn’t. He knows I don’t have to work for him if I don’t want to. I do it because I’d rather work beside him than across from him. That would have never been the case if my father’s raid of Prague had been successful.
The world works in mysterious ways, and my friendship with Nikolai is proof of this.
Recalling Nikolai’s earlier offer for us to return to Prague one day to restore my family’s name, I ask, “Achim?”
I could say more, but I don’t need to. The first syllable of Achim’s name had only just left my mouth when Nikolai’s jaw tightened to the point of cracking. I assume it’s a bad tightening until he opens the bag Nero entered the jet with. Achim’s head is inside of it. The fact his eyes are still open reveals his death was quick, but the expression on his face exposes it was also painful.
That appeases my annoyance for now.
My eyes drop to Nikolai’s when he says, “His wife wasn’t at the auction. That’s why it took me so