Chapter 44
WILLOW
It feels like it’s been forever since Malice and Ransom left.
Victor has himself barricaded in his room, and I don’t think he’d be happy if I knocked on his door and asked him to keep me company until his brothers return home, so instead, I end up pacing in the living room, jumping every time I hear a car go by the warehouse.
Each time it’s not them, it puts me in a worse mood, and I bite my lip, dragging it between my teeth.
It’s odd, caring so much what happens to them.
When this whole thing started, I wouldn’t have cared one way or the other if some bigger, badder criminal took out the Voronin brothers. It would’ve meant they’d be out of my hair, and as long as he didn’t come for me, then I would have been fine with it.
But now I’m worried sick about them.
They made it sound like it would be so easy. They have the element of surprise, and Ilya’s guard shouldn’t be up yet. They’ll go right to his hotel and take him out, and the problem will be solved.
Easy. Simple. Right?
But as it gets later and later, those words get harder to believe.
It’s dark outside by the time the door finally opens. Heavy footsteps come down the hallway, and Malice strides into the living room first, with Ransom right behind him, limping a little bit. All it takes is one look at their faces to know that something went wrong.
“What happened?” I ask, glancing between them.
“He got away,” Malice bites out, yanking a gun out of the waistband of his pants and slamming it down on the end table by the couch.
“Mal had a good shot on him,” Ransom adds. “It should’ve worked. But he flinched at the last fucking second, and we got into a shoot-out. Shit got dicey, and we had to get out of there before he got a good look at us.”
He steps forward as he speaks, still limping, and I realize his jeans are soaked with blood.
“Oh my god. Ransom!” My jaw drops as I rush over to him. “What happened?”
He shakes his head, sinking down onto the couch. “It’s fine. Just a scratch I got while we were running.”
“You need to deal with it, though,” Malice tells him. “Let me see it.”
Ransom rolls his eyes, but he unzips his pants and peels them down enough to reveal a nasty looking gash on the side of his leg, just a few inches up from his knee. The edges of it are ragged and dark with blood, and I suck in a breath, the sight making my stomach flip over.
Malice takes a quick look at it, his gaze practiced and assessing. Then he leaves and comes back a moment later with a first aid kit and a bottle of whiskey. He sets them both on the couch before crouching down in front of Ransom to poke and prod at his wound.
Ransom grabs the bottle and takes a deep swig from it, wincing either from the burn of the booze or from whatever Malice is doing to his cut.
“This needs a couple stitches,” Malice says. “It’s too deep.”
Ransom makes a face. Then he reaches for me, snagging me around the waist with one arm and pulling me down onto the couch beside him. His hand sneaks under my shirt, brushing across the skin of my belly, and I shiver at the touch before pinning him with a look.
“What?” he says, looking back at me with wide, innocent eyes that don’t fool anyone for even half a second. “I need this to help ease the pain. Weren’t you just concerned about me a second ago?”
I roll my eyes at that, but don’t protest. Instead, I settle in against his side and let him touch me, watching as Malice soaks a gauze in some disinfectant and starts cleaning blood away from Ransom’s wound.
He hisses in pain, and I stare down as more of the wound is revealed under all that blood. I’ve seen two dead bodies now, and it was horrifying both times. But there’s something about seeing one of these men hurt that makes me realize all over again how dangerous their lives are.
They’re not gods.
They’re breakable.
They’re killable.
Even though they came out of the encounter with Nikolai and the one with Carl unscathed, there’s no telling if that will always be the case. They work well together as a team, and all of them are quick on their feet and skilled enough with weapons that they’ve survived until now, but…
Seeing Ransom hurt makes concern twist in my gut.
It feels odd to realize how much I care, but I can’t deny that I do. I was worried before they left to go kill Ilya, feeling like there was a chance something could go wrong. And I was right.
Sure, it wasn’t anything terrible, and a cut that needs a few stitches is probably par for the course for men like this. But still. Maybe the next time they go after him, it’ll be worse. Maybe they’ll get hurt worse. Maybe…
Victor steps into the room, and I jump, because I was so busy thinking that I didn’t even hear him on the stairs.
He looks at the scene in the room and doesn’t even need to ask, just the way I didn’t. If they’d managed to take out Ilya, the atmosphere would be very different.
“You didn’t get him.”
“No,” Ransom agrees, shaking his head. “He got away, but so did we. And he still doesn’t know who we are.”
Vic curses under his breath, but nods. “That’s something, I suppose. It could have been much worse. What happened to your leg?”
They tell the story of running away from Ilya, keeping ahead of him enough that he couldn’t get a look at them, and Ransom getting cut on a gate. It’s not as horrifying as it could have been, but that doesn’t do much to settle my mind.
Malice finishes stitching Ransom up, gathering bloody gauze and stuffing it into a bag to throw out.
“We need a new plan,” he says. “And we need one fast.”
“Now that he’s spooked, he’s probably going to move locations,” Ransom points out. “I wouldn’t stay someplace I’d just gotten shot at, even if it is a good spot to hide out.”
Malice cracks his knuckles, looking irritated. “He seems like the type to work alone, which is at least one thing in our favor. We shouldn’t have to deal with any bodyguards or paid goons, no matter how spooked he gets.”
“That’s an assumption, though,” Vic counters. “And one we don’t have nearly enough information to make. He could have an army backing him up. Or some chunk of the Russian mafia that he’ll call in now that he’s realized he’s being targeted. We don’t know enough. Still.”
It’s easy to tell that he’s as irritated with their lack of information as Malice is by their failure tonight.
I listen to them go back and forth, throwing ideas out and shooting them down or agreeing with each other.
It seems like this is their process, something they do all the time, and I wonder for a moment if they’ve forgotten I’m even here, considering how openly they’re talking and planning in front of me.
But then I realize Ransom is still touching me idly, and I’m still tucked against him.
There’s no way he’s not doing that intentionally.
So they have to know I’m listening, and they’re just… fine with it.
It’s just another reminder of how much has changed between us. It wasn’t all that long ago that Malice made a point of telling me I wasn’t allowed to sit in on their meetings, and now I’m sitting right here while they hash things out.
“We can track his movements,” Vic says. “And it’s probably reasonable to think that he’s going to be keeping an even lower profile now that he knows someone is after him.
I’ll try to find out where he goes, and we can move from there.
If we work quickly enough, then he won’t have time to shore up his defenses, and we can take advantage of him being caught off guard. Hopefully.”
“And next time, he’s not walking away from it. Next time, he dies,” Malice grunts firmly.
Ransom nods. “We need to take care of this before it can bite us in the ass. We have enough shit doing that already.” He reaches for the bottle of whiskey that’s still on the coffee table, takes a couple swigs, then rolls his neck and shoulders with a groan.
“I’ve gotta get to bed. Today took it out of me. ”
He keeps his arm hooked around me, keeping me close as he stands up. I go along with him, not fighting his hold. The two of us head up the stairs toward the second floor, and although I can feel Malice and Victor watching our ascent, neither of them makes a move to stop us.
Once we reach his bedroom, Ransom closes the door and then takes a step closer until he’s right in front of me. He reaches up, pushing my hair back behind my ear before cupping my face in both hands.
When he leans in to kiss me, warm and soft, I melt against him, heat moving through my body.
It’s a slow trickle at first, like molasses being poured, but it’s undeniable.
I put my arms around his strong waist and lean into his kiss, humming against his mouth, my eyes falling closed.
His hands move, and one of them skims down my back, stopping just before he gets to the curve of my ass and resting there almost possessively.
It makes my heart beat faster, and when we part for breath, I can taste him on my lips.
I think again about the feeling of Malice’s and Vic’s eyes on us as we left, and I wonder how they feel about us being up here together. Now that the ban on fucking me has been lifted, they have to know what was on Ransom’s mind when he brought me up here, the same way I did.
It makes me nervous to ask, but I really want to know. So I screw up my courage and whisper, “Have you three… ever shared women before? Like you did last night?”
Ransom smiles, not seeming bothered by the question at all. “Yeah, we have. Malice and I have fucked the same girl before. Not Vic, though.”
I nod, biting my lip a little. I’m not sure how that answer makes me feel. It’s good to know they won’t be jealous of each other, but at the same time…
Ransom seems to read the thoughts that are bouncing around in my head, and he tips my face up with fingers under my chin.
“Nothing and no one has ever been like you, angel,” he says. “We’ve shared before, but no one else has ever gotten to us the way you do.”