Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
Katya
Shit, shit, shit, shit.
Using the car’s Wi-Fi, I try to reach out to my team. Still nothing. I need to get back to the safe house, regroup, and get Dimitri and me the fuck out of here.
I sit in the car in a total and utter panic, at least trying to make it look cool. But yeah, it’s definitely not working. I’ve reached out to my home office three times and still no answer. What the actual fuck?
“Fuck, Katya!” Dimitri says, his rage seething. “Tell me the truth right now.”
“So, I’m not just a bartender,” I try to say lightly and playfully.
“Uh, obviously,” he growls.
Okay, be kind. The man just lost everything in a matter of seconds.
“Listen, you’re having a rough day. I’m going to ignore the fact that you tried to choke me out in the closet. Because we’ve all made poor choices tonight. I am a CIA agent, undercover, researching a drug called Majesty. Have you heard of it?”
Of course he has.
Dimitri tightens his grip on the wheel. “My family has been offered deals to sell Majesty to the public, but we’ve turned it down. My uncle in America did the same thing.”
“Yeah, so that’s what’s weird. I came here thinking you and your family were the primary pushers, but now I don’t think you guys are.”
“We’re not. I literally just said that.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. But I figured it out a couple of days ago. And yet, when I presented my findings it was ignored. And now, all of a sudden, your family has been annihilated, and my team’s not answering.”
“So, where are we going?” Dimitri asks.
“There’s a safe house nearby. Do you have a go bag?”
“A what?”
“A go bag. You know, an ‘Oh shit, the whole world is collapsing and I need to get the fuck out of here’ kind of bag.”
“Oh, yes, of course.”
See, that’s what I love about criminals. Good criminals, at least. Organized crime is, in fact, highly organized.
“Alright, great. So we’ll get the go bag, regroup, reconnect with my team, and get the fuck out of here. I need to get to an embassy or something.”
In the car, he’s silent, and I give him vague directions until we arrive at one of the stone apartments—a relic of the Communist era.
Immediately, I head up the stairs. The door’s slightly open, the bullet holes evidence of how a hostile made quick work of the locks. That’s when I notice the thick, red liquid coming out from under the door.
Oh, I don’t even need to go in. I know what’s in there. Bodies. My entire team has been compromised.
But there’s information in there I need.
I brace myself for whatever horrors I might see, and as I push open the door, I advise Dimitri, “Stay out here.”
I’ve been ordering him around and for the most part, he seems kind of okay with it. I don’t know how long that’s going to last. Maybe once the reality sets in and he processes his trauma, he’s going to be super pissed that I’ve been bossing him around all day. Or maybe he’s willing to sacrifice his dignity in order to survive, if only for a little bit—which I appreciate.
Marguerite’s body lays in the hallway as if she dragged herself to the door in her final moments. There’s a steady trail of her blood from her table to where she’s currently lying. Perhaps she was trying to cry out in her last breaths.
Looking past her, I notice the computers are all gone. Everything is gone. My team. My backup. Everything. George’s body is slumped over the desk. Moving past him I notice there’s another body… George’s girlfriend. Did she have something to do with this? Did she compromise our safety?
There’s one last door I kick open. The office has been ransacked, but there’s no bodies. Maybe my boss made it out alive.
Boom!
The sound of metal and glass exploding rattles the building. Car bomb. Maybe my boss didn’t make it out.
I need one thing and it’s behind the locked closet door. It’s easy enough to break in with a quick kick. On the floor behind a pile of coats and gloves sits five go bags. Grabbing my red bag, my heart sinks when I see Markus’s green bag. He hasn’t gotten to HQ yet. I leave the bag where it is, in hopes that he might still need it.
Right now, I’m an American undercover agent. My entire support system has vanished. I haven’t seen Markus in hours. I have no idea where I’m going, what I’m doing, and I have the lone survivor of the Koslov crime family as my companion.
Great. Fanfuckingtastic.
Dimitri stands in the doorway. His wide eyes take in everything. He’s seen enough dead bodies for today.
Nothing about this sits right with me.
“Katya,” Dimitri says, “we have to go.”
He’s right.
Dimitri pulls me out of the apartment, and as we race back to the car, I notice his arm is bleeding. Fuck. How did I miss that?
“Dimitri, when did you get shot?” I ask.
“Somewhere when we were leaving the house. I don’t even know.”
“We’ll deal with that later, okay? Right now, we have to get out of here. If I was attacked and you were attacked, we have no idea how safe we are. We need to leave—and ideally, out of Russia. We need to get to an embassy.”
“Fine,” Dimitri says. “I know a guy.”
We race through the streets toward the St. Petersburg train station. His go bag is stored in a locker there. Easy to access, although I could do without the CCTV cameras all over the place. Fortunately, his go bag retrieval is less traumatic than mine.
But we’re far from out of the woods. There’s a long line of people, and we need to hop on the first train available. Glancing at the schedule, I find the perfect one. While people are waiting in line, I spot a couple—rich, fancy, and obnoxious—cutting to the front, and I steal their tickets.
Next thing, we're on the train as it departs, and the couple is gone. We end up in a cramped sleeper cabin that smells like old tobacco.
“Come on.” I drop my go bag on the floor. “We’ve got a long trip. Let’s take a look at your wound.”
He pulls away as I reach for him, the quick action making him wince. He needs space, but his blood has soaked through his jacket and dried, creating a scab mixed with linen. He moves slowly and deliberately as he discards his jacket, and hisses when he pulls his injured arm out of the sleeve. The fabric and the scab tear away from the injured flesh.
“Have you been shot before?”
“I’ve been stabbed by men with shitty aim.”
Is he joking? I can’t believe he thinks he’s funny.
With the jacket off, it’s easier to see the injury. Blood soaks through his white shirt, spreading like a glacier and staining everything underneath. His eyes focus on mine.
“It’s not as bad as I thought.” The wound is clean, and it doesn’t look like the bullet is embedded. “Take off your shirt.” It’s already a mess, but there’s no reason to make it worse.
My go bag has a field medical kit. Gauze, liquid stitches, some antibiotics—it’s not perfect, but it will do until we can get him to a hospital.
Wetting a piece of gauze, I extend my fingers toward him and pause. Minus the blood-soaked skin, he seems pretty unharmed. But his chest?—
My lady bits clench as I take in the defined muscles and intricate tattoos. Surveillance told me he worked out, but...wow. I take a second to enjoy the view: his bare chest, his black pants with a black belt, and his stoic expression. He’s a fucking god.
I swallow and redirect my attention to his wound.
He grabs my wrist with his uninjured hand. “Why the hell should I let you touch me?” I yank away, but he tightens his grip. “You lied to me. How the fuck do I know you didn’t set this whole thing up?”
My eyes burn, and the train rocking throws me off balance—but not nearly as much as his attack.
“You think I had your whole family and my entire team murdered? Your family—the people I’ve been relentlessly trying to keep safe? And my team—the people who’ve been my fucking lifeline and the only thread of sanity I’ve had in this mission?”
My throat feels like it’s on fire. I might make the occasionally dubious choice, but I am not evil, and this shit feels like a pact with the devil or something.
“I have to get to Helsinki, to the embassy, and report to my superiors that Marguerite—a mom of two beautiful little boys—her corpse is a tripping hazard in the hallway.”
He breaks our gaze to watch the fields go by in the darkness.
“How exactly have you been protecting my family?”
“Let’s see.” I count on my fingers, “I pulled a bomb out of your father’s car. The Smirnov syndicate sent over three guys to jump you, but they had an ‘accident’ on the way over. I diverted the authorities’ attention away from the docks when your shipments came in. Oh, and I had Ian’s EpiPen on hand, ready to keep him alive. And thirty minutes ago, I dragged your ass out of a burning building.”
The saturated gauze drips through my fingers.
He swallows and turns his head to the side, giving his full attention to the window—or maybe watching me through the reflection.
The blood wipes away, vanishing and being absorbed into the cloth. I work in slow circles, cleaning around the wound but careful not to touch it.
“How much of you is real?” he hisses as I apply pressure to the laceration, reopening any scabs that had formed.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
Fresh blood seeps through the gauze. He reaches back, pulls a second piece out of the kit, and hands it to me.
“I was ready to walk away from my whole life for you. And none of it was real.”
I swallow, and my high-definition vision of blood and flesh blurs for a second.
“Really?” He wanted me? Could we have worked? I would never join his crime family, but I could turn a blind eye. In the darkest recesses of my mind, I want him. Not the mob boss’s son, but Dimitri—the man who stopped his whole world to protect his nephew. The man who loves his family no matter how one sided it might be. The man who has a funny side I want to pry out of him, just to get a glimpse of it.
Bitterness and pain fill his voice as he turns away from me. “But now I’m a fool.”
I don’t know how I can heal his heart, but maybe I can heal his body. “Press your hand against your shoulder while I get the stitches.”
He wanted to leave his whole world for me. No, not me, he wanted Katya.
I open the liquid stitches and get ready to apply them. “This isn’t a forever fix, just enough until you get to a doctor.”
He grunts. “I know how it works,” he mumbles. “Nothing is permanent.” He’s quiet as I apply the gel. “After I broke up with Sveti, I was going to meet you at the party, seduce you, and have a real conversation about our relationship. To see if our feelings were the same. And I booked an otter experience at the zoo.”
I would’ve loved that, and I’m crushed that he planned it and it didn’t work out. I go back to the kit and start applying bandages. I need a task that will distract me from more talk and thoughts of “what could have been.”
He huffs. “But none of that matters now.”
Taping down the final side of the bandage, I step to the side, still not able to look him in the eye.
“It was all lies,” he growls low, the sound rumbling deep in his chest. “I discovered you were a liar, lost my family and my life.”
I step away. “And what’s your plan now?”
“Well, I’m probably going to kill you and take your cash,” he states without emotion, like he’s made up his mind. He’s resigned to it, but not pleased.
I wish I could say a million alarm bells go off in my head and my body goes into fight mode, but it doesn’t. I’m done fighting, and in my soul I need to believe he won’t go through with it.
“Sounds fair,” I admit. “But since I did get you out of there, can we wait until I report my team’s deaths? Their families shouldn’t suffer because you think I’m a piece of shit.”
He exhales. “Fine. How long until we get to Helsinki?”
“Hours.”
I dig through my go bag to find a change of clothes—this evening gown doesn’t scream blending in. Black pants and a long linen shirt are perfect.
I reach behind my dress, and I’m stuck. “A little help?”
“I just told you I plan on murdering you, and now you want me to undress you?”
“I’ve got a few hours to settle my affairs, and I’d rather not do it in a dress that’s been cutting off my circulation all evening.”
His knuckles brush against my back and trail down the zipper that’s stubbornly clinging to my skin. His breath is hot on my shoulders, and when the train hits a bump, I stumble too close to him. The dress drops below my bra, and he growls again.
“Thank you,” I say, reaching for my shirt and sliding it over my head as I let the dress fall to the ground.
He steps back while I step out of the pool of fabric, but I stumble and bang my head against the cabin wall as I try to pull on my pants. The sleeper cars have zero space.
His growls turn into short huffs of laughter. “I was going to ask how you got all those bruises on your back, but I don’t think it has anything to do with your day job.”
Yep, the klutzy spy. That’s me. I’ve added it to my resume to make myself more relatable.
Once I’ve changed, Dimitri puts on a clean shirt, hissing the entire time.
I squeeze my way to the bench and sit. “You should get some rest.”
He pauses. “You think I’ll be able to sleep after the last few hours?”
“I think you’re as safe as you can be.”
He frowns, looking around at the microscopic space. “I won’t fit anywhere.”
He’s right. The dropdown bed is dangerous, and with his shoulder, I don’t want him to get hurt worse than he already is. I pat the bench, and he continues to glare at me.
“I’ve already said I will steal your last breath, and now you want to snuggle?”
“That's a very poetic way of saying murder. Plus, you said you’d wait until I got to the embassy. We’ve got time.”
He exhales, deeper than defeat—a total loss of any sense of self. His whole body crashes onto the bench as he sits, his shoulders slumping hard against me and the wall.
“If you put your head in my lap and your hips on the bench, you can stick your legs out.” Oh, Russia. You’re always playing Tetris, aren’t you?
He grumbles something about being in the lap of a viper, which makes me want to correct him—vipers don’t have legs, so what he’s suggesting is impossible. But he shifts his weight and nestles his head on my thighs. His legs stick out and fill the rest of the space.
The train rocks us, lulling us into a false sense of peace. Unsure what to do with my hands, one goes on his chest while the other strokes his hair. I’ve dreamed of this moment forever, but it’s not hitting in the sexy way it does in my dreams.
“Are you comfortable?” His question throws me. One minute he’s threatening to kill me, and the next, he’s worried if I’m comfy?
“Yes. You’re the one with the shitty view of my underboob and up my nostril.”
“Boogers and boobs. I’m a lucky man.”
I huff. “Well, shit, look at that—you are funny.”
My fingers start to stroke his hair again. It’s soft, the motion repetitive, and everything I want right now. He doesn’t bristle at my touch. Instead, he closes his eyes.
His heartbeat slows, and the rocking of the train lulls him to sleep.