Page 62 of Keeping My Enemies Closer: Pt. 1

“You’re driving me in-fucking-sane, baby,” he told her, meaning every word.

“Well, now that you’re in trouble with your husband, I think it’s time for me to leave,” I grinned.“My work here is done.”

“Just pay Zoya her money and let her know that I want to speak with her,” Aurora replied.“She might feel more comfortable speaking to me about her friend.”

That got a laugh out of me.“Only because she doesn’t know the real you.If she did, she’d stay far, far away from you.”

“If she can handle you, then she should definitely have no problem dealing with me,” she retorted.

“Who said that she’s handling me?”I teased.

“That’s enough,” Viktor announced.“Get out, so that I can get my wife back to bed.”

Now that I was finally in love, I didn’t blame the man one bit for kicking me out.

Chapter 30

Zoya~

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out, but muffled voices were hitting my waking ears, and I wanted nothing more than to pass out again.My entire body ached from head to toe, but that was nothing compared to how wounded my mother appeared.No matter the state of our relationship right now, I didn’t want this for her, and I was certain that she felt the same about me.

“You guaranteed me that the money was here,” a voice hissed, and I was certain that it was the voice of the first guy.“We’ve checked the entire place and there is nothing here.No money.”

I cracked my eyes open as much as I could, and it was to see him on his phone, pacing the living room, and though he still had his mask on, his entire demeanor screamed in anger.He had drug me with him to every inch of the house, and when we’d found nothing, he had beat me hard enough to knock me out, then he had dumped me on the couch, though my mother was still tied to the chair.

“There’s nothing here!”he yelled into the phone.“You lied to us!”

It could only be Marcelle on the other end of the phone, but I couldn’t prove it without the police getting involved, and hadn’t I just given Aleksei Korolev my word that I’d never bring the police to his doorstep?Honestly, if I got out of this alive, I had no idea what to do.Therightthing to do would call the police, telling them everything that had happened here tonight, but I also knew that Kasimir would be furious if I did.He was the type of man that would want to avenge me himself, and the last thing that he’d want would be for the police to get in his way.

“I’m telling you that there is nothing here!”he yelled again.“We’ve looked everywhere!”

Not wanting to alert him that I was awake, I closed my eyes again, focusing on what I was hearing over the pain that was consuming my entire body.I also needed to bide myself some time to come up with any kind of plan to get out of this situation alive.Even if I were in the position to fight these guys off, I knew that I couldn’t.Not only were they bigger than me, but there were two of them, and they had my mother as an advantage.

“Yeah, and what are we supposed to do?”he scoffed into the phone.“Drag her down to the bank and have her make a withdrawal?You said that it’d be cash that can’t be traced back to us, so I’m not about to have her write me a goddamn check.”

“I’m not going down for this,” the second guy said.“The fuck that I’m going to jail for money that I never got.”