He blinked.
And, just like that, the darkness began its regression.
“What are you doing here?” She stepped back and motioned for him to come in. “I thought, after our little talk, I wouldn’t see you again.”
She shut the door.
When she turned around, he was right in front of her.
“We were always going to see each other again,” he said, and then he grinned like an android trying to convince a room full of humans that it was one of them.
She didn’t like him like this, but she’d needed to see it. Even if it was a small peek, the Dom he showed her daily wasn’t someone she could see sanctioning the slaughter of entire families or selling guns, women, and children. That was what the Bratva did. Someone like that, no matter how sweet the “yang” to his “yin,” was impossible for her to be with.
“Are you hungry?” She scanned his clothes. “I made that extra roti, so while I heat it up, you go get cleaned up. I don’t have anything here for you to change into, but I’ll throw those in the washing machine if you don’t mind walking around in a towel and your underwear for a bit.”
He tilted his head to the side. “You don’t have men’s clothes here?”
“Know what? You can go home now.”
“I’m good right here, actually.”
“We’ll see about that.” She pointed to the hallway. “The bathroom’s that way. You’ll see the linen closet right before you hit the door.”
He walked off, and she headed to the kitchen to reheat the roti and pour him a glass of vodka. Because she knew how his night had gone, she knew he needed it. Usually, at this time of night, she would be down at Colin and April’s, but after tonight’s activities, she’d stayed in just in case someone from Yuri’s camp had come looking for her.
Dom returned, a white towel wrapped around his waist and his clothes balled up in one hand. Eija traded him the vodka and roti for the clothes.
“Are these designer?” she asked, searching for a tag. “I don’t want to ruin them by tossing them in the washing machine.”
He shrugged. “It’s okay. I don’t care.”
“Dom, are you okay? You’re…not yourself.”
“No.” He took a large bite of the roti and studied her face as he chewed.
“Can I help in any way?”
“You already are.”
As her nana would say, she and Dom “pull on too well.” It was why she’d known, the minute their conversation in the penthouse library had ended, they would be back here. She’d never meshed with anyone as quickly as she had with Dom. Even Colin, when they were first assigned to work together, she’d butted heads with because their personalities were too similar.
Then, in the middle of an unanticipated shootout, Colin had taken several slugs to the torso, arm, and leg, nearly bleeding out on the streets of Thailand. She’d had her arm extended for them to take blood before they could ask, her and Colin one of the few pairs whose personality tests had placed them together and their blood types had matched for scenarios like the one in Phuket.
After that, they’d become inseparable.
With Dom, she’d fallen into a rhythm with him from their very first date, and that was something she found equally intriguing and terrifying.
She flopped down onto the sofa, legs curled underneath her. Before he arrived, she’d been watching an American crime show with Russian subtitles. Dom sat on the floor in front of her, long legs passing through the coffee table, periodically lifting the roti to his mouth.
“Like it?” she asked.
He moaned his approval. “Love it. Perfect amount of heat and perfectly seasoned You made this just for me?”
“You asked.”
“I did. Thank you.”
When he was finished, he put the plate and glass in the dishwasher, turned it on, and then washed his hands.
“Don’t scrub too hard,” she called after him. “Those curry stains are going to hang around a while.”
He returned, and she stopped herself from getting too caught up in his physique. The strategic way he was inked, he’d obviously gotten most of the tattoos to cover his scars. The ones that turned her on the most, for reasons unknown, were the ones on his fingers. Namely, the skull that started on the back of his hand and ended past his knuckles. Underneath all that ink was a body she’d never forget; abs that clenched and triceps that bulged with each thrust of his hips, pushing his dick deep inside her.
Instead of returning to the floor, he lay on the sofa. As though it was instinct, she unfolded her legs, grabbed a pillow, and he laid his head on the pillow, on her lap. She stroked his head, the strands of hair still smooth despite the low cut.
“What made you cut it?”
“You miss my hair?”
“I like you with either, honestly.”
“Yuri. He said my hair made me look too pretty. That no one would take me seriously.”
“Is that why,” she scrubbed the hair on his face, “you grew this out?”
“Yeah. You like that too?”
“I prefer you with it.” She scrubbed again. “I like you with any style hair, but I love this. God, you’re so good looking it’s disgusting.”
A smile pulled at the right side of his mouth. “Are you flirting?”
“No.”
“Sounds like it.”
“It’s my natural way of interacting. I’m genetically flirtatious.”
A deep laugh shook his shoulders.
Dom slowly filtered back in, Dominik slipping away and returning to the place where there was no love, no light.
They had heated debates over which of the reenactment actors would wind up being the killer. Eija nailed it every single time, and he joked that she would have made a good detective or law enforcement officer.
As another show geared up, he reached for her hand and massaged it with the back of his thumb. “How’d you learn to speak Russian so well?” he asked.
“Classes.” That she’d taken way back when she was still a runt in the CIA. She’d also learned Farsi and Czech as necessary parts of the job. “I always knew I wanted to teach here, so I enrolled in an immersive program.”
“What, were you trying to get a job with the CIA or something?”
She snorted. “Uh…no. Not even.”
By the time she’d gotten to Farsi, she’d already been an officer at the agency for a few years.
“I mean, I don’t even hear your accent when you speak it,” he went on. “You sound like you grew up here.”
She raised one shoulder in a shrug. “That’s the point, I think. It makes people feel comfortable, and I wanted to charm Yuri and Ekaterina. They had all the prospective nannies meet Nikolai, and I just knew I had to be in his life.”
“Honestly, I never pegged you for the caregiver type.”
“I was the ‘mother’ of the resort.”
He ticked his head. “I guess so. You do an outstanding job. Nikolai adores you.”
“He’s a sweet kid.”
“Can I make one request thought?” He held up his right index finger. “When we’re alone, can you use it for me? Your accent, I mean.”
“Didn’t you say it was a turn on?”
“No.” He dragged out the word. “I don’t recall ever mentioning that.”
She smoothed the short hairs at his temple with her fingers. “Whatever. I’m not going to do anything that’ll have us end up in bed together and break our covenant. I won’t share you, Dom, and especially not with a fiancée or wife.”
“Eija, I want you more than I want them. Collectively.”
She made a sound of disbelief, but her heart went full Mr. Miyagi crane kick in her chest.
“It would be a marriage in name only,” he added.
“It’s still marriage,” she argued.
“I know. I get where you’re coming from. But if you don’t want us to end up in bed together, you should probably stop rubbing my head.”
She kept
rubbing his head.
They finished another television show, this one about neighbors who ended up turning violent when minor altercations escalated.
He shared with her an incident with an old neighbor of his aunt’s. The man hadn’t known his aunt was no longer living alone and had fancied himself a Homeowner’s Association enforcer. He’d complained that the blades of grass in Dom’s aunt’s yard were a half inch too high and knocked on her door one morning to issue a citation it looked like he’d created in Microsoft Paint. When Dom opened the door, the neighbor had faltered and hurried back to his house. Dom then spent the next several months periodically visiting the neighbor’s yard with a tape measure, and a clipboard with blank sheets of paper.
“Just to be an asshole,” he finished.
“An asshole looking out for your aunt,” she justified. “Were your aunt and mother close? Is that why you chose her to live with?”
“For most of their lives, yes.”
“How’d your mother and Yuri meet?”
“They met in California. Aani was her name. She was Iranian.” He cupped her knee, slowly stroking. “Hey, Eija? Instead of drinks or dinner, what if I took you to a wax—”
“Dom, I swear to God…” She shoved his hand away from her knee. “Yes, let’s go to a wax spa. While they work on my perfectly smooth legs, I’ll ask them to wax off every last bit of that lovely hair.”
“Lovely, handsome, gorgeous, beautiful. Why are you so obsessed with me?”
“When did I call you beautiful?”
“I’m pretty sure you did. Don’t worry. I’ll remember.”
They laughed together, back in that comfort bubble it hadn’t taken long for them to build. Once their laughter died, she asked the hard question.
“Can I ask how your mother passed?”
It wasn’t clear how much of this information she would pass on to Colin, or if she wanted to know because she was looking for something that would absolve him from shouldering the responsibility of his father’s crimes.
“Kat’s not Yuri’s first wife,” he explained. “Her name was Anika. With her, Yuri didn’t do the dostavka because he didn’t want anyone knowing she existed. According to him, she was smart, quick-witted, sharp. She was also insanely jealous, emphasis on the insane. As you can probably already tell, Yuri’s dick wanders from time to time.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
“Most of the women, when Anika found out about them, she paid them to leave, but my mother didn’t want money. She wanted Yuri. When he found out she was pregnant, he brought her to Russia thinking he could hide us in Krasnodar. Anika eventually found my mother and…sold her.”
Eija went still. “Sold her? Trafficking?”
“Yes. Wasn’t hard considering the Brat…considering Yuri’s influence.”
“Oh my God.” She knew nothing of Anika, but selling a woman was something that had Yuri written all over it. “How did Yuri find out? And was she still pregnant when all of this happened?”
“She was.”
“Dom, did she use while she was pregnant with you?”
“At first, unwillingly, but dependency doesn’t care how you started. Luckily, I wasn’t affected. From what I understand, Yuri looked for us the entire time. When he found us, I was already six, and we were living in Astrakhan, one of the poorest oblasts in Russia. My mother did her best, but…” He shrugged. “Anyhow, Yuri took us back with him to Moscow. He tried to get my mother help, but she died by overdose.”
“Why does it seem like no one knows he has a son?” Eija prodded. “But then Nikolai talks about his ‘uncle’ Dominik, and Yuri introduced you to me as his son.”
While working on something unrelated for her boss at the CIA, she’d discovered a series of trips Yuri had taken to California. She’d also found flight manifests of him traveling with a female companion who went by “Annie,” and the large sums of money he’d send to California regularly. She’d tracked the funds to a shell company and then eventually to Dom’s aunt. After going through his aunt’s bank records, she’d learned a good portion of those funds had gone to tuition.
Eija closed her eyes and mentally cursed.
Tuition at Stanford.
He’d told her he’d attended Stanford back in Grenada but, by then, the stars in her eyes had already blinded her.
Not long after that discovery, her boss sent her to France to join Randy’s task force. It was from there she’d eventually learned of Dominik Sokolov, but Dom had been so well-buried, it was only because Randy’s file on Yuri had included one family member whose lineage had been unclear that they’d pieced everything else together. From there, the manhunt for the Bratva prince had taken shape.
Dom stretched his neck, chest flexing with a massive sigh. “Yuri hid me to keep me safe from his enemies. As a boy, and because I had no mother, I was more vulnerable than his daughters. For whatever reason, my father will do anything for me. So, since Anika had brought me grief, he’d had her killed. I’d assumed he’d sent Anika into hiding to protect her from any repercussions for hurting my mother, and I’d hated him for it, so I left Russia to live with my aunt in Redwood City when I turned sixteen.”
“And now that you know the truth?”
“I owe him.”
“Does any part of you want to run,” now she’d nearly slipped up and mentioned the Bratva, “Sokol Incorporated?”
“Nope. If it was up to me, I’d live out my days in a villa in Central America with a certain West Indian goddess.”
“Rihanna?”
“Who else?”
A laugh bubbled up and through her, and he smiled in response.
“So, I’ve told you a lot about me.” He turned onto his back, head still on the pillow, and looked up into her face. “Tell me everything that I missed out on learning about Eija.”
“There’s not much to tell.”
“Well, what did you do after you left the resort?”
She ran through the story she’d rehearsed so much, she’d started merging the fake events with her actual life, mixing the memories together.
“I spent time with my grandparents. Then, after my grandfather’s death, I needed a…change.”
“I really am sorry to hear about your grandfather. What about your grandmother?”
When she didn’t respond and instead looked out the window, he took her hand and brought her fingers up to his lips. What she hadn’t expected was for her to prefer her grandfather’s condition to her grandmother’s. One…maybe two days was all he’d had to live with the pain, and he’d been unconscious the entire time. Her grandmother’s condition and the gradual way it had stripped the parts of her that had made her who she was had been harder to deal with.
“Anyhow,” she cleared the emotion from her throat, “I came to Russia not really expecting much, and now I have one of the best jobs I’ve ever had. Funny how life works that way.” She squeezed his bicep. “Now, are you going to tell me why you’re bandaged up here and had blood on your clothes?”
He raised his arm and looked at the wound like he’d never seen it before. “Would you believe me if I said I got into a shootout and knife fight?”
Yes.
“Um...no. Dom, there are other ways to impress me. You don’t have to make yourself seem dangerous.”
“I am dangerous. Look at all my tattoos. I have tatts on my fingers. Only dangerous men have ink on their fingers, Eija.”
“Or men trying to hide childhood scars.” She took his hand. “I do like this skull tattoo, though. I like how it goes all the way down past your knuckles. It’s…making me…”
His pupils grew. “Making you…what?”
She turned her attention to the TV.
“Making you what, Eija?”
“Look, Dom, we got one wrong. The wife was the killer the whole time.”
He flipped onto his side. “I fucking hate you.”
She doubled over laughing and kissed his cheek.
After a great deal
of coaxing, Dom had gotten Eija to lie down on the sofa with him. The fatigue in her eyes had been clear since he walked in, but she’d stayed up to spend time with him despite his unexpected late-night visit. He’d half expected to walk in and find her with a man, and he’d fully expected to throw the man off the balcony if that had happened.
Sometime between a show that interviewed people who’d grown up with killers and another one recounting a detective’s past cases, she’d fallen asleep. As tired as he was, he stayed awake to watch her sleep. He wanted to hear her breathe, see her chest moving with each deep inhale and exhale.
He’d never been what some would consider a womanizer. He loved women and enjoyed their company, but he didn’t see fucking one—or as many as possible—as some sort of conquest. First love had come in the form of Ivy Lawrence, who he’d met his senior year of high school. Last he’d heard, she’d gone on to work in some genetics lab, dodging the bullet that would have shattered her life if they’d stayed together. While she’d been researching cures, he’d invested money during the day and carried out for-hire contracts at night.
So, he had no problem admitting to himself that he was into Eija. Whenever they spent time together, he walked away feeling better than good, and that she was the same fucking amazing person he’d met in Grenada didn’t help how badly he wanted her in every way and position imaginable.
“Eija?” He stroked her arm. “Eija, come on. Let’s go to bed.”
She grumbled something, folded his hand against her chest, and went back to sleep.
“All right. Fine.”
He eased up off the couch, lifted her clean off the cushions, and walked them back to her bedroom, the towel falling off on the way. Both their places had the same layout, so he’d known where the bathroom was even before she’d told him.
“Dom.” She groaned and let her head fall back. “I’ve already seen your muscles. Put me down before you hurt yourself.”
“You’re not heavy.” He set her on the bed and climbed over her. “I’ll grab my clothes from the dryer and go. I’ll lock up, okay?”
“No. Stay. You left me in Grenada, so you owe me a night here. Plus,” she yawned and gave his body a quick, sleepy scan, “I don’t know the entire story, but you’ve had a hard night. I can tell. Let me hold you.”
Prince of the Brotherhood: A Mafia Romance Page 13