Luka put his arm behind him to fortify his resolve with her presence, and she grabbed his hand. With her strength, he spoke calmly. “You will get nothing from me. You died the day you shot my mother.”
Damir flinched, the first signs of guilt twisting with his anger to leave a sad, pathetic shell. His voice quivered. “I loved her, Luka. You will never understand how much I loved her, but our tempers get the better of us. You understand this? I’ve seen your anger.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t understand anger that destroys people we love, yet you’ve experienced it so many times, you don’t understand the loss it brings to you. You have nothing.”
Luka and Damir stared at each other. The waves continued to crash against the sand and a few gulls flew low over the water in search of their breakfast. The beach was waking up, with more people and families coming to the water’s edge to begin their day with a walk, laughing and holding hands.
“Papa,” said Luka, his voice husky. “If you’ve ever cared for me, if you’ve ever wanted to do the right thing and allow me some semblance of peace after years of living with your terror, you’ll leave. Now. Give me your word you will never come near any of us again. Allow Pavel to run his businesses and allow me to move forward.”
“Without my protection,” said Damir, “your businesses will fold. You don’t have what you need to survive. You need me.”
“For my sons and for our future,” Pavel said with a shrug, “I will take that chance. I am also our father’s son, Damir, and I have a tenacity you’ve never respected. I won’t fight you for the St. Petersburg trade routes, but don’t assume that you’ve won them, either. My men are loyal to me in ways you will never understand.”
Damir looked from Pavel and his sons to Luka and Mia, his anger subsiding until there was nothing left. “Please, Papa,” Luka begged. “Just leave. I do not now, nor will I ever want, to see you in my life. If you don’t do this for me, do it for my mother. You know this is what she would want.”
His father nodded, leaving them on the deck without saying goodbye, but it wasn’t until they heard the sound of the engine in the front yard that Pavel motioned to the window. Zoya fled to Pavel’s arms. She was followed by two burly security guards who must have shown up during the fracas, but, of course, Pavel would have directed them to protect Zoya. Slavic began to speak to Damir’s men whose lives had been forever changed by a business decision that took place before breakfast, and Anton sat on the back steps in a fog with Yuri by his side, gently patting his shoulder as a brother would do to comfort another.
“I don’t understand, Luka,” said Mia. “Is he gone? Is he coming back?”
In the last fourteen hours, Luka’s entire world had been altered. His father may be gone, but Luka’s most important job was to keep her safe, yet he’d failed her, just like he’d failed Ana and his mother. Filled with danger, anger, deception, betrayal, and treachery, his past would never change, and he had no right to bring her into a world where wives and little sisters were the casualty of a war nobody wanted to win.
“Koshka,” he said, keeping his tone even while looking for the honesty she would need to move forward. “I need you to go home, without me, I know this is too soon, but after today, I’ve realized I can never offer you what you need. I never should have brought you this far.”
“But... but not yet,” she stammered, pulling at his arm to try to get him to hold her. “I’m not ready. You told me I would have you to the end of the summer. I... I can’t do this, not now. Not today.”
“Anton,” he said, pulling his arm away from her. “Can you get her home, for me, please, and see she is settled?”
Anton nodded, but a stunned Mia stood there until her temper took off. She poked her finger into his chest. “No. No fucking way. This isn’t how this is going to end. For once you are going to fucking listen to me.”
“Hush, koshka,” he said, rubbing his finger along her cheek. He’d hurt her, but she would be safe from him and his world of pain. “Do what you are told, one last time. For me, please. I’m sorry, for everything.”
From the first day they’d met, her power and her submission were the two characteristics that had defined her in his mind, but he’d missed the most important attribute she possessed. It was her pride that had given him the gift of sassy responses and casual wit, creating the strength to finish school, change her life, and make peace with her past while moving forward to meet her lofty goals.
Bringing her chin forward, she set her shoulders back, defeating the last of her beautiful submissiveness and taking the smile from her eyes. “You don’t owe me an apology,” she said, “and I’m nobody’s fucking victim. You’ve been clear from the beginning this was a limited relationship, and I’ve known since the day I was born that love wasn’t going to find me. There are no perfect fairy tale endings, and the only people who survive are the ones who make their own way, establish their own rules, and everybody else can fuck themselves.”
“You are not destined to a life without love,” he said softly. “I love you, and I always will. Be happy, my koshka.”
Mia slapped him, hard, across his face with a loud, stinging crack that burned his bare skin. She stared at him with disgust and hatred raging in her beautiful brown eyes. Luka touched his cheek, embracing the pain as the only sensation he could accept without breaking down. He turned and walked to his car, driving away from everything and everybody in Brighton Beach.
Chapter Nineteen
She lasted for three days alone in her little house after a reluctant Anton left her standing in her living room. Collapsed on the couch to avoid the pretty bedroom upstairs that had too many memories of their time together, she called off work and didn’t dress, shower, or even answer her cell. She slept for hours, a foggy, exhausting rest that failed to give her any strength to move forward, and she ate little.
On the fourth day, her mother showed up at her back door. Joy took one look at her stricken face and embraced her without asking any questions. “Come on, honey,” she said with a sigh. “You were too good for him.”
Joy packed her a bag and took her back to the trailer where Mia spent the next week. During the day, she hid in one of the back bedrooms away from her chattering family, but at night, she lay awake for hours on the fold-out couch in the living room, curled next to her mother to listen to the nighttime frogs sing to her through the open window.
Ten days after he’d left her standing on the deck in Brighton Beach, Mia sat in the beat-up recliner that had been part of Joy’s house for as long as she could remember. “Thanks for being here, Mom,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what I would have done without you, but I’m out of vacation and it’s time for me to go home. Maybe, if you aren’t too busy, could you take me car shopping? I still have his cash and should be able to get something decent.”
“I’m glad to see you showing signs of life,” said Joy. “It’s time to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Spend his money on a car or anything else you want, but don’t keep looking at that phone waiting for him to call. Have the cell phone company give you a new number under your name, and you’ll cut him off completely.”
“You’re right,” said Mia, dropping the phone on the table. “I’ll be fine, really. I am made of stronger stuff, it’s just that...”
She’d spent so many days in a haze that she’d forgotten to cry, and her eyes filled with tears. Joy pulled her into her arms and rubbed her shoulders while the sobbing took over. “It hurts,” her mother murmured, kissing the top of her head. “I know it hurts, baby.”
Joy gave her as much time as she needed until the tears slowed, leaving her weak and washed out, but Mia recognized it was a low point from which she would move forward. She grabbed a tissue and wiped her eyes, and Joy spoke with a teasing smile. “And you do need to go home, girl, because I’m trying to get rid of my kids, not take them back. With you and Robbie finally out of here, I’ve just got to get these girls grown, and I’ll be living the empty-nest dr
eam. Can you imagine a world with all the beds made and no towels on the bathroom floor?”
“Really?” Mia asked, giving her a mock look of disbelief. “Because somebody once told me you don’t stop worrying about your kids just because they’re grown up.” She changed her tone to an evil hiss. “You’ll never get rid of us, my pretty. We’ll be like the zombie apocalypse, haunting you all the way to the nursing home.”
Joy was laughing when Rosie came in the front door. Pointing over her shoulder, she said, “Hey, Mia, I think your boyfriend’s back, and he’s got all sorts of stuff with him.”
“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” groaned Joy in disbelief. “He’s got the worst timing in the world. Don’t fall for this shit, Mia. You’ve come a long way without him.”
Shock didn’t even come close to describing how she felt, but she went to the window to see Luka pulling packages, balloons, and flowers out of the back of an unfamiliar black Jeep. Dressed in sneakers, jeans, and a bright orange t-shirt, he was about as casually dressed as she’d ever seen him. He’d cut his hair too, cropped closer to his ears to defeat a few of his dark curls and his beard was that perfect stage of scruffy.
“He may be a son-of-a-bitch,” muttered Joy, “but damn, is he hot.”
“Oh, my God,” Mia said, holding her head. “You have no shame.”
“I said, he’s cute.” Joy held out her hands in defense. “I’m not hitting on him, for God’s sake. What kind of person do you think I am?”
Trying to avoid being spotted, both women pulled away from the window to stare at each other, but before they could stop her, Rosie opened the door with a smile, flinging herself into his arms. “I missed you, Luka,” she said happily. “I’m sorry you and Mia had a fight, but I’m glad you came back.”
His physical size and brightly colored balloons took up the lion’s share of the small living room. He set his many packages on the floor, and Karrie came from the bedroom, staring at him in distrust. “What the hell is he doing here?”
Rosie evaluated her family’s closed, angry faces and drew close to tears when she realized she’d misjudged his welcome, but nobody looked more miserable than Luka. “Is there someplace we can talk?” He used his flowers to push aside the balloons in a futile effort to make eye contact with her. “Privately.”
“Are you an idiot?” Mia asked. “What you see around here is pretty much what you get, and it’s starting to rain outside.”
“In that case, where is Robbie?” he grumbled. “We may as well have the whole family here to witness this.”
“He’s at work, and thank you for getting him that job, but how did you even know I was here?”
“What makes you think I had anything to do with getting him a job? And you still have my cell phone, so I didn’t really need any covert skills to track you down.” He pointed at Joy. “Besides, she called me, too.”
Mia shot Joy a death stare, but Joy snapped, “You’re the one who left their cell phone lying around. I just called to tell him he was a fucking piece of shit and somebody should kick his ass.” She thought for a second or two before having the decency to look guilty. “I may have had said, you know, something about you sitting on my couch with a broken heart.”
Balancing the two of them took a strength she didn’t have at that moment, but she turned to Luka and willed her tone to remain professional. “Robbie got a phone call from a Russian building contractor in Rochester offering him a job without an interview. Do you think I’m that stupid not to figure out that you set that up?”
“No, koshka,” he said seriously. “I do not.”
Koshka. It had been days since she had thought of herself as koshka, a totally different woman than the one who’d sobbed on her mother’s shoulder. The memory sapped some of her strength, and she rubbed the tension out of her eyes.
Joy pulled her into a hug, and Karrie came to her other side while Rosie stood between her and Luka, her little, tenacious family building a wall of protection around her. “Look, asshat,” said Rosie. “Why don’t you just leave? It’s pretty clear you aren’t wanted here.”
“It appears I will be doing this in front of an audience,” he said with a sigh. “Mia, you told me once that I wasn’t romantic—”
“I actually told you that many times,” she corrected.
He glowered a little. “Yes, you’ve told me many times that I wasn’t romantic, so I decided to fix that.” He reached around her twelve-year-old bodyguard to give her the flowers and balloons. “I made many mistakes. Everything. Dictating our relationship without speaking to you. Not understanding your needs. Putting you in a position where you didn’t think you could talk to me. I made the money a symbol of my needs, and I never helped you understand what it was doing to you. I didn’t share with you the depths of my grief over my mother’s death and the loss of my sister, making it impossible for you to understand why I struggled to offer you my whole self. I didn’t share with you the details of my business, so you had to make up incorrect facts to fill in the gaps. I didn’t explain to you my fears over my father’s ability to hurt you. All of it, koshka. I made a mistake over all of it.”
He stopped speaking, counting off with his finger like he was trying to remember if he’d left anything out of his carefully planned speech. The four of them stared at him with open mouths, but Karrie finally quipped, “Wow, if you’d screwed up that bad with me, I’d have left you, too.”
“She didn’t leave me,” said Luka. “The biggest mistake of my life was chasing her away, and I want her back.” He waited for a few uncomfortable seconds before adding, “And just in case you are wondering, I am asking, not demanding.”
“You sent me away,” Mia said. “You just sent me away like I meant nothing to you.”
“I did send you away,” he admitted, “and I was wrong. But I sent you away because you meant everything to me, and I thought I was protecting you from everything that ever hurt me. I spent a week hiding out at some hotel in the city before I returned to Brighton Beach to give Pavel back his car, and Zoya tore me apart. I didn’t know she could swear like that. She called me a dramatic, egotistical narcissist.”
Luka scratched the back of his head. “I didn’t know what all of those words meant, but when I looked them up, it wasn’t very nice. And she told me it would take more than an apology to win you back, so I used Google to find out what men do after they were assholes.”
Going through his reusable shopping bag, he pulled out a huge box of chocolates and a bottle of wine she knew cost a fortune. At the bottom of the bag, he had a package of generic chocolate chip cookies. “I didn’t know which one you would appreciate the most,” he said miserably.
“I’ll take the chocolates if you don’t want them,” said Rosie.
“Shush,” said Joy, tapping Rosie on the shoulder.
“Does this qualify as romantic, yet?” he asked. “Because I have one more thing, if all of this wasn’t enough.” Out of the cardboard box, he retrieved a wicker basket with a tiny kitten settled into a soft blanket. The almost white baby had a hint of yellow in her long, fluffy fur, and she took that moment to mew pitifully, looking for somebody to hold her in her frightening new world.
“Koshka,” Mia murmured, her sisters giving up their protective stand to gush over the tiny thing. Mia gently lifted the kitten out of her basket to snuggle her next to her cheek. “She needs a name,” said Mia, scratching the kitten behind the ears until she started to purr. “What should I call her?”
Luka showed her a few scratches on the back of his hand. “Killer. Scar. Terminator. All of them would fit. I told you cats didn’t understand the rules. Is there something in here that does it for me? Because I’m running out of options.”
“What’s not to like?” asked Mia as the kitten’s rough little tongue began to lick her face, “and you probably could have had me at the balloons.”
“That’s almost an old movie line,” he said seriously. “Zoya made me watch like five of them before I cam
e out here. She said I needed training.”
“Remind me to thank her,” she said, choking a little on the tears.
“If it isn’t enough, koshka,” said Luka seriously, “there is one more gesture, but this was my idea and not Zoya’s and I picked it out all by myself. There is a surprise for you around Cat Kong’s neck.”
Mia ran her hand around the kitten’s collar to find something hard. Separating the thick fur, she found a large sapphire ring surrounded by diamonds.
“Will you marry me?” he asked, getting down on one knee. “I don’t want to live my life without you.”
Her mother and the girls stared at her and nobody spoke until Rosie said, “You’re supposed to answer him, Mia, but I think you get to keep the cat even if you say no.”
“Yes, Luka. Dammit, I will marry you,” she said, pulling Rosie next to her. “This does it.”
“Good,” he said with a sigh, “because the next step was to start demanding.”
Joy pushed the two girls toward the door. “Okay, you two. Let’s go. We’re out of here.”
“Where?” Karrie protested, still eating his candy. “Things are just getting interesting.”
“I don’t know,” said Joy, grabbing her bag. “Let’s go school shopping or something. Anything to give them a little privacy to sort this thing out, because God alone only knows they’re going to need a lot of sorting time.”
“School shopping?” Luka raised an eyebrow and turned to Karrie. “I understand this is like a rite of passage for the month of August?”
“Well, yeah,” said Karrie, like he was some sort of an idiot. “I’m going to high school this year. It’s a big deal. You can’t look like an eighth grader.”
“And you, Rosie, this is important to you?”
“I’m going to seventh grade,” she said with a tilt of her chin and a touch of sass that reminded him of Mia. “They change classes every eighty-five minutes, and no teacher even walks you!”
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