It was a habit that they’d been beginning to develop. Whenever she felt apprehensive, or worried about him, she would rest her palm in that same spot, feeling his heart beat beneath her touch. It especially helped on the days she remembered trying to staunch the flow of blood.
“I told you, I’m fine.” He kept one hand holding hers, the other going to her breasts, slowly drawing the suds away with a sweep of his hand. “You worry too much.”
“No, it’s weird that you don’t worry about all of this,” she replied. “Are you forgetting that I watched you get shot?”
“It was bound to happen.”
“Mish!”
He shrugged. “It’s the truth. Besides, we have more important things to worry about at the moment.”
She moved to her knees in the water though her lower half stayed submerged beneath the surface. Soap suds and water slowly drifted down the front of her body, revealing more of what he had been longing to see. His eyes drank her in, his tongue sweeping out to slide along his lower lip. The temperature in the already warm bathroom skyrocketed.
“Like what?”
He visibly swallowed as he reached out, tracing his fingers from one hip, along her lower stomach, to the other hip and back again.
“I promised him,” he said absently, his gaze rapt on what he was doing to her, and her reaction to him, “that if you had so much as a bruise, I would make him pay.”
Her laugh was cut short when his hand drifted lower, his blue gaze immediately lifting to her face. He always wanted to watch her respond to him, easily reading even the slightest expression on her face. She was lucky to have him as her first, and more than glad that he would be her last.
“And what do you think now?” She asked breathlessly, shivering as his fingers moved up her inner thigh.
“As beautiful as you were.”
“I don’t think you’re allowed yet,” Lauren said breathlessly, sighing from his touch.
He didn’t give a response besides dipping his hand beneath the surface of the water, then back up, brushing the back of his fingers along her throat, down to the center of her chest. She more than willingly spread her thighs for him, knowing that despite her protests, she wanted this just as badly as he did.
But just as quickly as she’d acquired it, her control slipped away, and now he possessed the power.
He was still sitting some distance away, but without him having to ask, she moved as close as she could, practically leaning over the edge of the tub, wrapping her fingers around the edge to keep her balance.
Lauren could barely think straight as his fingers pushed in and out of her, let alone kiss him back, but he didn’t seem to mind, murmuring words in Russian against her lips, his other hand keeping hold of her hair, holding her where he wanted.
He didn’t stop, not when she was crying his name, panting softly as she came down, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
She saw the fire in his eyes, the passion he only let her see. Unbidden, a smile broke out on her face as he easily swept her out of the tub and towards their bedroom.
“I don’t think your doctor would approve, Mish,” she said with a giggle though she wasn’t helping matters much as she tightened her legs around his waist, loving the way he groaned as he squeezed her thigh.
“Have I ever cared?” He asked making quick work of his clothes after dropping her on the bed.
Mishca stood in front of her, proud, his need for her evident in the tautness of every one of his muscles.
“No,” she replied reaching for him. “No, you haven’t.”
Now that the threat of the mercenary was no longer hanging over them, Mishca was back at his office, doing what he did best. He hadn’t even made a big fuss about Klaus being there alone with her.
The door was slightly cracked when Lauren approached it, open wide enough for her to see inside. Her fist was raised, and she had every intention of knocking, but when she caught sight of Klaus on the other side, she froze.
She was used to seeing Mishca without clothes on, but at the sight of Klaus’ bare chest, she felt ill.
There were scars everywhere.
She was baffled, seeing the stars that were so proudly done on his chest because she knew they weren’t meant to be there, but more importantly, they appeared to have been mutilated, like someone sliced through them multiple times and on different occasions.
If it were Mishca, she might have wondered who had done it to him, but with Klaus, she wondered if he had done it to himself.
Klaus looked up, as though sensing her presence, meeting her eyes for half a second before giving her his back, grabbing his shirt from the bed. In the brief time it took for him to don the garment, she tried counting the long, jagged scars across his back. Now those, he couldn’t have done those to himself.
What the hell had he been through?
After his shirt was on, he pulled on a beanie, covering his hair—a habit Lauren noticed after the few times she’d been in his presence. He seemed to have a thing about letting his hair hang.
More noticeably, however, there was a brand on the nape of his neck, that of a triangle with a line going through it. Lauren wanted to ask what it meant, but she doubted he would be willing to tell her.
“Something I can do for you?” He asked, grabbing a bottle from his duffle, walking towards her
“Oh,” Lauren said shrugging, stepping back out of his way. “Just checking on you.”
His brow lifted as he moved past her, pulling the door shut behind him. She couldn’t get upset, especially when it did appear as though she were spying on him. It was clear that Klaus valued his privacy.
While they weren’t necessarily friendly, Klaus was nice enough when they were alone on the rare occasion. It didn’t surprise her that she still didn’t know much about him—he hardly ever talked about himself—but that didn’t stop her from being curious about him, and the anger he felt towards Mishca. She’d head Mishca’s side, what little of it he shared, and since heh ad said that it wasn’t his story to tell, the best person to ask was right in front of her.
“Can I ask you a question without you getting angry?” She called, trailing behind him.
He smiled sarcastically, waving her on. “I’m always angry, ask anyway.”
“Who is Sarah? You mentioned her at the hospital…”
He stopped moving altogether as he looked at her, but there wasn’t anger like she was used to, there was…nothing. It was like he had shut down every emotion, his face carefully blank.
“Worried your Russian had a thing for her? Ease your mind, he didn’t.”
“But you did,” Lauren stated, drawing her legs up in the chair, wrapping her arms around them. “You said you weren’t angry with Mishca because of what happened to you, but because of what happened to her?”
“And did you ever think that it wasn’t any of your business?” He asked evenly.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“Like that’ll make you back off,” he muttered looking out at the night through the windows behind him.
In that moment, he looked tired, that carefully placed mask of bitterness and contempt gone. He ran his fingers through his hair, glaring at nothing as he pulled that beanie away. She had noticed that since he was letting his hair grow out, he grew more agitated with it.
“She was my girlfriend. Sarah Moore. I’d known her all my life and we’d been together in high school.” He smiled, just a brief lift of his mouth before it faded. “For graduation, I wanted to take her to New York—it was all she ever talked about at the time.”
He looked back at Lauren. “I didn’t come from a rich family. I worked my ass off for a year to afford that trip, but it was worth it, just seeing the smile on her face when I showed her the tickets. I didn’t understand it at the time, but my mom didn’t want me to go, never gave me an explanation…just, ‘don’t go.’ What did I do? I went anyway.
“There we were, acting like
fucking tourists in the middle of the city, not a care in the world because we had each other.” His expression changed then, vulnerable to closed off in a heartbeat. “We got lost over in Hell’s Kitchen. It was late, no damn taxis anywhere. Then, out of the blue, a dark van skids to a stop beside us, three guys in ski masks jumping out.”
Lauren didn’t have to visualize what he was saying, she had experienced it. She also didn’t miss that all throughout his story, Klaus always referred to Sarah in the past tense.
“I tried to fight them off, but they fucking tasered me, throwing us both in the back. When I finally came round, we were tied up in that building.” He laughed, shaking his head though she doubted he found any of it funny. “I stupidly thought they wanted money, probably thought we were a couple of rich brats. I begged and pleaded with them to let us go, that we didn’t have anything. Do you know what they said?”
Lauren shook her head.
“They didn’t say anything. Jetmir—you remember him?—he punched me in the face. That was what he did any time I tried to speak that first night, but I kept talking because as long as they were hitting me, they would leave Sarah alone. Hours passed before they even told me why we were there. They wanted to know where the Bratva was storing their weapons.”
“Jetmir mistook you for Mishca,” Lauren said, remembering what Mishca had told her.
“I didn’t even know what a Bratva was, but they didn’t believe me. So every day, for five days, they tortured me, and when that didn’t work, they hit Sarah. I would have told them anything they wanted to know, but I had no clue. Then, on the last day, they were tired of my games. They wanted to teach me the errors of my ways by lying to them…so they killed Sarah, right in front of me.”
Klaus was repeatedly flexing his hand, the tendons across the back of it standing out. “But they didn’t have to do that. They didn’t have to kill her if they would have just taken my shirt off. They waited until after Sarah was murdered to look for the most obvious answer.”
He fisted the bottom of his shirt, dragging it up. Up close, the scars looked far worse. Some looked like bite marks, others were long slashes like old knife wounds.
More importantly, he was showing her his stars. Looking at them, Lauren could feel the phantom pain of the needle digging into her skin when she got her own.
“I didn’t have the fucking stars. Oh, I have them now,” he said when he noticed Lauren looking at them. “I got them as a reminder to who I was. I wanted to look at them for the rest of my life”
Swallowing, Lauren looked away. “What did they do once they figured it out?”
“It was too late by then, they were going to kill me anyway, but before we even got to that point, I begged them to kill me, to end my suffering because in my mind, I was weak. The love of my life was dead across from me and I did nothing to save her.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Klaus,” Lauren said quietly. “You were a victim too.”
“A victim, right. Well after that night, I promised myself I would never be a victim again. Your precious Russian showed up after they had left for a few hours, cut me free. Imagine my fucking shock when I saw his pale ass staring back at me.”
“They’re why you became a mercenary?”
He opened his mouth, ready to answer, but his phone chimed, cutting him off. Looking at the screen, he climbed to his feet. “Story time will have to wait.”
“Wait, where are you going?”
He wrenched the door open. “Some of us actually work for a living.”
“You know,” Lauren called after him. “If you gave half as much effort in being nice as you put into being an ass, I think you would be a pretty cool guy.”
“And where’s the fun in that?”
Klaus, Mishca, and Lauren were all sitting in a room together, discussing the night with the mercenary when Klaus’ phone chimed. Silence fell over them as they all just looked at the phone, though Lauren’s gaze often flickered to Mishca.
It was the phone call they had been waiting for from Klaus contact, Celt. Mishca had automatically assumed it was Jetmir wanting revenge or Brahim, and that theory was plausible, but Lauren doubted it. She felt as though Jetmir would have wanted to do it up close and personal as opposed to contracting it out. But for this reason, she was also afraid to know who had actually paid for the job. Either way, it was someone close to Mishca, and that was only going to piss him off more.
With a shrug, Klaus finally answered, and during his rather brief conversation, his face never gave anything away, Lauren worried what he was being told. When he hung up, he stared at the phone for a while, tapping his finger against it.
At first, Lauren didn’t understand why he was hesitating, he had always been so blunt in the past, no matter what it was about.
“Celt was able to track the account where the payment came from…” He trailed off, scratching at his facial hair.
“Did you get a name?” Mishca asked.
“Your sister.”
There was that split moment of utter disbelief hanging between them, but Lauren couldn’t—or wouldn’t—believe for a second that Alex would do something like that.
Even Klaus was a bit reluctant to jump to conclusions. “Information could’ve been fixed.”
“And your contact wouldn’t have found that?” Mishca went on, his tone dangerously calm.
It didn’t help that at that moment, they heard Alex’s voice in the living room, raised as she was yelling something at Luka.
“I think you should calm down,” Lauren said as she reached for Mishca’s hand.
But Mishca was already out of his seat, pulling the door open so hard it cracked against the wall, effectively claiming the attention of everyone in their living room. Lauren hurried out after him—Klaus staying exactly where he was—she hoped to calm him before he did something he would later regret.
Alex had a smile on her face at first, one that seemed permanently placed there since she and Lauren had come to terms with what happened before. Slowly, as Mishca stormed towards her, that smile fell.
“What happened when I took you to see Anya?” Mishca asked and Lauren could see the fear in his eyes that no one else could.
She didn’t know much about the politics of the Bratva, but she could take a stab in the dark as to what it would mean if Alex was behind the mercenary that was hired.
Viktor was a testament to that fact.
Mishca wasn’t like Mikhail, he wasn’t as cold-hearted as he pretended to be, but when it came to Lauren, sometimes he failed to see reason. Sometimes, Lauren loved that about him—like when he was going up against the Albanians—but not when it meant he would have to hurt his sister.
Slowly, it would eat at him until there was nothing left.
No matter what Alex said, no matter her reasons, Lauren wouldn’t let anything happen to her, not just because she wanted to save her, but because she needed to save Mishca as well.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Alex asked, immediately going on the defensive.
Like Lauren, she wasn’t effected by Mishca’s anger, and would happily snap back at him, but this was not a good time for her to challenge him
“What did she tell you to do?” Mishca asked again, his tone shifting from concerned older brother to pissed off Bratva Captain.
When she still refused to answer him, he began speaking in rapid French so only she could understand him, and whatever he snapped at her seemed to work.
The sarcasm bled out of Alex as she faced her brother, and for the first time in a long time, Alex looked her age. She’d grown up around the Vory v Zakone and knew their rules and how they treated anyone they thought disrespected them. She had no choice in the matter, she had to tell the truth.
“Mish, it’s not what you think.”
His eyes were cold, burning with fury. “Then explain.”
“Mum didn’t mean—”
Grabbing the closest thing to him—which happened to be a vase full of flowers
—Mishca hurled it across the room, making Alex yelp in fright and Luka and Lauren move closer to them.
Except, Lauren was going towards Mishca while it looked like Luka was more concerned with Alex.
“Anya told me to kill her,” Alex said in a low voice.
Lauren blinked in surprise, but still grabbed Mishca’s arm in case he made a move towards her. Whatever his reasons, he allowed it. Despite what Klaus had said, Lauren still had her doubts about Alex’s involvement. Even now, even after what she had just heard, she refused to believe it.
“And you didn’t think to tell me about this?” Mishca asked. “Is that what bothered you after you left?”
“It wasn’t like she could do anything,” Alex rushed to explain. “Hell, she was exiled with Mikhail’s guards on her all day.”
“And did you help her escape?”
Before she could answer, Lauren spoke up. “What are you talking about?”
They both ignored her, too focused on each other to pay attention to anyone else. “Is that the only reason?” Mishca questioned. “Your feelings towards Lauren were quite clear at the time.”
“I wouldn’t do that!” Alex shouted sounding like a frightened little girl as she turned pleading eyes to Lauren, hoping that she would understand.
“Mishca, stop,” Lauren said forcing him to look at her. He was out of control and she didn’t like it.
The words were softly spoken, meant only for him to hear. It didn’t matter how Alex had acted in the past, Lauren could see it in her face that she hadn’t planned this.
But it didn’t matter what Lauren was saying now, Alex’s gaze was back on Mishca, that fear that had been present in her eyes slowly disappearing as anger took its place.
“Don’t make me force you out of here,” Mishca warned, the threat clear in his eyes. He turned away, effectively dismissing her for the time being.
Whether she was tired of being blamed, or felt offended that Mishca had thought it was her in the first place, she began laying into him. “Yea, I was pissed at the time, but guess what, I told her no. Not just because I didn’t want Lauren to die, but because I knew what it would do to you! You think I would do that to you of all people?”
The Final Hour Page 18
