by Bethany-Kris
Demyan didn’t break his stare. “Roman, they found remains. Everyone else was apparently evacuated. I’m serious, yeah?”
“Everyone except?”
Because his father was talking like he already knew, and if that was the case, Roman would really like him to spit it the fuck out.
“Maxim. Unofficial word is that it’s confirmed. The official side could take weeks to make the rounds, and I’m comfortable going with what I’ve got on the unofficial side of things, frankly.”
Well ...
Shit.
Roman fell back in his seat with a thump, his hand cupping his chin and under his throat.
Maxim Yazov was dead.
Had the plot fallen through?
Did his warning come too late?
Roman took a second before he spoke—he wasn’t sure where his feelings fell on the news of Maxim’s death, and he didn’t owe the man anything. There was also someone else in the equation who may feel very differently when she learned her father was gone.
“Things just changed,” Roman said, drawing his father’s gaze to his.
Demyan nodded once. “Yes, it has. And not in a good way for us. You can be sure that Leonid and Dima are scrambling to handle the situation in their favor—just like they intended. However, that distraction isn’t going to last long, Roman, and very soon they’ll come looking for that girl you’re hiding in your hotel room.”
Roman hoped it was a slip of the tongue—that his father didn’t actually keep tabs on which room Karine spent last night in.
“You’ll be dead in weeks. So will she,” Demyan added after a moment. “You’ll have very little time once they figure out where she is, son.”
He didn’t need the goddamn reminder.
Roman’s foot tapped a nervous beat against the tile. “Vermont. Our lodge. Did you even hear me mention it, or—”
Demyan dragged in a hard breath, shooting Roman a look that quieted him as the waitress from earlier returned with an armful of topping options that she scattered across the table.
“Five more minutes for the pancakes, guys.”
“Perfect,” Roman replied with a tight smile. “Thanks.”
Once she was gone again, Roman waited for his father to speak first.
“Maybe the outside will do her good,” Demyan finally said.
Fuck.
Really?
Roman honestly hadn’t expected Demyan to give him permission to use the property, deep within the Vermont wilderness, hundreds of acres of private, raw land only accessed by two roads. Both gated, and protected. Powered by gas and solar power generators, weekly trips to a nearby town would provide pretty much everything they needed as they might need it.
But it was precious to his family, and he knew that, too. A safe haven they had used for years when the times called for it. No one except family and his father’s most trusted men—those that Demyan chose to protect his wife, or himself, his kids—had knowledge or details of the place.
“The long walks and the lake,” his father said with a shrug, “always helped me.”
Right then felt like the proper time to give his father the other news.
“I’ve found someone—a doctor for her.”
“Oh?”
“Nothing a bit of bribery—or blackmail—can’t make work, I guess.”
Roman might be trying some attempt at being the good guy where Karine was concerned, but he still had to be who he was at the end of the day to make shit work. He could never be a saint.
Demyan pointed at his son. “And it’ll put some distance between the two of you.”
Roman hadn’t considered that.
Not yet.
It wasn’t that he’d assumed he would stay with Karine at the lodge in Vermont either. He just hadn’t considered the minor details because the overall picture had finally started to make sense to him when he had the idea in the first place.
“Karine won’t like that,” Roman admitted.
Quietly.
He didn’t want to say it, but he felt like he should. How would she cope alone? None of this was easy.
Demyan studied him before saying, “Something tells me you don’t like the idea of being far from her, either.”
Right on time once again, the waitress arrived with a beaming smile and a stack of pancakes to quiet the two men. He was grateful that his father seemed happy to let the woman serve them for a moment because it gave him a few seconds to gather his thoughts.
Roman knifed through three pancakes in the stack of six as the brunette left as fast as she came. He wasn’t hungry, but his body needed sustenance, and it gave him something to do with his hands. Both good things. He didn’t want to delve too deep into what exactly he felt for Karine.
He didn’t need to be told to know he already felt too much.
“Vermont does feel like the safest option for everyone,” Demyan eventually said, breaking the silence between them. “I agree there, Roman. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
He nodded, but said nothing.
Understanding he’d have to be separated from Karine for a long period of time in the process of everything worried him. A lot. But he’d been the one to suggest it—even if he hadn’t thought it through—and his father was up for the plan, and ready to remind him of why it was a good idea in the first place.
“It will also give you the opportunity to go about business in Brighton Beach without her in tow. If you’re being watched by Dima’s men, they won’t know where to look for her if she’s not with you. On the other side of that same coin, it may give us a bit of time if they come here expecting her with you, and she’s not. Either way, it works.”
“I don’t need to be convinced. It was my idea.”
In a sigh, Demyan murmured, “But you don’t like it.”
Roman could have just as easily brushed it off, and if he were a humble man, he’d admit he didn’t need to say anything because his father could already see it written on his face. For once, though, he didn’t want to be any kind of man except the one his father expected him to be, so all he said was, “You’re right—I don’t like it.”
“Is it ... a sense of responsibility? A duty for what might happen to her if not for your meddling?”
Roman said nothing because what he was really thinking about was the look of disappointment and sadness on Karine’s face when he was leaving the room this morning. That had very little to do with his sense of responsibility, or duty.
What was she going to say when he told her they would have to live apart for a while—would that push her back?
For once, Demyan didn’t seem to mind his son’s silence when it was clear he also wanted an answer. The two men ate their pancakes in silence, and eventually gulped down the remainder of their lukewarm coffee.
Roman wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to break the news of Maxim’s death to Karine, either. How complex and dark was the relationship with her father that she’d somehow manifested a whole identity to kill him?
What he knew to be true about Maxim’s relationship with his daughter certainly didn’t lend toward his final message for her. Because yeah, Roman hadn’t forgotten about that little detail from his father—he wanted Karine to know her father loved her.
What the fuck was he supposed to do? Wouldn’t it be a better idea to shield her from it now that nothing could be changed? That seemed cruel, too, but he really did believe the past should stay where it belonged.
“Your mother could join her in Vermont,” Demyan said without warning, breaking Roman from his thoughts.
He looked up, then, not quite sure he’d heard his father right. “Ma?”
“You know, she used to be a nurse. Sure, she worked mainly with kids and in the NICU, but she could help if Karine needed something.”
“I thought you wanted her far away from—”
“Seems our issue with Chicago, and Karine, might be around for a while. Your mother would appreciate knowing, in that case. It’ll keep her safe,
too, if activity picks up in Little Odessa,” Demyan added.
Placing his cutlery to the table, Demyan then pulled out his wallet and left too many bills to count in the middle. The waitress, whom he didn’t even particularly like, would get a decent tip—as Roman suspected.
They stood up together, the rest of the day looming ahead of both men, but for entirely different reasons, Roman suspected.
“Son,” Demyan said right before he stepped away from the table. “I give it no more than a week before Dima’s men start to find their way here. That’s how much time you have to settle the girl in. Go to Vermont with her, but within the week, you need to be back here if you want to come out of this thing alive. Don’t draw them to her.”
Demyan walked away from the table after that, leaving Roman to follow him out with his parting words ringing in his ears. As casual as he made that last remark sound, Roman had seen the look in his father’s eyes.
Demyan wanted to keep his son alive. Probably even more than Roman did for himself.
NINE
Roman hadn’t realized just how bad he’d be itching to return to the hotel, to see Karine and reassure her that he was back, just like he promised, until he walked into the suite. And the very second he did, it was clear that Katina had been around to say hello.
The suite was trashed.
Broken glass scattered dangerously across the floor. The large vase from the table had found a new home, after it apparently crashed into the flat screen television on the wall. Only a trampled mess remained of the red roses that had made for a beautiful centerpiece. The coffee table had a crack down the middle of its glass top, and the further in Roman walked, the better he could see a milky substance forming puddles on the floor. Bloody drops trailed along, too.
Fuck.
The growled curse came from under his breath, but even his anger didn’t diminish the panic welling in his chest. The quiet state of the chaos and the fact there was no obvious sign of a message to him didn’t leave him feeling like this had been an attack on them. He called for her—Karine, first—even though every scrap of evidence in front of him screamed Katina.
If she was still around, she wasn’t going to respond to being called Karine, either. Not by him. Not when he knew better.
“What the fuck is going on here, man?”
The irritated question came from the man who emerged from the main bathroom of the large suite. Roman stopped his search of the room at the sight of the bull nursing a wounded hand. He’d been assigned to keep an eye on Karine and the hotel—but at a respectable distance that shouldn’t have caused a problem.
Still kind of seems like it did.
Despite the man’s injury and demand for answers, Roman didn’t really have it in him to give a shit at the moment. “How about you tell me what the fuck happened here—where is she?”
Tripp—a trusted man close to one of his father’s spies for the organization—gritted his teeth, his only effort to keep his simmering anger at bay. It didn’t take very much to remind the man of his place, and exactly what he was supposed to be doing.
“I’m not sure,” the bull muttered, shrugging one shoulder. “Her carer—that other woman—is looking after her, I guess. Or, trying to keep her in check. The second she cut me, I figured that’s what would keep happening if I went within two feet of her again. Didn’t seem like a smart choice, all things considered, you know?”
Well ...
“Karine did this to you?” Roman asked, taking a cursory glance at the man’s wounded hand. He couldn’t see the injury, but the white towel soaked with bright red stains said the cut had been fairly deep to bleed as much as it had.
“You bet—I had no idea she had a knife shoved down the back of her pants.” Tripp was still doing his best to keep his facial expressions under control, but the sharp sarcasm couldn’t be missed. Clearly, he’d never been bested by a girl before—and certainly not by one who looked like her. “It’s been an interesting day.”
That nearly made Roman smile, but he caught himself just in time. Barely. The seriousness of the situation wasn’t lost on him—Katina was getting worse by way of making it even more difficult to manage her.
She was the only one he felt was a wild card. Not that he couldn’t trust her, necessarily, just that she worked for the benefit of one thing, and one thing only. Herself.
“What did you do to provoke her?”
That was the real question.
Or the right one.
The bull shook his head, the disbelief coloring his widening gaze leveling on Roman. “Man, I swear, they went down to the restaurant for breakfast. Both of them. I stood at a distance, like I was told, didn’t even say hello. Everything was fine until it seemed like they were having an argument. Shit got a little loud—well, Karine did. People at the other tables started to stare, and I stepped in to see if they would like to move the conversation elsewhere. It seemed like the best choice.”
Roman hands balled into fists at his side—another fucking mess to clean. A public incident wasn’t something they could afford at the moment. How many people saw—how much was this hotel damage going to cost him? His mind went through a million different issues while the bull continued speaking.
“And what the fuck is her name, anyway?” Tripp asked, arching a brow. “Because you told me Karine—just to know, right, not to use—but the woman kept calling her something different when they were downstairs.”
He opted not to respond to that, verbally or otherwise. This guy didn’t need to know about the inner workings of Karine’s mind, never mind her everyday life. Not that he had the answers to the questions that would come even if he did explain the different identities, either. That was half the problem.
Someone needed to explain this—to him, so he could understand, and more important, to Karine. This was her life. How had no one given her the tools to live it?
“You must have done something to provoke her,” Roman said, without inflection. “Something that made her attack you.”
The bull’s nostrils flared with a dark chuckle. “Let’s just say she doesn’t like being touched. I was just leading them back up to the suite, trying to get her into the elevator, the second my hand touched her back—”
“You touched her.”
Tripp heard the dark dip in Roman’s tone, and his throat bobbed with a hard swallow in reply. “She lost her shit. Like ... crazy, man. I’ve never seen someone flip so fast. And violent, she was—”
“I get it, Tripp.”
The bull quieted, then. There was a part of Roman that wanted to curl his hands around the man’s throat and force him to take back his words—the vicious side of himself that knew he could painfully explain to Tripp exactly what he had done wrong, here. The only thing worse than the sudden urge to do violence to a man who was only doing his job—without the info to properly do it, to be fair—was the fact Roman’s emotions drove him to feel that way in the first damn place. He wasn’t prepared for the way words cut into him when he heard someone bitch about Karine, or make comments that were insensitive, even if it was from ignorance.
Tripp had also made valid points about the way he did his job—it was the only thing that saved him from the violent thoughts spinning in Roman’s thoughts. That, and nothing else, though.
“Footage?” Roman asked, instead.
“I’ll have to look into it. I’m sure there are cameras in the restaurant, but money talks, bullshit walks,” the guy replied.
Right. Almost any mess could be cleaned for the right price. Except it was still one more thing for him to do, or make sure was done. New things were constantly being added to the ever-growing pile of responsibilities on Roman’s plate. Not that he had the time to worry about it.
From the corner of his eye, Roman noticed Masha appear at the end of the hallway.
“I’ll handle it from here,” he told the bull.
Tripp grumbled his way to the door, and stepped outside.
Roman turned
to Masha, and noticed the bloody towel in her hand.
“She really went for it this time, didn’t she,” he remarked to the trembling woman.
When Roman really thought about it, he understood her, actually.
Katina, not Masha.
He could understand why and when Katina made an appearance—it was every time Karine felt like she was losing control. She answered that removal of power with brilliant violence from a beautiful face. She was vulnerability in the flesh capable of causing the worst kind of trauma.
But just because he thought he understood a facet of Katina—well, that didn’t mean he had an overall picture. He had waited for the bull to leave the suite entirely before he spoke to Masha, but she still remained silent, even though she stared back at him.
He wondered, if like him, Masha had come to accept the reality, too—that the only thing they could expect from Katina was violence.
“When did she show up?” he asked, deciding each word he posed very carefully.
For good reason.
Roman suspected a lot of things about Masha, but one of them actually worked to her favor ... even if it didn’t entirely work to his. Like the fact he believed she was loyal to Karine—probably even loved her—but that didn’t mean she cared about what happened to the rest of them.
Masha’s wet stare and sniffles gave away her emotions—beyond the scared and shocked she should be, there was something else. Sadness. Guilt.
“Do you feel it’s your responsibility to keep them under control?” he asked, then, as Masha chose to remain silent.
She did answer, finally.
But only to say, “Soon after you left. She was upset you had left—abandonment is her worst fear, do you understand?”
Roman opened his mouth to respond, but Masha cut in quickly, her voice still soft and mindful, but firm all the same. “No, I don’t think you do ... even if you do mean her well, I don’t truly think you do understand what it is like—to be the one person who knows that if you don’t help her, no one will—but you’re getting a taste.”
He eased his attitude.
But not by much.
“What happened, then?”
