Chapter 26
Dom kept his head down in the back of the van as the convoy ambled along. Pavel had assured them that the Bratva would intercept him along the Kuban River. Linda and Randy hadn’t explained to those involved in the transport that he was supposed to be taken, needing this to “remain several levels above top secret.” All that meant was, they wanted to absolve themselves of any guilt if and when lives were lost in the process.
He’d talked to Eija right before they started on the journey. She’d met his friends who lived in Sweden, and it had eased her mind to know Shiloh would be in more than capable hands.
The van rolled to a stop.
Next came voices.
Muffled gunfire rose into the air. Shouts and commands, in English and Russian, mixed with the gunfire. The van was bulletproof all the way up through the windows, so he didn’t worry about any shells penetrating.
Metal scraped the van’s back door, and he heard what sounded like chains falling.
The doors opened and, led by Pavel, were six Bratva, their guns aimed at the van opening.
Pavel tucked away his gun and made quick work of releasing the cuffs and manacles. The Bratva then formed a perimeter around Dom, just like he’d watched them do for Yuri time and time again, and escorted him to a waiting car. It was easy to see, with loyalty like this, how Yuri had swayed.
They helped him into an SUV and sped away.
When they were about a half hour away from the scene, a man he recognized as Liev pumped a fist.
“The prince lives!”
The other men, all except for Pavel, roared in excitement. Pavel remained silent, head down. Dom gripped his shoulder, and he nodded, but he didn’t look up.
“You have heard what happened to your father?” Liev asked.
Dom nodded.
“And Ekaterina?”
“Yes.” Her loss actually did bring him a rush of sadness. “How is Nikolai?”
Pavel finally spoke. “Safe. We won’t be bringing him back to the penthouse.”
The men murmured their agreement.
Dom gave Pavel’s shoulder another squeeze. Pavel might not have wanted Nikolai to know the truth about his paternity, but that hadn’t stopped him from doing everything he could to look out for his son.
“I need to make a stop,” Dom said. “At the U.S. Embassy.”
The men exchanged quizzical looks.
“The nanny’s involved, and I’m going to get the truth out of her…one way or the other.”
Eija sold the act of a helpless nanny, overwhelmed with gratitude that her employer had come looking for her. She’d changed into a plain white T-shirt and long cotton pants, as though the embassy had given her whatever clothes on hand they’d had for her to wear. On cue, she’d brought tears to her eyes, and Dom had rubbed her back and spoke with gentle words all the way back to the SUV.
Once they were inside, it was a different story.
“Hey!” Eija tugged on the rope that kept her hands fastened behind her back. “What are you doing?”
Dom studied her through narrowed eyes. “You know who killed Yuri.”
“What? H-how would I know that?”
They’d switched out the vehicles so that only he, Pavel, and two Bratva rode with Eija. The others took the initial SUV in the event they were being followed.
Dom leaned forward, inches from her face. “Because I know who you work for. You didn’t think I’d figure it out? Toss a little bit of pussy my way, and I’d fall to my knees?”
Her pupils dilated, and her bottom lip disappeared into her mouth. He gave a slight shake of his head. Now was not the time or the place. Seeing Eija tied up was like role play, and it fucked with his head too, but an SUV full of men would smell a wet woman from the first drip.
“What could I possibly know?” she asked.
He leaned back. “I aim to find out.”
“Please, I swear. I don’t know anything. What can I do? How can I make you believe me?”
Now, she was stumbling into fantasy territory.
Liev, grinning, grabbed his dick. “Sir, I don’t mean to be forward, but maybe you should hear her out. Maybe she can persuade us all.”
“You think with your dick often, Liev?” Dom stared at him, unblinking. “Can I trust that, if you are questioned about the Bratva, all you’d need to be offered to talk is a whiff of pussy?”
Liev’s smile fell. “No, sir. This is not the case.”
“See that it’s not.”
When they arrived at the penthouse, he ordered them to lock Eija in a room off Yuri’s study so he could monitor her. It was where Yuri had hid women if Ekaterina dropped in for an unannounced visit, already furnished with a bed and the crystal chandelier that dangled above it. Apparently, it was all Yuri had needed for his trysts.
Eija fought the entire way, the men thankfully missing the hardness of her nipples.
They strapped her, by the wrists, to the bedposts.
When they left, Dom left with them, but he was back already, standing in the doorway. She watched him through hooded eyelids, chest pitching high.
They hadn’t touched each other in Lyon. There, Shiloh had been the priority, and they’d both been nursing fresh injuries. Now, he was looking at Eija Barrett, the mother of his child. The woman who’d compromised a years-long operation. For him.
“I promise I know nothing,” she whispered.
He left the room and returned with a pair of scissors and more rope, which he used to strap her to the bottom bedposts by the ankles.
“Please, Mr. Sokolov. I had nothing to do with this.”
“I don’t trust you, Miss K.” He snipped off her panties and wasn’t, at all, surprised to see just how wet all of this had made her. “You arrived here around the same time as I did. I also learned that you were in Grenada at the same time as I was. Rumor is,” he slid two fingers along her slit, “we even have a kid together.”
Each pass of his fingers made her eyelids flutter.
“Please…”
“Please, what?”
“I’ll do anything you want.”
He cut the shirt down the middle, the halves falling to both sides. Her nipples were so firm, they looked like they ached. To help soothe them, he bent and sucked one into his mouth.
Eija nearly flew through the ceiling.
“Something wrong?” he asked, lips brushing her nipple. “You seem…agitated.”
“I just,” she swallowed, “want to give you what you want.”
“Is that right? And what do you think I want?”
She cried out when his mouth and tongue found the other nipple.
While he sucked, he stroked her clit, and the way her thighs clenched, he could tell she wanted to squeeze them together.
Too bad.
She was completely under his control.
“Quiet, Miss K. I don’t want the rest of the house to hear what I’m doing to you. What would they think of me?”
“That you’re a wicked man,” she hissed.
“Wicked?” He kissed his way down her body. “What else?”
“Dom, please. I can’t be quiet.”
“What’d you just call me?” He sank his teeth into her inner thigh. “What’s my name?”
Goosebumps flashed over her skin. “I’m sorry, Mr. Sokolov.”
“You don’t tell me what to do with your body. You don’t tell me what you can or can’t handle.”
His head disappeared between her legs.
She tried to pull away, but the restraints kept her locked in.
Moans became gasps.
Then cries.
She writhed and bucked. Pleaded. When he took her to the edge and stopped, multiple times, the tip of his tongue pressed lightly against her clit, she prayed.
When he finally let her climax, her body arched into a bow, and he kept licking until she nearly jerked a post from the bolts that attached it to the bed frame.
“You still say you know nothing?”
he asked, sucking the taste of her into his mouth from his bottom lip.
“Even if I did, why would I tell you?”
“Oh, is that right?” He undressed and stood, naked, along the edge of the bed. “So, you want me to give you a reason to tell you?”
“I’m…not sure.”
“Tell me what you want, Miss K. Is this,” he motioned to his dick, “what you want?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Please.”
He removed the restraints then tied her up again, this time hitching her up against the bedpost, stomach first and her body slightly bent. He grabbed her chin and turned her head to slip his tongue in her mouth at the same time he pushed his way into her body.
“Tell me what I want to hear, Miss K.”
She whimpered with each surge forward, and he held her hips steady with both hands.
“Miss K,” he bit her neck, her earlobe, “answer me.”
“You,” she answered, winded. “I want you.”
He’d asked her to tell him what he wanted to hear as Mr. Sokolov, but now she was speaking to Dom. Her Dom. And it made him even harder.
“I love you,” she said, and that it was nearly inaudible made it more salient. “When all of this is over, I just want you.”
An orgasm shot from him like molten lava, so strong he had to hold her in place against him to absorb some of the sensation. It covered him from head to toe, activating every nerve fiber. He kissed her any and everywhere, then simply held her until their heartbeats returned to normal.
Eija fell limp against him.
He untied her and helped her into bed, where they both drifted off to sleep.
Hours later, he emerged from the suite. Another Bratva, Zurik, met him on the stairs.
“Did she talk, sir?” Zurik asked.
Dom shook his head. “Not yet. Whoever she works for trained her well. I suspect I’ll be back up to try again, several more times. Several more times.”
Chapter 27
Eija stared at the monitor screen in front of her, scouring the images she’d taken in Yuri’s office for the millionth time. Dom was out, staying authentic to his role of trying to find who’d orchestrated the attack. Pavel had switched out the computer in Yuri’s office with one supplied by Colin, and when Dom wasn’t around, the study door remained locked. Because he didn’t trust anyone but Pavel to watch over her, whenever he needed to take Pavel with him, she locked herself inside the office. If she needed him, she had a phone. If she couldn’t get to a phone, she had a gun.
The office and her “cell” were both soundproofed, so she freely moved between both rooms. She and Dom hardly saw each other during the day, but he came to her at night. He’d come with her, every night. His friends in Sweden, a team of elite soldiers with families of their own, sent videos and images of Shiloh, who looked happy in each one.
Two more weeks, and Shiloh would be back in her arms.
“What are these?” Eija rotated the images, rotated her head. “They’re schematics, but for what?”
Her grandfather had been an enigmatologist who’d loved puzzles until the day he died. After retirement, he’d joined senior puzzle and chest tournaments, winning a few. He’d religiously watched detective crime shows, which was why she loved them so much. He was also the reason she’d chosen to go into covert work. What bigger mysteries were there to solve than the ones which could level entire cities? Result in biological warfare? In her opinion, there was no greater puzzle than the mind of a human being, especially those in positions of power.
An alert on the screen showed Dom entering the penthouse. He was with Pavel and Liev, but Pavel remained behind while Liev followed Dom up the stairs. At the top of the stairs, he glanced at a painting on the wall, a portrait of Tchaikovsky, letting her know they were headed to the office.
She closed out the images, went to the private room, and “cowered” on the bed.
The study door opened.
Several footsteps later, Dominik appeared in the private room without a suit jacket. Blood splatters made his white, collared shirt look like a Jackson Pollock. She knew it was Dominik from the look in his eyes, and she never asked him what he did whenever he left. They did what had to be done to get results.
Liev entered behind him.
Eija pulled the covers up to her chin. Dom had left enough bruises on her neck, from his biting and sucking, for the marks to look like injuries from afar. The ones on her breasts and ass, however, would give everyone a more accurate idea of what they’d been up to.
“Still nothing, hmm?” Liev asked her. “You don’t appear to be bloody and swollen enough for me. What kind of torture have you been using, sir?” Liev looked over at Dominik. “I think it might be the kind she likes.”
Dom’s gaze moved slowly from Eija to Liev.
“I can take a turn, hmm?” Liev went on. “Maybe she’ll sing on my cock.”
It was such a precise cut to the neck, a surgeon could have done it.
Dom twisted the knife before pulling it from Liev’s throat.
Liev, gasping, fell to the floor, eyes open, and they remained that way until he stopped twitching.
“He asked too many questions,” Dom said, shrugging off his shirt. He used it to wipe the blade, then tossed them both at Liev’s head. “I would have asked Pavel to handle it, but this one felt personal.”
Eija stared at the lifeless body.
He strode over, sat on the bed, and rubbed the sole of her foot with his thumb. “You okay?”
“Colin thinks Yuri, most likely, hasn’t left Russia,” she slowly began. “They cross-referenced flight manifests with his name and demographics. So far, they’ve found nothing. If he’s left, he hasn’t done it by plane, train, boat, or…diving gear.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think he hasn’t yet. He’s waiting for something. I’m guessing it’s a buyer for whatever those plans will, eventually, show me.”
Dom looked around. “You okay locked up in here?”
“I’m keeping busy. Plus, I have a friend who comes in here at night to play with me.”
“And how’s your calf?”
She lowered the sheet. It was nowhere near gruesome on the outside, but she had suffered some nerve damage. It would make for an interesting story one day. She’d tell Shiloh once she was old enough.
“It’s not bad, right?” she asked.
He fingered the scar’s marbling. “What’d you think, you’d come out looking like the monster Frankenstein built? You’re gorgeous, Eija. Scars and all.”
“Frankenstein? Oh, baby,” she hopped up and gave him a quick kiss, “you and that Nietzsche-quoting brain of yours.”
She hurried back to the computer, stepping over Liev’s body. As she moved the images around, he watched from over her shoulder. It took close to an hour, so he went from watching over her shoulder to pacing until she ended up on his lap, his hands kneading her hips. She had no idea how she’d survived working any other way before then.
“Dom, tell me what the Soviet atomic bomb project is.”
“You’re assuming I know.”
She looked back at him over her shoulder.
“Well,” he sighed, “it was basically Stalin’s response to The Manhattan Project when Soviet spies found out the U.S. was developing nuclear weapons. The secret cities here in Russia, they’re where the Soviet Union did much of its nuclear testing. The effects are still felt to this day in the surrounding areas.”
“God, I love you.” She positioned herself so they could both see the screen. “We were wrong. Yuri didn’t steal information from foreign countries. These are part of a set of notes on nuclear fission. Nuclear weapons. I thought we were looking for military weapons. Maybe a design schematic for a gunship or an unmanned fighter jet. Not, dare I say it, weapons of mass destruction. Why the hell would he want this?”
“Maybe he wants it, but he doesn’t intend to use it,” Do
m said, fingers moving to her spinal column. “Having this information is still powerful. Can you imagine what countries would pay for it?”
Realization hit them both at the same time.
“That’s why they did the Dostavka-Koronatsiya so soon,” she said, too shocked to feel betrayed. “Yuri still had years left in him, but he needed to be pulled out. Think about it, Dom. Who would this information benefit the most?”
Dom let his head hang, shook it. “Us.”
“Exactly. And the only price, in my opinion, Yuri would accept for this information is his freedom. Linda, David…they helped him do all of this. They created an entire fake op, a fake task force, to retrieve Yuri. It’s like she said; that’s years of intel. Yuri’s too valuable. It’s the real reason Linda sent me to work with Randy. She was afraid I’d figure it out. Shifting my focus to you took the heat off Yuri. Even if I’d sent your information in, they wouldn’t have done shit with it but throw me another bone. I wouldn’t be surprised if Randy has no clue.”
Dom called Pavel up to the room, clued him in, and the stoic man somehow went even more stoic. He didn’t have to speak for them to know, in his eyes, that there was no way Pavel was going to let Yuri get anywhere near safety.
“We still don’t know where he is,” Dom said, helping her to her feet. “And, if we’re going based on the theory that Randy doesn’t know what Linda and David are up to, they won’t leave him alone and risk me calling him without them running interference.”
Eija paced the room, mind going so fast her mouth could barely keep up. “The human brain likes comfort. It creates comfort using familiarity—patterns, rituals, rhythms. Predictability. Yuri had to lay low somewhere he felt safe. Somewhere familiar. Pavel, you know Yuri better than any of us. Say he had only two weeks to live. Where would he go?”
“Home,” Pavel said. “Astrakhan. It’s where his grandparents are from.”
“We used to go down there all the time,” Dom added. “He’d walk around the city, dredge up memories.”
Astrakhan was southern, like the regional dialect they’d picked up on. Which meant Yuri had likely orchestrated the attack at the dostavka-koronatsiya outside of Linda and David’s knowledge. He’d wrapped himself in the comforts of home, right down to the contract killers he’d hired to go after his only son, knowing Dom would handle them. But he’d needed to sell the lie of a snitch.
Prince of the Brotherhood: A Mafia Romance Page 23