by SR Jones
“I still hate you,” I say as a tear falls down my cheek.
He brushes it away with his thumb. “I hate you too,” he says, his voice filled with anything but.
He pulls me into him and claims my mouth, and as his tongue tangles with mine, I come with a low whimper as I lose myself in this … in him.
Chapter Fifteen
Vasily
I watch her sleep. She’s such a conundrum, and I don’t know what to do about her. I want her. I want her now as she drools onto her pillow. I don’t care that she snores lightly or that she makes weird little snuffling noises in her sleep. In fact, they’re kind of endearing.
She shot K, I remind myself.
She did, and yet, as I watch her, a powerful protectiveness washes over me. She shot my mentor. My best friend. A man I’ve looked up to for years. I should be itching to put a bullet in her myself, but I don’t want anyone to harm a hair on her head.
This is a dangerous game I’m playing. For me. For her. For both our hearts. This can’t work out in some happily ever after. It just can’t. She shot my closest friend. I forced her to marry me … at knife point.
I imagine for a surreal moment us having kids and them asking that age old question: Mummy, how did you meet Daddy?
She’d reply: Oh it’s such a funny story. He chased me down in the woods after I shot his friend and made me marry him … with a knife.
Shit. It can’t be. This cannot become something. She has a kid; one I’ve never met. I can’t magically make us all as a perfect family. Half of me finds the thought terrifying anyway. But part of me really wants it too.
She makes me proud. She wouldn’t be a little mouse like Cassie or a boring one-track obsessive like Dasha. The only thing she’s more obsessed with than her dancing is Bohdan.
Zoey is a woman a Bratva kingpin would be proud to have by his side. She’d be like Maya is for Damen. A mafia queen taking her rightful place with me because she’s tough and smart, and she’s been through as much shit as most of us men have.
Then I once more remind myself that she has a daughter, and I know there’s going to be no place for me in their lives once I reunite them. Zoey will want her away from all this. From the darkness and the poison. She’ll probably end up in witness protection with the British state or something, organized by Reece or Luka. The thought makes me happy that she’ll be safe, but it gives me a dull ache in my chest.
I’ve been alone, I realize, for a long time. My friends were my family, but when your friends fall in love, you soon realize that they can’t be your family anymore. They have their own now. Part of me has been sneering at Bohdan and K for what they’ve done, falling for their women, but part of me wants that too.
I yawn and glance at the clock. It’s almost eight in the morning. At five pm we’re taking a chartered jet to the UK, and we’re going to pay a visit to these bastards who have ruined Zoey’s life. I’m more than capable of doing whatever it takes to get the information out of them that I need, and I will get her daughter back for her if it’s the last thing I do.
Shouting downstairs has me rolling my eyes, until I realize the voice is female. Who is that? Violet and Andrius? Shit. Is he back to try to shoot me again?
I begin to sit up and gather my wits about me when the door to the bedroom smashes open, bouncing off the wall violently.
Cassie stands in front of me like some avenging angel. She doesn’t look like a mouse now. Her hands are on her hips, her legs planted wide. Golden hair falls heavily around her shoulders, and her eyes are blazing.
“You piece of traitorous shit,” she yells at me.
She looks at Zoey, and her face turns an intriguing shade of red, as if she’s about to explode. Which, she does.
So quickly, I don’t have time to react. She reaches for an old vase on the window ledge and throws it at my head. I duck, and it smashes on the headboard.
“What the fuck?” Zoey shoots upright, her eyes wide and alarmed.
“I always knew you were utter crap,” Cassie yells. “I never liked you. But this? You’re lower than the lowest form of life. How dare you have sex with her.”
She spits the word her out as if it’s pure poison.
“Cassie,” Zoey begins.
Cassie turns her ire on the woman next to me. “Don’t say a word. You don’t get to speak. The love of my life, the father of the child I am carrying is in a hospital bed right now, drugged out of his mind with painkillers because of what you did. Do you know, he’ll possibly need another two surgeries and then rehab? Do you even care? He doesn’t know he’s going to be a father because he’s been too sick to be told. You should have shot me when you had the chance because I will never forgive you! There are a lot of guns lying around where these men go, and one day, I swear to you, Zoey, I will pick one up and use it to end your life.”
“You do that, and you cross a boundary. It means you, your child even, are fair game,” I tell Cassie seriously. “You harm Zoey, and you put yourself in danger. Serious danger. K wouldn’t want that.”
She blinks, and her brows draw down. “What do you mean? You’re talking nonsense thinking I know nothing about your way of life. I know whores don’t get special protection.”
I hold my hand up, showing Cassie the band, and then do the same with Zoey’s hand. “She’s my wife now. You ask your beloved, and he’ll tell you—she’s off limits. Unless you all want to start a war. Think about it, Cassie. She did wrong,” I say, keeping my voice calm. “But what wouldn’t you do to protect the life you’re carrying?”
Her face calms some as she absentmindedly touches her belly.
“You don’t even know that person. It’s not even a person yet, just cells, and yet, you feel for it, yes?”
She doesn’t answer, but her hand rubs her stomach. “They took Zoey’s daughter, her young daughter, and they threatened to sell her to a brothel where she would’ve been raped multiple times a day. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do anything to stop that happening to the child you’re carrying.”
I hear a sniffle next to me and turn to see Zoey wipe at her eyes angrily.
“What Zoey did was wrong, and she’s being punished. And will be punished. She’s not in love with me, but now she’s tied to me whether she wants to be or not. I decide if she gets to go free or stays with me. I decide whether Zoey can live on her own terms or mine. She is being punished, but she won’t be physically harmed—not a hair on her damn head.”
Cassie scowls at me, but some of the heat and rage has gone out of her.
“One more thing to think about. Even Andrius will come around to this realization once he’s calmed down. K would already be there, by the way, if he weren’t doped out of his mind. The people who took Zoey’s daughter to manipulate Zoey and make her do this are the ones we need. They are the real enemy. We all must come together because if we don’t, they will be the victorious ones. Do you understand? We have to work together, to… Damn what is the word. Let it go? No. Erm, where neither side gets exactly what they want.”
“Compromise?” Zoey supplies.
“Yes, compromise. We must all compromise and work together. I’m going to see K this afternoon, and I’ll tell him what I’ve done. He may well decide to kill me for it, as is his right. What he doesn’t get to do is kill Zoey, and neither do you.”
“I’ll always hate her.” Cassie looks at me as she speaks.
I grin. “That’s okay. I hate her too.”
There’s a soft laugh from next to me, and Cassie shakes her head. “You deserve one another. You’re both insane.”
Cassie leaves, and a moment later Ilya pokes his head around the door.
“Thanks for the backup, man,” I drawl.
“Didn’t realize you needed protecting from sexy little blondes now,” he says with a grin.
“I’m going to take a cold shower, seeing as there’s no other kind to be had here, and then go and see K. You coming with?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“You are too,” I say to Zoey.
“I know; can’t risk the bride escaping, right?”
“Exactly. You belong to me now.”
“You do realize this isn’t the middle ages. A marriage license doesn’t infer ownership.”
“No, it doesn’t. I do own your ass, though, whether you like it or not. That’s the deal.”
“I hate you,” she says without any heat. Then she gets out of the bed, in her bra and thong, stretches languidly as Ilya admires the view, before sauntering past him and out the door.
“Damn, man, she’s not my type, too thin, but fuck me, she’s sexy for a skinny bitch with an ink fetish.”
“She’s sexy in every way,” I tell him because she is.
“Our Greek friend called me earlier and told me he has some information about who our friends, but he can’t share it over the phone. He will be here in two days, so our London trip better be quick.” Ilya leans against the door and folds his arms.
“It will. This works perfectly. We go to London, torture the fuckers who hurt Zoey, and get as much information as we can out of them, kill them, and then come back here.”
“Kill them?” He raises his brows.
I snort. “What? You gone vegan or something? Care about all lives now?”
“No, you fucker, but on whose say-so?”
“On my say-so. I run Moscow, and they fucked with something that is mine. I don’t need to ask permission.”
“Killing them might not help your girl. It could bring attention to her from higher up. It might mean any info we get could lead to a literal dead-end if we’ve killed the people who can tell us something more and when we need it.”
“I’m going to make sure they tell me everything they can, and then I am going to kill them. Damen already has leads. We have Luka and Reece digging into the Order in general. We don’t need to keep these fucks alive. There is zero reason to do so.”
“Keep one of them alive, and bring him back here,” Ilya bargains.
“How do you suggest I get him back here? I hardly think he’ll come quietly.”
“I got Amanda out of England using some medication to keep her quiet; we can do the same with the one we decide to keep alive. Bring him back here, let Damen, Andrius, and the rest talk to him, then take the other two out.”
I pause and think on his words.
“It might go some way to healing the rift if we bring one of them back.” He runs a hand over his short facial hair. “A sacrificial offering to Andrius. Give him someone to take his temper out on? Refocus all that anger.”
He has a damn good point. “Okay, you win. We’ll do it your way.”
He smirks. “Why thank you, oh powerful one. Now, let me take a horrible cold shower too, and we can go to see K. You must pray he doesn’t kill you there and then.”
“He’s drugged up in the hospital.”
“Knowing K, it won’t stop him if he decides to take you out for saving the bitch.”
He shrugs and saunters out of the room, passing Zoey as she comes back in, eating a banana. He stares at her openly again, and she shakes her head, taking a huge snapping bite off the banana with ostentatious glee.
Ilya’s deep laugh follows him down the stairs.
“You need to put your clothes on,” I tell her. “In about five hours we’re heading to London.”
***
An hour later finds me outside K’s hospital room. He still hasn’t been told that Cassie is pregnant, so why Ilya thinks he’s fit enough to know about Zoey, I don’t know. I take a deep breath and follow Ilya into the room.
Christ, K looks awful. He’s white, and his face is drawn as if he’s lost all his body fat, which he couldn’t have done in such a short space of time. Still, it looks like he’s been on some starvation diet with added stress and blood loss.
“You look like shit,” Ilya says.
“Losing a few pints of blood and having surgery will do that for you.” His voice is hoarser than usual.
Ilya chuckles and sits on the chair by K’s bedside. “How are you doing, my friend?”
“Marvelous.”
We’re all talking in Russian, and for a brief moment it feels as if the bonhomie is real, but then K’s heavy gaze slides my way, and this isn’t about to be a cozy chat.
“You know,” I say.
“Andrius told me.” He’s calm, but his impassive face could be hiding anything. “You married her?”
I shift from one foot to the other. “Yeah, well, Ilya here and Andrius were hell-bent on killing her, and I didn’t think that smart, or right.”
“Right?” His voice hardens. “You didn’t think it was right to kill the woman who fucked me up?”
“No, K. They took her kid. They took her kid and didn’t threaten her with death but something far worse. So no, I didn’t think it was right. What would you do to protect Cassie? You’d kill me, no? And I’d fucking expect you to, man.”
“Letting her live sends a signal we’ve gone soft.”
I laugh. “K, you don’t get to talk like a Pakhan now because you left that life. You handed all of that to me. I did what I thought was the correct course of action. She’s not married to me happily. It’s forced. She’s mine now. My prisoner. I’m her damned jailor. Think strategically. If we kill her, it sends all sorts of signals, but if we basically keep her a prisoner, married to the Moscow Pakhan who took her like a fucking war trophy, well…” I smile a shark’s smile. “I personally think that sends even scarier signals. And the fact is, we’re about to take out two of the men who ordered the hit on you and bring Andrius and you the third, their little groups leader. I think justice has been most excellently served.”
His gaze sharpens. “You know who they are?”
“Names, addresses, fucking inside leg measurements, courtesy of Damen, who, might I add, was also not on board with killing Zoey.”
“How is this going to work?” he asks.
I’m not sure what he means. I shrug. “We take out the subordinate two, drug the leader and bring him here, private flight.”
He laughs harshly. “No, you fucking asshole, the Zoey-and-you-being-married thing. How the hell do you think it’s going to work out? You bring her to our house for a lovely couple’s dinner? We all eat, as I sit opposite the woman who fucked me up?”
I snort. “I didn’t envisage any of us as the dinner party types.”
“We do have dinner parties,” he replies. “Violet makes amazing mezze. Bohdan, Dasha, me, Cassie, Andrius, Violet, and sometimes the Greeks. Do you think you’ll be welcome there?”
“Are the drugs addling your fucking brain?” I lose my patience. “You’re talking about dinner parties and weird shit, and I’m talking about strategy, getting our vengeance, and keeping us safe moving forward.”
He smiles at me, and it’s melancholy. “No, Vasily, I’m talking about friendship. You asked me back in England if we could still be friends, and I told you we were family and that our friendship was solid, important. You just took a wrecking ball to it.”
“Even if it keeps Cassie safe?” I tell him. Then I think fuck it. “Even if it keeps your baby safe?”
“What?”
“Cassie’s pregnant, you motherfucker. She’s pregnant, and Zoey figured it out, and it’s the reason she couldn’t shoot her. At great risk to herself, and knowing it meant hell for her own daughter, Zoey refused to shoot Cassie and harm the child she’s carrying.”
I go right up to the bed and lean over it. “There’s no one I respect in this world more than you. I’m not Bohdan, though. Some lost soul who needs your fatherly advice. You’ll always be someone I consider a friend, but if that no longer goes the other way, fine. However, you come after Zoey or me, and it will be a war. You get me? You’re not my boss. You’re someone I admire, as I say, and I love you as a friend and brother in arms. I’ve done what I think is right. Not only for selfish reasons to save Zoey, but for all of us. There are bigger issues than Zoey. She’
s never going to have a normal life. She’s either going to find her daughter dead, already brutalized. Or, if she’s alive when we get to her, and unharmed, she and Zoey will probably spend the rest of their lives in protective custody. And that’s even if I decide to let Zoey go, and I haven’t. She hates my guts, so staying married to me will be purgatory. So, you see, she’s being punished. However this plays out, she’s being punished.”
He’s silent. “Get the fuck out, and tell Cassie to get her ass in here right now.”
Ilya puts his hand on K’s shoulder as he stands. “K, she didn’t tell you on Doctor’s advice, so don’t blame her. Fuck-features here shouldn’t have either.”
“Where do you stand in all this?” K asks.
Ilya scrubs a hand over his face. “If there’s a war between you two, count me out. I think it would be … foolish for us to fight amongst ourselves when our enemies are gathering. I get that it goes against the grain to let Zoey live, but it makes sense to focus on those pulling the strings not the puppet. Killing her also gives us problems with the Greeks, and by the time Violet is done with Andrius, I doubt he’ll be as happy to put a bullet in Zoey. Violet is dead against it. I personally don’t care if the cunt lives or dies, but a lot of what Vasily says does make sense.”
I cross the room and smack Ilya across his face. He stares at me for a moment in total shock.
“That cunt is my wife. Don’t call her that.”
“You’re fucked in the head, Vasily.” K sighs. “Get out. I don’t want to look at you. I will make you a deal, though. You get me the leader of the men who sent Zoey, and I’ll let her live. Only because she let Cassie and our child live. You marrying her wouldn’t have stopped me if I’d wanted her gone. It certainly won’t stop me if I decide you’re too much of a liability.”
“Liability to what? You’re out of the game, K.”
“I gave you Moscow; you don’t think I can take it back?”
“You can try,” I tell him, then I walk out the door to get my wife and head to England.
