Chapter 39 Willow #2
Unable to help myself, I take a tentative step toward her, wrapping my arms around her in a hug.
It’s awkward at first, and I almost expect her to shove me away, since several of her father’s men—her men—are still watching.
She’s stiff for a second, but then her arms tighten around me, squeezing tightly as if she needed this more than words could express.
I feel her body shudder against mine, and then she releases me and steps back, squaring her shoulders.
“Are you going to be alright?” I murmur.
“Yeah.” She nods, and I can already see her compartmentalizing her emotions again. “I always am. I have to be, so I will be.”
To my surprise, Malice steps forward, offering her his hand. She takes it, and they shake once.
“Jonah helped us more than we can say,” he tells her. “So if you ever need something from us, we owe you one.”
I’ve learned enough about the world my men inhabit by now to know that offering an open-ended favor like that is rare.
The Voronin brothers spent years under X’s thumb, doing jobs for my grandmother in exchange for Malice’s early release from prison.
So owing anyone for anything, having that sort of thing hanging over them, is the kind of thing they would normally avoid at all costs.
But for what Jonah did for us, they’re clearly willing to do it.
There’s not much more to say after that. I have a feeling Quinn and her people want to be left alone to start dealing with the realities of her father’s death and figuring out what comes next, so with a final nod, my men and I get back into the car.
I look back once as we pull away, watching Quinn gesture as she gives orders to the gathered men and wondering when—or if—our paths might cross again.
The drive back to the safe house feels long.
I keep replaying everything that happened today over and over in my head, reliving all the moments that we could all have died. Everything that could’ve gone wrong with our plan seemed to go wrong, and if it weren’t for Jonah being on our side…
I don’t even want to think about it.
Somehow, we all made it out alive. My grandmother is dead and buried under several tons of concrete, unable to ever hurt us again. That’s hard to wrap my head around, but I keep repeating it in my mind, trying to make it feel real.
The guys are mostly quiet as we head back into the safe house, lost in their own thoughts. I want to leave them to it, to let them decompress after the night we’ve had, but there’s something building inside me that I can’t ignore.
So as soon as we get back and step through the door, I turn to them, my heart thudding.
“Take off your shirts,” I demand, surprising even myself with the fierceness of my tone.
Ransom raises his pierced eyebrow, almost smirking at me. “Not wasting any time, huh?”
Clearly he thinks I want sex, but this isn’t even about that.
“No, I just… I need to see.”
I keep thinking about Jonah and the way he walked up to my grandmother’s body, spit on her corpse, and then just… collapsed. He looked okay before that, hiding his injury well enough that I didn’t even know it was a lethal wound until he went down.
The thought that one of my men might have a hidden injury like that makes me feel sick to my stomach. I need to see with my own eyes that they’re alright. That they’re whole. It’s the only thing that will make my heart calm down.
They seem to understand, because one by one, they start taking their shirts off.
I go to Vic first, running my hands over his chest and torso. His muscles tense beneath my hands, and I can feel it when he takes a shuddering breath. It makes me swallow hard, knowing that just feeling me touch him like this is enough to get him to react this way.
I run my fingers over the scar from the last time he got shot for me, and the bruise that must be left from him getting shot this time, even with his vest on.
Thank fuck for bulletproof vests.
Vic lets me touch my fill, and when I’m finally satisfied that there are no life-threatening injuries, I move on to Ransom.
I feel as if I know all of these men’s scars by heart now, having cataloged them with my hands and mouth since we’ve been together. There’s nothing new on Ransom, and the dried blood on his arm turns out to be from someone else, to my relief.
“I’m all good,” he murmurs to me, lifting one of my hands and kissing my knuckles. “I promise.”
I nod, my heart thumping in my chest.
Last, I turn to Malice. The most reckless of the group, the one most likely to be trying to hide a bullet wound and shrug it off.
I take my time, making sure all the scars on him are the usual ones, and that none of the blood is his.
There are bruises on his chest from being shot, blood that probably belongs to Olivia, and a shitload of scrapes and bruises that can be explained by being kidnapped and thrown in a hole, but nothing else.
The invisible vise around my lungs finally releases its grip, and I feel like I can breathe normally again.
“Thank you,” I whisper to Malice, staring at his tattooed, bruised chest. “For not dying.”
He grabs my hand and then uses his free hand to tip my face up to his so that I’m looking him in the eye.
“I meant what I said, Solnyshka,” he murmurs. “I wouldn’t have hesitated to die for you, if that’s what it took.”
“Neither would I,” Vic agrees instantly, and when I glance at Ransom, he’s nodding too. Something flutters in my stomach, and I swallow hard.
Malice’s fingers draw my face back to him. The hardness of his features softens a little as a smile pulls at his lips.
“But I’d rather live for you,” he tells me. “I’d rather spend the rest of my life making you happy.”
“A-fucking-men,” Ransom adds.
Emotions swell inside me, and I’m suddenly overwhelmed by how much I love these three men. Tears well in my eyes, spilling down my cheeks, but for the first time in a long time, they’re not sad tears. They’re tears of joy and love and relief.
“That sounds perfect,” I breathe.
The room tilts around me as Victor picks me up, cradling me in his arms. He carries me into the bedroom with his brothers close on our heels.
Between the three of them, they get me undressed, doing their own checks to make sure I’m okay. Other than some bruises and scrapes like they have, I’m fine, and the three of them kiss each mark on my body.
They kiss every bruise and all of my scars, making me feel so loved and cherished that I start crying all over again. Then they kiss my tears away too.
There’s going to be a lot to do going forward, but for now, there’s just this moment.
Me and the three of them, celebrating the one thing that matters most.
We’re alive.
And we have each other.