Page 128 of The Darkness is Calling

He extends one of the guns to someone from his team, then uses that hand to touch my veil, removing a small piece of bone.

“The dress is perfect like this, covered in blood,” the killer tells me softly, just loud enough for only me to hear.

Then he lifts the veil from my face and brings his own close to mine, until only a few inches separate us.

“Isn’t that right, dusha moya?”

My heart stops.

My gaze snaps upward, and confirmation comes when two eyes in different shades of gray and brown meet mine.

Chapter 23

Artem

I can split open a thousand men and bathe in their blood, but nothing compares to the euphoria I feel when I breathe in her vanilla scent and look into her blue eyes.

And I haven’t even kissed her yet.

Finaly, there is silence in my head. Especially after ten days in which I thought the voices would win the battle they were waging against one frail thread of conscience. I clung to it as hard as I could, constantly reminding myself why I had to stay away from Ekaterina.

My patience was tested every second, and I am not known for being a patient man.

Maybe that is why I watched her in secret every day whenever I had the chance. And when I could not get there, I had Dima taking pictures of her and send them to me. Not one or two a day. I texted him almost every hour, sometimes even more often, and now I have an album made only of images of the woman I am obsessed with.

Unfortunately, my brothers followed me like shadows throughout this entire time, afraid I would lose control completely. Otherwise, something beautiful would have happened the night Ekaterina went to dinner with my number one enemy.

Beautiful for me.

Ugly for him.

Spoiler: we would have made him eat

pieces of his own flesh.

And I would have done it under the eyes of the journalists he himself brought there, according to my sources. He made his return to the city sound like a real lifestyle event, but something wasn’t to my beloved’s taste. And I’m not referring to the food, but to the conversation I was able to hear thanks to the microphones installed under the table.

Oh, yes. With the right people, I was able to get into his assistant’s system and find out where she had made the dinner reservation. In a digital age, no information is safe anymore, and I have a team capable of finding out everything.

That conversation was the last drop in the glass.

But the glass spilled over the day Ekaterina tried on the wedding dress.

A true princess, meant to be my wife, in that very dress, but stained with the blood of those standing in our way.

The first to kill was the loudmouthed woman with a small device in her ear, who was getting ready to announce to everyone that the bride’s new bodyguards were dropping like flies behind her. The boys could have restrained her easily, without hurting her. But I had enough days to find out the ugly things that woman had been doing with her clients’ money, so they had permission to eliminate her if she got in their way.

What can I say?

Suppressed guns were perfect for this kind of operation, especially since we also had music in the background to cover any other noise.

I’m not a fan of these events, but I really liked this one. Not to mention this is the first wedding I have ever attended, and so far, I like the way it’s unfolding.

Especially the part where I get to kiss the bride.

I can hardly wait.

Someone clears his throat behind me, and a deep voice tells me quietly, but firmly. “We are kind of in a hurry...”