King of Envy: Chapter 45

Ispent my weekend knee-deep in paperwork and calls. Amidst all the Brotherhood and Emmanuelle drama, I actually did have a company to run. My staff had kept things flowing while I’d been busy with other priorities, but if I didn’t buckle down before the holidays, I’d have a mutiny on my hands.

However, all thoughts of product launches and fiscal reports evaporated when Dominic emailed me Monday afternoon.

Subject: Done

The email contained no text, only an attachment. After the prerequisite cybersecurity checks, I downloaded the folder and opened the files.

My pulse thundered as I read through the documents. My team was good, but tracing money trails wasn’t in their wheelhouse. It was in Dominic’s.

I’d given him Shepherd’s old safe house address. He was able to take that grain of information and chase it all the way to the end.

The intricate web of aliases and shell companies would’ve taken normal forensic accountants years to untangle, but Dominic’s team wasn’t normal; they were the best of the best. Plus, the favor I’d promised him provided strong incentive for him to find what I was looking for within my given timeframe.

Say what you will about the man, but he got the job done.

I skipped past the unnecessary details and zeroed in on the name at the end of the trail.

The breath vanished from my lungs, and I smiled.

Bingo.

After I found out what I needed to know, I saved Dominic’s files to a secure location and deleted his original email. I kept my revelation to myself for now. I had to be strategic about how I used the information, which meant I couldn’t rush into action yet—no matter how much I wanted to.

The next afternoon, I went to the Valhalla Club for my shooting lesson with Ayana. She’d been strangely distant since Friday night. She hadn’t texted me as frequently as she usually did, and when I reached out, she replied with uncharacteristically terse answers. She said she was simply stressed about the Emmanuelle situation, but I suspected there was something she wasn’t telling me.

“You’re early,” I said. I’d arrived fifteen minutes before our scheduled lesson, but Ayana was already waiting in our usual stall. She normally didn’t bring any accessories with her, but today, she carried a giant tote slung over her shoulder.

I kissed her hello. She returned it with noticeable hesitation.

“Everything okay?” I asked with a frown.

“Yes. No.” Ayana’s fingers strangled her bag strap.

I waited, a cold sensation creeping into my gut. This wasn’t like her. Even when she was upset, she was never this aloof.

“After we said goodbye on Friday, I went into my apartment and…” She took a deep breath. “Someone broke in while I was out. They left something for me.”

My reaction was so visceral, my head snapped up before her words fully registered. Blood rushed to my ears, and a sudden snarl of pure, icy panic exploded in my chest.

“Are you hurt? What did they leave you? Why didn’t you call me?” I fired the questions one after another, like bullets from a loaded gun.

Fuck the Singapore meeting. I should’ve gone in with her and made sure everything was okay before I left. Shepherd might be dead, but the other faction was still out there.

It was a rare oversight on my part. I should’ve known better. Hell, I should’ve gone with my initial instinct and kept a twenty-four-hour guard at her building even after Shepherd died. Ayana would’ve hated it, and my team was already overworked, but it would’ve been worth it.

Now, someone had broken into her apartment, and I hadn’t been there.

Regret serrated my stomach.

“I’m fine,” Ayana reassured me. “Don’t freak out. They were already gone when I got home, and they didn’t take anything. I also filed a police report and changed my locks. Someone is coming later this week to upgrade my security system.”

“My team will do it today,” I said. “This can’t wait, and their upgrades will be better than anything on the market.”

“No. I already have it all set.” Ayana wore a strange expression. I was about to argue when she added, “The person who broke in left me this.”

My regret flattened into dread. I watched, stomach twisting, as she retrieved a manila envelope from her bag and passed it to me. There was a slight shake in her hand.

I hesitated for a second before I took the envelope.

Opened it.

Retrieved the contents.

And felt every ounce of blood drain from my face.

My breath knotted in my throat. The shock of seeing those particular images crystallized into jagged little ice chips that stabbed deeper and deeper the longer I stared.

There were three photos in total, detailing what I’d done to Dexter in graphic, gruesome detail. My team had dumped his remains near a known Brotherhood hub as a warning. If taking Dexter had tipped my hand to Shepherd, I might as well have gone all out—there’d been no point trying to hide what I’d done.

The pictures were taken where we’d left him, which meant someone from the organization had been inside Ayana’s house. There was no one else who would’ve had the means or motive.

My blood thundered in my ears. I dragged my eyes from the close up image of Dexter’s mangled face to the note clipped on top.

It’s time you found out exactly the type of man Vuk Markovic really is.

A sickening taste filled my mouth. Time slowed into an excruciating pace. Each second scrounged forth a different memory.

Jordan getting shot. My first night with Ayana. Sean’s call telling me he’d found Dexter. The warehouse. Roman’s taunt about Ayana leaving me if she ever found out what I was truly capable of.

That’d been just over a week ago. I couldn’t think of another reason why someone would leave Ayana these photos besides wanting to break us up, and the timing was a little too convenient.

The images crumpled in my fist. If that weaselly bastard Roman had anything to do with this, I was going to gut him like a fish.

But first, I had to deal with the present.

When I finally looked up again, Ayana was staring at me with that same strange expression, like she was torn between painful hope and possibly throwing up.

Time returned to normal, but my blood remained frozen.

“Tell me the truth.” She gestured at the photos, her voice trembling. “Did you do it?”

AYANA

It was silent enough to hear a pin drop.

Vuk stared at me, his knuckles white around the photos—the gut-churning, blood-soaked photos that had haunted my nightmares for the past four days and made all my food taste like cardboard.

They rested in the same hands that had held me. Touched me. Comforted me.

I couldn’t imagine them being responsible for something as brutal as what happened to the man in the pictures. I didn’t want to believe it. There had to be another explanation.

Someone had either left them as a sick joke, or they were trying to frame Vuk. While I’d suspected Vuk’s idea of justice crossed the line of what was technically legal, I never thought he’d be capable of that. There was also a difference between suspecting something and seeing it laid out in macabre detail.

Tell me it’s not true. Please. Tell me it’s not true.

His response shattered my fragile tendril of hope.

“I did.”

My stomach plunged over the side of a cliff and straight into the icy waters below. The cold consumed me as I blinked, trying to match the implication behind his words and his stoic expression. It was like someone had slammed a gate shut over his face and turned the man I knew into a stranger.

I did.

“Okay.” What a stupid, inane reply, but I couldn’t grasp the right word amongst the thousands swirling through my head. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything except stand there and watch my world crumble around me. “Do you…” Once again, the words escaped me.

“Do I regret it?” Of course Vuk understood what I was trying to say. He always did. “The only thing I regret, srce, is that I didn’t have more time to work on him.” There wasn’t a single trace of remorse in his voice.

Saliva vaporized in my sandpapered throat. The room was spinning out of control, and I had nothing to hold on to except the tatters of what used to be.

Vuk swallowed the distance between us with two strides. He held the photos up. “This is the man who shot Jordan. The man who almost killed you. For that alone, he deserved worse than what he got.” His voice was arctic, but his body was an inferno. Heat poured off him like a living, breathing reminder of his duality.

The businessman and the criminal.

The protector and the murderer.

The man who could kiss me so tenderly one day and kill so viciously the next.

“In my world, justice comes in one form: retribution.” Vuk cupped my cheek, his touch unbearably gentle. “I told you I wasn’t a good person, srce. You should’ve believed me.”

I closed my eyes, trying to reject his words even as I savored the warmth of his palm against my skin. My breaths escaped me in tiny, gasping puffs.

I was hyperaware of how isolated we were. The shooting range was always empty besides us, and it was located at the very back of Valhalla.

If I screamed, would anyone hear me? If they did, would they come to my rescue?

My mind brushed aside the hypotheticals as they popped up. Despite Vuk’s admission and the evidence of his cruelty, I wasn’t afraid. Anxious, yes. Stunned, definitely. But I didn’t feel an ounce of the fear that’d engulfed me when I’d been alone with Wentworth or when I saw a bullet streaking toward me at the wedding.

No matter his crimes, I didn’t believe for a second that he would hurt me.

“Look at me.” Vuk’s command wrenched my eyes open. His stare burned into mine, equal parts unyielding and desperate. “This is who I am, Ayana. What I did to the man in these photos doesn’t compare to what I did to those responsible for my brother’s death. If I had the chance to go back in time, I’d do it all again a hundred times over. No one harms the people I care about and walks away intact.”

My vision blurred. Part of me wanted to scream. Why couldn’t he lie and let me live in blissful ignorance? Why couldn’t he give me leeway to pretend nothing had changed? Why did he have to be so crushingly honest when it meant we’d never be the same?

“I won’t hurt you. Ever,” Vuk said. “If you walk away right now and say you never want to see me again, I’ll respect your wishes. But I can’t pretend to be somebody I’m not. What’s done is done, and if someone came after you tomorrow, I’d deal with them the same way I dealt with the shooter.” His tone was hard. Ruthless. “It’s in my DNA, srce. I can compromise, but I can’t change the core of who I am. No matter how much I wish I could.”

My heart splintered at the small crack I heard in his voice toward the end.

I understood his implicit question.

Would I stay, knowing the things he’d done and was capable of? Or would I walk away like he said I could and leave the darkness of his world behind?

The prospect of the latter tore through me in a blaze of pain, but it was chased by the phantom screams of a man I didn’t and now would never know.

Crimson images flickered behind my eyes, and my stomach heaved for the dozenth time since Friday.

Do I stay, or do I leave?

“I…” Words stuck in my throat. A decision glimmered beneath the murky waters of indecision, but I couldn’t reach it. If I tried, I would drown.

“I need time.” A tear slipped down and scalded my cheek. “I just—I can’t think right now. I need to be alone for a while so I can…” Unshed tears swallowed the rest of my sentence. “I just need to be alone,” I repeated.

Vuk swallowed. Emotions battered at his stony facade. Fear, panic, desperation—they surfaced for a gasp of air before his face shuttered again.

He dropped his hand and stepped back.

A chill swept over my skin. I shivered, yearning to feel the warmth of his touch again even as the hole in my chest threatened to swallow me.

“Take as much time as you need,” he said. “I’ll be here.”

His quiet promise was supposed to make me feel better, but it only made me feel worse. And when I walked away, my throat so tight it was impossible for me to squeeze another syllable out of it, I couldn’t help but look back.

Vuk was standing exactly where I’d left him, his head and shoulders bowed.

We hadn’t said goodbye, not yet, but I felt like a chasm had opened up between us all the same.

I sucked in a shuddering breath and faced forward again. One foot in front of the other. That’s it. You can do it.

I walked through the halls of Valhalla like a ghost, corporeal yet lost. Somehow, I found my way to the exit, but I didn’t know where to go from there.

The thought of returning to my empty apartment made me flinch. Despite what I’d said about upgrading my security, I was on edge knowing someone—most likely a member of the Brotherhood—had broken in so easily. Perhaps I should check into a hotel or ask Maya if I could impose on her for a few nights.

In an alternate reality, I would stay at Vuk’s house, but that was no longer an option.

I swiped at my tears and took another deep breath. I could break down later, in private. Right now, I needed something, anything, to distract me.

I walked down the street from Valhalla and hailed a cab. I told the driver to drop me anywhere in SoHo. A walk would calm me down, and the neighborhood was crowded enough on a weekday afternoon to provide the illusion of safety.

Thirty minutes later, I exited the cab and ducked into a nearby café for tea. It wasn’t my mother’s shai, but it’d do in a pinch.

I let the drink’s comforting warmth wash away the rest of my tears as I wandered through the streets. My nose was stuffy, and my head pounded the way it always did after I cried, but I was so emotionally exhausted I didn’t even care if someone recognized me while I looked like shit.

Who cared about a potentially bad candid photo when my heart was being crushed?

It doesn’t have to be this way. I could run back to Valhalla right now and throw myself into Vuk’s arms. I could look the other way if and when he did what he did, and we could live happily ever after.

But a part of me would always know. I would always be on edge, and he would always feel my distance unless I found a way to reconcile my morality with my feelings toward him.

Whether or not that was possible remained to be seen.

“Ayana.”

I paused at the familiar voice. It was one I hadn’t heard in person in months.

Hank stood outside Beaumont’s headquarters, a cigarette in hand. I’d been so preoccupied by my thoughts I hadn’t realized I’d meandered straight to my old agency’s offices.

I stiffened. My former agent looked the same as always, all slicked-back hair and spray-tanned skin. However, dark shadows smudged his eyes, and his hand trembled as he brought the cigarette to his mouth.

I remembered what Emmanuelle had said about Vuk threatening him. Perhaps I wasn’t that good of a person after all because, while I couldn’t stomach torture, the mental image of Hank cowering before Vuk gave me an immense sense of satisfaction.

“What do you want?” I asked.

He took a drag of his cigarette before he spoke again. “We never got the chance to say goodbye. Six years of partnership down the drain.” Hank shook his head. “You really pissed Emmanuelle off.”

“By asking for what I was legally due?” My grip tightened around my cup. “And when you say six years of partnership, you really mean six years of exploitation.”

“Exploitation?” He scoffed. “You’d still be a nobody in D.C. if it weren’t for me. I gave you a career. Fame. Money. Even if you take your agency fees into account, you’ve earned more with me than you ever would’ve doing…what? Toiling away in some chemistry lab somewhere?” Hank’s eyes glinted. “You think you would’ve ever met men like Jordan Ford or Vuk Markovic if it weren’t for me?”

“I never asked for any of those things,” I snapped. Anger was good. Anger kept me from dwelling on the sharp pang of hearing Vuk’s name. “I just wanted enough money to pay my father’s medical bills. I didn’t want to be famous, and I definitely didn’t want to be locked into your sham of a contract.”

“Maybe not, but here we are.” Hank gave me a thin smile. “At least you won’t have to worry about your contract any longer. Just a lawsuit.”

“The lawsuit is bullshit, and everyone knows it.”

“Sure, but by the time it’s over, you won’t be the untarnished golden girl of fashion anymore, will you?” Hank stubbed out his cigarette. “Emmanuelle knows what she’s doing. You may have Markovic on your side, but she’s not someone you want to cross. Ever.”

I suppressed a flinch at his second mention of Vuk. “I’m not afraid of her,” I said. “Not anymore.”

What else could she do to me that she hadn’t already done?

“That’s too bad.” Something flickered in Hank’s eyes. “I thought you were smarter than that.”

Screw this. I’d wasted enough time on him. He wasn’t my agent anymore, and I had no reason to indulge his attempts to get in my head.

I left without another glance, but his words followed me like a putrid scent.

Did Emmanuelle have something else up her sleeve or another motive to target me besides one semi-heated phone call? I’d been Beaumont’s top-earning model, and she was a shrewd businesswoman. Her decision to drop me didn’t make practical sense.

Then again, ego had a way of making people act against their best interests. Two years ago, an up-and-coming fashion designer ignored his friends’ advice and sank a million dollars of his own money into a last-minute event to spite his rival, who was hosting his own event that night. The whole thing had been a disaster, and the designer never recovered socially or financially.

So yes, I believed Emmanuelle was really that petty.

I turned the corner onto a side street. It was one of those empty lanes that served no real purpose other than as a conduit from one major thoroughfare to the next.

I spotted the gleam of a familiar café across the way. I was almost finished with my tea, so it was perfect timing. Instead of running around downtown, I was going to order another drink, park myself in a corner booth, and browse the latest posts from my favorite perfume blog. No emails, no texts, no checking social media, and no thinking about Vuk. Once I cleared my head, then I could decide what to do next.

Resolve quickened my steps, but I’d only made it halfway down the street when a sharp pain pierced my neck.

At first, I thought I’d been stung by a bee. My hand flew up to swat it away, and that was when the world tilted. My cup fell from my other hand and rolled across the ground. The lid popped off, and the remnants of my tea seeped into the concrete like a dark stain.

Tightness seized my lungs. I stumbled, my breaths coming out in short, shallow bursts. The last thing I heard was the slam of a car door before iron hands grabbed me, and the world went black.