Chapter 14
Lev drives in silence. His hands grip the steering wheel while his eyes focus on the road in front of us.
My nerves are shot. Marion can sense my tension and begins to mewl in her crate again. I pull her out of the carrying case and put her in my lap. She rubs the top of her head against my chin, purring now that she’s out of her little box.
Where could Joey and Keith be, and why would they leave town without at least letting me know they’re okay?
Maybe they’re in bigger trouble than even Lev suspects. But if they would just tell me what they’re up to, maybe I can fix this. It’s a colossal sized maybe. The deeper they go into the shadows, the harder things become. But I have to at least try. I can’t give up on them.
Lev pulls into an underground garage and drives down two levels before coming to another garage door.
“Do you have the key?” I ask when we continue to sit at the closed door.
“I don’t need one.” A moment later there’s a soft beep from a box next to the door, and it rolls up for us. “It scans the car and the driver.”
I lean forward. “And the driver? What if I was driving?”
“It wouldn’t open,” he says as he pulls through, and the garage door immediately shuts behind us.
A dozen, maybe more, cars are lined up in a perfect row. Some are SUVs with dark tinted windows like the one we’re driving in. There’s also a Bentley, Porsche, a BMW, and others I can’t name, but they look as though they’d cost more than a year’s rent.
Lev finds a spot close to a set of elevators and pulls in. As soon as he parks, several men step up to the car. The trunk is opened, and my bags are pulled out, while another man opens my door. Lev says something to him, and he steps away.
“I can get out on my own, thanks.”
Lev snatches my hand, tucking it into his palm and walks me through the garage to a private elevator at one end. When the doors open, he pulls me inside, and his men wait with my bags outside.
“There’s room.” I try to tuck myself into the back corner, but Lev tightens his grip on my hand.
“They’ll wait.” He slides a card key into a slot and punches in a code, making the doors close.
“You’re so high and mighty your men can’t ride in an elevator with you?” I tug on my hand again, still unable to find freedom.
“Don’t worry about them.”
“Is that how you treat people who work for you?”
He sighs, and it’s a sound that could break the paneling on the walls if he were standing close enough.
“If you were to be squeezed into the corner of the elevator in order for them to fit, it would be sign of disrespect. They have your bags; they’ll ride with your bags where it’s not going to put you in the corner.”
“Disrespect? It’s not like I’m your wife, or your girlfriend, or someone so important that I can’t move over to make room for them.”
He squeezes my hand. “They make room for you, not the other way around. And in this case, there was no room.”
“Again, that might make sense if I was someone important but—” The sound he makes stills my tongue.
It’s a cross between a groan and a growl, but the message is clear. He’s reaching the end of his patience.
I mean he was shot at because of me, so I suppose I should give him a little grace. But only a little.
The elevator doors open, and we enter a foyer that’s different than the one I came through when I visited him before. Back when there was hope of me dealing with some of this mess on my own.
Though, I wonder now if there was any ever hope of that, or if he had just let me believe it.
“This is the back of the penthouse. I’ll give you a tour in the morning. It’s late; you should get some rest.” He leads me down a short hallway that passes by a kitchen, then a dining room, before turning into a new hallway that leads to a staircase.
“You think I’m going to be able to sleep now?” I laugh as we make our way up the stairs. “First you wake me up from a dead sleep and tell me some creep is watching me from outside my bedroom. And then you make me pack up my life in five minutes. Then bullets were flying over our heads…”
When we get up the stairs, he brings down another hallway to a set of double doors.
“…I mean, I got hit by flying sidewalk, and you think I’m just going back to sleep?”
“What?” His voice goes hard. You’d think I told him there was nuclear bomb in my backpack.
He spins to face me and grabs my shoulders, inspecting me.
“Where?”
“On my neck. It hurt then, but it’s fine now.”
He grabs my chin, jerking back my head to get a better look.
“You’re bleeding.” He says this as though I’m to blame.
Which, maybe I am since it was probably my brothers who got us into the little shoot-out.
“You said you weren’t hit.”
“It was cement. It’s a little scratch. I’m fine.” I push his hand away, but he’s determined.
“I have a medical kit in the bathroom.” He shoves the double doors open, and they swing into a massive sitting area complete with a flat-screened television hanging on the wall.
It’s all very masculine with sharp edges, dark coloring, and leather upholstery.
“The bathroom is through here.” He walks through the room to another door.
“I don’t think it’s that bad.” I argue, but he’s already gone through the door.
“Maxine.” He calls for me like I’m some little puppy who will come toddling along with a wagging tail.
Well, he can wait.
A moment later, his men enter the room carrying my bags.
“Maxine. Now.” Lev’s command gets sharper.
“I’ll just leave them in there.” Dominick carries everything into the bedroom where Lev is waiting for me.
When he comes back through, he gives me a small glance.
“Is he standing in there getting mad?”
“Mad? No. Lev doesn’t get mad, but he’s not a patient man, either.” Dominik pauses, reaching his hand out to pet Marion.
He’s rewarded with a hiss and a swipe of her paw at him. His reaction time is impeccable, and he gets away without getting scratched.
“I’m so sorry.” I glare down at Marion. “She’s just scared with everything that’s happened.”
“It’s fine. Never been much of a cat person, myself.”
Lev appears in the doorway, like the shadow man he is. After snapping something in Russian, Dominik lowers his gaze and heads out of the room.
When my gaze locks with his, a tremor runs straight through my middle. Apparently, he’s finished pretending to have any patience left. He raises his arm and crooks his finger at me. A silent order that isn’t all that silent.
Considering he did shield me from flying bullets and is giving me a place to stay for the night, I decide to give into him. Just this one last time.
As I make my way to him, the fierceness of his expression softens. But only by a fraction. To anyone who didn’t know him, they’d think he was ready to go into battle with the tension in his jaw.
When I get to him, his turns his crooked finger around, hooking it into the top of my shirt and pulling me closer to him.
“When I call you, Maxine, you come to me. Understand?”
“I’m not some pet to be beckoned, Lev. Do you understand?” I’m not exactly sure where I find this bravado, because the way he’s staring me down should be making my bones shake inside my skin.
“My pet?” The left side of his mouth kicks up. “That has promise. But for now, we’ll get your cut cleaned up, and you tucked into bed.”
“I’m not a child; I can take care of myself.”
His eyebrow lifts, and I wonder how many people have ever stood up to this man and lived to tell the tale.
Drenched in his silence, his gaze wanders over me, my chest, my hips, all the way down to my toes, and then crawls back up to my eyes.
“No. You’re definitely not a child. And just because you can take care of yourself, doesn’t mean you have to. Right now I’m going to take care of you. Now. The bathroom is through there, get going.”
He unhooks his finger from my shirt and steps to the side, giving me plenty of room to pass him. I touch my neck, ready to show him that it’s not even a scratch, but when I take my hand away, my fingertips are covered with blood.
“If I have to tell you again, I’ll be bending you over my knee for the trouble.”
“I’m never letting you spank me again, so make all the threats you want, it’s never going to happen.” I raise my chin, tuck Marion further into my chest and charge past him.
His open palm lands hard against my ass, propelling me a foot.
Marion jumps from my arms, running to the four-post bed and making herself comfortable. I’m not sure who to glare at first. My traitorous cat or the man who keeps manhandling me like he has any right to.
There had to be another name for Lev’s bathroom. Because this is not the same thing as what the rest of the world has in their home.
This is not simply a bathroom. Aside from the standing shower large enough for three people, with a built-in marble bench and three shower heads, there is a jacuzzi tub built to fit Lev’s enormous frame and another person. I stop at the first of the double sinks to check out the cut in the mirror.
The collar of my sweatshirt is soaked in blood. I use it to wipe away more blood to get a better look at the actual cut.
It’s not so bad. A little deeper than I thought it was, and it’s still bleeding, but it won’t need stitches. Some soap and water and a band-aid will do fine.
Lev enters while I’m still looking at the cut and digs under the second sink, bringing out a small case with a medical cross on the top. He flips open the lid and starts pulling out gauze and other items that are completely unnecessary.
“You don’t need all that.” I shake off the sweat jacket I put on over my T-shirt and drop it on the counter beside me. “I can wash it up and put a band-aid on.”
He grunts—actually grunts—as though my answer isn’t worth an actual response. Then he lines up all the things he thinks he needs before turning to me and grabbing me with his huge Hulk hands and lifting me up onto the countertop by the waist.
“You could simply ask me to sit here.” I shove his hands away.
He huffs, then grabs one of the pieces of gauze and starts spraying it with antiseptic.