by Roxie Rivera
I glanced back at Nikolai. The mask he had been wearing since the zoo had slipped. I could see him, all of him, and he looked utterly destroyed and soul sick.
"Tell me."
Wordlessly, he crossed our bedroom and sat next to me on the bench. He exhaled a long, rough sigh—and then he told me everything. He told me about the hit that had been taken out on a daughter connected to Romero, Nikolai, Hector or Maksim. He told me about Kostya's discovery that Holly freaking Phillips was likely Maksim's daughter. Which made her Nikolai's sister and my sister-in-law!
"So then I decided to give Hector and Romero the green light to carry out their coup," he said, his voice sober and dark. "I gave them permission to do their dirty work here in Houston."
"Is that why everyone was at Samovar tonight? Ten, Arty, Danny, Ilya, Boy," I ticked off the names that matched faces I had seen at the restaurant. "You wanted them to have alibis."
He cast a sad smile my way. "I can't decide if I should be proud that you've learned to think like me or ashamed of what I've done to you."
"What have you done to me that I didn't ask for or want?"
"No, solnyshka. You didn't ask for this. You never wanted to be part of something so depraved." He dropped his head into his hands. "You asked me to love you. You asked me to build a life with you. You asked me to be your husband and the father of your children." He laughed, the sound raspy and sinister. "What did I do? I gave you a twisted, perverse version of the life I promised you when I married you. I've dragged you right into the middle of a bloody, violent coup." Nikolai lifted his head, but he wouldn't look at me. "I must disgust you.
I touched his face and forced him to look at me. "You don't disgust me."
"Vee, I let that happen tonight." He gestured angrily toward the television. "How can you even stand to be in the same house with me right now?"
"I love you." The answer was simple and imperfect. "I love you."
"You shouldn't." His voice cracked. "You should take the money and the diamonds and run. You should take the baby as far away from me as possible."
"You're probably right." Nikolai's head snapped toward me, and I was glad to see the glint of panic reflected in his pale eyes. "But I love you. I don't like what you've done. Frankly, I'm sickened by it. I can't stand the thought that all of that violence and death happened because of money and greed and your desire to protect me and the baby and Holly."
"There was no other choice," he insisted. "Hector and Romero were going to make this move whether I said yes or no. It was better to give my permission and control the situation as much as possible than to have them running wild in the city. There were rules tonight. No women, no children, no innocents."
In Nikolai's world, those distinctions meant something. To men like him, men who were more comfortable in the darkness of the underworld than in the bright light of day, tonight's events had happened in a carefully managed and wholly acceptable way. I would never fully understand that mindset. It simply wasn't possible for me because my life experiences were so different.
"I love you, Vee. I love you, and I'm sorry that I've disgraced you tonight, but I would make this decision again. I'm sure that disgusts you and angers you and confuses you, but it's the truth. I won't sit here and lie to you."
I tried to wrap my head around the fact that he could tell me that he loved me and that he would allow a night of carnage in the same sentence.
"This wasn't just about you and me and the baby. It wasn't just about Holly or your father or mine. The choice I had was to let Romero and Hector take out a handful of men or to let the entire city descend into chaos. The police would not have been able to contain this. It wouldn't have been a slow spreading cancer that crept across the border. It would have been a full-blown contagion that infected everyone."
In his view and I'm sure in the view of all the underworld bosses, he had made a decision that sacrificed a few to save countless other lives. In a different context, the decision might have been viewed as heroic, but this wasn't a war being fought for freedom or any other noble reason. This was a war being fought by my father and Hector Salas so they could gain control of the drug and gun trade.
Suddenly very tired, I reached for the remote and shut off the television. I plucked the decorative pillows off my side of the bed and tossed them onto my reading chair. When I slid under the sheet and comforter, Nikolai stood up and watched me from the foot of the bed. He seemed uncertain and bewildered by my behavior but too anxious to ask me what I was thinking.
"I don't like what you've done. I think it's cruel and vicious and brutal. I'm not happy with you right now."
Nikolai gulped. "I'll sleep across the hall."
"No." I pointed to his side of the bed. "You'll sleep here."
"But you're angry with me."
"Yes, I am." I didn't know what else I could say. I didn't trust myself to say much more anyway. I feared that I would say something I couldn't take back or that we would get into an ugly shouting match that would do nothing to solve this situation. What had happened tonight couldn’t be undone. I had to find a way to live with it.
Nikolai walked into the bathroom and shut the door. I heard the shower start. Alone in our bedroom, I tried to make sense of this terrible situation. I felt like an awful human being as I searched for ways to make this ugly episode more palatable. I began to understand why so many mob wives didn't ask questions. This was complete and total hell.
Sometime later, Nikolai came out of the bathroom stark naked. He entered the closet and came back out in just a pair of boxer shorts. After turning off the lights and flipping the switch on my night light, he slid into bed but left a wide space between us. The tension in the room grew unbearable.
Nikolai's warm, strong hand found mine. His voice, thick with regret and desperate for my love, echoed in the darkness. "Vee. Please."
I closed my eyes and exhaled a slow, deep breath. I gave his hand a squeeze and then tugged on it before I rolled onto my side facing away from him. Now that I was getting so far along in my pregnancy, I couldn't sleep comfortably any other way. Nikolai scooted across the mattress and curled himself around me, tucking me into his chest and pulling his thighs up until they cradled my backside. He buried his face against my throat and breathed in my scent.
Our love was complicated and messy, but it was strong and real. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was weak. Maybe I was stupid. But I couldn't punish him. I just couldn't do it.
And when I felt that first hot tear splash onto my skin, I realized I didn't need to punish him. The punishment and castigation he heaped upon his own shoulders would be far more painful than anything I could ever dream up. He had made bad choices early in his life—and now he was paying for them.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Five Weeks Later
"I bet Danny and Boy aren't being used as slave labor," Ten grumbled as he tapped a tiny nail into a thin piece of wood. We were seated at a worktable in the warehouse Nikolai owned and had converted to a studio space for me a few years earlier. This was a project I couldn't tackle in my home studio.
"Seriously? Are you really going to whine about helping me build canvas stretchers for the class I'm teaching?" I rolled my eyes at my hulking bodyguard. "If you wanted to babysit Bianca while Sergei is out of town with Ivan for that tournament, you should have asked."
"Sure," Ten said with a harsh laugh. "Then I'd be sitting here banging my thumb with this hammer and crying about my wired jaw. Because you and I both know Sergei would have planted his fist in my face if I had asked to spend all day and night with his hot fucking wife."
"Wow." I made a face at him. "Maybe we could not refer to my friends as fucking hot? Maybe?"
"But she is."
"Way to miss the point, Ten."
"I'm just saying—"
"I heard you the first time. We're good." I used a pair of clamps to hold a glued corner together. "Besides you couldn't have been Bianca's guard today. She and her mother are meeting Ad
am today at the prison. You're on parole, remember?"
"No," he stated dryly. "I forgot all about the rules and regulations I have to follow for the next four years of my life." Holding out the stretcher he had built, he scrutinized the corners. "Do you think it was a good idea for her to visit the man who killed her brother?"
"No, I think she's crazy to do it, but that's Bianca for you. If I were allowed to bet anymore, I would put money on her mother pressuring her to go to this meeting."
"It's dangerous. Especially now," he added with a shake of his head. "Until Hector tracks down Lorenzo Guzman, we're all in danger. That guy is not going to go quietly into the night. He'll want revenge, and he'll take it wherever he can get it."
The Lorenzo situation was one that continued to vex me. Instead of having more freedom after that terrible September night, I had been restricted even further. My father's crew had missed Lorenzo during their hit on the drug lord's compound. Now he was out there somewhere, lurking in the shadows and biding his time until he found the perfect time to strike at us.
"We're all fucked," Ten grumbled in Russian.
"Gee, thanks for that encouraging sentiment."
"It's the truth."
"Maybe keep that truth to yourself and get back to work."
We had another dozen or so stretchers to piece together before we started the actual hard work of tugging and stretching the canvases across them. The special needs art class I had taken over for Hadley had completed their landscapes during the last class so it was time for me to stretch and frame them so they would have gifts to hand out during the holidays.
My cell phone chirped and buzzed so I put down the stretcher I had been assembling and picked it up. "Hello?"
"Vee!" Nikolai greeted me in a voice that was aggressive and sounded almost panicked. "Are you still at the studio with Ten?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Give him your phone right now."
"Why? What's wrong?"
"Now, Vee!"
"Okay." I thrust the phone at Ten. "It's Nikolai."
"Boss?" Five heartbeats later, Ten was on his feet and striding toward the windows overlooking the street below my studio. The area was still mostly empty commercial properties and warehouses so there wasn’t much traffic on the roads. Whatever Ten spotted outside made him curse so strongly in Russian that I was sure my ears would catch fire. "They're here. You better fucking hurry."
Ten ended the call and slipped my phone into the back pocket of his jeans. He raced to the door of my studio and turned the lock. He rushed to the nearest heavy worktable and hefted it up as if it weighed nothing. The muscles in his arms bulged as he carried it to the door and used it to barricade us inside.
"What's wrong? Who is here?" I finally found my voice. "Ten!"
"Get in the supply closet." He handed me a box cutter. "You don't make a noise. You don't move. You can breathe, but it better be very fucking quiet. Understand?"
"Ten, what—"
"Now! Go!"
His booming voice shocked me into a run. Thinking of the baby, I went into the closet and shut the door. I could hear Ten moving things in front of it. They wouldn't keep whoever had come for us out, but the boxes and furniture might slow them down.
Crouched in the dark, cramped closet, I clutched the box cutter. It had to be the remnants of Lorenzo's inner circle coming for us. They must have known that my usual guard was spread thin while Nikolai made sure Bianca and Erin were protected while their men were out of town.
Ten was right. We were utterly fucked. Gun, knife, fists—he could handle his own in a fight, but he was handicapped by a pregnant woman who depended on him for her safety. If he was killed because of me, I would never forgive myself.
Please, Kolya. Hurry!
Loud bangs rattled the warehouse door. How many men had come for us? Three? Four? Five? I prayed it was a small number that Ten could handle.
The bangs continued for a long time. The lock finally gave, and the furniture pushed in front of the door scraped the floor as it was shoved out of the way. I pressed my ear to the door of the supply closet so I could hear what was happening. Men shouted in Spanish and English. I tried to count the voices, but it was so hard to keep them separate. Was that three? Four?
The sound of fighting erupted in the warehouse. Stools clattered to the ground. Fists smacked against skin. Men growled and cried out in pain. The vicious noises made my stomach churn. I gripped the box cutter more tightly and hoped Ten was every bit as good as his reputation would have me believe.
A crack of gunfire made me gasp. I clapped a hand over my mouth as Ten shouted in obvious agony. Was he badly injured? Had they hit him in the stomach or the chest or the head? Was he still alive?
Our attackers started fighting amongst each other.
"He said no fucking guns! He wants her and the baby alive!"
"I didn't shoot her. I shot this big Russian bastard!"
"He broke my arm, man! He snapped it in half!"
"Shut up, Javi. Look at Terry. He broke Terry's nose and crushed his fingers."
"The bullet could have ricocheted! It could have gone through a wall and hit her."
"Where the fuck is she anyway? She can't have gone far."
"Start tossing the place. We don’t have long. That husband of hers keeps her on a short leash."
I counted five distinct voices. Straining to hear, I tried to detect any sounds from Ten. All I could hear were footsteps coming closer to the closet where I was hiding. I crouched down in the corner, going as far back as I could. The short stack of boxes between me and the door would do little to protect me.
The footsteps stopped outside the door. Breathing rapidly and on the verge of a panic attack, I held out the boxed cutter and extended the sharp razor tip. The first person to come through that door was getting slashed. No one was going to touch my baby.
The furniture Ten had moved in front of the door was loudly tossed aside. A hand twisted the knob and started to open the door—but then something heavy and hard hit the door, rattling it right on its hinges. I squeaked with surprise. Outside the door, all hell broke loose.
"Shit! He's alive!"
"He's got Marco, man. He's got Marco."
"Put the gun down and kick it over here," Ten ordered gruffly. "Now! Or else I'll snap his fucking neck like a toothpick."
A few seconds later, I heard several pinging noises. Then something metal hit the wooden floorboards. A scraping noise followed.
"There you go, man. There's the gun, but I've got the bullets. What do you think the odds are that you can take all of us? Huh?"
"I'd say they're pretty fucking good right now," Ten answered in an evilly gleeful voice.
The pop of a gunshot startled me. It was quickly followed by four more. I dropped the box cutter and clamped both hands over my mouth to stifle the scream that threatened to erupt. The lock on the door was flipped, and I squeezed my eyes shut. The door squeaked as it was jerked wide open.
Please, please, please.
"Vee!" Nikolai crouched down in front of me and hauled me into his arms. "Oh, baby. Are you okay?" He pushed me back so he could get a better look at me. His eyes were wide and panicked. His face was taut with fury. He touched my belly. "Our son?"
The baby chose that moment to kick hard against the spot where Nikolai's hand rested. Nikolai's shoulders sagged with obvious relief. He pressed his forehead to mine and embraced me tightly. "I thought I had lost you. I didn't think we would get here fast enough."
"We?" I clung to him so hard that my fingertips went numb.
"Your father is here." Nikolai helped me stand. "You're going to go with him for tonight."
I clutched at his shirt. "Where are you going? Why aren't you coming with me?"
"They attacked Bianca, her mother and Erin," he reluctantly explained. "Bianca's mother is on the way to the hospital. So is Artyom and his crew. Danny and Boy are missing. We think they were taken with Bianca and Erin. I have to get them back. Romer
o will protect you."
My legs nearly buckled. "They took Bianca and Erin?"
"I'll get them back," he swore. "I'll get them home safely."
Nikolai shrugged out of his suit jacket and handed it to me. "Cover your face. I'm going to carry you out of here. I don’t want you to see this."
I didn't want to see it either. I wanted to reach into my brain and take this memory out of my head and throw it away. That wasn't possible so I decided that closing my eyes and hiding under a jacket while Nikolai carried me out of the studio was the best option. It would help me avoid adding more unpleasant images into my brain bank.
"Wait." I stopped him before he could pick me up. "What about Ten?"
Nikolai cracked a smile. "Ten? They picked the wrong man to attack. He's been shot and stabbed, but he'll be fine. He's had worse."
"That's awful."
"That's Ten." Nikolai swept me up in his arms and cradled me close. "Close your eyes, zolota. Cover your head."
I did it, and he carried me out of the warehouse, down two flights of stairs and out into the noticeably cooler early evening. I was placed on the front passenger seat of an SUV, and the jacket was removed. Nikolai fastened my seatbelt and then draped his jacket around my body to keep me warm. He nuzzled our faces together before claiming me with a passionate, lingering kiss. "Stay close to your father. Don't even think about coming home until he says it's safe."
"I'll be careful." I touched his face. "Promise me you'll be careful."
"I'll be careful." He kissed me again. "I'll see you soon."
I blinked back tears as Nikolai shut the door and strode into the warehouse. The driver's side door opened, and my father slid behind the wheel. I hadn't seen him in months. He had changed quite a bit. He looked older and stressed out. There was more gray in his hair than I remembered and more tattoos on his hands and neck.
He said nothing as he put the SUV in drive and pulled away from the curb. We drove in silence for probably ten minutes before he lifted the center console and retrieved a couple of wrapped hard candies. He held them out to me. "Eat these. You're going to get the shakes from all that adrenaline pretty soon. The sugar will tide you over until we get to the safe house and I can feed you."