The Life (22 page)

Now, more than ever, she needed to talk to her husband.
Even if it was useless conversation and mundane words. Even if they ignored the obvious and pretended like what was happening didn’t exist. Viviana needed that, she didn’t care.

Like Joe hadn’t just roared at him, Rory kept calm as he placed the phone back to his ear and began speaking. “Listen, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you, but if you shout at me like that again, I’ll pistol whip your fucking ass.” Rolling his eyes, Rory huffed and said, “Sure you would, asshole. Thanks for waking Vine up with your nonsense. I have to go.”

Again, the phone was turned off and tossed uncaringly to the seat.

Viviana tried like heck not to notice, but she couldn’t help it: Rory’s hands were trembling.

“Can you call Boss back?” Rory asked quietly. Worry had pitched his tone a little higher than normal. “Be fast about it, Vine.”

Apparently Rory had reason to worry. Viviana turned to look over her shoulder just in time to see the SUV behind them speed up at an alarming rate. The vehicle loomed close enough to the back of theirs that she could make out the shape of the man driving. Tailgating was one thing, but what Joe was doing was just downright dangerous.

If they had to stop suddenly, where would Joe be?

Right inside their trunk.
That’s where.

“Holy crap he’s close,” Viviana said.

“He’s being an idiot,” Rory muttered lowly. “Trying to make a point.”

He hit the gas and the force of their SUV lurching forward sent Viviana falling back into the seat with wide eyes. It was only then that she noticed her seatbelt was unbuckled, so she made quick work of fixing that issue.

Viviana pulled out the phone to call Anton, but she didn’t have to. He was already calling her back. Pressing the on button, she didn’t even need to put the phone up to her ear to hear his fear. Anton was calling her name loud and clear through the speaker, over and over. Her heart clenched at the thought of him worrying about why she hadn’t picked up his first call.

But hadn’t he said he wouldn’t call until he could see Joe?

“Anton?” Silence covered the phone. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m here.”

“Damn it, baby.
Why didn’t you answer me?” he asked sharply.

“Rory was on the phone with Joe.”

“Oh.” All of the fight left his voice with the one word.

“How close is he?” Rory asked.

“Close enough to see his taillights,” Anton said. Viviana relayed the information. “Far enough with my lights turned off so he won’t notice me.”

Viviana glanced out at the pitch-black darkness surrounding their vehicle. There weren’t any streetlights and the area they were driving through was dense with forest. How could he even see where he was driving?

“Is that safe?” she dared to ask.

“Safer than him noticing me,” Anton replied. “How are you doing?”

Viviana bit the inside of her cheek, willing the unannounced tears to stop welling. “Good.”

“Really?
Because it’s been a rough day.”

“Okay, so I’m a little tired.
Terrified, too.”

Anton took her confession in stride, or he seemed to. “I promise a hot bath, a warm bed, and me as soon as we get home.”

Clearing her throat, she smiled at his offerings. “We might have to put that off, though.”

“No way.
Rest and relax, that’s what you need to do.”

And birth a baby
, she thought. Maybe.

“There’s a turn off for a private access into Columbus Park coming up. I’m taking it,” Rory stated from the front seat.

Viviana’s heart lurched into her throat as her stomach dropped. “Why?”

“Because I need to get closer,” Anton said.
“Somehow. That’ll probably help.”

As Rory turned on his blinker to signal he was making a turn, the stress and tension in the SUV turned up a notch or two. Anton went quiet on his end of the phone and Viviana forced
herself not to turn around and look out the back window. She didn’t want to know how close Joe was to their vehicle.

As the car started to turn into the dark, dirt road, Rory’s phone began ringing again. Rory tossed the phone a glance, but didn’t move to pick it up.

“Just a little detour,” he said under his breath. “Keep following, asshole.”

Soon enough, Joe’s call stopped ringing through.

The road was bumpy, jostling Viviana with every pothole the tires hit. She tried to see beyond the rows and rows of trees lining either side of their SUV. She couldn’t make out much, but she did notice there was a slight ditch on the left side. The embankment wasn’t overly deep, and was more than likely just a water runoff for a lake or something.

The darkness and unknown area didn’t bother Viviana, though. What did bother her was the silence on the other end of her phone. “Anton?”

“I’m just turning in the road, too,” he said quietly.

Viviana took a deep breath, willing it to calm her raging emotions. “Okay, should I—”

She didn’t get to ask if she should hang up her phone. She did manage to hear Rory’s low cuss before something slammed into the back of their SUV with a force that sent their vehicle swerving off to the side. Viviana’s shoulder rammed into the door and the sharp sting of agony ricocheted through her side. Her cry of pain and surprise fell on deaf ears as the phone slipped from her grasp and hit the floor with a dull thud.

Shocked, she realized Joe had driven his vehicle into the back of theirs.

Totally terrified and unsure what Joe was trying to do, Viviana only wanted to get the phone off the floor and back into her hands. She needed Anton. Their SUV sped up as a slight bump knocked their vehicle from behind again. The second hit wasn’t nearly as hard as the first one, but it was still enough to send the terror skyrocketing. Dread crawled over Viviana’s skin as she tried to catch her breath and calm down enough to think.

Rory still hadn’t spoken a word from the front.

Viviana wrangled with her belt to try and grab the fallen phone. She couldn’t reach it from her spot without unbuckling the seatbelt but that didn’t stop her from trying. Anton’s shouts from the phone echoed up from the floor. When she couldn’t grab it, a sob escaped her chest.

“
Don’t
unbuckle, Vine! You might need it.”

Sitting back and knowing Anton must have been in a terrible
panic, Viviana dug her hands into the soft leather of the seat and closed her eyes. That gun on her thigh burned a little more. Viviana didn’t want to think about using it, or needing to.

Tears fell over her cheeks, gathering on her trembling lips.

Good God, Anton could not see her like this.

Rory seemed to notice her state as his quiet, calm voice brought her out of a meltdown. “Hey, what’s the name of that boy of yours, huh?”

Somehow, Viviana managed a short laugh. Was this really the right time to be discussing her son’s name? She knew her bull was only attempting to cool her fear, and surprisingly, it worked.

“What?”

“The baby’s name,” he said again. “Jen won’t leave me alone about it. You’re close enough, so what’s his name going to be? My bet was on Daniil or Anton.”

Viviana licked her lips. “Wrong, well, sort of.
Can’t tell you anyway, Anton would have a fit.”

Rory scoffed, but the sound didn’t ring true. The car was going dangerously fast, hitting the bumps and divots in the road with more force than before. The pain in her shoulder was dulled, but it still hurt something fierce.

“Sure you can,” Rory said, lifting his gaze to meet hers in the mirror. “Come on, Vine, what if I never find out? I’m kind of like his guard, too, right, so I should know. Boss will get over it. It’s not like I’ll tell anyone, promise.”

Sure, Rory finished up his statement with an offhanded comment about Anton, but Viviana hadn’t missed his words right before that.

What if I never find out?

Was that how he thought this situation was going to end?

“Rory …”

The hard profile of the man in the front seat turned just enough for her to see the softness he always held in his gaze. “I meant to thank you, by the way.”

“For what?”

Rory chuckled, his grip on the steering wheel tightening as their SUV sped up impossibly faster. “For Jen, I guess. Boss never would have let me date the girl because she works at one of his joints. You’ve been good for him, more than he knows. Good for a lot of people. So, thanks.”

Viviana didn’t know what to say.

Rory didn’t give her the chance to figure it out.
“His name?”

She could still hear Anton calling for her from the forgotten phone on the floor.

Faith
, Viviana reminded herself.

It would be all right. It had to be.

As Joe’s vehicle bumped into theirs again, she closed her eyes.

“You’ll find out when he’s born just like everybody else.”

It was the last thing Viviana said before she felt their vehicle drop off the side of the embankment.

Chapter Seventeen

“
No
…”

Anton felt something painful expand and burst in his chest as he caught the faint outline of the SUV his wife was in drop out of sight. The lights of the SUV dimmed before blinking out completely as the taillights disappeared.

The phone at his ear crackled with static as Viviana’s piercing scream echoed through the receiver. He could hear glass shattering and the metal of the car crunching under whatever weight it slammed into.

His heart beat a staccato rhythm. Anton couldn’t even manage to breathe. The embankment wasn’t large, maybe only fifteen or twenty feet deep. Even so, it was more than big and deep enough to roll a vehicle.
Enough to hurt a passenger, or knock them out. Enough to kill a person if they weren’t buckled in, or God forbid if a tree went through a window. Anton wasn’t even trying to think about the speed Rory had been traveling when Joe knocked them over the ditch. An accident at that rate of speed was more than enough to do serious damage.

Joe’s SUV stopped at the same time Anton’s car did. The bull was getting out of the car, a gun firmly seated in his palm as his form strode along the dirt road.

Unfortunately, Anton was quite a ways behind and he had a bit of a run to catch up. He didn’t dare take the chance of going further and having Joe draw his gun out on him. Sure, Anton had a weapon of his own, but it wouldn’t make a difference if the bull shot him dead while he was still behind the wheel of a moving vehicle.

Besides that, Anton still wasn’t sure if Joe had seen him or if he didn’t know that he was following behind at all. It was more likely that Joe assumed this would be the best place and time to make his move on Viviana when Rory chose to drive into the dirt road. Anton had been hoping to get a little closer to the man’s vehicle before Rory stopped, but Joe hadn’t given him the chance.

Anton was stuck frozen. Lightheaded with blurred vision, he was suddenly dizzy and lost. There was no noise on the phone he held to his ear. No crying, no words. The sounds of the car crashing into ground had all but stopped, too. There was just … nothing. Dead silence, but the phone hadn’t cut out the call.

“Vine,” he whispered, knowing his wife wasn’t going to answer him back.

Dread clawed through his cold veins. As Anton blinked at the headlights flooding over the shadow of Joe who was still staring down the embankment, he couldn’t help but let his mind run wild. His wife and unborn son had just been in an accident. A man with a gun and thoughts intent on killing them was less than maybe thirty feet away.

Anton was much farther than that.

Watching in a horror induced haze as Joe came to the edge of the embankment and looked over, Anton didn’t know what to do. The lights from SUV Joe had been driving lit up the road, trees, and the bull enough to give Anton a decent view of what he was dealing with. When Joe lurched forward, slipping off the edge of the ditch to jump down the embankment, Anton finally sprung back to life. Adrenaline pumped through his blood as he slammed his car into park and flung open the driver’s side door.

The warm air felt like a slap in the face as he hit the ground running.

Anton was an athlete. There wasn’t much he couldn’t do in the physical sense. But his physicality didn’t matter a single bit in the situation he found himself in because he was much too far away. Anton simply wasn’t fast enough, he couldn’t be. He knew he wouldn’t make it to his wife in nearly enough time to save her from Joe’s wrath or his gun. The only thing he could hope for was Rory being awake and capable of using his own weapon, or Viviana being able to use hers.

“Oh God, Viviana!
Vine
!”

He shouted into the phone again and again, but still, nothing answered him back.

Anton didn’t falter in his run when the first gunshot rang out in the darkness.

*

Viviana jerked awake at the loud bang. Glass shattered around her face, littering shards into her hair. She struggled to remember what had happened and why her shoulder hurt so goddamned badly. Groaning, she didn’t focus too long on the muffled noise that sounded just out of reach.

Oddly, she felt slightly off balance.

Viviana turned her head to the side, wiping off the glass fragments from her face. Something warm and wet smeared on her cheeks from the touch. The coppery taste of blood lingered on her mouth. Sparing a glance out the broken window beside her, Viviana realized the vehicle she was in had slammed into the trunk of a tree.

But hadn’t a window just broken? Wasn’t there a bang?

A bang that reminded her of something … something frightening.

Like a gun, maybe.

Was it a gunshot?

What was that bang?

What was that noise?

Who was yelling?

With a thick throat and no voice, Viviana looked to her right. That window was broken, too, and her eyes blurred as she attempted to see through the darkness. A shape was there—
someone
was out there, shouting.

The person reached through the window, trying to grab her, but she was too far away for them to reach. By the shape of his form, she knew he was a man.

“Anton?”

Ouch. Talking hurt worse than breathing. Viviana’s throat felt scratchy and raw.

“Fucking door!”

No, it couldn’t be her husband. Anton’s voice was deeper, with silken tenors and a deep baritone bass. This was nothing like the soothing, familiar voice of her husband. This person was angry. Viviana’s whole body flinched as she heard something slam into the car door.
The man’s foot, likely.

Had the door been crushed shut when they wrecked?

At the memory of the SUV rolling off the embankment, Viviana was flooded with the rest of her forgotten mind. No, it certainly wasn’t Anton outside of the vehicle.

It was Joe.

Had he shot into the car already?

That would certainly explain the bang that brought her back into consciousness.

“Rory,” Viviana said hoarsely as Joe once again struggled to open the door.

Why wasn’t he just shooting her? Why was he trying to get inside the car?

Where was Anton? He hadn’t been far behind, or so she thought.

“Rory,” she said again, louder the second time. The bull in the front seat didn’t answer Viviana back. In the darkness, she couldn’t see a thing but the glow of the dashboard’s clock, anyway.

“Fuck this,” she heard Joe mutter.

The telltale click clack of a gun resounded outside the car.

It took Viviana less than a second to reach down between her legs with her shaking hands, fumbling to find the small handgun she knew should have been at her thigh.

By the grace of fucking God, it was.

At the same time Viviana’s arm lifted with the gun in hand, aimed at the figure outside the window, she watched with clearing vision as Joe raised his into it. Viviana didn’t have to think about her next move. There was no sadness or guilt over her choice, she didn’t even hesitate. This man would not take her life, he would not hurt her child.

Instead, she remembered Roman.

Get a better grip on that gun.

You only get the one.

Make it count.

Don’t you blink about it, girl.

The trigger pulled back smooth and easy under her finger. Viviana watched as the blaze and smoke from her gun clouded the car with a burst of light and grey. The scent of gunpowder choked her lungs at the same time a sob ripped past her lips. Joe fell back with a painful shout of shock, his gun dropping into the car with a clatter as his body hit the ground.

Relief never felt so good, but Viviana didn’t have a clue if he was going to be able to get back up or not. She didn’t have the time to sit there and think it all over, either. Groping to unbuckle the belt that was keeping her confined, she somehow managed to find the latch. Bits of sharp glass scratched against her skin as she released the buckle.

Viviana just started to crawl over the backseat as she heard Anton’s voice outside the broken window.

*

“Viviana!”

The second gunshot exploded into the night just as Anton propelled his body over the side of the embankment.

Fortunately, he’d been able to hear every word Joe shouted in English and Russian as he tried futilely to get inside the car. It must have been too dark for Joe to properly see inside the car, so the first shot had been nothing more than a failed attempt to shoot Viviana through the window. The bull’s words had echoed up to the dirt road Anton had been running down. It somehow urged him to move a hell of a lot faster, even though he had been able to tell by Joe’s words that Viviana was still alive.

The second gunshot might as well have stopped his heart straight up.

Anton landed on hard earth, a sting radiating up his left ankle as he hit down.

Only one headlight in the SUV had survived the impact. It gave off just enough light for Anton to make out the wreckage. It was clear by the dents that now covered the black vehicle from the roof to the wheel wells that it had in fact rolled when it fell into the deep ditch. Every window was broken out, and it rested on the two passenger side tires while the driver’s side were a good half of a foot in the air.

Rage flooded Anton’s body as he noticed the form sprawled out near the back of the SUV. Joe lay on the ground, clearly wounded as the rich color of crimson slipped down around his neck, soaking into the ground. Joe’s hands clutched up near his throat as his boots dug into the earth and the sweet music of his choking reached Anton’s spot.

Viviana had one hell of an aim
, Anton thought.

The small handgun he gave her wasn’t that high of a calibre, but it would stop a man in his tracks if used correctly. Clearly his wife had used it correctly.

Fuck, was he ever grateful.

“Viviana?”
Anton called her name again, ignoring the pain in his ankle as he moved closer to the SUV.

“I-I’m here … Please get me out of here, please. The door won’t open.”

The beautiful sound of his wife’s voice, strained but alive, was the only thing needed to make Anton move. “Oh, baby. I’m coming. It’s okay.”

He crossed the space, jumping over the small creek of water in one fluid swoop, and made it to the side of the SUV in seconds. Viviana’s hands came out of the window at the same time his went in.

For a single moment, Anton just needed to touch Viviana. To feel the warmth of her flesh, hear the sounds of her breaths, and see the life blinking back in her brown eyes. Anton simply needed to know she was there—okay, healthy, alive. That was all. Even in the darkness of the SUV he could see where she’d bruised up her cheek in the accident. A few scratches dotted up the side of her jaw, glass littered the black strands of her hair, and blood was smudged on her brow and hands.

Anton didn’t give a shit about the blood on her mouth when he kissed her through the broken window. The tears making rivulets down her cheeks smeared onto his. Anton shushed tenderly against her lips, feeling the trembling in her shoulders as he wrapped his arms around her.

“The baby?” he asked.

Viviana sobbed brokenly, but shook her head. “Everything’s fine, I promise. Please just get me out of this car. I can’t breathe in here.”

Anton didn’t waste any time doing what she asked. The door had been crushed shut, but the window was more than big enough to get her out. Being mindful of the shards of glass still around the opening he pulled Viviana out from the back. Cradling her to his chest, Anton stood there holding his wife for long enough to tell her over and over that she was okay. Viviana buried her face into his neck and started to cry low, with hiccupping sniffles that wracked her form all over.

“
Shh,” he said against her hair. “It’s all right, I’ve got you.”

“Vivi-
viana … Vine?”

Anton felt the air he’d been holding in release. Rory had survived the car rolling over and Joe coming down on them, too.
Somehow. Anton hadn’t checked the other bull, but he was more concerned over getting his wife out first.

“Rory, you okay?” Anton asked loudly.

Anton listened as glass was brushed off, Rory groaned painfully, and then the man’s head popped out of the driver’s side window. He had one hell of a bump on his forehead, a bloodied up lip, and few scrapes and bruises. The accident had only knocked him out, luckily. But that bump was a good sign he might be concussed, too.

Rory clamoured out of the broken window, landing to the ground with a thump. The man sat there, head in his hands, and stared at the ground, saying nothing.

The gurgling coming from three feet away reminded Anton of Joe.

And his wife in his arms.

Viviana tried to look in Joe’s direction, but Anton wouldn’t let her. The last thing she needed was to see the damage she’d caused.

“Rory, I need you to get up. Can you do that?” Anton asked.

Anton had very little time left with Joe.