My body acts like the finely tuned machine it is as I haul myself up and over the top of the train in a fluid motion, and the moment my feet touch the ground, I whip my pistol back out and point it in front of me…
...where I see my Russian friend holding Becca with an arm around her neck, his pistol pointed at her temple as both their faces look into me — one full of hatred, the other pale with fear.
“Adrian O’Connor,” comes the Russian’s thickly accented voice, a voice that hasn’t changed a bit since we last met.
“You have me at a disadvantage,” I reply, my voice barely restraining the blinding rage just under my skin as I shout over the wind that whips across our bodies atop the train.
“My name is Anatoly Bogdanov,” he growls as Becca’s eyes look at me pleadingly. “I was once a commander, but I resigned in shame, thanks to you.”
Thanks to your bad call and arrogant pride, I think to myself, but I know that I have to measure my words carefully right now. This has just become a hostage negotiation, and I’d lay down my own life before letting Becca’s go.
“What happened wasn’t our fault, Anatoly,” I say calmly. I need to talk him down if I can, just long enough for him to release Becca. Nothing else matters right now. “We got bad intel. Someone over our heads crossed some wires, and some good men paid the price.”
“The best men!” he barks, and now I can see the pain in his eyes as he presses the cold metal against Becca’s head, and she whimpers. “My men, O’Connor! They had families, and you killed them! My team went through everything together, but you ruined it all. The survivors went rogue after that operation. I had to lose my life’s savings to bribes to cover it all up. When I left the service, I had nothing! Nothing but the Bratva, and the chance to take revenge.”
“They ride you for all you’ve got, then leave you out on the streets,” I say, keeping my tone level. “I know, Anatoly, I’ve been there. I nearly had to resign after that mission — I lost one of mine, too. My best man. My best friend.”
“But you got to move on,” he rasps, his finger on the trigger, and I feel my body tense. “You got to keep rising through the ranks, and now, you retire with a bright future and a beautiful woman.”
He tightens his grip around Becca’s neck, and I see her face starting to redden. He’s choking her. His eyes are bloodshot, and there’s a vein pulsing in his forehead.
“That’s because I knew when to let it go, Anatoly!” I shout. “You can walk away from this, get in touch with the rest of your men, get some closure!”
“No,” he snarls, readjusting Becca in his grasp as he poises himself to pull the trigger, tears streaming down Becca’s face. “I’m going to make you taste the bitterness I’ve had to live with for years, and then I’m going to break your body!”
The sound of a gunshot rings out with a bang.
Adrian
Anatoly’s attention snaps to the road beside the train along with mine, and his one remaining eye widens in shock.
The old recluse called Jones is driving a beat-up old pickup truck alongside the train, and he’s fired off the very same shotgun he aimed at us earlier today, getting Anatoly’s attention.
Just long enough for me to act.
The moment the Russian’s eyes are away from me by the sudden distraction, it’s Becca who seizes the moment. She breaks away from Anatoly, twisting his wrist around behind him and making him cry out in pain before he can do so much as react.
She’s trained military too, after all.
The moment she holds him still, I fire the last bullet in my weapon at his head.
Becca recoils and collapses to the ground as Anatoly’s lifeless body falls away from her, onto his side, his blood streaming from the hole in his head. Dead.
I look down to Jones and give him a silent nod as he grins up at me, giving a hoot before stowing his weapon and pulling away from the train, presumably retreating to his neck of the woods once more. I don’t know how he survived the bikers, and I never will — his story is his own, and I know that’s the way he’ll want to keep it.
I rush forward and catch Becca in my arms, who breaks down into sobbing immediately. We hug each other tight, and I feel the weight of the world off my shoulders as I pepper her face in kisses while she lets it all out.
“I thought I’d lost you,” she sobs, clinging to my shirt and burying her face in my chest.
“What’d I tell you, baby?” I say, stroking her hair gently as I hold her up, letting her sink into me and breathe deeply. “As long as I’m alive, nothing’s gonna get between us. And now, nothing else will ever stand a chance.
It’s been about a week since our fight on the train. We made it to Collingwood and got a ride back to Toronto after making a few calls with some well-informed contacts of mine.
As much as I want it to be, the fight isn’t over just yet. There’s one last little detail to take care of: the Bratva still has a hit out on me, even though the man who paid for it is dead.
So when Becca and I swing open the doors of the biggest Russian bar in the city, it’s no surprise when a dozen sets of eyes glare at us while I strut inside.
I’m wearing a gray suit with a white, unbuttoned shirt, my military dog tags hanging from my neck so everyone on the club knows exactly who I am. Becca is at my side, wearing a short, red bodycon dress and black stilettos, her hair spilling over her shoulder in gorgeous waves, blood-red lipstick a challenge to everyone who looks at us.
I stride through the club as dull music pulses around us. It’s a little classier than the gopnik garbage the low-ranking Bratva mobsters are known for. This place is an upscale joint run by the upper echelon of the country’s Russian mob presence.
A massive bouncer approaches us, his ugly mug fixed in a scowl. I don’t flinch, and after everything she’s been through, neither does Becca.
“You’ve taken wrong turn,” he says in broken, accented English. “You need to leave.” He cracks his knuckles meaningfully as he glares at me, but I don’t break my stride, heading for the bar.
“Hey!” he shouts, furrowing his thick brow, and he tries to grab for me as I pass him. Exactly what I was waiting for.
Using the brute’s own weight against him, I take a hold of the wrist of the meaty hand that was reaching for me, and I twist him over my shoulder, hauling his whole mass over me and slamming him down on the ground with a thud that the whole club can hear.
A quick glance around the place tells me this guy must have been one of the toughest out on the floor, because nobody seems to be in any rush to back him up. But all eyes are on us now if they weren’t already. At the far end of the bar, I see a couple of men posted at a door whisper to one another before saying something into the mic in their shirts.
With Becca at my side, I walk over to the bar, where the bartender is arching an eyebrow at me.
“Moscow mule,” I order.
The bartender seems mildly surprised, but nonetheless he starts mixing my drink. “You’re making a terrible mistake, American,” he says in a mild tone as he pours the vodka and ginger beer over ice in a copper mug. “So I’ll make your last drink a double, how about that?”
I grin at him. Didn’t think I’d find a barkeep with a sense of humor in a place like this. “Much obliged,” I thank him, putting a $50 on the counter. “Now tell me — is Vitaly around? I’d like to have a chat.”
“Oh, he’s around,” the bartender laughs as that door towards the back opens, and six burly men with guns in their hands make their way out onto the floor. I notice that most of the patrons seem keenly interested in their own drinks. I turn around and lean on the bar, smiling at the men casually. “And I believe you’ve just made the VIP list,” the bartender adds as I down my drink.
“Here I was starting to doubt Russian hospitality,” I say, setting the empty mug on the counter before approaching the group of mobsters with my arms open. The men glare at me, clearly on edge. “No need to be tense, boys, I’ll come quietly.”
“They really know how to treat you around here,” Becca muses, walking close by my side. The Russians don’t say a word, but one of them motions for me to follow with a nod toward the back door and a grunt.
We’re led down a long hallway, three men in front of us, three in the back. The hallway looks designed to withstand a firefight, a long and narrow chokepoint that would be easy to defend. The owner of this place certainly knows what he’s doing.
The room we’re escorted into is large, dark, and overcast with a pall of cigarette smoke that makes the other few armed guards standing in the corners seem hazy. There’s a huge desk in the center of the room, and I instantly recognize the man sitting at it with his hands steepled atop it.
His icy-blue eyes are glaring at me, and the darkness of the room doesn’t do anything to conceal the silvery hair on his head.
“Vitaly,” I greet him, “good to see you again.”
“I spend thousands tracking you down for my good friend Anatoly,” he says, leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs as the guards take positions around us. I can’t help but notice they haven’t put their guns away.
“You wipe out a strike team of twelve bikes and nearly twice as many men,” he goes on, raising his eyebrows as he mentally goes over the figures, “you leave the huge mess out there in the wilderness, so my men’s deaths are plastered all over the media, you kill my underboss Anatoly, and just as I’m about to call in some of my best international hitmen to wipe you off the face of the earth and send your body back to Anatoly’s relatives, you present yourself at my doorstep.”
Vitaly picks up the glass of vodka on the table, taking a drink as he watches me with even eyes. “I’d call you a strange man, Adrian O’Connor, but to tell you the truth, you remind me of myself when I was younger.”
“I live to please,” I say in a mocking tone, putting a hand to my chest with a smile.
Vitaly turns his icy eyes to Becca, looking her up and down. There’s a flash of something in his eyes, similar to recognition, but not quite. I can’t put my finger on it, but he seems to soften at the sight of my raven haired girl.
“So I get to meet the woman for whom nearly two dozen of my men are dead. She’s even lovelier than I remember.”
“They say looks can kill,” Becca says with a wink, and the fire in her makes my chest swell with pride. Vitaly conceals a smirk. He likes a spitfire too, I suppose.
Finally, Vitaly stands up, folding his hands behind his back and pacing about the room thoughtfully. “Anatoly was a good man,” he muses, “and a powerful one at that. Moreover, he was one of us. A made man of the Bratva. My very own underboss.”
We lock eyes for a few long moments. I know what he’s thinking. Anatoly was unstable, he was vengeful, and he was a threat to Vitaly’s power. He was a threat to business, and if I had been killed in that firefight like Anatoly wanted, it’s likely that a fight with Vitaly would have been next on the list in a bid for power — those international hitmen would have been for Vitaly’s protection instead.
But Vitaly cannot simply shame Anatoly’s memory right here in front of all his men and discuss such things openly. Then again, neither can he request a private audience. Because he knows that if I get him alone, I’ll kill him with my bare hands. So instead, I must use a different approach.
“What Anatoly and I had was purely personal, you know that. He and I fought viciously in Syria, and we finished our battles here in Canada. It was over a bad call our superiors made long ago, and good men died on both sides as a result. Our fight never should have happened in the first place.”
I flex my fist. “I tried to talk him down. I really did. And if I’d had my way, he’d be standing here before you instead of me.”
“Yet here you are,” Vitaly points out, his eyes narrowing.
“Here I am,” I say, crossing my arms and looking at him firmly. “You’ve lost a lot of men over this too, Vitaly. A lot of men who might have had promising careers ahead of them. You can blame me if you want — I won’t fault you for that. It wouldn’t be the first time I got blamed for deaths that were outside of my hands.”
He chuckles, but I continue. “But you and I both know that Anatoly is the reason we’re standing here, and Anatoly is the reason that all those men lost their lives. And now Anatoly is dead.”
“So,” he says, leaning on the back of his chair with an arched brow, smiling a cool, cold smile, “you mean to propose a truce? Say that no more of my men need to die, and you and your woman can just walk away from this while we all forget it happened? That’s very bold of you, Adrian O’Connor. But then again, they only choose the bold ones for SEAL service, isn’t that right?”
“You’re a smart man, Vitaly,” I say, glancing around at the men around us. I know that they’re the real bargaining chip on the table — Vitaly’s ego against my ability to kill a room full of armed guards. The odds are better than I’m used to. “I doubt you ever believed in Anatoly’s little vanity project of killing me. Nobody’s going to mourn my passing if I die, nobody’s going to shift around big lumps of money, and nobody’s going to be really happy about my death but one dead man’s ghost.”
Vitaly’s face is still, his gaze hard to read through the darkness and thick smoke. But the fact that he isn’t smiling tells me he’s at least listening to what I have to say.
“Not many men like yourself would plead the worthlessness of their lives,” he says smoothly.
“Not many men have the same things to live for as I do,” I say, wrapping a strong arm around Bex and drawing her close to me. She puts a hand on my chest, leaning into me. After all this time, after everything we’ve been through, I realize that she trusts me more than anyone else in the world.
She trusts me to protect her. She trusts me with her life. And just as importantly, she trusts me to be the father of her child, the father that little Maya deserves. I feel utterly invincible as I hold her against me in that moment, and I can feel her smiling up at me, full of love and animalistic desire.
Vitaly looks evenly at us before standing upright again, glancing around at his men, who look back at him as if awaiting orders.
“You make a bold case, O’Connor,” he admits. “But tell me this — what exactly is stopping me from simply… having you executed right here? Gun you and your lover down in this very office, end the blood feud in all of about ten seconds, nobody to save you but yourself?”
I smile right back at him.
“I’d like to see you try.”
Rebecca
“I do.”
The words flow into my ears and surround my whole body with welcoming warmth. I’m smiling so wide that my cheeks almost ache from the exertion. My feet feel like they’re hovering several inches above the ground and my heart is so full it could nearly burst into confetti. I take a long, deep breath, feeling my tightly-tailored white dress clench around my waist as I breathe.
I’m wearing the wedding dress of my dreams: long, flowing, decorated with intricate ivory lace and netting over the skirt, with detailed pearl beading and lacing up the fitted corset top. The plunging sweetheart neckline perfectly shows off my ample cleavage, as well as the gorgeous rose quartz-and-white gold necklace my new husband’s father gave me as an engagement gift. My hair is coiled behind my head in a half-up, half-down style, two thick, shining braids wrapping around to meet in a complex knot at the nape of my neck while the rest of my hair falls in loose, dark waves around my shoulders.
To my delight, as it turns out, one of my new sisters-in-law is a fantastic hairdresser, and the other is a wonderful makeup artist, so I was able to bond with two of my new family members and get my wedding look arranged at the same time. Haley and Jenny are their names, and I am overjoyed to finally have some sisters — who are already turning into the best aunties I could ever have dreamed of for my little girl. And Adrian’s three older brothers, Michael, David, and Frank, are all exactly what I expected: tall, broad-shouldered, athletic good ole boys
who love nothing better than backyard barbecues and an impromptu game of football. Even though they are physically intimidating and tough, the three of them treat Maya like a little princess, and she has so much fun playing with her new little cousins-in-law, who are six and eight years old, respectively.
Maya is being held off to one side in my mother’s arms as my parents look on with shining, tearful eyes and bright smiles. They are both so happy to see me happy — and even though I was initially a little nervous to have my parents meet the tough, somewhat cocky father of my child, the three of them actually get along quite well. Adrian and my father bond over their shared love of the great outdoors, and my mom loves to watch Maya interact with her long-lost daddy.
In addition to gaining such a gigantic, welcoming extension to our little family, I have been most moved and overjoyed about Maya finally getting to meet Adrian. From the very first moment he held our tiny daughter in his strong, muscular arms, I could see just how very smitten he is with her. At first, she was understandably shocked to have this new man in her life — after all, Adrian is a far cry from my solemn but sweet elderly father. But within a few days, Maya was already totally warmed up to him, even calling him da-da without any prompting from the adults. Adrian carries her around in his arms so much that I sometimes have to gently remind him that she’s supposed to be learning how to walk on her own, and that carrying her too much might stunt her development in that area.
It’s like he never, ever wants to put her down. In fact, when I first half-jokingly told him that we’re supposed to be helping her learn how to walk, he replied, “I know, I know. But it’s like… I’ve gone so long feeling like my arms were empty. Like I was missing something so precious that I just couldn’t put my finger on, and now… I have it. I have my little girl. And it’s just so hard to let her go sometimes because deep down I just can’t believe she’s here with me. It all seems like a dream, too good to be true.”
Sights on the SEAL: A Secret Baby Romance Page 15