Chapter 24
Max
That makes no sense. None at all. Even my sex-addled brain knows that one simple fact. I must have misheard her. “He what?”
She releases me, the cold absence of her touch less shocking than her absurd declaration.
“He killed her, and then he reached down and ripped the locket from her neck.” She meets my gaze, anger coloring her cheeks. “It was my locket. My mother said so. But she was never able to pass down that inheritance, because Roman killed her. Then took it for himself.”
A sharp, ugly laugh tears from my chest like broken glass.
My ankle shrieks when I stumble to my feet. I embrace the white-hot pain clearing my foggy mind as I pull up my pants and put several feet between us. “You’re a fucking liar.”
She doesn’t recoil. “I’ve never lied about anything in my life. I saw Roman, the man I called Daddy, who I thought loved us both, kneel over my dead mother while her blood still pooled around her. After he stole my necklace, the one she said would be mine one day, he started shouting my name.”
Nothing adds up as Nika pushes herself up from the floor. She’s naked from the waist down, her eyes too steady. Too clear. She appears to be telling the truth, but how in the hell is that even possible?
“You’ll say anything to justify your insanity.” I yank my gaze away, unable to look at her and still think with that sincerity written across every line of her face. “No.”
“Yes.”
Her conviction causes me to doubt everything I thought I knew.
Roman killed Lilia, his own wife? Nika’s mother? The man who saw the monster in me and didn’t flinch? Who gave me purpose when I had none?
I don’t believe her. “You’re wrong.”
“After everything he’s done this last year, you don’t think he’s capable?” She stands still, watching me unravel. “He’s out of control. He could have ignored the clues I sent at any time. He chose not to. His pride meant more to him than the lives of everyone else. And you still protect him?”
“He’s my Pakhan.” I shove my hair out of my face viciously enough to rip a few strands free, the sting helping to ground me. “Tell me what you want from me. From Roman.”
She rolls her eyes while exhaling a puff of hot air. “The same thing I’ve been telling you I want from the very beginning. I want my mother’s locket. The one she promised to me. The only tangible thing I have left of her.”
I reach into the front pocket of my jeans, right where her hand sat while giving me head just minutes ago. I extract the locket, the metal warm from my body heat, and hold the chain aloft. “You think Roman killed your mother over this? Are you psychotic? He probably gave this to her!”
She stiffens, fixating on the necklace with an almost fanatical intensity.
For the first time since we met, she resembles the psychopath from the video.
“He didn’t give her anything. That gift came from my Dedushka Peter, who gave it to my mother, not to Roman.
Why do you think he gave it to my mom instead of his own son? ”
Her eyes brighten with unshed tears.
Tears.
This woman—tough as a diamond, frigid as winter, trained to kill without hesitation—is about to cry over a piece of jewelry.
The sight throws me off-balance because I think she’s fucking serious.
This would be the perfect time for her to tell me what she’s actually after, and she still insists it’s just the locket. Not whatever the locket leads to. Not money or power. Not even Roman’s death.
This is wrong. The fury, the tears, the insane tale… It’s too emotional to be calculated, too detailed to be fabricated.
And sadly, entirely too raw to be anything except lived truth.
It’s the truth of a nine-year-old girl who lost everything and longs for a fragment of the happiness she once knew.
A sick, twisted nausea curls in my gut.
No. I cannot accept this. Not without proof.
She’s got to be after more. She must have some further reason for doing all this shit. For ripping my family apart from the inside out.
My gaze catches on a painting that hangs on the wall near Nika’s bedroom door. It’s been at the edge of my awareness since I first searched this place.
A woman with dark hair and a smile. The proportions are wrong, the colors muddy, but there’s clumsy love in every brushstroke. The kind of thing a child would create.
Mounted and professionally framed.
I cross over to the portrait.
Nika sucks in a small breath. “No.”
I yank the frame off the wall and set it on the floor, exposing a small safe with a digital keypad. “What’s the combination?”
Nika stumbles toward me. “Don’t touch that! You don’t get to destroy that! That was—” Her voice hitches.
I barely register the pleas, too consumed by the safe I completely missed. “If you don’t give me the combination, I’ll destroy every single thing in this place.” I let her glimpse the certainty in my expression. “Then I’ll burn down your greenhouse.”
Nika launches herself at me with pure, feral rage.
She hits me like a missile, all teeth, kicks, and gouging fingers. She aims for my throat but gets tangled in my unzipped pants. This woman’s a rabid beast that’s lost all control.
“What the hell?” I catch her wrists but can barely contain them.
“That’s my mother!” She fights, clawing at my hands and face, trying to get free. “You’re soulless! A destroyer. A ruiner. You’re empty! There’s nothing inside you but cold and death and misery.”
I spin, slamming her back into the wall and nearly knocking the breath from her lungs. She wraps her legs around my waist, dragging me closer.
If that’s what you want.
Without thinking, I crash my mouth against hers.
I’d only meant to make her stop talking, to keep her from saying things that cut too close to the bone and exposed things I’ve spent years burying.
The tactic works, but the violent, all-consuming lust her accusations had chased away comes flooding back.
Not just for me either.
Nika is all teeth and fury, but now she’s trying to crawl under my skin instead of shredding it.
I taste rust when she bites my lip and crush my body against hers. Forcing her jaw open, I lay claim to that too-talented tongue and mouth. I can’t stop myself from pressing closer, kissing more fervently, digging my fingers into her arms. I need to feel her, and I need her to feel me.
Her hands slice through my hair, painfully tugging me closer.
Good. I want this to hurt.
Pain’s a sensation I can process. Unlike the truth in her eyes or the anguish in her voice.
With one hand under her ass, I hitch Nika higher. The other yanks at my jeans in an effort to get them low enough to finish this once and for all.
She’s so unbelievably wet. Despite the talking and fighting and the grief she dug up and spread around like fertilizer, she wants this as badly as I do. The scent of her envelops me. Roses and blood, sweat and cotton. She drives me fucking crazy.
Once I get my cock free, I line myself up and finally slam in.
The tight, almost painful resistance is both immediate and unexpected.
Nika yelps, bites her lip, and flinches.
I freeze.
That’s not the blissful moan from earlier. She’s too tense. The warning skitters across my mind, realization surfacing through the haze of lust and rage.
I grip her chin between my fingers and force her to look at me. She glares, tears that aren’t at all related to her previous freak-out clinging to her lashes.
Fuck my life.
I hold her gaze, my heart pounding against my ribs. “Nika. Are you a virgin?”
The truth scorches through me as Nika pants against the wall. Naked. Ruined. Exposed in a way that constricts my chest.
The beautiful assassin is a virgin.
What the hell have I done?
Nika hisses and squirms. “No.” She digs her heels into my ass, shifting herself up. “Not anymore.”
With a feral smile, she plunges herself down, taking me deeper. Chasing a feeling that has nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with familiar destruction and pain.
She clenches around me with every ounce of strength she has, more than I could have dreamed of. Her entire body wraps around me as she squeezes and takes what she wants, what she needs.
Even wrecked with shock, I manage to rein myself in as pleasure builds in her. The tension ratchets up as my hands push into the wall. If I were a better man, I would stop her. I would throw her off of me and get as far from her as I could.
But I’m not a better man.
She moans in my ear before draping her arms around my neck and riding faster, racing to her peak.
And I just let her.
She’s innocent, and I’m a monster.
Nika tenses around me, her breath halting and then trickling out in a satisfied sigh that ripples down my neck and shoulder. Her audible pleasure nearly kills me. I struggle to stay still, to give her this without complicating her first time.
She convulses around my cock until that, too, slows and relaxes.
With all the willpower I have, I press my hand against the wall and pull out.
The loss devastates me. My body screams for completion, for the release that’s right within reach.
I could go again. Improve the experience for her. I know what she likes, and she barely got anything special. Hell, she did all the work herself. I know I could…
No, I can’t.
Even monsters have their limits.
And no one’s first time should be with a man like me.
Max
I find myself in front of the big windows, staring into the darkness. My jeans remain open, my body still hard and aching. I ignore them both as my mind attempts to piece together the fragments that won’t form a coherent thought.
She insisted that Roman killed her mother, which means she must be lying.
Except she wasn’t.
I can’t deny her conviction. She believed everything she said, and I know that.
I also know that I’ve never once seen my Pakhan be anything but kind to women. Even strangers he passes on the street get a smile and a nod. He’s almost courtly with his old-world manners.
In the time I’ve known him, though, I’ve never seen him with another woman. Never seen him in a relationship. He never went on a date or flirted or showed interest in anyone after Lilia died.
Or after he killed his wife, as Nika claims.
The thought settles into my stomach like lead, threatening to come up my throat.
Roman never had another woman. He was alone. Always giving in to grief when he didn’t think anyone was watching.
Was that grief? Or guilt?
What if she’s just mistaken? Kids can misremember things, and the adult they grow into would never know the difference.
What if she’s not lying?
If she’s speaking the truth, she’s even more dangerous. More tragic.
Worse, it makes her vulnerable. A wounded human instead of a weapon, a victim of Roman Kozlov’s inhumanity.
“Max!” Nika’s voice carries from the bedroom where she went to clean up. The sharp, high-pitched panic drives ice through my veins.
I whip around, ignoring the jolt of pain in my ankle as the room behind me fills with smoke.