Chapter 22
A t least a million dollars’ worth of damage. The whole building will need to be taken down and reconstructed.
But the rebuild is nothing compared to the actual issue.
I drop my phone onto my desk on my way to the stereo system in the corner. Every muscle in my neck and back is tied into impossible knots.
The needle falls easily into the record groove, and the comforting crackle of vinyl soothes my soul. After grabbing a whiskey, I drop into an armchair near the fireplace, resting my head back and letting the music massage the stress from my body .
A soft click of the door closing alerts me to her arrival. I don’t need to turn to know it’s her; I can feel her.
Whenever Mira is near, my body goes on alert. My soul wakes up.
It’s unnerving.
I grip my glass tighter, taking a long sip as she quietly makes her way over to me.
She’s been left to herself since we arrived home from Kaz’s. Oddly, she’s been quiet.
It was a dirty trick, making her think Max was going to have to cut into his arm as retribution for not following orders. She might now think I wouldn’t make him to such a thing, but she’d be wrong. I’d take every one of his fingers if he disobeyed an order to keep her safe while I was away.
And he’d do the same to any member of his own crew who went against his orders.
“You’re really into opera, huh?” Mira sinks onto the love seat opposite me.
She’s wearing a deep purple, oversized night shirt with the neckline ripped out. It hangs off her right shoulder, showing off creamy skin that I’ve thought about all fucking day.
Running my tongue over it. Biting it. Turning it red with well-placed smacks to her perfect ass with my palm until she’s wiggling with pleasure over my knee.
I take another sip, hoping the liquor will burn away some of the desire I have for this woman.
“I guess it’s on brand for you.” She picks the lid of the crystal candy dish on the coffee table between us and glances inside at the butterscotch candies inside.
“On brand?” I find myself asking.
“Yeah, I mean, you’re a fancy guy.” She slides off the couch and wanders around my office.
The hem of the nightshirt rides up as she moves, allowing me to get a glimpse at the gentle curves of her thighs and ass. There’s a pinhead sized freckle just below where the hem hits her thigh. I want to lick that freckle.
I clear my throat to bring myself back on topic.
“Fancy?”
“Expensive. I mean you have a lot of money, so it makes sense. It’s just given your profession, I didn’t expect you to like so much fancy stuff. Like crystal dishes and operas. That’s all.”
“You expected me to live in a one room apartment with beer cans scattered around and empty whiskey bottles filing my trash can?” I keep my eyes on her while she looks through the bookshelf.
She finds the row of photo albums and pulls one from the shelf. My body tenses, and I almost tell her to put it back. But she carries it back to the couch with her with such innocent curiosity, I decide to let her look.
If I’m going to have a life with her, she should know everything. The past. The present. What the future will hold.
Sasha had a point this afternoon.
There are times I’m away on a job for weeks at a time. She’ll be on her own here. If I can’t trust her to allow the protections I have in place to work, how can I keep her safe ?
With her legs folded beneath her, she rests the photo album on her lap. I watch, captivated by her expressions as she flips through the first few pages of black and white photographs of my childhood home back in Russia.
“Is this your family?” She glides her fingertips over the protective plastic covering.
I lean forward enough to see which photos she’s talking about and nod.
“My sister, Nadia, my brother Igor, and my parents. I’m in the middle there. I was seven.” I rest my glass on the coffee table and lean forward with my elbows pressing into my knees.
“This is where you grew up?” She turns the page, more photos of the farm my parents worked.
“Yes.”
“Your parents had a farm.” A small smile touches her lips, but then she turns the page, and it slips.
When she looks up at me, it’s with confusion and surprise.
“My parents worked on a farm. We lived in that cabin.” I reach over and tap the photo of my parents sitting in the front yard of the five-hundred-square-foot cottage we lived in.
“All five of you?”
“Yes.” I nod. “The cabin was part of their wages.”
She continues to look through the photos.
“There’re so many pictures.” Her eyes roam over the page.
“My mother wanted us to have photos of our family, so she saved up enough money for a camera one year. My father complained endlessly about it, but you see he’s in most of them.”
She continues to turn the pages, watching the years go by as I grew stronger, taller, more confident.
“Are they still back in Russia? I know you said your parents passed away, but your brother and sister?” She stares at the last photograph.
A color photo of the cabin, or what was left of it.
“No.” I get to my feet and take the album from her, closing it and laying it on the table.
“They’re here in the States?” She questions.
“No.” I sit back down, pick up my drink. “They’re dead.”
Her cheeks pale a little.
“The family my parents worked for owed money, and when they didn’t pay, their farm was burned to the ground.” I down the rest of my drink. “My family was asleep in their beds the night the cabin was set on fire. The doors had been nailed shut.”
“And you?” The question is quiet and full of worry.
“I’d been sent to another farm the day before to help with the shearing of their flock of sheep. When I returned home, there was nothing left.”
Her eyes glisten with unshed tears. For my family, this woman has tears in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Rurik.” She climbs into my lap, wrapping her arms around my neck and hugs me tight.
“It was a long time ago.” I hold her tight, letting her warmth seep into me .
“What happened after you got home? You were only fifteen. Did you have other family?”
My expression hardens. “I went looking for those responsible for my family’s murder. Vladimir Volkov heard about it and found me. The family that owned the farm were distant relatives of his. He helped me track down everyone involved.”
“You killed them.”
I meet her gaze, bracing for the sting of repulsion. Or worse, fear. But instead, I find something else—acceptance, unwavering and raw. A pride so fierce, it steals the breath from my lungs.
“Every one of them.” My voice shakes with conviction. I’d do it again today if I had the chance.
“Was Vladimir Alexander’s father?”
“No, his grandfather.”
“If you have such an entangled past with the Volkovs, why do you not work for them?”
“When Vladimir asked me to, I refused. I would not give myself to any family. I wanted freedom. So, as long as I vowed to never do anything that would bring harm to the Volkov family, he gave it to me.”
“Even though he helped you?”
“Yes.” I nod. “Vladimir was a very different man than Alexander’s father. When I came here, he tried to make me bend the knee. When I refused, he tried to have me killed.”
“Alexander’s father? And you still work with Alexander?”
I brush my knuckles along her jawline. “Who do you think saved me? Alexander had a strong relationship with his grandfather. He didn’t agree with his father, so he refused the order.”
“Who needs soap operas with the mafia running around. I can’t believe you’ve gone through all of this.” She rests her head on my shoulder.
I let her sit in silence as the record continues to play.
“Are you worried about the fire?” She asks when the record stops.
“No. A building can be rebuilt.”
She pushes up from my chest and narrows her eyes on me. “You listen to that record when you’re tense.”
“It reminds me of my mother. It’s an opera, ‘Snow Maiden.’ It’s about a magical girl made of snow who longs for human love. She finds her way into the human world and is granted the ability to feel the warmth of love. But’s she’s a snow maiden, so ends up melting away.”
Her brows pull together in confusion.
“I may not be explaining it correctly. My mother used to listen to it all the time, it was one of the few records she kept from her own childhood. It relaxes me when I’m a little tense.”
“Which is a lot, because you have a stressful lifestyle. If it’s not the fire, then what?”
“Why do you want to know? We’re not a…what did you call us…a thing?”
She rolls her eyes. “That doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. I mean, at first, I wanted to scratch your eyes out, but you’ve grown on me. And a lot of what you’re stressed about is probably my fault, anyway, so yeah, I care. ”
“You carry a lot of guilt on your shoulders that isn’t yours to carry.”
“If you knew me, you wouldn’t think that,” she says softy, her eyes casting off into the space behind me.
“Tell me, Mira. What would make me change my mind?”
“I’ve had a lot of boyfriends.”
If she thinks that will make me want to discard her, she’s delusional.
The idea of any other man touching her puts me in a murderous mood, yes, but I’m not as much of a Neanderthal as she thinks I am.
She’s an adult who’s lived an entire life before I arrived.
Those men are safe, so long as they didn’t hurt her.
If she carries so much as a single scar from any of them, they will be ashes by sunrise.
“The only thing that matters is I’m your last.”
“No, I mean…” She heaves a heavy sigh, but her burden doesn’t lighten. “I mean, it’s what I do. I meet a guy and he shows a drop of interest, I’m head over heels for him. You saw how many marriages there are between my parents. I don’t want to end up like that.”
“They do seem to love love,” I agree.
Her mother’s fifth and current husband, is sleeping with his secretary. When she finds out, she’ll be jumping ship and looking for husband number six.
“I don’t want to do that. I want to find one man, get married and have lots of babies.” She blushes with her confession.
“And you don’t think I’m that man.” That’s all right; there’s plenty of time for her to come around to my way of thinking.
I’m nothing if not patient.
Her shoulders drop a fraction. “I can’t be trusted, Rurik. That’s what I’m saying. My brain doesn’t work right.”
She taps her temple with two fingers.
I grab her wrist and pull it down to her lap.
“I trust you.” Three words have never been truer in my life.
“Why would you do that? I’ve been nothing but a pain in the ass since we met.”
“It’s true.” I nod. “You have. But tonight, when you saw Max was about to be hurt because of your actions, you stepped in.”
“It was my fault, not his.”
“And you owned it.”
She sighs and rests her head on my shoulder again. “This conversation has gotten too depressing for this late at night.”
“You’re hiding heavy secrets.” I run the tip of my fingers over her bare shoulder.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
She’s right, we all have skeletons buried deep in our closets. Some are worse than others. Hers are crushing her, even if she won’t admit it.
“I can carry them for you; you only need to tell me.”
A flash of relief crosses her features, but she buries. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“How do you know? ”
“Because even you can’t turn back time.” Pain hides behind her forced smile.
Whatever monster she’s trying to slay on her own won’t win. I’ll hunt it down for her.
My phone rings, giving her a reason to climb off my lap. “You have things to do.”
“I’ll be only a second.” I grab my phone, seeing Alexander’s number on the screen.
He’s going to need an accounting of what’s happened with the storage building. All of his units were destroyed.
She pads across the room in her bare feet. When the door shuts behind her, I answer the call. Alexander’s voice sounds in my ear without preamble.
“Marco DeAngelo left a message.”