“You really fucking think I’m letting you walk out that door? You think I’d let you throw away what we’re building?” He inched closer, his voice deadly steady. “Sweetheart, I wouldn’t leave an employee hanging out in a situation like this, let alone the woman who’s sleeping full time in my bed.”
Every scrap of frustration, anger and fear she’d buried since the day she’d escaped Russia surged in one unforgiving burst. “He’ll kill you. Don’t you get it?”
He opened his mouth.
Before he could speak, she cut him off. “Three people have given for me. Sacrificed so I could have a life. They did that because they loved me and now it’s my turn. Do I want to leave? No. The last thing I want to do is be away from you, but I will not let Ruslan hurt the man I love or his family. Ever.”
One second.
That was all it took and the tension in Knox shifted. Where the air around him had practically sparked with aggression and untamed ferocity, now it hummed with a supercharged focus centered squarely on her. His voice was tightly leashed, a powder keg of emotion compacting his quiet words. “You love me?”
So vulnerable. A rawness she knew without a shadow of doubt he gave only to her. She cupped the side of his face and drew in his woodsmoke and black currant scent deep into her lungs, willing it to imprint deep for the lonely days and nights to come. “Another boundary I crossed, I know. But how could I not? You’re you.”
Faster than she’d ever seen him move, he jerked her against him. His arms banded around her, coiled unmovable steel pinning her flush against his chest. Fingers tangled in her hair, he held her cheek above his heart while his heart beat a frantic rhythm beneath her ear.
God, she’d miss him. Their physical connection for sure, but more than that, his mind and staggering capacity for goodness. No one within Knox’s sphere wanted for anything. Not if he could help it. Especially her. Because whether he realized it or not, he’d given her the world just by being him.
She pressed her hands against his chest, but his hold wouldn’t budge. “Knox, I have to go. If he finds you with me...” A shudder racked her from head to toe, the horrid stories gleaned from her days working with Yefim stirring unwelcome images in her mind. “Please,” she muttered. “If something happened to you or your family, I could never forgive myself.”
His arms loosened only enough to let him soothingly stroke her spine and lay a sweet kiss to the top of her head. He chuckled low, the beautiful sound completely incongruent with the moment, but beautiful all the same. “The guys were right. I should have just claimed you right out of the chute.”
This time when she pushed against him, he gave her enough play to meet his gaze. “Claim me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
His smile was pure confidence laced with wickedness. “Exactly what it sounds like. That you’re mine. You, your past and your future.”
She fisted her hands in his T-shirt, the faded red fabric so soft it was a wonder it didn’t tear behind her brutal grip. “Didn’t you hear me? I have to go.”
“I heard you. Though, if I’d listened to my brothers four weeks ago, you’d know by now our women don’t sacrifice anything for us. They live how they want. Free. Without fear. And that happens because we have the means and the fortitude to obliterate any threat to their happiness, no matter where that threat comes from.”
“Knox—”
“No.” Knox dipped close. His deep voice reverberated through her, a thundering vow delivered with an assassin’s stealth. “I don’t know who Ruslan is or what he wants with you, but your days of running are over. We’re going to close those suitcases, get them and you in my car, and then you’re going to give me the whole damned backstory while I take you home.”
More than anything she wanted to do just that. To give way and let yet another person protect and shield her from the ugliness of her past. “I can’t do that. Think of your mothers. Vivienne, Natalie and Gabe. Or worse, Levi. If Ruslan can’t get to me, he’ll use them.”
Knox dropped his hands, slow as though he’d had to force the action, then stepped back. “I don’t think you understand.” He turned for the bed and coiled his hand around the handle of one packed suitcase. “The only place you’re going is with me.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Fifteen minutes and a string of continued arguments later, Darya was in the passenger seat of Knox’s car. The top was up and the music down, both completely outside the norm compared to other times she’d ridden beside him. He’d also been frustratingly tight-lipped. Where long stretches of silence between the two of them were normally filled with comfort—two busy minds working silently yet seamlessly in parallel—this time the quiet made her fidget.
As if he sensed her discomfort, he shifted to the next gear then coiled his hand around one of hers fisted in her lap. “Whatever you’re worrying about, let it go. I’ve got this.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but closed it just as fast at the warning look he shot her.
With one last encouraging squeeze, he released her hand and plucked his phone from the center console. In the last four weeks, she’d rarely seen him use the device while he drove, but when he did, he used every hands-free feature available. This time, he turned off the Bluetooth and anchored the phone between his ear and shoulder.
“Hey,” he said to whoever answered, checking his rearview mirror. “Need you to reroute family night from Haven to our place and call rally. Darya’s in trouble and I’m not leaving her.”
So it was Beckett. Not surprising, really. For men who weren’t actually born from the same womb it was shocking how close they were. Shocking, but beautiful.
“Yeah, it’s that rally, but I need all hands on deck. If what Darya says is true, we need the women and Levi, too. Too risky to have them exposed until we have a plan.” He paused long enough to let Beckett get a word in edgewise then glanced at her. “No details yet, but by the time we get there I’ll have them. We need a sweep of the loft, though. The office, too. Darya found footage of a guy she says works for the goon who’s after her outside our building. If they got that close we have to assume the worst and check for bugs.”
Her lungs hitched and the choking bile she’d swallowed down since finding the damning footage pitched violently in her stomach. She hadn’t thought about bugs. What if Ruslan had managed to plant them in her apartment? If he’d heard what she’s shared with Knox, he’d kill Knox for sure.
Knox’s gaze slid to each side mirror, the focus he put into the action more attentive than what was necessary for seven-thirty traffic on a Wednesday night. “Nope, no tail visible yet, but I’m taking the scenic route home just in case. Make sure the guys know to arm up. I might not know all the finer points, but the men we’re dealing with aren’t amateurs.” He listened for a second, nodded at whatever Beckett had said and answered back. “Right. Got it.”
He thumbed off the connection and tossed the device back to its place below the dash. “Beckett’s changing up the protocols in the building. Security guards will be in place within the hour and camera ranges extended.”
“Knox—”
“Sweetheart, if you start in with how I don’t have to do this again, I’ll tie you down the second we get home and fuck you until you forget how to speak altogether.”
She sucked in a sharp gasp. Her body might be weighted and fatigued from the prolonged adrenaline rush, but her sex clenched and fluttered at the promise.
He chuckled and glanced over his shoulder, checking the lane to his left. “If I’d have known that was the way to distract you, I’d have leveraged sex thirty minutes ago.” Settled in the HOV lane, he poured on the gas and wrapped his hand back around hers. “Now, spill. Who’s Ruslan? What’s he want?”
Countless times in the last month she’d thought about how to share what had brought her here. Had dress-rehearsed all
kinds of scenarios and dialogue in preparation for this moment. Now that she needed to put voice behind them, they dried up.
He scowled at the road and squeezed the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turned white. Despite his open frustration, he kept the hand around her own gentle. “I’ve got a full tank of gas and can keep us moving for a good four hours before I have to stop, so you might as well get it out.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. I just don’t know where to start.”
His thumb smoothed back and forth against her knuckles. “You went to school. What happened after that?”
Right. The beginning was easy enough. She opened her hand and laced her fingers with his. “I studied business in school and did well in my studies. Well enough one of my instructors shared my name with a man named Yefim Mishin. He hired me as a personal assistant.”
He nodded like the news wasn’t exactly a surprise to him. “If you studied business, why take a PA job? Why not something with more meat to it?”
“Oh, there was plenty of meat when it came to working with Yefim. As his assistant, I was with him constantly. Was included in every meeting and traveled with him extensively. And while I was rarely a voice in those meetings, I learned much by watching him work. It was a very coveted position. One I was not only blessed to be offered, but eagerly accepted.”
“He treated you good?”
She smiled down at her lap, memories of the days before all hell had broken loose drifting in like a soft morning breeze. “He was like a second father to me. Indulgent in the extreme. Not only was I compensated more than others might be in a similar role, he mentored me. Took the time to review the nuances of each meeting and strategic move he made.”
“And?”
Outside the car’s windshield, the sun crept toward the horizon, not a single cloud to mar the orange and indigo ahead of them. A far different view than the dark ominous fog rolling through her memories. “And one day he took me someplace he shouldn’t have.”
Knox kept his silence for a moment, the same narrowed focus he always aimed at his screen when attacking troublesome code marking his face. “What kind of business was he in?”
“Not one business. Many businesses. Have you ever heard the term oligarch?”
He frowned at that, but kept his eyes on the road. “Top businessmen in Russia, right?”
She nodded. “A small number of entrepreneurs accumulated much wealth under Gorbachev. Yefim served as the closest advisor to one of these men. But he also was an associate of Anton Fedorov.” She paused long enough to suck in a tight breath. “Anton is mafiya.”
Surprisingly, the word didn’t ruffle him as much as she’d expected. Beyond a slight lift of his eyebrows, he seemed utterly unperturbed. More like she’d told him an unexpected cold front was predicted to blow. “And this Ruslan guy who’s after you works for Anton?”
Darya shook her head. “Anton is very traditional bratva. A pakhan, or boss, who lives the old life of vory v zakone. But as an advisor to Anton, Yefim was called to negotiate with another family. Their pakhan, Ruslan Sokolov, is reckless. Power-hungry. So much so, he killed his own mentor and assumed his place. His business deals often drew attention Anton and the other pakhans detested. Yefim was sent to negotiate boundaries.”
“So, Ruslan and Anton are rivals.”
“Yes.”
Knox glanced over his right shoulder, shifted quickly at the HOV interchange all the way to the far right lane and took an upcoming exit at top speed. His gaze locked on to his rearview mirror, watching for anyone to repeat the unexpected exit. “So, you went with Yefim to negotiate. Did you do something to piss this Ruslan guy off?”
“No.” She focused on his hand curled around the gearshift. The lazy yet powerful confidence as he shifted from one gear to the next. Right now, she’d give a lot for that hand to be back in hers, holding her steady. “I didn’t anger him. I caught his attention.”
Knox whipped his head toward her, his attention lingering uncomfortably long considering how fast he steered them down the access road. “You’re telling me you had to run from a guy because he wants you?”
“I don’t think you understand how things work with men like Ruslan. Traditional Russian men are possessive. More primitive in the way they approach women than Americans are.”
He cocked one eyebrow high. “Are you the same woman who’s been in bed with me for the last month? Because I’m thinking most of what we’ve done belongs in the primitive category.”
Leave it to Knox to draw a smile from her at the most frightening of times. “Yes. What we have is quite primal. Carnal.” Her smile slipped. “But you’ve always given me a choice. There would be no choice with Ruslan.”
He might have been calm before, even blasé at the mention of organized crime, but with her explanation Knox’s face hardened with unforgiving fury. “You’re telling me he’d just...what? Own you?”
She slowly dipped her head and her voice dropped, her mind instinctively treating the rest as though it were the gravest secret. “Men like Ruslan do not ask for what they want. They take by whatever means they need to get it.”
Knox held his silence. Despite his eyes on the road and the uninterrupted navigation through the light traffic, there was no question she held all of his attention.
“Ruslan made his desire for me well known,” she said. “I knew what that meant and the life it would result in for me. So did Yefim. That’s why he helped me escape. He used his ties to Anton to procure me false identification to get me in the United States and staged an assault. The plan was that Yefim would be found unconscious, and I would be missing. Anton’s people were to provide an unidentifiable body that would be presumed to be me.”
“Did it work?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t contact Yefim without potentially revealing my existence and putting him at risk, but after I assumed JJ’s identity, I believed I was safe.”
Knox zipped into an alley, drove to the far end of the warehouses on either side and whipped a hard right. Directly in front of them was the underground entrance to their loft’s garage. Stationed next to the gate normally only controlled by card readers was a big man in a plain black T-shirt and black cargo pants holding an electronic tablet. With one look at Knox’s car, the man activated the gate and nodded.
In another thirty seconds, they slid into Knox’s reserved spot. As soon as he killed the engine, silence engulfed them. He shifted in his chair. “I get that you’re scared, but I want you to listen and really hear me. You’re safe. No more running.”
“Knox, Ruslan is dangerous. He has no conscience. No honor.”
“So?”
Needing the contact, she placed her hand on his forearm and squeezed. “You do.”
Either he was certifiably insane or truly comfortable with the nastiness she’d brought into his life, because he smiled. Genuinely smiled. “Yeah, I’ve got honor. So do my brothers. But only when it’s deserved. We can and will play dirty if it means keeping our own safe. And I don’t give a shit how much muscle this Ruslan dick throws around—I’m a wily fucker when I want to be and right now I’ve got a shit load of incentive.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why the incentive? I told you the best thing for everyone is for me to leave and draw them away from you and your family.”
In a blink, his hand was curled around her nape and his face close enough to hers his breath whispered warm against her skin. “You love me?”
She nodded, barely capable of even that much behind the intensity in his gaze.
His fingers tightened against her skin. “No woman outside my family has ever said that to me. If you think I’m gonna let anyone even think about hurting the first woman who does, you are very much mistaken.” Closing what remained of the distance between t
hem, he pressed a firm kiss to her lips then eased away only enough to murmur, “Now, unbuckle and get ready to hop out. In case you missed it, four of my brothers and their broods are already here and waiting on us.”
The comment jolted her from the pleasant cocoon his powerful words had created. Sure enough, the spaces that were usually empty around his and Beckett’s slots were full—one massive silver truck, a classic ’69 Camaro, an eggplant-colored Chevelle and a candy apple red convertible Corvette. Translation: Trevor, Danny, Zeke and Beckett. “They’re here already?”
Phone stashed in his back pocket, Knox popped opened the glove box. If there’d been a snake coiled up and ready to strike inside, she couldn’t have been more surprised than she was seeing the holstered gun inside. He grabbed it, slipped the gun free and checked the safety. “Family doesn’t lollygag when you need them. My guess is Axel and Jace aren’t far behind.” He popped his car door. “You wait there.”
Like she could have done anything but sit in stunned silence.
Knox has a firearm?
On one hand, the idea wouldn’t jibe, but another more instinctive part of her settled into the concept easily. After all, Knox was Knox. Yes, he’d pushed her relentlessly from the very first, but he’d also demonstrated a protective streak. And not just with her, but with everyone in his life. The fact that he’d be willing to extend that level of protection to a more dangerous level shouldn’t surprise her at all.
Her door chunked open and Knox stepped in close, his hand extended to help her out. “Come on, sweetheart. I’ll come back for your bag after we get you situated.” He didn’t say as much, but there was an undercurrent of when you’re not in anyone’s line of fire woven into his words.
Tension and overdrive-awareness riddled their trip to the top floor, even the air supercharged with an invisible current. Nothing at all like the playful banter and teasing touches they’d shared on previous nights coming home from work together. Instead, he corralled her to one corner, braced himself in front of her and activated the fifth floor via the biometric scanner. Only when the doors opened to their loft, did his shoulders relax a fraction. He stepped out of her way, splayed his hand low on her back and motioned her toward the private landing.
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