by Bella Rose
“Was he telling the truth?” she whispered.
Her lips were so close to my cheek. I felt their softness and reveled in the knowledge that I would have another day, and another after that, all for my second chances with Anya. But for now, she was desperately trying to understand what had happened. So was I.
“We need a hospital,” I told her softly. “You need help.”
“I need help?” she snorted. “Have you looked at yourself in a mirror?”
“Shall we try to get up?” I wondered if that was even possible. Then it started raining again.
She was shivering. “We have to get moving.”
“Help me stand up.”
The two of us pushed, pulled, and yanked on each other as we struggled to our feet. Both of us wobbled. I was weaving as though drunk, and she had to help me hobble back down the street the way we came. We needed a car and then perhaps a doctor.
“I thought mafiya men didn’t go to hospital?” she teased.
I flashed her what I hoped was my charming smile. “When they’ve been blown up and stabbed, they sometimes do go to hospitals.”
“So basically as long as they haven’t been shot, since that would require a police report.”
“Exactly.” I loved the way her mind worked. “You’re certainly very quick.”
“What do you think my father will do about him?” She gestured behind us to the lifeless shape of Antonin. “If he’s my brother, doesn’t he deserve a funeral or something?”
I didn’t remind her that he had been insane. That was probably something she would never forget. “He doesn’t deserve your pity, sweetheart. But I’ll dispatch a couple of the men to collect the body if you’d like.”
“I would, thanks.”
We shuffled along amicably—slowly. I don’t know. It was all so damn jumbled in my head. Everything was surreal. I needed to make this right, and there was only one way to do it.
“Stop. Just stop right here.” I halted in the center of the street. “I need to tell you something.”
“You do?”
“I love you, Anya.” The words came out in a rush, all shoved together and difficult to understand. “What I meant was…”
“I love you too.”
It took me a moment to process what she’d said. “Love me. Wait. You? Love me?”
“Yes. I could never bear to go through that again without you knowing how I feel.” She touched my cheek. I didn’t even care that the contact burned my already charred skin.
“You’re mine and I’m yours,” she whispered. “The rest of it I think we can work out. Don’t you think?”
“Damn right I do.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Anya
If the doctors at the emergency room of St. Elizabeth’s thought we were idiots for checking ourselves out of there, they were smart enough not to say anything. Vasily had given them some bullshit about a small kitchen fire. Nobody believed him, but at least they didn’t call the cops. That would have been awkward. And considering how antsy we both were to get back to my father’s house, I don’t think that situation would have ended well. In fact, I’m pretty sure there would have been more gunfire and maybe more bodies. Of course shooting cops is tricky business, but I have faith in Vasily’s skills as an assassin and a negotiator.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
He gazed down at me. His face looked even more dramatic with the blood removed and only the bleak array of cuts and bruises decorating his strong jaw and elegant cheekbones. His nose had been broken, but he refused the bandages when they reset it, saying he’d broken it so many times now it no longer mattered.
I answered him readily. “I’m ready.”
I couldn’t have looked much better. I felt like my face was raw meat that had been beaten until tenderized. My eyes felt swollen, and it hurt to move my lips. Kissing the gorgeous man standing beside me was probably going to have to wait. That just made me mad at Antonin all over again.
One of my father’s lower-ranking soldiers answered the door. It was so late that the place had been locked down for the night. I don’t think Vasily or I particularly cared. Judging from the relief on the young man’s face, nobody else would either.
“Come in.” He gestured as he spoke in Russian. “The Pekhan has been waiting for you. He is in his office.”
Vasily very gently put my hand in the crook of his elbow and walked slowly and painfully toward the stairs. For some reason the same stairs I had climbed so many times now looked mammoth in size. I gripped Vasily tightly and struggled not to make a noise as we climbed each step one by one.
I think it took forever. Or at least it felt as though it took forever. Each agonizing lift of my knees made the burn marks across my thighs stretch painfully. Most of Vasily’s injuries were above the waist, but the piece of wood they had removed from his thigh no doubt made this trek almost unbearable.
We didn’t say anything though. I would never admit to weakness like that in my father’s house. We were both under scrutiny here. I had no idea what the future held. I didn’t want to be the mistress of this house or the wife of the new Pekhan, but at the end of the day that was not entirely my decision. Vasily had a right to be recognized for his worth. And my father had much to answer for.
Vasily banged on the office door. The noise seemed abrupt and loud in the still upstairs hallway. There were no other men hanging about. That wasn’t normal. At least not from what I could remember. There should have been guards. They should have been standing right here at the door, keeping anyone from bothering my father whether he was working or just dozing in his chair.
“What’s wrong?” Vasily whispered.
I couldn’t name my fear. “Something feels off.”
“Not long now.” He gently lifted my fingers to his lips. The gesture warmed my heart.
“Come in!” my father called through the door.
I shoved the door open and stepped into my father’s office. He was sitting behind his desk, and he looked awful. There were two bottles of vodka on the desk. One was empty and one was half-full. Obviously he’d been drinking to solve his problems.
“We came to see you, Papa,” I began lamely. “We wanted you to know that we’re okay.”
“I knew that,” he blustered. “You’re my daughter. You’re too stubborn to die.”
Okay. I was going to take that as a compliment and leave it. “Papa, Antonin is dead.”
Vasily picked up where I left off. “He told us that he was your son, Boris. Is it true?”
I had never seen my father’s face turn that particular shade of red. He looked as though he were going to have an aneurism or something equally horrible. It worried me. “Papa, are you all right? You look very bad.”
“You just shocked the hell out of me!” Boris blustered. “Of course I look bad.”
“You can’t tell me you didn’t know,” Vasily said sarcastically. “He claimed it was on his paperwork. You had all of that. You brought him over here. They would have given you his information. He was yours. Just admit it.”
“Fine!” Boris shouted. “I admit it! Is that what you want to hear?” He glared at me. “That your papa was a horny young man who could not keep himself from getting a young woman pregnant? I did not expect to find him in that orphanage. I did not even know that he was there. I tested him like any other boy, and he passed. Just as you did.” He gestured vaguely toward Vasily.
“He was angry because you did not let him inherit,” I told my father. “That’s what all of this was about. He just wanted someone to acknowledge him as your son.” I felt the rush of tears. “And now he’s gone.”
“Gone where?” Boris looked mystified.
“He was going to kill Anya,” Vasily said flatly. “I refused to let that happen.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I was the one who shot him. He was going to murder Vasily and keep me prisoner. I was just a way to get to you. He wanted your position, Papa.”
T
he horror on my father’s face was genuine, but then so was the guilt. Apparently Antonin had not been lying about his origins.
Vasily
There were so many aspects of this messed-up situation that made no sense, I could hardly name them all. But as I stared at Boris I realized that the old man knew far more than he would ever say. In fact, he knew everything we were telling him—probably had known. And yet he was not going to afford us the respect of telling us what was really going on.
That really pissed me off.
I put both my hands flat on his desktop and leaned in close. “You need to come clean. Now. Your bastard son just tried to marry your legitimate daughter in order to get control of the Romanov holdings. Why would you deny a son and claim a daughter that doesn’t even want the inheritance? It doesn’t make a damned bit of sense.”
“He was insane.” Boris finally threw up his hands and gestured wildly in the air. “Did you not see it? I thought when he was young that he could be helped. I thought that he could become my heir. I would eventually adopt him officially.”
I remembered Antonin when we were younger. “He was always brash and out of control,” I admitted. “But he had a good heart. I always thought his intentions ran along in the right direction.”
“Because you didn’t know about the rest!” Boris leaped up from his desk and began pacing the floor.
Anya watched her father, seemingly aghast at his behavior. I couldn’t blame her. If my parent suddenly started acting batshit crazy, I would have been concerned.
She seemed hesitant to speak. I didn’t have the same compunction. “Why didn’t you do anything? You let him become an Avtoritet. He was a leader. He led his men to their deaths tonight! He turned Romanov soldiers into traitors and led them to their deaths all because he made them believe that he was your true heir.” I don’t think I realized the truth of that until I spoke it. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. He was your true son, and they believed it. It caused a rift in our organization. Our brotherhood was compromised. What have you to say about that?”
Nothing. Boris said nothing. He just muttered to the floor and to the ceiling, as he lifted his eyes to the sky before lowering them back down as though he were praying. He kept repeating the words: “I never meant for this to happen.”
“I know you didn’t!” Anya burst out. “But it did! I don’t understand, Papa. He was your son?”
“I knew his mother. It was nothing like your mother,” he hastily assured Anya. “Antonin’s mother was a camp follower. She’d had every man in the Bratva and more.”
“So what if Antonin wasn’t your son?”
“Antonin took some of my personal things and had a DNA analysis done a few years back.”
“My God!” I could no longer hold back my outrage. Did Boris not understand that I would have helped him with this? He had been dealing with Antonin alone. He’d been hiding the truth from us all! “How could you not say anything? This man has been basically blackmailing you!”
“But it is over. Now you and Anya can take over the business, and I can retire.”
“What if we don’t want to take over the business,” Anya asked in an almost petulant tone of voice. “I left this life, Papa. I don’t want to come back.”
“You have no choice!” he snapped.
There was something wrong. I could not place what I was feeling, but I knew that Anya sensed it too. She was pushing on her father, but he wasn’t really pushing back. He was just arguing. He was ordering and making threats. That wasn’t like him. It bothered me.
Then Boris slumped down in his desk chair once more. He rummaged in the drawer on the right side of the desk and came up with a snub-nosed revolver.
“Boris,” I warned. “What are you doing?”
“I am old and tired.” He sounded every bit of it at the moment. But I didn’t like the way he was handling the gun at this moment. There was something off. “I want my daughter to marry you, Vasily. You will take good care of her when I am gone.”
“Papa, you’re not going anywhere,” Anya said with a twinge of exasperation, but I was afraid she was missing the point.
“I love you, Anya,” Boris told her softly. “You are a wonderful daughter. Any man would be proud to call you his offspring.”
“Papa, you’re scaring me.” Anya edged closer to the desk, and I wondered if she was going to dive across it. “Please? Won’t you put the gun down?”
“This?” Boris waved the weapon in the air. “No. I don’t think so. I think we need to have a chance in the family.”
“Boris, no.” I needed him to understand what this would do. “Not like this.”
He stared me right in the face. “You take care of her. No matter what happens. You put her first. Don’t be like me. Don’t prioritize backwards.”
“Boris, no!”
I knew it was coming, and still I could not stop it. Boris lifted the gun to his head and squeezed the trigger. The roaring sound of gunfire was nothing compared to the mess of blood and brains that spattered on his desk, the floor, and even the wall behind him.
There was a noise in the room. It took me a moment to realize that Anya was screaming. Her voice shredded my composure. She burst into tears and sank to the floor. With her head in her hands, she sobbed as though the world were ending. I could only look on and wonder what had gone so very wrong. This man had ended his life in front of my eyes, and I could do nothing but feel numb. It was all too much. I think I was getting tired of saying that.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Anya
Everything hurt. I don’t think I could even catalog the aches and pains that I was feeling. But all of that was physical. None of it really mattered. Nothing did. My papa was dead. I had never felt so much regret all at once. I hadn’t been close to him. I don’t think I ever had been. Mama had died when I was so young, and Papa had been so overbearing all the time. I think I fought him my whole life. Why had I done that? Why had I wasted so much time when I could have been using it for something good?
“Anya?”
Vasily’s voice was like a whisper in my mind. I knew he was there. I could sense him. I could smell him. The intense masculine scent of him was on my periphery. But I could not respond. I could only stare at my father’s lifeless body on the floor. He was partially concealed by his desk, but I could see his face. I could see his eyes. They were so empty. There was nothing remaining of the man I knew.
“Why?” I did not realize at first that I had spoken out loud. I didn’t know my lips would still work, that I could still talk. It felt as though I were in a coma.
“Anya, please? Let’s get you to your room. You need to lie down. We need to—to take care of your father.” Vasily grabbed me beneath my arms and dragged me to my feet.
My legs were jelly. I could not stand. I had no bones in my body. Everything felt dead. I felt dead. My father was dead. Everything was so insubstantial and confusing. Surely if I closed my eyes, when I woke up this would all be nothing but a horrible memory.
Vasily picked me up into his arms and carried me out of my father’s office. There were other men there—Romanov men. I recognized them. There were tears too. I heard shouts and agonized sounds of anguish. That was as it should be. These were my father’s men. They should be mourning him. Somehow my brain kept rejecting that idea though. My father could not be dead. Papa was just sleeping. It was a horrible, cruel joke. When I woke up in the morning, I would discover that it was all a hoax.
We entered my bedroom. It looked the same. Everything was the same. Papa had never changed it. I had been here only a week before. Was it a week? It seemed so long ago that Papa had told me I should take a semester away from my job and stay here so that he could keep me safe. Why had I refused? It would have been more time that I could have spent with him. I was a fool. There was so little time for the things that really mattered.
Vasily
Anya was in shock. I could see it in her eyes and feel it in her body. I
lay her down on her bed, and then I climbed up there beside her. We were both a mess. There was no other way to describe the mass of barely bandaged cuts, bruises, and lacerations that covered both our bodies from head to toe. This night had been hell, and now it had just gotten worse.
“Anya, Anya,” I whispered softly. I pressed my lips to her forehead and held her as close as I dared. She was cold. “It’s going to be all right, Anya.”
She didn’t speak. She hadn’t spoken a word since she had said “why” back in Boris’s office. I reached down and pulled up the blankets. Her body was cold to the touch. I had to get her warmed up, or things were going to get worse. I rubbed her arms as best I could without disturbing the bandages. She snuggled in closer to me. I considered that a good sign.
There was a knock at her door. I sighed. There was so much more going on right now. I had to remember that. “Who is it?” I called out.
“Sasha Nikolavich.”
“Come in.”
The young Avtoritet stuck his head into the bedroom. “How is Anya?”
“She’ll be fine.” I kept my voice calm and perfectly even. There was no need to stir up trouble within the ranks. “Did you need something?”
“Sir, the men are here. They’re asking questions. You have to say something.” Sasha cocked his head to one side. “They’re saying that Antonin is dead. They’re saying that he murdered the Orlov Pekhan and that we’re at war with the Orlovs.”
Oh yes. This was a mess all right. Shit! Damn you, Antonin! The man had an uncanny way of leaving a mess for others to clean up, even from the grave. I carefully extracted myself from Anya’s bed. I brushed a kiss over her forehead. I had to go smooth this over before the power keg blew wide open and there was nothing left of the Romanov organization left.
Sasha looked tense. “What are you going to say?”
