He searched her face, memorizing every detail as if he might not get to hold her like this again after today. His mortality and hers had slammed into him today. There were no guarantees.
Too many people were after them. There was only the here and now, and he intended to make the most of it without running through all the possible scenarios that could have happened when she’d made that decision to follow Belinda.
“I know. Please. Don’t do that again.”
“I won’t.” She sighed. “Maybe I changed things. Maybe Belinda wouldn’t be alive if I hadn’t been there?” And then she sucked in a sharp sob. “Then again, two men died. Maybe I killed them.”
“Honey, those men were not good people.”
“I know, but they were humans. I didn’t like pulling that trigger, and I’m glad I had no skills and missed. Someone else shot that guy on the porch.” She shuddered in his arms.
“You scared me to death. Do you get that? You scared your brother. Everyone.” He flattened his hands on the door at the sides of her face.
She winced. “I simply acted. I didn’t have much time to make a decision.”
“You should have called me. Taylor was in the clinic. And Leo. And Katie. It’s not that big of a place.”
“They weren’t around. Belinda was already heading down the street when I realized what she’d done. I had seconds.”
“The FBI could have followed her. Or Leo. Not you.”
Her shoulders dipped. “I’m sorry. I know. It wasn’t one of my finest decisions. But I knew what Belinda was thinking. She was scared for her cousin. She felt responsible for putting her family in danger. There was no way the FBI was going to let her trade herself for Rena.” She swallowed. “Belinda needed backup.”
“Not you, Alena. God, not you.” He needed her to see reason.
She nodded. “I know.”
He sighed. “Are you going to run off half-cocked every time I leave you alone?”
“No. I swear. That was awful. My gun-toting days are over.”
He watched her face for several seconds.
She shifted her weight from one leg to the other.
He let go of her face bent his head down. “Let me see your leg.” She had on sweatpants that weren’t hers. “Come on.” He lifted her into his arms as if she weren’t able to walk on her own and headed toward her bedroom. At the hallway, he flipped off the lights for the great room.
In a few long strides, he was at her door, nudging it open with his hip and moving toward her bed. He settled her on the edge and reached over to flip on the lamp.
She bit her lower lip as she stared up at him. “It’s not that bad.”
“Uh-huh.” No matter what she said, he wasn’t going to rest until he saw for himself. He’d had more cuts and scrapes and stitches in his own body in this lifetime to know how serious a wound was. It was the nature of his career.
He also knew injuries on other people were more severe than on him or any of the other fighters.
And he was acutely aware Alena hadn’t received the same weird injections as a young child that would help her heal quicker than other humans.
He reached for the hem of her sweatpants and hauled them over her hips as she lifted slightly to help.
The bandage was large. He fought the urge to gasp. If this damn gunshot wound was worse than anyone played it off to be all day, he would kill them all with his bare hands.
While he tried to catch his breath, she grabbed his forearm. “Ivan, it’s not that bad. Just a graze.” She peeled the corner of tape holding the gauze for him and pulled it away.
An angry red wound came into view, but he sighed in relief. It wasn’t large, and it was very clean. It showed no signs of infection.
He leaned down and kissed the area around it and then took the corner of the bandage from her and gently sealed it back into place.
While she stared at him, he hauled her shirt over her head and then continued to undress her, popping the clasp of her bra and lowering her to the mattress so he could ease her panties down over her hips. He was careful to avoid the bandage and not cause her pain.
It wasn’t that he intended to have sex with her. She would be exhausted, and her leg had to hurt. But he also hated that she wore borrowed clothes. It was bad enough her hair didn’t smell right. He at least wanted her in bed next to him wearing something he was familiar with.
At the last second, instead of rummaging through her drawers to pick something out, he hauled his own T-shirt over his head, pulled her to sitting, and slid it down her arms.
It was late. Really late. He had to fight tomorrow night—if he could pull his shit together enough to accomplish that. He needed the money. They needed the money.
He tugged back the comforter, helped her slide under the sheets, and then shrugged out of his jeans to climb in next to her. He wore only his boxers. She wore his shirt. He hauled her back to his chest and wrapped an arm around her middle.
When he tipped his head into her hair again and inhaled, he could smell her under the foreign shampoo. Alena. She was under there. It annoyed him she’d taken a shower somewhere else with the wrong soap, but he had her in his arms now.
She was alive. She was okay. She was his.
As she relaxed in his arms, he held her tighter and whispered in her ear. “I love you, Alena.”
Several seconds went by. He was sure she was asleep. And then she surprised him. “I love you too, Ivan. I’m okay. I’m right here. I’ve never wanted to be anyplace else but here.”
He let himself relax into her pillow and closed his eyes, but if she thought he would release her during the night, she was crazy.
»»•««
Fedor took the call from his boss and held the phone a few inches from his ear to avoid the shouting coming through the phone.
Vadim winced next to him.
The director of the FSB was livid. “You’re telling me Alena Dudko walked right out the door of that clinic yesterday and neither of you managed to pick her up? I need that woman. Yesterday. Not tomorrow. Yesterday.”
“I’m aware of that, sir. But snagging her is not going to be easy. The last thing we want to do is alert the FBI to our presence. I’m not convinced they aren’t aware we’re here as it is.”
“They might know, but they can’t be certain, or they would have picked you up for questioning already. Look, this is a matter of national security. We’ve spent a lot of time and money to find that woman after the fucking Americans stole her right out from under us last year. I want her back, and the FBI or the CIA or whoever else was involved in taking her from us can go fuck themselves.”
Fedor flinched. He’d been on this case for years. He knew all the ins and outs of it. Every fucking detail. He didn’t need his boss to point that out.
However, at this point he was beginning to wonder what the director’s motives were. In the six months they’d held Alena in Siberia, she’d been of no use to them. If she had been injected with the same thing Anton Yenin was trying to recreate, no one in the FSB had been able to prove it. They had studied her blood work repeatedly for months. Nothing.
The FSB had been working for over twenty years with incomplete data. For one thing, Yenin himself had stolen every file he could get his hands on when the government fell in 1991. There had been almost no backup system.
For another thing, the original records that listed which children received the experimental drug from which orphanage were missing. Anton and his father had taken the lists of children with them. No one was sure how many children, who were now adults, had received the experimental drug. And the FSB had no idea where to locate them. Except the six on Yenin’s radar, and possibly Alena Dudko.
Alena had undoubtedly been on the original list of children scheduled to receive the experimental drug. But had she gotten the injections? No one knew. The medical staff working for the FSB had no idea what they were looking for when they studied Alena’s blood last year.
If Fedor w
as honest with himself, he would have to say she probably had nothing unusual in her system. But that had been a year ago. They needed to know if her blood samples would be different now.
Why? Because there was no telling what Anton Yenin had managed to do to her in the last year. Anything was possible. Fedor and his partner had only arrived weeks ago. Even though Alena was heavily guarded by both the Russian fighters and the FBI, no one from the FSB knew for sure if she had ever been in Yenin’s hands. Or hell, Yenin could have sent someone into her apartment at any point in the last year and injected her with his experimental drug without snatching her.
The FSB needed their hands on Alena Dudko. Stat.
»»•««
Anton stepped into Jorge’s office and leaned his butt against the counter where the man was currently looking through a microscope. “Need answers, Montego.”
Jorge lifted his face, a frown marring his features. “Sorry, boss. You haven’t had Hepatitis A. I’m not sure why you’d want to inject yourself with your own drug yet, anyway. It’s not proven. Your own father died trying it out, and he’d had Hep A.
“Just because two subjects we’ve tested had positive results doesn’t mean a third will. And I don’t understand why on earth you’d want the next guinea pig to be you.”
Anton didn’t expect Jorge to understand. It was none of his business. Grigory Yenin didn’t die from the shot alone. The man had ALS. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Genetic testing had proven Anton also carried the gene. Jorge didn’t know that. It was none of his business. The last thing Anton wanted was for anyone to perceive him as weak.
No. That wasn’t true. The last thing Anton wanted was to die of the same horrific disease as his father. Years of suffering while his body gave out on him slowly. Anton would rather die himself now than go through that pain.
They’d built an empire together. They had millions from drug trafficking alone. But what did all that matter if he was going to slowly die from the degeneration of the motor neurons? He knew all the terminology by now. He also knew his clock was ticking. Loudly.
“Boss?” Jorge jerked Anton from his reverie.
“I need Hep A antibodies and fast. Would an immunization work?”
“No idea, sir. Potentially. But it’s impossible to say if the antibodies created from having the illness would react the same as antibodies obtained from an immunization.”
“But it’s a shot. The only one I have.”
Jorge nodded. “A long shot.”
Anton shoved off the counter and walked toward the door. “Thanks, Montego. Keep working.” He was torn. His plate was full. There were dozens of unanswered messages from his father’s accountant and his right-hand man, Viktor. People were waiting on Anton to make decisions.
His liaison with the FBI seemed to have vanished overnight. Were Dayton and Millings killed yesterday? That seemed unlikely. Which meant they had either been caught or they had intentionally stopped communicating with Anton.
Neither option sat well. If those assholes breathed a single word about Anton’s project…
Anton climbed the stairs leading to his second-story office overlooking the lab. He pulled his phone from his pocket as he sat heavily on his chair. The call he made was to Winston Florence. He tapped a pencil on his desk while it rang.
Florence and Anton went back nearly twenty years. He was Grigory’s age, and the two of them had met in a gambling hall soon after Grigory and Anton moved to the US. Grigory spent the first several months networking at every possible location. Winston Florence had been one of his best connections.
When Anton first met the guy, he had his doubts. The man looked like he ran a drug ring, and he undoubtedly did. He was tall and built with a gut that always stuck out. He wore an expensive three-piece suit every single day, commanding attention. He dripped with gold jewelry that was almost gaudy.
Winston’s hair was bleached blond, and his dark tan was fake. As far as Anton knew, the man spent his days gambling. And he always won. It had been Winston who taught Grigory, and later Anton, how to hide his money off shore.
Anton owed the man for everything he’d taught Anton and his father, and nobody wanted to find themselves owing Winston Florence—ever. But Anton wasn’t most people. Winston had always treated him like a son. He would never require payment for services.
And the man had connections. Everywhere. Connections Anton was sorely lacking in Chicago where so many of his men had been killed lately. But the best part? Winston had been living in Chicago for a decade.
Winston picked up on the third ring. “Yenin. Long time no word. So sorry to hear about your father. Couldn’t make it to New York for the funeral. Too much on my plate in Chicago this week.”
“Thank you.”
“What’s up?”
“Need a favor.”
“Might be able to help you, depending on the favor.”
“I seem to have a hard time holding on to good men this week. You got anyone you could spare to do some sleuthing for me tonight?”
“What’s this entail?”
“There’s a fight in the city. I’ll send you the address. Need to know who’s there and who’s not.”
“Sounds simple enough. You got a list with pics?”
“Yep. I’ll pop all the info over to you now.”
“I’ll get someone on it.”
“Excellent. And Winston?”
“Yes?”
“Pick someone nobody in the city would recognize. And make sure the guy keeps his nose down and doesn’t get caught.”
“How long do we go back, Yenin?”
Anton chuckled.
“That’s right. If you don’t think all that goes without saying, you don’t know me at all.” He ended the call, leaving Anton to stare at the phone in his hand.
He was aware several of his old fighters were on the schedule for tonight. The question was who else would show their faces at the speakeasy, and how much of an entourage did they have trailing them?
He knew the FBI would be stepping up their game after the last few debacles, but what about the FSB? What did those fuckers want after all these years?
Chapter Nineteen
Alena stood on her tiptoes, trying to see through the crowded room. At five two, it didn’t help any. She was too short. If she’d worn heels, maybe. But Ivan had growled at her and demanded she wear jeans, a thick sweater, and tennis shoes.
She looked ridiculous in her opinion, but she hadn’t wanted to argue with him and add stress to his evening. He looked pale at the thought of separating from her for the duration of the fight. Even though it was her own brother at her side, that wasn’t quite good enough for Ivan.
Her thigh was well bandaged under the denim, but the pressure was keeping her aware of the wound on her leg. A skirt would have been better, but there was no way in hell she was going to argue that point with Ivan.
And the shoes? He probably visualized the possibility of her needing to run at some point.
The sweater made her smile. That was his way of keeping anyone from bothering to look at her. Her cleavage, and indeed her entire chest, was so completely covered as to be indistinguishable.
The roar of the crowd made the hairs on her arms stand on end. Every time one of the guys fought, she got nervous, but when Ivan fought, it was worse.
He bounced around inside the cage while the announcer introduced him and his opponent.
“Ivan ‘The Dominator’ Belinsky…” the man began in a booming voice.
Alena squeezed Mikhail’s arm so hard it should have hurt.
When he grunted, she shot him a glare. “What?”
He held Haley tight against his chest with an arm around her waist, but he wiggled his other arm out of her grasp and tugged her against his side until his mouth was near her ear. “I’m still getting used to the idea of you with Ivan.”
She really didn’t want to have this conversation with her brother here in this noisy speakeasy while Ivan was two secon
ds from fighting, but she also couldn’t ignore her brother’s blatant acknowledgement. “You need to get used to it.” She shrugged like it was no big deal.
He narrowed his gaze further. “Do I? Is it serious, Alena?”
“Yeah.” She glared at him again. “Can we not discuss this right now?”
“I don’t think so.” He shook his head. “Now’s the best time, actually. I have you trapped with me here. You can’t walk away rolling your eyes.”
Haley slapped Mikhail on the chest. “Don’t torture her. She’s a grown woman. Leave her alone.”
Mikhail squeezed Haley tighter, but he also ignored her and continued to stare at Alena.
She grew restless under his scrutiny as if he were her father, and probably in the absence of her father, he felt the need to take on that role and protect her.
“I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“You’ve already said that. Several times. And like Haley said, Mikhail, I’m a grown woman. Twenty-eight. You can’t protect me from everything. I might make mistakes. I might get hurt. Lots of things could happen. But you have to let me make my own decisions. And I’m happy with Ivan.”
He lifted a brow and then licked his lips. “I’ve known Ivan for twelve years. He’s a brother to me. And I trust him with my life. Just like I would all the guys. I just want you to be sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“You aren’t just lusting after him because you’re trapped in that apartment alone with him every day and night? Because I’m going to feel like a total shit if your relationship was caused by my absence and then it goes badly.”
She shook her head, anxious to put an end to this conversation before Ivan started fighting any second now. “Mikhail, stop it. This has nothing to do with any circumstances. It would have happened no matter what. I’m in love with him.”
He sucked in a sharp breath. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
Haley reached out to wrap her arm around Alena and give her an awkward side squeeze. “I’m so happy for you, Alena. I can see the excitement in your eyes. You’ve picked a good man. Congratulations.”
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