Page 105 of The Darkness is Calling

Sasha sighs loudly before rattling everything off as if he has been holding it all in. “Dima says she received a picture from the club, from tonight, when you were talking to that whore. We don’t know who sent it to her right before the recital started, with a messagesayingshe’sbeenyourmistressforyears.She’s fucking upset.”

My body tenses, and the pain blurs my vision for a second.

“I’ll kill them,” I growl at the universe, already making the bloodiest plans for those responsible.

“We’re with you, brother,” the blond tells me as he sticks a gigantic plaster over my shoulder in the front, then another on my back, where the bullet exited.

“I want to know her every move,” I say categorically. “And I need to see her immediately. No exceptions.”

“We’re going home,” Yaroslav informs me. “Dima will certainly bring her there straight after the performance, especially after what happened.”

“She must not know. I told you.”

“He won’t tell her anything, relax,” Sasha scolds me too. “Now let me clean off the blood, otherwise you’ll have to tell her about tonight’s madness. Or lie and say you were at a slaughterhouse right when they were butchering pigs.”

“She doesn’t need to know anything,” I repeat, much more quietly.

“You are so fucking stubborn,” Yar mutters, looking at me in the rearview mirror. “The doctor will be at the house soon too, but if you need to go to a hospital,I’ll dragyouthere byforce.AndInolongercare about anyone, or any story meant to protect your princess.”

“In the future, I expect you to stop making sarcastic remarks about my wife.”

Yar turns quickly toward me, not caring about the traffic ahead, and from the corner of my eye, I see Sasha looking at me just as strangely.

“Did he hit his head that badly?” Yar asks the youngest, who stops applying the cleaning solution to the wound at the back of my neck.

Thank God that he stops for a second, because it stings like hell.

“I wouldn’t have said so, but apparently, yes.”

My jaw tightens. “I am perfectly lucid.”

“I’m pretty sure your voices disagree,” the blond says.

Rarely do my brothers approach this delicate subject, using the term “voices,” as I call them. In general, it is taboo, something only the two of them know about in more detail, along with my parents, who noticed this small “problem” when I was a child.

And to that short list of people, we can now add my future wife.

“On the contrary. They are very pleased, and I can say it was their idea.”

“But you are not married to Ekaterina,” Yaroslav says.

“Not yet,” I answer in a calm tone. “But she will be very soon.”

If my entire body did not hurt, I would smile.

Chapter 19

Artem

- present

I thought I was losing my mind completely when my father called to give me the news. I didn’t even get the chance to tell him about the attack, because he began straight away with his new instructions. Starting today, Ekaterina Borislova will stay either with her friend or in her own home, and I will have to provide the same level of security to keep her safe until the wedding.

Something I could have done from the beginning, but I don’t regret for a single second that she chose the option my father proposed in the beginning, the one much easier for me: keeping watch over her from inside my own home.

I realized the situation was truly serious when my father told me Ekaterina had been the one to call him and ask for this, on her own initiative.

The reason she gave had to do with the fact that there are too many men in our house and that, if the press starts circling, unpleasant rumors could arise about her integrity. Besides, according to her, her fiance has begun asking more and more questions about where she is living, and he would not be pleased to learn that she is staying under the same roof as three other men.