Maxim smiles and claps his hands together. “Bravo! You’ve won the scavenger hunt and now yo—”
“I said cut the shit, Maxim!” Katya snarls at her cousin, pacing the room.
Maxim falls back onto an armchair and crosses his leg over the other. “Why ruin my fun, cousin?”
“Because you stole my stepdaughter, who’s also one of my employees. Why’d you take her?”
“Sergei fucked with my father far too much, and when I discovered his child was here, in Moscow, I couldn’t resist. So, I took her for some fun.”
“She’s not some sort of toy you can play with, Maxim, fuck!”
“You will hand her over now, before things go sideways,” I grit, finding it hard to control my anger.
Maxim looks over to Katya and chuckles, not even having the decency to look me in the eyes. “Keep a leash on your dog, before it gets put down.”
“Don’t make threats against my men, Maxim. You of all people should know better,” Katya snaps. “Hand Dema back over to me, now.”
“Why the fuck would I do such a thing? She’s a Kolosov, so she deserves the same pain her father experienced toward the end of his life.”
I yank my gun free and pull back the safety, pointing it at Maxim Volkolv. I don’t give a damn that he’s the leader of the Russian Bratva. I only care that he has my woman. She’s the only thing that matters to me right now.
Maxim begins to open his mouth and without hesitating I pull the trigger. The bullet flies from the barrel of my gun and goes into the top of his head.
I glance over to Katya and her face is flushed bright red. I mentally prepare myself for being chastised by her, but instead, something different comes from her mouth. “Search every inch of this place until we find her. Tell everyone here the Bratva is now mine because I have Volkolv blood running through my veins.”
Chapter Nineteen
Dema
Warmth surrounds me and I wonder if this is heaven. Will I finally see my mom again? My dad?
No, this can’t be right. What is the noise I keep hearing? It sounds like people’s voices speaking softly. There’s also a beeping sound. Like a heart monitor, I don’t know.
I struggle to open my eyes. Light flickers in my aching eyes and I sink right back into the dark abyss, not having the strength to open them completely.
“Are you sure she’s okay?” The sound of people talking closer to me pulls me back from the abyss of nothingness.
“She’ll be okay,” a woman’s voice says reassuringly.
“We don’t know that.” I know that voice. It belongs to Kronid, but he can’t be here. Can he?
I died at the hands of Maxim. Didn’t I?
“The doctors said everything was healing nicely and they took her out of the medically induced coma yesterday, Kronid. You know I wouldn’t get anything but the best for Dema. Not after what she endured at Maxim’s hands. We’re just waiting for her to wake up,” another woman says. My heart begins to pound against my chest at the mention of Maxim’s name.
“I know this. I just want her to wake up. It’s been two weeks since she’s been here,” Kronid mutters. The frustration is evident in his voice.
Holy crap. Did he just say two weeks?
“Look, see this is proof she’s waking up,” someone else says, mentioning something beeping.
It takes all my strength, but I open my eyes and blink against the brightness in the room. My gaze immediately moves to Kronid as I take in the room. I’m in some hospital room of some sort.
I take in Kronid, noticing his clean-shaven face is no longer clean but scruffy looking.
“Kronid,” I croak.
“Sirenă,” Kronid rasps, moving from the chair he’s sitting in next to me. He moves to the edge of the bed. Reaching across my bed, he grabs a small white foam cup with a straw in it and brings it to my lips. “Take a couple sips of this water,” he murmurs gently.
I do as he says keeping my eyes on him the entire time. I’m exhausted but I’m scared if I close my eyes Kronid will disappear and this will all be a dream within a nightmare. I don’t want to fall back asleep and him not be here.
He must sense my exhaustion as he removes the straw from between my lips and places it back on the table.
“Rest, sirenă, I will be here when you wake up. I swear,” he murmurs, leaning forward to press a kiss to the top of my head.
With a nod, I close my eyes and let the sleep take me once again. This time I know I’ll wake up to find him there with me.
My screams filter throughout the room and my head thrashes to the side. “No . . . please don’t hurt me anymore,” I cry out.
“Shh, easy, Dema, I’ve got you, no one will hurt you ever again.” Kronid’s soothing voice breaks through the dream and I open my eyes, my breathing heavy as I try to catch my breath.
I sigh, realizing it’s only a nightmare and slump into the hospital bed, tears welling in my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I utter quietly.
“Don’t be sorry, sirenă, you haven’t done anything wrong,” Kronid states, his accent gruffer than usual as his voice seems thick with emotion. He brings one of his hands to the side of my face where he proceeds to wipe away my tears.
Glancing around him, I notice the others in the room. Standing in the corner is my boss, Katya, with her husband. I’m surprised to see her here. I honestly didn’t think I was special enough to gain her attention in having her here at the hospital with me.
Next, I notice Michail who is normally with Kronid when he comes in. Moving on my eyes widen at the sight of Trista standing near the doorway.
“What . . . are you d-doing here?” I croak out the question.
“I got a call from this hunkalicious here telling me you were in the hospital,” Trista comments, causing me to roll my eyes. She’s a bit of a character.
“Okay, but I thought you weren’t coming until you had enough to move here,” I state in confusion.
“Well, when you get a call from a man with this voice telling you your best friend’s in the hospital and there’s a ticket waiting for you at the airport, you pack your shit and hop on the first damn flight,” Trista mutters.
Wow.
I shift my gaze from Trista’s back to Kronid’s. “You did that?” I ask him.
“Yes, Dema. I told you, I’d do anything for you,” Kronid rasps.
“I love you. I didn’t know it until now, but I love you,” I whisper.
Kronid brushes the back of his fingertips against my cheeks. “And I love you. Now how are you feeling?” he asks, changing the subject.
“Um, like I’ve been beaten with a sledgehammer then thrown in front of a truck,” I grumble. I’m sure I look like hell. “How long . . . how did . . .”
“You want to know how long he had you and how I found you?” I nod at his question. “I prefer not to answer right now. First you’ll rest and get your strength back.”
“Okay,” I murmur,
“Your grandparents are on the way up here,” Trista says, drawing my attention to her. I notice her glancing in Michail’s direction as she pulls the phone from her ear and hands it back to him.
“Thank you,” I say with a slight nod. My throat was on fire from talking so much.
“Can you all give us a few minutes?” Kronid asks politely.
“Of course, we’ll go get some coffees and be right back,” Katya states.
Kronid nor I say anything else as they all leave the room and leave us in silence.
As soon as the door closes, Kronid clears his throat.
“Sirenă, can you forgive me?” he rasps.
“Forgive you?” I didn’t understand. Had he done something against me?
“I didn’t protect you as I should have, Dema. I left you unprotected, and I left you vulnerable to be taken by a madman.”
“Kronid, you have nothing to be sorry for. This isn’t on you or anyone else. I knew until the end you’d come for me,” I murmur, wanting him to under
stand just how much trust I hold in him.
“I promise you, Dema, my sweet sirenă, from now on you will be guarded as you should’ve been and I’ll make the streets of Moscow bleed red if something else ever happens to you,” Kronid declares.
Holy cannoli.
You can see in his eyes he means every word he just said.
And in all honesty if it came down to it, I wouldn’t stop him because I know it is who he is. He will do whatever he needs to, to make me safe.
This is one of the many reasons I love him, and I would never change a thing about him.
Chapter Twenty
Kronid
I bought time waiting for Dema to get better before I told her the reason she was taken. It’s been almost three weeks since she’s been home and every few days, she looks at me in a certain way, with her eyes alone she’s telling me exactly what she wants to know—the truth.
I’ve been here in her grandparents’ home, living with them completely. I’m here not only to help her but with them as well. Playing cards with her grandfather before he goes to bed has become a nightly tradition and I usually have a drink with her grandmother in the evening as well.
I’m sitting beside her grandfather as he’s telling me a story of how things were when he was serving in the militia when Dema walks in through the front door with her grandmother. They’ve been going out on walks around the block for the last week to give them both a good bit of exercise.
Moving in with them has been the best decision I’ve made in a long time, especially since Dema’s best friend, Trista, needed a place to stay. I took everything important out of my apartment and she’s been staying there. She’s simply repaying me by being the new receptionist at Pins and Needles. Unlike her predecessor she shows up and does her work, which is a breath of fresh air.
“Have a good walk?” I ask her and immediately she gives me a nod and smiles.
“Yeah, it was nice. The weather is lovely today.”
“Good. Mind coming upstairs with me. I wanna talk to you about a couple things.”
She narrows her eyes in on me and I rise, telling her grandfather we’ll play again tomorrow. He’s a good sport, so we agree to play tomorrow and I head upstairs behind Dema, not minding watching her as she goes up every step but being here in case she loses her balance. This way I can catch her quickly. She gets to the top of the stairs, walks down the hallway, and then heads into our bedroom. I shut the door behind her and she takes a seat on the edge of the bed, while I lean up against the wall and tell her what she’s been so desperate to find out for weeks now.
“You’re about to tell me everything, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, you ready to hear it?”
She nods once. “I’ve been ready for ages.”
I clear my throat. “You were taken by the leader of the Russian Bratva, also known as the mob. He took you because your biological father crossed his father in some way, and don’t ask me how because I don’t know. I didn’t go digging for that information because my main priority was getting you. We found you because the woman across the street from the tattoo shop, the one who lives above the café, had security cameras pointed toward the alley. It was because of her we were able to see the wolf tattoo on the man who took you, leading us to find out it was someone who worked for the Volkolv family. Katya was on her way back from Istanbul and took us to the Volkolv estate.” I’m summarizing the series of events for her, but the part I’m about to say is the part where I’m unsure how she’ll react. “Katya’s cousin was the man who took you, her mother was half-siblings with his father, and now Katya has claimed the role as leader of the Russian Bratva. Your father was an arms dealer, who was actually Katya’s husband.”
Dema sits up a bit straighter and stares at me with widened eyes. “Do you mean Sergei?”
“How do you know his name?”
She shrugs. “I’ve only heard about him from some of the men who work for you, briefly hearing about the way he was . . . feared yet respected.”
Her words are nicer than most would use. Sergei Kolosov was a foul beast. “Katya told me that you were conceived when they were married, that they had a night with your mother and well, here we are now. As you’ve told me your father provided for you financially while your mother took care of you, but I found out the day we rescued you that you have two half-sisters. Natasha is older, and Larisa I believe is a few years younger than you.”
“I have sisters?” Dema’s eyes widen more and she puts a hand over her mouth in complete disbelief.
“Yes, two of them.”
“I can’t believe this . . . this is all so much to take in . . .”
With that, I’m using this opportunity however I can, so I kneel down on both of my knees and pull the red box out from my jeans and open it, praying to God she doesn’t say no. “I hope you’ve come to realize we’re anything but a charade, Dema. Sure, we were forced together to save your life . . . but you’ve given me purpose, and I want to spend the rest of my life by your side. Will you do me the honor of being my wife?”
Dema’s hands shake in front of her mouth and she nods profusely, so I slide the diamond ring Katya picked out with smaller opal stones around it over her finger and before I can take another breath her lips are on mine.
While we haven’t had an easy run as a couple, we’ve made every damn moment count and I know we’ll continue to do so until the end of our days.
This woman is everything I’ve ever wanted, and I can only hope I’m the same for her.
Epilogue
Dema
It’s been two weeks since Kronid sat down to explain all that he knew of my family. To say my world was rocked back some is a drastic understatement. It explains why Katya was in my hospital room because she was married to my biological father before he died. Though I’d have thought she wouldn’t have liked me since I was the product of another woman he’d slept with.
I mean Trista’s parents are divorced and her mother despises my friend’s little brother, who was born when her ex-husband remarried a really nice woman.
Then again, I don’t know much of how families are supposed to be. Maybe it depends on the people in the family. According to Kronid, who admitted to killing a man my sister was married to, I shouldn’t expect to get to know her. I couldn’t be mad at him for doing something to a man I didn’t know. I didn’t even know Natasha and as it stands now, I don’t know if I’ll ever want to know her. One day, maybe. Who knows? Then there’s Larisa and I don’t know much about her, but Kronid’s spoken to me about his own strained relationship with his younger half-sister, even explaining how his father conditioned him to be his own miniature soldier of sorts, making it seem like the world was against his father, and not like his father was the bad man. At the end of the day his father was bad, he might’ve even been as horrid as my biological father.
For the past couple of days, I hadn’t been feeling the greatest and I was lucky enough to already have a follow up appointment set for this morning. I promised Kronid I’d mention not feeling well to the doctor and see what they say. Hopefully it’s not the flu or anything else serious.
We were in the process of planning a wedding after he proposed to me. I thought it was beautiful how Kronid informed me nothing about the two of us could be a façade. Then when he pulled out a gorgeous ring and asked me to marry him, I felt like I was living a real-life fairy tale. We may have started out in a strange way, but the two of us have longed for each other to know what the heart wants.
I told Kronid I didn’t want a massive wedding. I simply wanted a small, intimate affair where the two of us stood in front of our friends and family where we said our vows to one another. Kronid agreed, more than happy to keep it small.
“How are you feeling today, Dema?” the doctor asks after stepping into the room. I didn’t even hear her knock on the door. But if it were anyone else, my guard, who now goes with me everywhere when I’m not with Kronid, wouldn’t have let them pass.
Since I left the hospital, Kronid’s kept his word and when I brought it up that he didn’t need to do this, I thought he was going to yell at me. Instead, Kronid simply stated, ‘You might not think you do, but I’m not about to take a chance with your life again.’
I couldn’t argue with him, not when his words were so meaningful. If he needed this to be able to focus on what he has to do then I’ll endure the brunt of it. Besides, I get to go back to work hopefully tomorrow, as long as the doctor clears me today.
I miss tattooing and haven’t been able to since before Maxim nearly ripped my body apart. I still have nightmares, but I’m thankful more than anything to have Kronid with me every night to hold me through them.
“Honestly the pain is gone. I’m still somewhat tender but I can at least walk now without agony and I can move my arms without wincing,” I inform her.
“That’s very good, Dema. I don’t see why you can’t go back to work as long as you promise not to overdo it, but you need to start on light shifts,” the doctor states.
“I promise,” I murmur with an enthusiastic nod.
“Good, now is there anything else you would like to discuss before I send you off?”
“Actually, there is. See the last few days, I’ve been feeling under the weather and I wanted to make sure I didn’t have the flu or anything. You know with taking care of my grandparents, I’d hate to be the cause of them falling ill.”
“Understandable. Now when did you have your last period?”
My mind falters at the question. I honestly don’t remember. With the pain my body’s been suffering for the past several months it slipped my mind.
“Um, I’m not sure.”
“Okay, well, before we start testing anything else, I’d like to get you to take a simple urine test,” she says softly then proceeds to tell me to go get her a sample and bring it back into the room for her.
Blood & Agony: A Dark Criminal Romance (Pins and Needles: Moscow Book 1) Page 9