The woman is at the machine, turning it on, chatting and putting jelly on Inessa’s stomach, but all I can think about is that fucking hit out on her—how she can literally be taken from me at any second. It makes me ill.
“Ready to see the baby?” the woman asks. Inessa murmurs something back to her.
The machine turns on and I expect to see the blob that I witnessed only a few weeks ago appear on the screen. My mouth hangs open in shock when what looks like a real baby is displayed. I can make out the features—eyes, nose, mouth, ears, the arms and legs. I can even see the fingers moving.
Fuck.
It’s real, it’s all real, and it’s right in front of me.
“Would you like to know?” she asks. Inessa is quiet.
I tear my eyes away from the screen to look at her and she’s watching me, waiting for my answer.
“Yeah,” I grunt.
“Congratulations, mom and dad, you’re having a girl.”
MY EYES WIDEN IN surprise, and I look from the machine to Dominik. He looks pale, really pale. I can’t tell if he’s happy, nervous, upset, or just overwhelmed. The technician wipes by belly clean of the clear jelly and then I speak.
“Dominik, we’re having a girl,” I whisper when he stays silent.
Uncle Pavlov stands and holds out his hand while the technician takes his offer and they leave the room together. Dominik stands once the door closes behind them and walks over to me. I watch him, wide eyed and nervous, unsure of what he’s going to do next. He cups my cheeks with his hands and presses his forehead against mine.
“A girl,” he rasps.
“Are you okay with it?” I ask hesitantly.
“I’m so happy, Inessa. You make me so happy,” he murmurs before he presses his lips to mine. My body relaxes as he sweeps his tongue through my mouth.
“Come home, please,” I beg, wrapping my hands around his wrists.
“Yeah,” he grunts.
The door opens and the technician and Uncle Pavlov walk back inside. My appointment is over shortly after, and together, Dominik and I walk out of the office. Stas is right where I left him, and he stands as soon as we appear.
“We’re having a girl,” I practically squeal as Dominik wraps his arm around my waist and holds me to his side.
“Congratulations,” Stas chuckles.
“I’m with Inessa for the rest of the day. You can go and get some rest,” Dominik mutters.
“You’re with me for the rest of the day?” I ask, looking up at him as we start to walk toward his car.
“We have papers to sign,” he murmurs as he opens the door and helps me into the car.
“Papers to sign,” I mutter to myself as I watch him walk around the car to the driver’s side.
My eyes are glued to him as he starts the engine and then guides the car onto the busy street and toward the title company’s office. It’s like he’s a totally different person from just an hour ago. It’s as though the last three-weeks, he’s been someone else. Now, he’s back to the man he was before, the man who wanted the family and the home.
“You need to talk to me,” I announce.
“About?”
“Why are you all of a sudden here? You told me it didn’t matter,” I remind him.
Dominik doesn’t answer me; all he gives me is a shrug as we pull into the parking lot. Once we’re out of the car and walking into the title company, I know that it’s not the time nor the place to continue the conversation.
Jeannie is available and actually greets us with a smile before we follow her into the conference room. Thirty minutes later, Dominik holds the key to our home in his hand. I can’t believe it’s ours. We’re having a daughter, he just bought a real family home, and he’s suddenly present and back.
“When is your class?” he asks as he starts to drive.
“At six this evening.”
“Let’s go shopping,” he murmurs. My eyes widen as I turn to him in surprise.
“Shopping?”
“Furniture,” he announces.
I nod, unsure of what to say. Then he pulls into a Pottery Barn Kids. My eyes widen, but he doesn’t give me even a moment to process exactly where we are, or why, before he’s out of the car and opening my door, holding out his palm for me.
“Dominik,” I call as he walks toward the front doors.
“Our baby needs furniture for her new room,” he rumbles.
I tug on his hand as soon as we walk into the store to stop him. He halts, turning to face me.
“She doesn’t need it today. What’s the urgency?” I ask, searching his face for answers.
“We’re buying it today. We’re having it delivered as soon as it comes in, and she’s going to have a place of her own,” he states.
I don’t argue with him. He’s adamant, and I can only assume that this has to do with his own childhood. He wants his baby to have a home and a room set up and ready for her arrival. Who am I to tell him no?
“Hello, how can I help you today?” a woman asks, walking up to us.
“Girls cribs,” Dominik practically growls. She takes a step back before she composes herself and then asks us to follow her to the girl section.
The whole area is swallowed in pink frills, and I can’t stop the smile from forming on my lips at all of the delicate bedding—the lace and satins that surround me.
“This,” Dominik announces, pointing to a crib.
It’s absolutely beautiful. The crib itself is a light grey, but the sides have white tufted leather fabric. It boasts of being convertible into a toddler bed, and it looks vintage and just plain delicately pretty.
“This is our Blythe Convertible Crib—,” the sales girl begins. Dominik holds his hand up, definitely not interested in her sales pitch as he turns to me, arching his brow in question.
“It’s lovely, but I’d like to look for bedding and take my time with that,” I murmur. He nods.
“We’ll take this crib, and that rocker that matches, plus the wide-dresser and that bookcase to match,” he announces. The sales girl stares at him with wide eyes.
“You better start doing whatever you have to do to get those ordered,” I say to her.
She shakes herself out of her stupor and hurries over to her computer and starts punching a bunch of buttons. Thirty minutes later, we have an estimated delivery date, which will be sometime six weeks from now.
“I don’t like how long their process takes,” Dominik mumbles as he drives me toward my class.
“These things take time, Nik. We have the time,” I say, wrapping my hand around his.
He takes my hand and sets it on his thigh as he drives. This is the most normal it’s ever felt between us, and I like it. I’m just not fool enough to think that it will last.
I sit outside of her class, waiting for it to finish so that we can go home. I’ve already scheduled movers for Saturday morning. I want us in our new home as soon as possible. First, I have to make sure it’s outfitted with the proper security, which I’ll be handling tomorrow.
I’m not taking any chances with Inessa’s safety, not after everything that’s happened.
As soon as I get one situation dealt with, it seems like something else pops up. I want this hit bullshit taken care of so that she can focus on the baby—so that I can focus on her and the baby. A girl. Fuck. My girls.
I always anticipated wanting boys, never knowing what I would even do with a girl. I still don’t know what I will do with her, but I know that I’m excited to find out. She’s going to be gorgeous, like her mother, and she’ll probably have Inessa’s attitude as well. I can’t deny that I’m excited to meet her.
I spend the next four hours on and off the phone, setting things up for the move and checking in with Konstantin about how the night is going. Then my phone rings, and it’s Pasha.
“Talk to me,” I grunt as Inessa walks toward the car.
I’m watching her, tracking every single step she takes and making sure that nobody e
lse is around her.
“They said they would look into it for a price,” Pasha explains.
“Name it, whatever it is, they can have it,” I announce.
“It’s not that easy. Come to my house tomorrow morning, six o’clock, with Yakov. We’ll discuss,” he informs me before he ends the call.
“What’s happened?” Inessa asks as soon as she’s in the car.
“I have a meeting with Pasha tomorrow morning. Let’s go home,” I grunt, unwilling to tell her anything else.
She doesn’t ask, knowing when to keep her mouth shut, which bodes well for her right now. I don’t know that I could keep my rage at bay. I can’t imagine what those Cartel fucks would want from us, but if Pasha wants to have a meeting about it, it must be big.
“You hungry?” I ask Inessa as soon as we walk inside of the apartment.
“No. A classmate brought dinner for everyone,” she says with a shrug.
“This normal?” I ask, walking into the kitchen to find something for myself to eat.
“Yeah. We take turns bringing dinner. Last week was my turn,” she murmurs.
“What’d you take?” I ask as I pull out some sandwich meat and cheese.
“I ordered spaghetti and had it delivered.”
Inessa stands with her hip against the counter as I make myself a sandwich. She looks like she’s deep in thought, but I don’t ask her what she’s thinking about. It probably has to do with the meeting I have tomorrow.
I know that it’s all I’m thinking about. I don’t know what isn’t easy about naming a price, or what they could possibly want from me to make this shit go away.
I finish eating and, silently, we go to bed. For the first time in my life, I don’t want to fuck. Inessa changes into one of her sexy, silky nighties, and though the sight of her makes me hard, I’m too stressed out to do anything about it.
“Dominik?” she whispers after she climbs into bed and curls into my side.
“Mmm,” I hum, my fingers combing through her soft hair.
“You’re worried about this meeting,” she observes. I jerk my head with a nod as I stare at the ceiling.
“I usually know what to expect. I go into things with all the information beforehand. This is the unknown,” I admit.
“I love you, Dominik. Whatever will happen, you’ll protect me. I trust you,” she murmurs as her fingers draw patterns on my chest. I squeeze her a bit tighter to my side.
Trust and love.
These two words alone are the biggest gifts she’s ever given me. I’ve given her no reason for them, either. I disappeared for weeks because I was scared shitless and panicking to try and figure out how to find the hitman who is after her.
I’ve never been open or honest with her, only giving her information when I could tell she was at her wits end, about to break completely.
Yet, here she is, telling me of her love for me and her trust in me, whispering it into the dark, with my baby growing inside of her. I could not live this life without her by my side. I know this now. She was always meant to be here with me.
“Sleep,” I rumble huskily.
I show up to Pasha’s home twenty minutes before the meeting, Yakov in my passenger seat. He hasn’t said a word to me, giving me no hint as to what this meeting could be about, or what the Cartel wants from me to end the hit contract they have on my wife.
Once we’re inside of Pasha’s office, I begin to pace. Nobody is saying anything, and it’s starting to piss me off.
“You need to relax,” Pasha announces from behind his wooden desk.
My trigger finger twitches. I want to pull my gun out, point it at his head, and demand he tell me what the fuck is happening.
“Boss,” a Byki calls from the other side of Pasha’s office door.
“Let them in,” Pasha announces. The door opens.
In walk two men, dressed much like us in expensive suits, shoes, and watches, their hair dark, and slicked back.
I lean against Pasha’s bookshelf as they greet both Pasha and Yakov before taking the chairs facing Pasha’s desk. Yakov stands with his back to Pasha, sitting on the corner edge of the desk.
“This is Dominik Markov,” Pasha introduces, waving his hand at me.
I dip my chin in greeting, refusing to speak or uncross my arms from my chest.
“Dominik, Felipe and Sergio,” Pasha offers.
I stare at the two men, not giving the first fuck what their names are. I want to know what they fucking want from me.
“Go ahead and tell Dominik what you’ve proposed as a compromise,” Pasha offers. Felipe sits up a little straighter.
“Oleg and Larisa gave our man fifty grand to off your woman,” he begins. My back straightens. “Then once the job was complete, they were supposed to give him another fifty, which of course won’t be happening now.”
I know that he’s not asking for the fifty G’s. If that were the case, Pasha and Yakov would have already paid them and then just taken the amount from my monthly cut. There’s more coming, and I’m bracing for fucking impact.
“This is a good opportunity for us to combine forces, if you will,” he chuckles.
I can’t stop my mind from thinking about how they bought Russian girls as sex slaves from Ivan Chekov before he was murdered, and how we have no idea where any of these women are. They were our sisters, daughters, nieces, and they were sold like chattel.
The girls that weren’t lucky enough to have matches, the girls whose fathers weren’t high enough in the Bratva, the girls who maybe weren’t considered pretty enough for our brothels—they went to this man’s organization for profit, sold to the highest bidder. More times than not, they were abused until they were murdered.
All for sex and money.
I can’t fathom why we would even think to combine anything with these monsters.
“We want the old arrangement back. We don’t have the supply of women that we have the demand for. We’re willing to discuss terms and have a contract in place. But essentially, it would be similar to what we had with Chekov,” Sergio offers. My spine stiffens.
“If we agree to this, you cancel the hit on Inessa,” I clarify. Both Felipe and Sergio nod. “If we don’t?” I ask.
“Hit’s not cancelled, and we still need women,” Sergio says, arching a brow.
“That sounds like a threat,” Pasha murmurs.
“No threat here,” Felipe offers with a grin twisting his lips.
Sliding my eyes over to Pasha and Yakov, I see that their jaws are set hard. If I were to guess, they’re shaving millimeters off of their molars right about now by grinding them together.
“You said this was about trafficking dope,” Pasha announces.
“It’s that, too. We want to pay for a portion of the girls with good cocaine. We didn’t lie,” Sergio shrugs.
“This new information needs to be discussed,” Yakov grunts.
“The due date for the hit is next week. Better make a quick decision,” Felipe says as he stands. We watch in silence as he and Sergio walk out of the office.
“No way in fuck are we making a deal with those bastards,” I announce.
“They’ll kidnap our women,” Yakov mutters, pushing off of the desk.
“We make a deal with them, then we’ve turned into Ivan,” Pasha says, speaking of Yakov’s father, who dealt with them in secret for years.
“They were looking for any opportunity to bring this up to us. Oleg just opened the door, and they ran with it,” Yakov says.
“What do we do?” I ask. “This is all my fault.”
“Nyet. If not you, it would have come about another way. Only a matter of time,” Pasha waves off.
“We work with them, we lose our contract and trust with the Notorious Devils MC,” Yakov announces.
“We’re big, the MC is big, and now we have the Irish at our back—a fact that the Cartel probably doesn’t know yet,” Pasha murmurs.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask, looking betwee
n Yakov and Pasha.
“Meeting. Ten o’clock tonight. I’ll skype Sergei and Kirill,” Pasha announces.
Yakov and I leave with a promise to return to him at ten this evening. This whole situation is a clusterfuck, and there is someone literally waiting—watching and waiting for any opportunity to kill my Inessa.
“We’ll get this handled,” Yakov mutters.
I want to believe him, but I’m not sure. I’ve never been so fucking terrified in my entire life.
DOMINIK WALKS THROUGH THE bedroom door just as I’m smoothing down my skirt. I look up at him in surprise as he continues to make his way toward me, and then he pulls me into his arms, squeezing me tighter than he ever has.
“Nik,” I wheeze. He releases me, but he doesn’t completely let me go. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
I’m starting to panic, and he just looks down at me, his eyes wild and his jaw clenched. Then he lowers his head and places the gentlest kiss I think he’s ever given me on my lips.
When he lifts his head, he opens his mouth as though he wants to say something, and then he slams it closed as his fingers slowly slide the zipper of my skirt down.
His mouth presses against my neck, his tongue tasting me as he kisses along my collar bone and then to the center of my throat at the base of my neck. My skirt falls to the floor, followed shortly by my panties.
I gasp when his fingers gently tease my center, brushing over me so lightly that it’s only a whisper of his fingertips.
“Lay down, yagodka,” he murmurs before he pulls my shirt up and over my head. I take a step back so that my legs hit the bed. Dominik removes my bra as I sit down, and he tugs it over my arms before I lie my back on the mattress.
I watch as he sinks to his knees, then continue to watch as he places my legs on each of his shoulders. I suck in a breath when one of his hands lifts and he opens my center, his eyes taking me in. I feel more exposed than I ever have under his penetrating gaze.
Tempting the Badman (Russian Bratva #5) Page 26