by Olivia Gates
“You almost did...”
“Almost doesn’t count. I couldn’t save Alex.”
She swallowed another red-hot shard of agony at the reminder. “What I mean is, how were you so close that you reached us so quickly?”
“My Black Castle headquarters, with my apartment above it, is half an hour’s drive from your labs. I came by helicopter.”
He’d been that close? She’d spent the past years thinking he’d returned to Russia, or was flitting around the world, never settling in one place like he’d once said he never would. Had he been that close all along? So near she could have stumbled upon him on the streets?
Maybe she had. Maybe it was why she’d always felt him around her. Maybe he’d crossed her path many times but had remained out of sight.
He went on. “On the way, I saw the GPS signals of your phones next to each other. My blood froze when I realized you were together when you’ve been working in different labs during this phase of the research.”
She nodded, stunned yet again at the extent of his knowledge of her and Alex’s routines and the latest developments in their research, not to mention his ability to track them with such pinpoint accuracy. “I had a feeling Alex wasn’t telling me something important about that emergency meeting so I went to him instead of going to my lab. To see if I could persuade him to let me join him.”
His nod was terse, bleak. “The moment I realized you were together, I knew it would be the perfect time for them to strike. I knew they’d assume what I did, that he’d taken you into his confidence and you had to be eliminated with him. I have no doubt they would have leveled the whole building to destroy all evidence had I not arrived when I had.”
The memories assaulted her, vivid and palpable. She choked as she felt as if she’d been thrown back into the horrifying moments all over again. “I’d just walked into his lab...and before I could say anything to him, they—they...”
Horror and agony filled her throat again, sealing it, cutting off her words, her breath. But she had to ask, had to know.
“I—I saw our attackers fall. Did you...?”
Ivan again looked as scary as he had during those moments when he’d swooped down on her and Alex. “I took care of them.”
“You k-killed them?”
Her answer was a terrifying flare in his eyes. Not only affirming that he had, but also telling her he wanted nothing more than to resurrect them so he could have the pleasure of killing them over and over, this time slowly, agonizingly.
This was an Ivan she hadn’t known, hadn’t dreamed existed. Not the virtuoso cyber entrepreneur or the dream lover. This was a seasoned warrior, a remorseless exterminator. It made her wonder again if she’d ever truly known him.
Not that seeing this lethal side to him upset or scared her. It didn’t even occur to her to be bothered about the illegality of his actions. He’d exacted immediate revenge that she considered just. Had she been able to, she would have done the same.
The need to know what else he’d done burned her. “What else did you do? Besides get us here?”
“I erased every sign of the attack.”
“You removed the bodies?”
His nod was so matter-of-fact it made her wonder how many times he’d been involved in situations like this. It seemed this man she was discovering she knew very little about had dealt with lethal scenarios so many times before, he’d developed an unblinking ability to take ruthless action and had all the resources in place to resolve any problem. She’d only heard about such power and abilities in spy and black ops thrillers. So who exactly was Ivan Konstantinov?
She prodded him for more details. “What did you do with them?”
Ferociousness simmered again in his eyes. “No need to concern yourself with them, ever again. No one will ever find them. Along with the evidence of what they did to you and Alex.” At her confused expression he continued. “To your colleagues and employers, Alex had to cancel the meeting as both he and you had to leave on emergency family business. To your families, you’re on sensitive, confidential work-related business that necessitated you leave immediately and remain out of contact until it’s over. I send them messages from both your phones regularly to reassure them.”
So he’d really covered every angle. Still, her breath came out in painful spurts as she imagined their families. Three weeks had passed since their abrupt disappearance. “They must still be going mad with worry.”
His frown darkened. “I know. I try my best to placate them but I can only postpone their devastation, as this served many purposes.”
Unable to contain her frustration anymore, she seethed. “What purposes? Why won’t you let me contact them? Why don’t you want the police involved even now? What—”
He cut off her agitated questions, his voice and gaze soothing, compelling. “Because I needed to keep the assassins’ masters in the dark about what happened until I dealt with them all.”
“That’s why you didn’t take us to a regular hospital and had Dr. Balducci take charge of us there?”
His eyes flooded with what looked like relief, that she’d reached that conclusion. “I couldn’t even take you to one of his publicly known medical facilities where you could have been seen and recognized. I had to make sure those involved in the crime would never pose danger to you or anyone of yours, or anyone at all, ever again.” At the fresh surge of tears in her eyes, he gritted his teeth again. “I know now I should have told you more of this sooner. But I still wouldn’t have let you contact your family. It would have placed them in danger if they’d learned any of it before I concluded everything.”
“And did you? Conclude everything?”
“I’m putting the finishing touches on it all today.”
This probably meant far worse than she, in her previously oblivious life, could imagine. Even now, she couldn’t speculate on what he was doing. But after finding out the truth of the big picture, she no longer wanted to know the details.
But one thing she did know—Ivan was unstoppable. Whatever it took to end this with no more damage or danger to her or any of Alex’s loved ones, he would do it. He’d already done it, was just wrapping up the loose ends now.
And no matter what he’d said, she was grateful, with all the ferocity of the agony and rage that were the only things fueling her will to live now.
He stood straighter, his eyes taking on a solemn cast. “Now you know. But there’s one thing more I need you to understand. You have nothing to fear anymore, Anastasia. Never again. I pledge it.”
His vow, along with the ramifications of his revelations, sank deep in her mind, drying her tears, stifling her agitation. She stared up at his hard, arresting face, and felt even more confusion and questions swamping her.
Years ago he’d been her lover, the embodiment of all her fantasies, the sum total of everything she could have never dreamed of. Then one day it was over. He’d said he was traveling on business. Then he’d never contacted her again.
The end had been so sudden she would have believed something terrible had happened to him if she hadn’t read about him in media sources that covered the rich and famous. It had forced her to stop her efforts to contact him after one unanswered try. For only one thing could explain his ending it like that. In their incendiary, if short-lived affair, all the passion and emotion had only been on her side.
Yet everything he’d been doing since the attack contradicted that assumption. None of that was the actions of a man who cared nothing for her, or for Alex, whom he’d cut off as well. Everything he’d told her proved he’d kept close tabs on her. He’d come to their rescue without a moment’s hesitation, and he continued to go to unimaginable lengths to eliminate any further danger to her and her family, and to avenge Alex. He’d been unwaveringly there for her through this ordeal, by her side from the moment he’d res
cued her.
It was beyond confusing. But she was also beyond attempting to make sense of it all.
She could do nothing but let him steer the situation as he saw fit. He had all the knowledge, and all the power, while she was demolished, fragile in body and psyche.
She nodded weakly, accepting his vow and admitting her need for his protection, then lowered her aching, trembling body back to a supine position.
“I know you don’t want thanks, Ivan, but you have mine. I’d do anything to repay you.” His growl started to interrupt her but she closed her eyes, aborting his exasperation. Before she let exhaustion drag her into nothingness again, she whispered one last thing. “Let me know when you decide it’s safe to contact our families.”
* * *
Ivan watched Anastasia’s breathing even out until it was the imperceptible movements that had at first sent him berserk, thinking it was a sign of deterioration.
But he’d been finding other things to compromise his sanity—her gemlike azure eyes, which had turned muddy, her peaches-and-cream complexion and even her long, thousand-hues golden hair that had become ashen, and her body, which had lost its lush curves and looked more fragile by the day.
But Antonio had kept assuring him she was getting better, and he’d been by her side day and night making sure she continued to do so, watching for every sliver of improvement.
Now the last words she’d said before she’d slipped back into oblivion reverberated in his head.
Our families.
She’d meant her and Alex’s families: their parents, Alex’s wife and children, and his in-laws, who were like a second family to both of them.
She couldn’t know one of those families was his, too.
Keeping that fact a secret, keeping away from that family, had been one of the two reasons he’d forced himself to walk away from her and Alex years ago. Though he’d told her a lot today, that was one revelation he was keeping to himself. As it was, what he’d revealed of the tragedy had hit her hard enough.
But she’d made him tell her. And soon the need to keep their families in the dark would be over and her family’s grief would only add to hers.
Dealing with the scum responsible for Alex’s murder had been the easy part of this disaster. The hard part—and what kept getting harder—was dealing with everything that concerned Anastasia. His dread for her. His inability to give her her life back, with her body intact and her brother alive. And the expectation that he’d soon have to relinquish her again.
But the hardest thing of all was her very nearness.
When he’d deprived himself of it seven years ago, he’d thought he’d eventually become numb to the loss. It had taken one look into her eyes, in those nightmarish moments when he’d thought he’d been too late to save her, to prove how wrong he had been.
He hadn’t been numb; he’d been shut down completely. It had been the only way to continue functioning. The injury of her loss, what he’d inflicted on himself, agonized and hardened him like none of the ordeals of his hellish past had. And that had been when she’d been alive and well. In the time he’d thought she might die, too, he’d known he wouldn’t survive losing her for real.
But he hadn’t lost her. Antonio had saved her.
At first he’d hidden Alex’s fate from her, and the details of what he’d done, in order to hide his true nature. Anastasia and Alex had known him as Ivan Konstantinov, not Wildcard, The Organization’s lethal mercenary with a body count that neither of them could have thought existed except in fictional tales or real-life stories of monsters.
But she’d insisted on seeing Alex until he had to tell her the truth. Watching her almost disintegrate with grief, he’d been grateful he hadn’t told her she’d only survived because of the liver transplant she’d gotten from Alex.
As it had turned out, he should have told her, not about the transplant, but about the rest. Now that she was privy to everything, she was letting him deal with everything as he saw fit. He should have trusted her then to make the rational decision. After all, the Anastasia he knew never let emotions interfere with pragmatic priorities.
When he’d walked away, she’d only tried to contact him once. When he’d made no response, she’d gone on with her life as if those magical weeks they’d shared hadn’t happened.
At first, instead of being relieved that his desertion hadn’t hurt her, that she’d decided to just move on, he’d hated it, had felt such contrary bitterness that had made him even more ruthless and cynical.
But he’d still been unable to stop watching her and Alex obsessively. And as time had gone by and she’d been too busy with her scientific studies and research career to move on, he’d felt perverse pleasure that she hadn’t replaced him. Even if she had, he still would have helped her. And he had, opening doors for her and Alex that would have remained closed otherwise. Their success had been deserved, but even in the world of science, it wasn’t always merit that saw someone get their dues. He’d seen to it that they did.
It had remained a struggle to keep away even when he’d believed her better off without him. He lived in fear his past would catch up with him and he’d place her and Alex in danger. That had been the main reason he’d walked away.
It was such tragic irony that when fatal danger had targeted her and Alex, it had had nothing to do with him.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Getting it out before the noise could wake her, he read the message he’d been waiting for. Fyodor, his right hand, affirming his latest move had been carried out.
Alex’s murderers had been neutralized.
There was no reason to put off contacting Anastasia’s and Alex’s families anymore.
Not that his reluctance had anything to do with caring what they would suffer once they knew the truth. If not for them being Alex’s family, if it wasn’t for them continuing to impact Anastasia’s life, he wouldn’t have considered them at all.
After all, they were the people who’d sent him to hell.
Two
“Don’t discharge her.”
Ivan blocked Antonio’s path in the deserted corridor, intercepting him on the way to Anastasia’s room.
His best friend’s turbid eyes clashed with his unwaveringly, in their depths things Ivan had never seen before. Not even during their worst days as The Organization’s captives and mercenaries.
Antonio had always been their brotherhood’s most sangfroid member, at times seeming inhuman in his ability to deal with any level of hardship or abuse with a level head and a cool smile. Even as his closest friend from childhood, who’d seen deeper into him than anyone else ever had, he’d never thought Antonio could feel like this, let alone be unable to hide it. Despondent, desperate, even a little unhinged.
But then what had seemed impossible had happened. Antonio had fallen in love. Violently, irrevocably. And Liliana, the woman who’d created a heart inside him to worship her with—in his friend’s own words—had discovered the truth. That he’d started their relationship as a plot to infiltrate their joint family, to destroy them from within. Liliana now believed he’d never loved her, had only proposed as means to an end. Devastated at the discovery, she’d run away from his efforts to explain...and she’d almost been fatally injured in doing so. After spiraling through ten different kinds of hell as he’d operated on her, too, he’d saved her life. But clearly, not her love. Liliana’s rejection seemed final.
Now Antonio, the surgeon with nerves of steel, was a total mess. Which could actually work to Ivan’s advantage right now.
The old Antonio, whose emotions never played a role in his actions and decisions, would have turned down his demand, since there was no medical merit to it. But Antonio the emotional volcano might sympathize with his plight and do what Ivan wanted.
And what he wanted was to postpone Anastasia rej
oining the world, and her family.
Shaking his head, Antonio said, “I have already kept her longer than necessary, to be on the safest side possible. There’s now no medical reason not to let her go back to her life.”
A shiver ran down Ivan’s spine. Antonio’s voice now was the scariest thing he’d ever heard. Such barely contained instability from the most controlled being he’d ever known.
He only hoped dragging Antonio into his own concerns would distract him from dwelling on his regrets and the loss of the woman who’d become his only reason for living.
“Listen, Tonio, I’m eternally grateful for what you’ve done for...Anastasia.” It was still hard to say her name, even to Antonio. He hadn’t told him a thing about her until she’d realized her surgeon didn’t even know her name and provided him with it. “I’m thankful that she has healed enough for you to think she should be discharged—” He grabbed Antonio’s arm when he turned away. “But I’m still demanding you don’t do it.”
Irritation flickered in Antonio’s eyes at Ivan’s detainment. “And you’re not going to give me a reason for your demand?”
Ivan’s fingers dug harder into Antonio’s steel arm in frustration. “My asking it should be reason enough for you.”
Antonio finally took exception to Ivan’s effort to coerce him, prying his hand off his arm with equal vehemence. “It was when you were asking me to help her. I didn’t need to know anything then. I was willing to wait forever for you to tell me why she and her brother were shot or who they are to you. But now you’re asking me to lie to her, to keep her here against her will.”
“Who says it would be against her will?”
“She does. She wants to leave.”
“She wants no such thing. And she certainly said nothing to you. I was there every second you were with her.”
A ghost of the teasing they’d always engaged in from childhood came into Antonio’s gaze. “Yeah, that you were. But I let you sit in during my checkups only as a courtesy to you as my best friend, against my professional and better judgment.” Any hint of that indulgence vanished, and he started moving past him. “So don’t push your luck, Ivan.”
