Chapter 37 Lev
LEV
If I was perfect, I wouldn’t have broken orders from my Pakhan and slept with her. But I’m alright with not being perfect if she believes I am, because she’s all who matters.
I urge her back down because her head on my chest, hair across my skin, is something I could get used to. I’m waiting for the moment it feels too much, when my senses go into overdrive…but it never comes.
Admitting my issues lifts a weight off my chest. At least she understands. She’s the only one I want to tell this stuff to. I’ve never admitted it all to Anastasia, and definitely not Vanessa or Dimitri. Papa brushed me aside and demanded I return to training the day I begged him for support.
Serafina curls into my side. Holding her is a simple act, but for my body, it’s huge.
With my eyes closed, it’s easier to handle the consequences of tonight.
Despite what I told Vanessa the other day, Serafina and I were always meant to collide.
This will be an explosion that will either destroy me or save me.
The afters don’t matter. One day soon, Serafina will go home to Italy, and the buzzing will return, stronger than ever. I’ll be stuck surviving without the salve I’ve discovered within her soul.
For now, though, I betray my entire world and make her mine.
Her vanilla-scented shampoo wrecks my senses. While I’m breathing her in, her finger traces a few of my tattoos, specifically the sun on my ribs, five rays jutting out from it. It’s a misaligned sun; ever since Vanessa’s takeover, the likelihood of that sun getting filled in has lessened.
“Do your tattoos mean something?” She touches the skulls and roses over my heart.
“Tattoos in the Bratva tell the story of our life within the organization. The stars on my shoulder are a symbol of authority, since I’m one of Vanessa’s Spies, a coveted position in charge of her soldiers.
The cross on my chest is traditional, and we all have one.
The spider on my hip means I’m an active member, and so on; I won’t go through each one. But the sun—”
I stop, hesitating. Telling her, letting her realize how opposite we are, is something else entirely.
I find the strength in her eyes, though. The way they glisten patiently, waiting for me to speak. She’s never run. She didn’t run when I admitted the stuff about my brain.
“The sun’s rays represent how many times I’ve been to prison. Five lines, Five imprisonments. And this one”—I lift my opposite arm, twisting to show the portrait of the religious figure of Madonna holding a child—“represents being there at a young age.”
My hold on her tightens, my next inhale filling with peaches so when she inevitably disappears, the memory will remain.
She tilts her head. “You’ve gone to jail?”
“I warned you, printessa. My hands aren’t clean.”
Her gaze drops to where my knuckles show the cuts, the evidence, of my last job. “I know they aren’t,” she whispers, brushing over the sun tattoo. “Keeping me from this life was always my brother’s plan, not mine. I’m curious about your history, but I don’t want to probe.”
“Ask anything you want.” An offer made to no one, ever.
“Tell me why you were in prison.”
Keeping my arm around her waist, I pull us further up the bed until the pillows cushion our backs. They provide comfort the centre of the bed doesn’t have.
“My father was the ultimate user. His loyalty to his Pakhan, to Ursin, was everything to him. Everything we—him, Ana, and I—did was in the name of the Bratva, and if that meant him making his children into weapons, so be it. I mentioned before how I get fixated on things that interest me. Well, he didn’t like when I didn’t conform.
My fixation with computers often resulted in skipping training.
Ursin saw the appeal of my skills, which meant Papa had no choice but to accept them.
Still, he wanted me physically stronger.
He wanted me to be like Dimitri, who showed potential from a young age to be the ultimate soldier.
When I didn’t fit into his standards, when I skipped orders because my mind was so latched on to one thing or the other, Papa would drop me into prison, in the non-Bratva owned cells, around men who despised us.
This is how he taught me to fight and defend myself when I missed too many trainings.
I had to figure it out for myself, to survive. ”
Her nails dig into my chest. Silence consumes the room for a moment until her whisper shatters it, right alongside my fear she’d run from this—from me. “That’s so sad.”
“Maybe. In some ways, I had it easier than the others.”
“What do you mean?”
I shake my head gently. “None of them are my stories to share, but no one here had the happiest starts. Ursin didn’t treat Vanessa well, used her for more than one political advantage.
Ivan targeted someone Dimitri cares for deeply—numerous times, past and present.
And Ana wasn’t saved from Papa either. He found uses in her early ballet talent. ”
“I’m sorry for you all.”
Our lives were vastly different than the one Zeno ensured she had. Serafina’s only known a mother’s love, a brother’s joy, while Ana and I don’t even know our mother. Vanessa’s died early on, and Dimitri’s ran off.
She studies my body, the scars hidden behind tattoos, most of them from surviving prisoners older and larger than me.
“Being in prison had some benefits; it was an effective training method, though admitting so feels wrong. It’s nothing I’d subject a kid to, but it got me where I needed to be. It’s kill or be killed, so not being the victor wasn’t an option.”
Her countenance lowers. “How old were you the first time?”
“Fourteen.”
“Fourteen,” she practically screeches before moving overtop me, one leg on either side of my hips.
Immediately, my heart jumps, the initial panic sending my finger into position to work through the anxiety. But then, she leans forward and covers more of my body, tightening her arms around my neck, her hair in my face.
She’s hugging me.
The peach and vanilla scent is now tainted with notes from my own soap and aftershave. It replaces the unease with another feeling, something new and never ever felt before.
Possessiveness.
“That’s fucked up.” Her whispered breath blows over my neck with her tightening hold. “I’m sorry.”
My hands cup her hips, keeping her there. “Nothing you need to worry about. It’s over.”
She lifts her head, catching my gaze, though I really wish she’d lay back down. “Where’s your father now?”
“Cayman Islands. When Vanessa became Pakhan, she threw everyone from Ursin’s reign out but left his fate to Ana and me. We kicked him out of Russia and kept him alive.”
She props herself up on my chest as she slides her fingers through my hair. Her touch is becoming more natural, which poses so many risks to our future. “He hurt you. No one should be allowed to survive hurting you.”
You hurt me by breathing, by being the only one in the world to not hurt me.
Having someone care about me like this is a strange notion. I’ve always been the person in the background, fiddling with the technology to solve others’ issues. Being on the receiving end of someone’s empathy is…odd.
So strange, she almost doesn’t feel real, except my heart’s coming to believe she is.
I tug her down again, resting her head over it, reassuring the thumping beat that this woman is indeed present.
Part of me doesn’t want her unblemished skin touching the markings of my less-than-savoury moments in the Bratva, but another part of me can’t imagine her elsewhere.
Dragging the blanket over us both, I tuck us in for sleep.
“That’s why you believe all that shit. You called yourself a resource the first day in Rome. You were always jerked around for your father’s needs, which depended on Ursin’s. But he was wrong about you.”
She falls asleep while waiting for the response I never give.
Once her sleepy breaths fill the room, reminding me of the first night she slept here, I pass out too, matching my breaths to her own.
My head isn’t staticky after talking so much.
My body isn’t overwhelmed having her beside me.
And there’s no need for numbers to help me sleep.