“I knew you had a good reason. And if applauding you for what you did makes me a bad person, then so be it.” She handed him the stick that had caused so much trouble. “Please destroy that,” she said as she lay back on the pillows, hissing when the back of her head burned with pain. “What the . . . ?” She reached under her tacky hair and felt a small bandage.
“When you fell against the dresser, you cut your head open. Tegan said she’ll take the stitches out in a few days. You were out for a while. Too long. Scared the fuck out of us.”
“Who’s ‘us’?” Her memories were fuzzy after Kevin disappeared out the fire escape. She vaguely remembered having a hard time cutting open the suitcase, but that was about all.
“Me and Vincente.”
“Really? Did he say something?” She clamped her lips shut. Shit. She’d sounded too eager. Her cheeks heated in embarrassment.
Caleb frowned down at her. A frown she recognized as the “brotherly” frown. “What’s going on between you two?”
“Nothing,” she said honestly. “Why? Did he say something?” Eager, again! Grr.
“No. But then, he didn’t have to. His actions spoke louder than any words he could have used. He was rattled. Big-time. Lost that impressive control he’s famous for. Was ready to kill Kevin—that was for sure. And anyone else who got in the way of getting you here.”
There was no denying the pleasure that dipped in her stomach that time. “Well, maybe he’s just a good guy.”
“He is. Been through the ringer, too.”
“How so?”
Caleb shifted, settling next to her with his ear almost touching her forehead, because she was on her side. She snuggled up to his warm bulk, still so cold, and relaxed against his comforting presence.
“Kirov said Vincente had a sister. Younger than him, from the impression I got. She was snatched off the street on her way home from school one day by some guys running a prostitution ring. They got her and the other girls hooked on meth and made them trade sex for more drugs. Really messed them up. Vincente found her body on one of his nightly rounds to the morgue. She’d OD’d after almost a year.”
Nika could barely breathe, unable to even comprehend what that must have been like for Vincente. “Oh, my God, Caleb. I wish you hadn’t told me that,” she wheezed through a tight throat. “Poor Vincente.”
Caleb briefly tightened his arm around her. “Sorry, Nik. I wasn’t thinking. Maks also said he thinks V is taking this so seriously to make up for not being able to save his own sister.” He grunted but with no real feeling. “So be prepared to have him hanging around. I, for one, am glad. If anyone can help us find that cocksucker, he and his boys can. Do you have any idea where Kevin went?”
Nika shook her head as something that felt like defeat settled on her bruised chest. Vincente wasn’t acting like her watchdog because he might care for her in some small way. He was trying to salve his own conscience. She buried her head deeper into her brother’s shoulder, sighing long and quietly as her eyes slid closed.
If Vincente helped himself by helping her, she’d be okay with that. If he found some closure by being involved in her mess, then at least she’d have had a small part in helping him gain a little peace, and that would be all right.
Yet another thing to make the past year of hell worth it.
Her eyes slid open, attempting to widen. “Eva. Oh, my God. I ruined her—”
“Hey,” Caleb barked, startling her. “You did nothing. And don’t even think about apologizing to her and Moretti because you’ll get nothing but shit for thinking anything else was as important as what you ended tonight.”
Nika wilted again and was pretty sure she smiled as she slipped into a deep sleep.
CHAPTER 8
A week later, Alekzander Tarasov grabbed his briefcase from the passenger seat and climbed out of his Range Rover. As he slammed the door, he watched Caleb, who’d been a regular around the house lately, come down the front steps, his fragile-looking sister just behind him and a worried Eva behind her. Alek followed their gazes and saw a gray Escalade pull around the circular drive.
Gabriel and Quan were a few paces behind the queen bee, and Alek noted the Asian’s hand going casually to the small of his back where he’d have tucked his gun, despite where they were. He needn’t have bothered. Neither Samnang nor Maksim would have allowed the truck through the front gate if they hadn’t been sure of the occupants.
The rear door of the Escalade opened, and a big blond dressed in denim and leather climbed out of the backseat.
Vex.
The president of the Obsidian Devils MC, Manhattan chapter, gave a round of nods before going over and pulling Paynne in for a back-slapping hug. Grabbing the big guy’s chin in a grip, he said something too quietly for anyone but them to hear. Paynne nodded and was released.
The prez then turned to Nika and—
Oh . . . shit.
Vincente’s Kombat pulled in behind the Escalade.
Alek went over, merging with Gabriel so that they were there when V got out. They obviously had the same idea—possible intervention. Handing the vulnerable redhead over to her brother and Vex wasn’t something Vincente was going to find easy to do. Guy had a soft spot for her—and he sure wouldn’t like seeing Vex gather her gently into his arms to greet her as he was doing right now.
“How you holding up, honey?” Vex asked in a tone that was downright tender.
Everyone watched as the biker raised a hand as if to touch the bruise on Nika’s face. The sudden look of alarm that flashed in her eyes and that pitiful action—the same one a dog would make just before getting a cuff on the head—made every male body seize up as if they’d all been jacked with Tasers.
Grinding his teeth, Alek glanced at Vincente and saw rage, pure and simple, flash across his friend’s sinister features at Nika’s cowed gesture. Something else was there, too, easily identified as the same possessive instinct Alek had felt whenever another guy had gone near Sacha.
Shit. He almost staggered as a crippling pain flared behind his sternum, sucking away his ability to breathe. How had he let her name slip through his mind so easily? He was usually more careful.
Refusing to acknowledge what felt like a fist squeezing his heart, he kept one eye on his friend, who’d been MIA for a week now. Vincente had taken off without a word the night he’d brought Nika in. Seeing him now, eyes sunken, skin pale, mouth a tight slash behind his unshaven jaw, the look was familiar. Saw it every time his own reflection bounced off a mirror. They knew he had a soft spot for Nika from the way he’d acted around her in Seattle, but maybe it was more than that. Whatever it was, V was clearly attempting to deny it.
Alek wanted to tell him not to bother but knew it was a painful lesson his friend would have to learn on his own.
“You gonna be okay with this?” he questioned under his breath as Nika stepped back from Vex.
Vincente’s long hair slid off his shoulders with the slight shake of his head. “Nope,” he answered, as honest as ever. “Doesn’t matter, though.” He stood still as a statue when Nika’s gaze found him.
Damn, Alek thought, moved by the emotion in the redhead’s expression as she walked over. Holy fuck. In the light of day, she looked worse than ever with the dark smudges of fatigue under her eyes and that damned spectacular bruise on her cheek standing out like nobody’s business because her skin was so pale.
“I’m glad you got here before I left.” She gave Vincente a warm hug, which he barely returned, obviously trying to be careful of the many injuries that were pretty much everywhere on her body. Even around the V-neck T-shirt she was wearing, the edges of an angry bruise coming up from her sternum could be seen. “Thank you, Vincente. Caleb and I appreciate your help more than you know.”
V’s only response was a clipped nod, but she took it and moved to Gabriel, hugging the boss and saying
quietly, “Watch Eva for me, Gabriel. Something’s up. She said she felt sick this morning. Then I saw her wobble and grab the counter when she was pouring my coffee. Her mom had type 1 diabetes and always made Eva have checkups, but I know she hasn’t had one for a long time. Maybe she should.”
Gabriel’s attention latched on to his wife, who right then did look kind of green. “She didn’t say anything.” He sounded angry.
Nika snorted and gave him a look that said, Are you dense? “’Cause she’s Eva, silly. Just watch her, ’kay?” She kissed him on the cheek. “And thank you for everything.”
She smiled at Alek and went over to say good-bye to Eva. The ladies embraced each other like sisters. “Thanks, hon. And I’m sorry again for ruining your wedding. I’ll call you once I charge my cell.” Her voice was just a whisper, but it carried in the tense quiet.
Eva nodded, wiping at the tears on her cheeks. Something she’d been doing a lot of lately. Crying.
An unhappy chuff sounded next to him as Gabriel witnessed the action.
“Relax, man. You can turn her frown upside down later,” Alek muttered, as disgusted as he was right fucking jealous of the newlyweds. He tried not to grunt at the elbow that connected with his ribs.
Caleb, whose eyes were bloodshot and droopy, gave his sister a gentle prod toward the truck, and, with an all-encompassing wave, she disappeared into the interior, closing the door behind her.
Vincente’s big body lost some of its steel as she was hidden away, but then he bunched up tighter than ever when Caleb turned to him. The hand the biker put out was instantly clasped.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Caleb demanded. Then he went on without waiting for a response. “Have you found anything yet?”
At V’s negative head shake, Caleb said, “I want to come out with you when you’re searching. I need to be there when you find that fuck.”
“I’ll be in touch,” was all Vincente gave him.
A throat being cleared had them glancing at an impatient-looking Vex. “We should get her home.” The president’s usually cocky attitude was dialed way down, but he still clearly thought he was in charge.
And if this wasn’t one of those oh-shit moments that could turn into a run-for-your-life massacre, Alek didn’t know what was. A deadly mafia underboss and the alpha-male president of a notorious MC panting after the same woman?
Oh, yeah. This could get real messy.
Caleb thanked Gabriel with a solid embrace, waved at the rest of them, then got into the truck with Vex. As they drove away, Gabriel stalked over to Eva and gathered her close before leading his sniffling bride into the house.
Alek remained by Vincente’s side as they watched the vehicle disappear down the long drive, wondering what kind of violent thoughts were tumbling through his friend’s mind.
The forty-minute drive to the clubhouse was a mostly silent one, broken only by the stereo quietly playing in the background.
Leather creaked as Vex shifted, tipping his head at one of the boys leaving on his bike as they entered a paved parking lot through the chain-link gate. They pulled up behind a high concrete wall that hid a row of Harleys, and they all got out.
Nika squinted against the brightness of the sun as she took in the nondescript, weathered gray brick of the building, interrupted by dozens of high windows spaced a good distance apart that wrapped around the entire clubhouse. Vex had refurbished the inside of the old place, making the space livable by creating more than a dozen midsize suites for any member of the ODMC needing a place to stay. No one but Vex, Caleb, and two others lived here permanently, but the place was always teeming with a few of the boys and their current girlfriends.
And now her, Nika thought, tired and strung out.
But not for long, she vowed. She’d give her brother as long as she’d given Eva, and then she’d strike out on her own. Start living her life.
An image of Vincente’s big truck pulling up outside the house came to mind. Where had he disappeared to this past week? Didn’t really matter. She was just curious, because he sure as hell hadn’t been at home. Every day she’d thought she’d see him walk into the main room where she and Eva had spent most of their time. Had waited to see him stride into the kitchen at mealtimes the way Alek, Maksim, Quan, Gabriel, and most times Vasily did.
But he hadn’t. Not once.
Had he stayed away because she’d been there? Or was his absence a normal thing?
She didn’t know, and she had been too self-conscious to ask.
Maybe he’d just been working. Maybe he had a place in the city.
Or maybe he’d been with a woman—he probably had a half dozen waiting for a call from him. Had he been with one of them? Sleeping in her bed, loving her with that powerful body, holding her as tenderly as Nika dimly remembered being held the night she’d gotten away from Kevin.
“Nika?”
“What,” she snarled through the jealousy invading her. She unfisted her hands when she felt the bite of her nails pierce the skin of her palms.
Vex and Caleb both stared at her.
“Sorry,” she grumbled, snatching her borrowed bag of clothes off the seat; all Eva’s, of course—the damned duffel darkened her mood even more because it made her feel like a beggar. “I’d like to go shopping, Caleb.” After slamming the truck door, she took off. The two silent men carefully fell into step just behind her. “Can you take me? I also need to leech some money off you until I can make it to the bank. And if, even once,” she warned through clenched teeth as they passed through the oversize steel door and headed upstairs, “you say anything that resembles don’t worry about it or it’s on me or everything’s going to be okay, Nik, I’ll punch you right in the nose. Understand?” She halted at the top of the stairs, not knowing which way to go.
I will not cry.
She went right when someone’s hand nudged her shoulder that way.
“Okay,” Caleb said gently. “Vex went over and got your stuff from the hotel.” He stilled her with a tug on the hem of her shirt, also Eva’s, reached around her to punch a code into the pad on the wall, and opened the door for her.
“Burn it,” Nika instructed. “I don’t want anything but my purse and cell phone.”
“Will do.”
His eager-to-please acceptance of her bitchy, unreasonable attitude sucked the temper right out of her, and instead of stomping into the room, she turned to him.
The sight of his unease disappeared when her vision blurred because, yet again, her fucking eyes filled with tears. She hadn’t cried so much since she was a toddler!
“Please don’t put up with my shit like this, Caleb,” she pleaded angrily. “You never would have before. You would have handed me a box of Midol and told me to get my own water. Yes, I’m stressed and worried.” Because Eva had told her how hard they were searching for Kevin. “I’m pissed off.” Because it had been Eva who’d had to tell her they were searching for Kevin. “I’m hurting, and I swear I really am going to get my period any day now. But, of course, I don’t know that for sure because my calendar and everything I’ve ever owned is back in hell. Where it will stay,” she vowed, not wanting even a thread to remind her of what she already considered her past. Eva had also told her Gabriel had had Jakson Trisko, another in his security team who’d remained in Seattle to tie up any loose ends from the Stefano–Furio fiasco, go to Kevin’s apartment. He’d done a sweep and found no copies of Caleb’s video.
“But what I find worse than anything,” she continued, hearing the high pitch in her voice but unable to do anything about it, “is how everyone’s tiptoeing around me. The looks I’m getting are driving me crazy. Even from Eva, for God’s sake! You’re all looking at me like I’m some kind of poor kicked puppy.”
She spun away and entered Caleb’s suite, where the first thing she saw, sitting so innocently on a bookshelf between two grease-mark
ed Harley manuals, was a picture of her and Caleb with their dad when they were about sixteen and twenty, respectively.
Nika’s hand slapped over her mouth as her throat closed up. Oh, God. The innocence in her expression. The real smile. When was the last time she’d smiled like that? When was the last time she’d even had the urge?
Why had her life turned out like this?
Her knees hit the floor with a soft thud, and Eva’s bag fell beside her as dark memories consumed her. She broke, shadows billowing and swallowing her whole. She fell to pieces in a way she hadn’t allowed herself to do until now, mourning the expectant, naive girl she’d been. And cried her heart out for the wrecked woman she now was.
Not in all the time Kevin had terrorized her had she felt so shattered, so hopeless. Not when he’d held her prisoner by threatening Caleb’s freedom. Not when he’d kicked her. Slapped her. Broken her wrist that first month. Made her bleed. Treated her worse than an animal. Not once during any of it had she allowed herself the freedom of purging, pouring out her emotions, as she did just then.
But faced with that photograph, that heartbreaking before, and the after now reflected back at her in the mirror, she couldn’t stop herself.
And through the powerful storm that had finally rolled in, her brother and his best friend knelt beside her, holding her, offering their strength, their comfort, in the form of soft, affectionate touches to her bruised back and stitched head. Gentle, soothing words brushed her ears, words she couldn’t hear over the thunder rumbling through her mind.
Where did she go from here? Where would she find a tether? Because as it was, she felt as if she were floating free of everything she’d ever known—even if throughout the past year the majority of that had been violent and negative. At least it was familiar.
Being free was not.
Walking through a warehouse that sat on that line separating Queens from Brooklyn, Gabriel noted the pleasing scent of wood and fabric still in the air from when the place had been used to build furniture. His expression was grim as memories danced around his head. The last time he’d come through a place like this it had been at his brother’s request. The same night Gabriel had delivered a truck filled with explosives to a factory in the Bronx, causing the blast that had killed his brother’s girlfriend. At their father’s orders. Well, his father’s.
The Salvation of Vengeance (Wanted Men #2) Page 11