“Who did the call come from?” Sheppard asked.
Lucian spoke up. “I thought it only fair you have someone at your back since Alek is so well covered.”
“That mean I’m forgiven?” the attorney asked with a mildly hopeful note in his voice. The question clued them all into a history between the two. Lucian appeared not to have heard anyone speak, and Justin sighed and said to his brother, “I know you do business with Kirov and didn’t want to jeopardize that.”
“That’s business. You’re family.” Vex chopped him on the hip hard enough for it to have hurt. “And you better get your fuckin’ head out of that hole Dad’s wedged it in. You’re not in a fuckin’ courtroom where people have to play by the rules. This is real life. You lived it, for Christ’s sake. Did you forget that? You’re lucky you have this one in your corner.” He pointed his thumb at Lucian. “You are in his corner, right?” he said as an afterthought. “Because if you’re not, that speech was…what was that word?” he asked Vasily. “Redundant?” He nodded and turned back to Lucian. “You gonna make my shit redundant?”
Lucian gave Vasily a bland look. “So well named, this one.”
Vex smirked. Like Maks, the guy didn’t take things too seriously.
“The tension in this room leads me to believe we missed something monumental,” Lucian said as he stepped to the side and offered his hand and a mildly friendly expression to Sacha. “Lucian Fane. I remember meeting you, but it was some time ago.”
Sacha wiped her hand on her dress before shaking his. Her face was still tear-stained but diffident, proving she remembered who he was. “Sacha Urusski. Nice to see you again.”
Lucian’s smile became genuine, and he turned it on Vasily. “I hope this works out for you.” He nodded to Sorin and went for the door. “But I won’t pretend I’m not relieved this is your problem and not mine. Even though I am working on it for Markus, I still find all this emotion tedious as hell.” A low groan by the door said Markus was present, and that forced Lucian to clip on, “I hope no one takes offense to that.”
And if they did, who gave a fuck was what his bearing said as he paused in front of his little brother. The distance went out of his eyes, and a warm affection came through as he planted a kiss on Markus’s temple.
“Can you make dinner on Monday?”
Markus winced. “Monday isn’t good.”
“Wednesday?”
“I have tentative meetings scheduled in Houston mid-week.”
“Friday?” Lucian’s voice was going lower with each day he suggested.
“How about next Sunday?”
The Romanian turned and scowled at Alek as if he was at fault for Markus’s lack of availability.
“He makes his own schedule,” Alek muttered, wishing they’d all fuck off.
“Very well. Next Sunday. Shall I have Daria and Gheorghe join us?”
“No. Just you and me.”
“All right.” Lucian sounded surprised that Markus didn’t want their cousins included. Pleasantly surprised, even though they were all pretty close. “I look forward to it.”
“Markus.” Alek picked up Sacha’s purse that Maks had tossed onto a chair. He offered it to her, making her approach him to take it. “If you’d like to go, feel free. We’re heading out now, too.” As the seconds ticked by, the urgency crawling up his spine was growing. He had a child, and he wanted to meet her. The hows and whys could wait. “Thanks for your help tonight. And if you’d be so kind,” he said to Lucian. “Would you take the brothers with you? As you said, this is a family issue, and they’re no relation of mine.”
Lucian looked at Sacha. “Would you rather Justin stayed for moral support?”
She shook her head. “No, thank you. This is my issue, and I have brought him enough trouble.” She had the gall to go to the attorney after a quick glance at Alek, and give him a hug and what looked to be rather a sisterly kiss on the cheek. “I will call you tomorrow.”
“No, you won’t.”
Her head swung Alek’s way, her lips flattening. “Go. I will be fine,” she insisted to Sheppard when he snorted under his breath.
“I can stay. This isn’t trouble compared to where I’ve been.”
“Word,” Vex said under his breath.
Alek’s interest was piqued hearing that, even more so when Sacha frowned as if she didn’t understand what Sheppard was talking about. Had he not opened up to her? Told her about his past?
She shook her head. “Go.”
“Vex. Justin.” Lucian showed them the door. “Let’s not linger.”
Alek didn’t watch them leave, but he did hear Justin tell Sacha to get in touch when she could. In that moment, Alek knew the lawyer wasn’t in love with her. He might care for her, but he didn’t love her. Had he, both he and Alek would be bleeding by now.
Then he and Sacha were left with only Vasily, Maks, and Sydney.
Sacha came to him, her shoulders squared. “What will you do with me?” she asked outright.
An image of what he’d kill to do with her right then slammed into him. Oh, how he would punish her during the act.
He buried the thought. How the hell could he still want her in his bed after this? “I don’t know. My mind is changing by the minute. One thing is for certain, though.” He locked onto those glittering gold orbs and leaned in until he had a hell of a time blocking the toasted coconut and sun-drenched orchids that filled his head. “Your life as you know it is over. From this moment on…I own you.”
Footsteps preceded his uncle coming between Alek and his new possession. Mmm. Yes. She was all his, to do with as he pleased. Because if he knew Sacha, he knew there was nothing short of death that would separate her from any child of hers. And since their daughter—holy fucking shit—would never again be separated from Alek, neither would her mother.
“Get your disrespectful ass back,” his uncle gritted out. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” He waved Sydney forward. “Please take Sacha to the restroom. I’m sure she would like to splash some water on her face.” He quieted Sacha’s protest by shaking his head and pointing to the door. “Go with them,” he ordered Maks.
“Give me your phone before you do,” Alek said to Maks, taking the cell when it was handed over.
The second they were alone, Vasily started. “Why the fuck am I watching you disrespect her and our family name again? The last time, I’m ashamed to say I let it go. I can’t do that again. I don’t think you quite understand what you did to that girl the last time you were together, so let me paint a picture for you.”
He jerked a chair over. Alek shook his head. “Can’t sit.”
“Fine.” The chair was tossed across the room. It came to a stop with one of the legs imbedded in the wall. “Dmitri tracked her through the cab company she used when she left your home for the last time. She ended up at a small hotel just off the 59th Street Bridge.”
Alek knew that because Maks had found her in the same place.
“When she opened the door to me, I’ve never been so ashamed of my name, my gender; ashamed of the very genes we Tarasov men carry that make us treat the precious women in our lives with such cruelty. Sacha was a young, insecure girl who worshipped the goddamn ground you walked on in the most honest, open way. She was a pleasure to be around. Not that day.”
He jammed his hands into his pockets as he began pacing. “She stood in that grungy little room, shaking, her teeth chattering. She kept making these quiet, pained sounds. Her cheeks were raw from wiping at her tears, her eyes swollen. She looked as if she’d been mauled by death but hadn’t been lucky enough for him to finish the job.” He grimaced. “Polite as ever, she invited me in, and like an insensitive fool, I made the mistake of mentioning your name. She broke right in front of me. When she gathered her composure, I insulted the hell out of her by offering the only thing I could; money. A new start. She refused, and I walk away.”
Remorse clouded the room, coming from both of them. It subdued Vasily’s voice,
and tempered Alek’s anger. It forced him to see his part in all of this.
“It haunts me that I left a young girl with no father, no male figure to stand for her. I have stepped in and supported so many in her shoes, young men and women who come to the U.S. without their families. Yet the one who loved you almost as much as I do, I walked away from and left her to her agony. I should have tried harder to convince her to let me help. She had no one, and, because I became wrapped up in your pain, that’s who I left her with. No one.”
“Not true.”
Vasily turned from where he’d ended up at the far wall, and Alek could plainly see the guilt ravaging him was most definitely about more than just Sacha.
With his temples throbbing because he wasn’t sure anymore if he had a right to the anger burning through him, Alek brought Maks’s phone over and handed it to his uncle.
“She wasn’t alone.”
SIXTEEN
“No, I was not alone. I gave birth to Alekzander’s daughter in April of this year.”
Vasily looked up from the records he’d just read through for the third time to see Sacha alone in the doorway. He was shell-shocked. It was funny how certain things still had the ability to do that. Sacha pulling off something like this? Staggering. And to learn of it after his impassioned speech that had portrayed her as a meek little victim? He might now have to accept that was something Alek’s woman was not.
He wasn’t sure if he should be proud of her or pissed at himself for misjudging her so badly.
A baby? A little girl? Holy shit. It didn’t surprise him in the least when euphoria swept through him to overshadow everything else.
He held it off and gave his attention to his nephew’s not-so-meek girlfriend. Likely due to nerves, Sacha reverted to Russian when she spoke, her gaze fearful but steady as she owned up to stealing who was essentially Vasily’s granddaughter. He listened to the baby’s mother with a lump the size of a melon lodged in his throat.
“Her name is Alekzandra Liliya Urusski. I deliberately kept her a secret after I walked in on her father in a…compromising position. He told me a few minutes ago that he set that up, and why, and I believe him. But that does not change the fact that he broke me when I saw…what I saw. I had planned to tell him about his daughter, but the chance was taken from me. I will now do anything to make up for the time I stole from him. And you,” she added quickly. “Anything but be separated from my child. Please, do what you will, but do not take my life away by taking my daughter from me. That would not only punish me, but it would hurt her because I am all she has known since she was born.”
“If you think to separate her from her child, I will stand before her and do what I must to make sure that does not happen.”
They all turned to find Dmitri standing in the doorway, his gunmetal eyes furious as he looked between Vasily and Alek.
A nerve had been struck.
Vasily took no offense to the aggression pulsing from his byki. He knew a situation like this would always trigger the man’s protective instincts more than any other. Vasily dealt with that first by going over and offering a quiet reassurance that no one had any intention of separating Sacha and her daughter. Hell, Vasily was already planning which rooms in his house would work best for the new family of three.
The speeding tic in Dmitri’s jaw was a good indication of what he was seeing in his mind’s eye. His mother and sister being torn apart, screaming and crying with their arms outstretched, reaching, before being silenced with two well-aimed bullets.
“I will not separate them,” Vasily stressed. He waited for a sharp nod of acknowledgment, and then went back to Sacha.
“I have more respect for you right now than I ever have.” He kissed both her cheeks and ignored the way Alek’s body stiffened next to them. His next words were for his nephew’s benefit just as much as hers. “I appreciate that you didn’t make excuses, and more, that even now you automatically protected Alek by glossing over the details to save face on his behalf. The fact that you honored us by naming his daughter after him, even after everything, well, that’s just icing on the cake.”
She didn’t believe his amicability was sincere. He could see it in the careful way she was holding herself. Which showed how smart she was. Of course, he felt some anger over what she’d taken from them. How could he not? But he let it go because he understood her reasoning, and would never think to berate her in public—mainly because she was in no way solely responsible for this situation. They were all going to have to work to gain each other’s trust again. But that would come over time, he thought as he turned her and nudged her toward his nephew, damn relieved there was now a little someone who would guarantee they would be together.
“You and Maksim will take her home,” he told Alek. “Sydney will remain with her for support while you arrange to have her apartment closed up and her things brought to Old Westbury. My house, not yours. I think we’ll let her and the baby get settled before dropping them into the circus your place has become with all the new inhabitants.”
While Sacha’s skin went snow white, Alek’s face transformed from pissed to smugly satisfied. Brat, Vasily thought affectionately as he went over and grabbed his brother’s only child with a hand over each of his ears. He landed two smacking kisses to his cheeks.
“You didn’t think I was going to leave you to be the bad guy, did you, son?” He released this boy he loved so much and had to move away before this news got its teeth into him. Alekzander was a father. Jesus Christ, that made him want to weep. He cleared his throat and said over his shoulder, “Let’s move out. When I get home, I want to greet the baby girl who’s going to bring happiness to two men who probably don’t deserve it.”
♦ ♦ ♦
As Vasily left her and Alekzander alone, Sacha tried to get her bearings. Even though she’d always thought Vasily was a reasonable man, she couldn’t believe this easy acceptance of what she’d done. How could he understand and be okay with it, just like that?
She watched the rise and fall of Alekzander’s shoulders beneath his tux and knew it wasn’t going to be so effortless with him. But she’d expected that, and as clarity had slowly seeped in over the past few minutes, she now understood the new choices before her.
She could cower under the weight of Alekzander anger. Let him continue to yank her to and fro while feeding fear into her heart until she eventually fell apart and was of no use to anybody.
Or she could kill the trembling girl he was now studying and show him something more. The strong, capable woman she’d become. One who would do anything to keep her place in her child’s life.
Some of the tension in her muscles eased. Where was the choice?
She straightened, closed her eyes, and drew in a long, slow breath. Uncaring that he was watching, she blew it out, and with it, she released the dread and fear she’d been living with since staring down at her still flat abdomen in that hotel room. She’d known she was inviting this man’s wrath when she’d made her decision to keep her child from him. She’d known and had done it anyway. So now she would live with the consequences. If she had to leave her pride behind when they walked out of here, she would. If she became not much more than a nanny, useful for nothing more than rearing the baby she’d gladly give her life for, she would. If she had to whore herself to keep her place in her child’s life—sadly, that part wouldn’t be difficult—she would do it, and wouldn’t beat herself up for enjoying it.
Much.
She didn’t think.
She shook the indecisive voice from her head. No. She wouldn’t. She would share Alekzander’s bed, if that’s what he wanted, and she would be adult enough to admit it wasn’t awful.
If it allowed her to keep her daughter, who cared if Sacha eventually lost a piece of herself? What was pride anyway? Nothing.
She focused on her warden and saw triumph glinting within the emotions swirling in his eyes. That was okay, too. It didn’t bother her. She felt her lips curve just a little. H
e saw her as a submissive, eager-to-please pushover, but she would show him. For her daughter, Sacha would become a rock. A mountain. One even a Tarasov wouldn’t be able to move. Her only place in this world was with her child, and she would wear a brave face while doing everything it took to stay there.
And if she failed herself by falling more deeply in love with a man who now hated her, then she would have no one to blame for that but herself.
“You have changed since we were last together,” she commented as she saw Maksim appear in the doorway, an impatient look on his face.
“What’s this?” Alekzander demanded.
“What?”
He tipped his chin at her. “You. You suddenly don’t seem upset anymore.”
“I am upset,” she corrected. “But this is what it is, so…”
“So…what?”
“So I will not fight you.”
“You won’t.”
“No.”
“Really.”
“Really.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Go over and stand next to that chair.”
She sighed quietly, and her teeth ground together only a little as she walked to where he’d motioned. Men were so immature.
“Come back to me.”
She held his eyes, absolutely forcing herself not to glare. She felt like a puppy as she went back to stand before him.
He inclined his head as though letting her know he was pleased. “You seem to have gathered your composure pretty damn well in only a few minutes. Would you like to tell me how you did that?”
“Are you looking for lessons?”
As Maksim choked, she held steady when Alekzander’s eyebrows slammed down. She never said she’d take everything he dished out.
“I could use the help, yes. But you must know that already.”
She blinked at his honesty, not expecting it. Especially not in front of his friend. “I am struggling, too,” she admitted so he wouldn’t regret sharing that with her. Could he be softening already?
Ultimate Vengeance (Wanted Men Book 4) Page 18
