by Renee Rose
I glance at Oleg for his agreement. Of course, as usual, nothing shows on his face, so I make the decision for him. “Yeah, that would be great.”
Oleg takes a step but loses his balance, throwing a hand out to catch the chair, which he nearly knocks over.
Natasha stumbles back into Dima, who catches her with an arm around her waist and a hand at her hip.
“Little help,” I call out, ducking under Oleg’s arm to support his massive body, but he recovers his balance on his own. I notice Dima hasn’t released Natasha yet. He lowers his head as if to kiss the top of hers or smell her hair but stops an inch away. His lids droop like having his hands on her is an unexpected pleasure. He doesn’t release her until she turns into him, blushing, and mumbles something I don’t understand. It sounded like, “Spasibo.”
Interesting. Someone has a crush.
“Are you Russian, too?” I ask as I follow her out the door. Dima holds it open then leads the way down the hall, as if we needed an escort.
“Yes,” she smiles.
“Is everyone in this building Russian?” I say it as a joke, but Natasha nods, smiling.
“Yes. That’s why it’s known as the Kremlin. Ravil only rents to Russians and at rates we wouldn’t find anywhere in the city.” She throws a grateful glance over her shoulder at Ravil, who has left the office behind us. “He takes care of his own.”
He takes care of his own. Yes, like any mafia leader. He’s mild-mannered, but I could tell by the tension in Oleg when he questioned him, that he respects and holds his boss in high regard. Ravil wields his power quietly.
They’re killers, all of them. Dangerous men in dangerous business. I keep trying to shove that into a box and forget it, but there’s an anxiety gnawing in the background. I have a high threshold for trauma and chaos, but this is all starting to get to me. My compartmentalizing skills are starting to fray.
As we walk, I notice Oleg favors his leg a bit. He’s not limping, but there’s a stiffening through his trunk when he walks on it. Christ, why didn’t I notice sooner that he hasn’t healed? There’s been so much to decipher and interpret and try to understand since he brought me here. I feel way out of my depth with all of it.
I squeeze his hand, and he looks down at me. It’s faint—barely perceptible—but I see the shadow of a smile at the corners of his lips.
I don’t want to think about where this is going. How close I’m starting to feel with him because I need to brace against this becoming anything real. I can’t start to believe this is going to last. It can’t. He’s Russian mafiya. I’m allergic to relationships. This can’t work.
Still, that ghost of a smile produces that same swirling warmth I always felt as Saturdays approached, and I knew he’d be there to watch me. Up for anything I threw his way—standing on his table. Climbing on his shoulders. Making him catch me as I dead-dropped off the stage.
We pass through the living room and kitchen toward Oleg’s room. Dima is still with us, leading the way. “So, what’s your connection here?” Natasha asks, which I realize is a nice way of asking who I am. I never introduced myself.
“I’m Story. A friend of Oleg’s.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“You, too.”
Dima opens the door and steps inside. We all follow, but Oleg hesitates, standing in the middle of his room.
“Pants off, big guy,” I tell him. He toes off his boots and unbuttons his jeans.
“Oh, um. Where is the wound?” Natasha asks.
Dima steps closer like he’s going to shield her from any unwanted peen if it gets flashed.
Oleg sways on his feet again, and I move in to help him carefully get his jeans down over his wound and then sit down.
For fuck’s sake. The bandage is soaked with yellow and red, and when Natasha kneels beside him and gently peels it back, we both gasp. The edges of the wound are swollen and angry, and puss is coming out of it. I look away, suddenly nauseated.
“Okay, wow. Definitely infected. Give him one of those antibiotics for starters.” Natasha indicates the bottle I’m holding.
I jump into action. “Right. Oh my God.” My hands shake as I pry it open.
Dima leaves and returns with a glass of water, which he hands to Oleg, who throws the pill back and swallows.
“I’m going to go downstairs and make a poultice. Do you have hydrogen peroxide you can pour over the wound?” Natasha stands.
I look at Dima who nods. “I’ll get it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t feeling well?” I demand.
Oleg pulls me around to his other side and sits me on his good knee.
“Oh my God! I was sitting on your wound!”
He shakes his head.
“No? You could die from an infection like this. What if you have MRSA? I should have taken you to the hospital when it happened.”
Oleg shakes his head lightly and closes his eyes.
“Oleg?”
His eyes open, and he stares back at me.
“You’ve probably been feeling miserable this whole time. Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shakes his head.
“You have to start communicating with me.”
“I can help with that.” Dima reappears with the hydrogen peroxide and a washcloth. He also carries a tablet, which he hands to Oleg. “I have you all set up, my man.” He touches the screen, which reveals a keyboard with the Russian alphabet. “You type in here, it spits out the English for Story. It can even speak it aloud although I didn’t find a voice with a Russian accent.” Dima grins.
I pour the hydrogen peroxide liberally over Oleg’s wound, catching the drips with the washcloth. I suck in a breath when it bubbles and hisses over the open wound.
Oleg types something with his forefinger. He’s slow. I imagine his large finger makes it harder.
“Hit that to make it speak aloud.” Dima points at the screen.
An Australian-accented male voice says, “Don’t worry about me, swallow.”
I meet his eye. “What was swallow in Russian?” I ask.
Oleg looks down at the screen, like he’s not sure how to reverse the language, but Dima answers for him. “Lastochka. Is that what he calls you? I can set that word not to translate, if it’s your pet name.” He picks up the tablet and types something in.
Natasha reappears and doctors the wound with a poultice, and then she and Dima leave us alone.
Oleg falls back on the bed. I curl into his side, resting my head on his shoulder. He looks at me and points at my chest then at his own.
“I belong to you?”
A tiny smile appears. I didn’t get it right, but he likes my interpretation. He nods.
“Oleg, I—”
He stops my words with a finger on my lips then repeats the gesture, reversing it.
“You belong to me?” His lips tip up again. He nods.
I can’t stop staring at him. He looks so transformed with the small smile. Much younger. So warm.
He belongs to me. One part of me wants to reject that gift. Because believing it’s something I can count on is irrational. I know love doesn’t last. People don’t stick. We just do the best they can as we all muddle through life.
That’s what Oleg and I are doing right now. And it’s a precious moment, despite—no, because of the drama surrounding it.
I want to believe what he’s telling me. That this sturdy, steady man will always be there for me. Always and forever. Something I’ve never had with anyone in my life.
Maybe it could really be true.
Chapter 10
Oleg
I pass out for the rest of the afternoon, falling in and out of feverish dreams. The worst kind—the type that picks up right where real life left off, so I can’t be sure if they’re really happening or not. I know Natasha came back to check on my wound and change the poultice. Dima stood behind her like her bodyguard. Or maybe that was a dream, too.
In one dream, Story walks out of the
Kremlin while I’m asleep, and the bearded asshole from Rue’s guns her down in cold blood.
In another, Skal’pel’ operates on her, removing her tongue, too, so she can never sing again.
Then he’s here in my bedroom with a gun on her. I jerk awake, a hoarse cry coming from my lips. I lunge for my gun in my nightstand.
“Hey.” Story’s voice cuts across the room. “Are you okay?” She’s curled up in a chair by the big windows, her guitar across her thighs.
I release my grip on the gun before she can see it, my pulse racing. Blyad’. What if I’d pointed it at her before I got my head on straight? The thought does nothing to calm my pounding heart.
Story puts the guitar down and comes to the bed. She has a way of moving that’s more childlike than sultry-woman. She skips steps. Leaps onto the bed with a bounce instead of crawling. It’s part of what makes her so fascinating to me. She yanks the covers back and tucks her legs into the bed to sit with me then shoves the iPad Dima brought me under my nose.
I stare at it for a moment, remembering what I’m supposed to be doing with it.
I had a bad dream, I type. The Australian mudak speaks the words to her.
“What about?” she asks.
I point at her. I dreamed he cut your tongue out, too.
Fuck. I feel so raw and exposed giving voice to my nightmare, but Story’s been demanding communication from me.
“Scalpel?” she asks.
I nod.
“What was he to you?” Her brown eyes search my face.
Damn. I haven’t told this story before, not that I ever talk about my past. But Story, of course, deserves to know. I frown over the letters, using both index fingers to hunt and peck.
When I was fourteen, my mother took a housekeeping job with a wealthy plastic surgeon named Andrusha Orlov. I sometimes helped my mother after school, and the doctor took a liking to me. He paid me to do odd jobs for him and took a fatherly role with me.
“Did you have a father?” Story asks, folding her slender legs underneath her to sit cross-legged.
I shake my head. I never knew him. He left when I was young.
“I’m sorry.”
I shrug. When I was seventeen, Dr. Orlov asked me if I wanted a job as his personal bodyguard. I was already almost this size. He had a security team, and the head of it was former military. He trained me to shoot a gun. To fight with my hands. He taught me seventy-two ways to kill a man.
I didn’t know why Orlov needed protection, but I didn’t care. I was getting paid more money than my mom made as his housekeeper and feeling like a man. As time continued, he took me to meetings he held with people in public restaurants or bars. I sat in on meetings where large sums of cash changed hands. Over the next five years, I witnessed more and more of Orlov’s identity-changing business.
Then things got too hot. The St. Petersburg bratva came after him when they got word he’d performed surgery on a man they wanted dead. I killed three men who showed up at his residence. It scared me.
I tried to quit. He persuaded me to stay just until he closed out his operation, changed his own identity and disappeared.
I stop typing. The rest of the story isn’t worth telling.
Story slips her hand in mine. “And he cut out your tongue to thank you.”
I rub my aching head and nod.
“Where’s your mom?” Story asks.
Pain stabs through my chest. My sweet, honest, hard-working mother. She lost her job and her son when Skal’pel’ left, I type.
“Does she know you’re alive?”
I rub my head again.
“Oleg?” Story leans her head forward to peek at my face.
I was too ashamed to see her again. I went straight from prison to Chicago. I needed a new start.
Story leans her head on my shoulder, curling her body against mine, her knees folding over the top of my thighs. “I hate what happened to you.” She sounds choked up.
I stroke her cheek, brushing her hair back over her ear. Dredging up my shitty past sucked, but now that it’s out—now that Story knows it and Ravil and Maxim know part of it—something that’s been blocked all these years has moved. I used my pain as a wall to keep everyone out. To keep myself out. I was half a man, barely living half a life.
I was missing far more than my tongue.
But now that wall is down. The path isn’t clear—far from it. There’s fucking rubble everywhere. But I’m willing to pick through it.
“You should contact your mom,” Story says, threading her fingers through mine. “I’ll bet she’s dying not knowing about you.”
My chest constricts, and I fight a lump in my throat. I nod my agreement.
“Speaking of moms, I need to call mine. She’s kind of a mess.” Story slips off the bed and retrieves her retro flip-phone.
I type on the iPad, What happened? It’s strange to have a real conversation with anyone, but Story makes it seem possible.
Story comes back to the bed and sits cross-legged again. “My mom suffers from depression. She’s amazing, but totally unreliable as a parent. I’m more the parent in the relationship. I mean, when things are good, she’s there for us—for me and Flynn and Dahlia, our baby sister. But her life is a rollercoaster of falling in love and then falling apart. And last time I talked to her, it seemed like things were going south with her boyfriend, Sam. I’m just going to check in with her.” Story dials a number on the phone while I type on the iPad.
“Hey, Mom. Just checking in. Give me a call when you get this.” Story closes the phone. “Voicemail.”
It was hard for you. I pass the iPad to Story. I’m sick of the Australian asshole speaking for me. I’d rather she just read it.
“It was okay. I felt loved. I just couldn’t rely on anyone.”
You can rely on me, I want to tell her, but I hold back. She’s skittish when it comes to commitment, and I’m in no position to push. Not when I can’t even keep her safe.
“My dad’s life was also pretty crazy with sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. Now I worry that Flynn’s going down that path, you know?” Her eyes shine with tears, which she blinks back. “But music is really the one thing we have. It’s what holds our family together, even though it’s not the most stable unifying force. I couldn't go to college because things were just too crazy with my mom being in and out of psychiatric care. I needed to stay home and make sure Flynn and Dahlia were okay. So my brother and I ended up in a band. Only Dahlia went to school.”
What else would you want to do? I type. If you could?
Story tosses her phone back in her purse. “I don’t know. I’ve never even thought about it. Maybe I would do nothing different. I love the band. And I like teaching guitar. I really do. It works, you know?”
I study her, trying to decipher whether there’s something hidden in there to decode, but my skills at conversation and women are so lacking, I can only take her words at face value.
I try again. What would you have studied if you’d gone to college?
“Probably something completely useless like French literature. Or Art History.” She shrugs and gives me an impish smile.
I fucking love this girl.
She touches the iPad. “I like talking to you.”
You’re mine for the next five days, I write. I don’t suggest anything more permanent, even though I don’t intend to give her up. Ever.
“I guess so. You’d better get better, so we can hang out. I mean, watching you sleep is fun and all, but…”
She wrenches a smile from me. The unfamiliar expression is happening more and more with her around.
I’m already better, I tell her although it’s not entirely true. My head aches, and I could probably fall back to sleep again in a heartbeat. Tomorrow I will wear you out.
She sucks in a breath and shoots an excited look at me. “Is that dirty talk?”
I nod, and her smile widens. “Oh my God, I can’t wait to hear all the filthy thoughts in that big head of
yours.”
I arch a brow. Careful what you wish for.
Story straddles my lap, grinding her warm core over my semi, turning it into a full-fledged boner. “How much better are you feeling?” she purrs.
Well enough to fuck the daylights out of you, shalun'ya, I type, using the non-translate feature on her other pet name, then toss the iPad aside and flip her to her back.
“I hope shalun'ya means something very naughty.” She tugs up my shirt.
I growl and claim her mouth, showing her exactly how I treat my little minx when she’s a bad girl.
Chapter 11
Oleg
I wake to find Story gone.
I fly out of the bed and pound down the hallway in my boxer briefs and t-shirt. The living room is bright with daylight.
Fuck. Did I lose time again? How much?
Vaguely, it comes back to me that I slept through the afternoon and evening. Story stayed with me, playing her guitar softly and moving about the room. I vaguely remember Sasha inviting her to eat—I don’t know if it was lunch or dinner. Maybe both.
That must’ve been yesterday.
“Hey, big guy. How are you feeling?” Nikolai asks from the couch. He’s eating donuts from a box on the coffee table.
I throw my arms in the air in frustration, demanding to know where Story went.
“Relax.” Maxim emerges from the kitchen drinking a glass of grapefruit juice. “Story’s up on the roof with Sasha.”
The roof. I shake my head, already reaching for the door.
“They’re safe up there—you think I would allow it if they weren’t? There’s no clear shot onto that roof from any direction. I promise.”
I relax my grip on the door handle slightly, debating if I should go put on pants before I storm up there, since it’s not an emergency, when I hear screams and the sound of bullets piercing metal from the rooftop.
Everyone in the penthouse flies into action. I fling open the door, running. The footsteps of my brothers pound behind me, Maxim at my neck. Pavel and Nikolai are further back, both with guns drawn. I take the stairs three at a time and throw open the door to the rooftop with a whack. Sasha and Story crouch together in the hot tub, covering their heads.
