Chapter 27
MIKHAIL
Andre became more involved with Anya over the course of the day.
He was my go-to in terms of making sure her needs were met, yet whenever he checked in with me around the meetings and such, he hinted at her not entirely warming up to him.
Which didn’t surprise me. She had to get used to having a brother before she could adjust to having a sibling caring for her.
I was grateful that he stepped in like this.
As he did with so many other things, he was my right-hand man, the son I could depend on no matter what.
Raising him had been a pleasure. However, I was still at a loss for how to connect with her, especially after she saw me as the reason she was here at all. The reason she was ever targeted.
Without my making a move to fix this disconnect between us, I was at a loss for what else I could do right now to reach her. It emphasized how much I had been counting on Claire in that regard. I had been looking at her for the first, crucial step in helping with my daughter’s recovery.
Did she even consider that?
How could she walk away from her, too?
Letting my son deal with Anya felt like a cop-out. Like I was being too dismissive to do more to help her. Or like I was avoiding her.
It wasn’t that. I was simply caught up in all the hell of this day’s events. Between the Popovs and the Giovannis, it felt like fucking war had been declared on us. It had to be a tactic of kicking someone when they were down, a battle coming at us from too many fronts.
It didn’t change over the course of the day and night.
I gave up trying to sleep, staying in my office and going over files and footage of all that I needed to supervise to make this empire run efficiently.
Because of the late hour, I poured myself into work and securing all angles of revenge on my enemies, working this much harder to defeat them in business, to cut them off from any profits in all their revenues.
Speaking with the businessmen and investors on the other side of the world was something I could manage in the middle of the night, but ultimately, I crashed.
Waking up in the morning with my head on my folded arms, a crick in my neck with this angle of slumping over my desk, I groaned.
“Did you stay in here all night?”
Sergei knocked on the open door as he let himself in.
“Looks like it,” I admitted, sitting up and wincing at the uncomfortable position.
“Didn’t know when to quit?” he asked as he sat in the chair opposite me.
“I don’t quit,” I growled. No one would ever get away with that accusation, even jokingly. This family was brought to greatness because of my unrelenting and tireless commitment to it.
“You seemed to quit on Claire rather quickly.”
I narrowed my eyes, hating the third degree. From him, it wasn’t an attack. Sergei had always been the coldest of them, brutal and hardworking, not often dallying with any pleasures or vices of life.
“I didn’t quit on her.”
“Does that mean she mattered more than just being a doctor to assist here?”
I heaved out a long breath. “She could’ve mattered as more if she was willing to stay and accept our world. She was not. End of story.”
“I highly doubt that’s the end of the story. Not with the way you’ve been trying to stay preoccupied and busy.”
“I am busy,” I argued.
“But I can tell it’s different now. You didn’t want her to go, did you?”
I rubbed my face and groaned, okay with being vulnerable in front of him. “No, I didn’t want her to fucking go. But when she asked me if I could change for her and walk away from violence, what the fuck was I supposed to do?” I held my hands out in a what gives manner.
He shook his head. “You don’t think she would’ve come around eventually and adjust with a little more time?” He rubbed his hand over his hair and sighed. “I mean, for an insider looking in, it’s got to be a big adjustment.”
I shrugged. I would’ve given her time. I refused to consider that I pushed for her submission too quickly and scared her off. She enjoyed it. I knew she had.
“Her father was a judge. Her mother was a highly awarded professor. It’s not like she was just an ordinary nobody in the middle class somewhere. She was probably raised with high standards and expectations, obedient and law-abiding.”
“I know.” I’d had them look into her when I was first curious about her. “I can’t go back in time and change any of that. She is who she is. Just as I am the boss of the Orlov name.”
He let out a deep breath. “But—”
“No but, Sergei. She walked away, and I won’t bend over backward trying to force her to change her mind about me, about this family.”
“Isn’t she worth it? To convince her to change and stay if that’s what makes you happy?”
How greedy of him to say.
“She is worth it, but I don’t think I’d be happy with her so upset and ranting to leave.” I shook my head, hating the lesson that loving her meant letting her go.
He frowned. “I’m guessing you’ll change your mind. You have been obsessed about keeping her close and even our enemies have learned that she matters to you. They’ll be after her like bloodhounds now, to get to you.”
I ground my teeth together, hating that she’d asked me to back off and I was willing to give her what she wanted. “I won’t—”
“Where’s Roman?”
Sergei and I both jerked our heads toward the door. Andre was there, breathing hard like he’d just run quickly to reach us.
“What?” I furrowed my brow, confused why he’d think we would know and why it would matter. I wasn’t born yesterday, though, and I knew from the urgency in his tone that something was wrong.
“Anya asked to go to the salon,” he said, scowling.
“I thought it would be a way to appease her, to give her something to smile about after all she went through and—” He shook his head.
“I told her she could go, with guards. Roman offered to take her and get to know her more. But I can’t reach him.
He’s not online and his phone isn’t being tracked. ”
Fuck!
I shot to my feet, alarmed. “He was with Anya?”
He nodded. “I saw him leave with her and a few guards. But when I got word from one of the spies near the docks, I heard that the Giovannis are plotting to have her taken. They’re pissed that the Popovs tried before them and beat them to it.
But they’re after her, wanting to get her and kill her to weaken you and distract you.
” He scowled again. “They’re that desperate to force your hand and get you to quit the competition for the drug trade. ”
Sergei joined me at the door, ready to race into action too. “He heard all that, just today? Anya was only retrieved yesterday!”
Andre indicated for us to hurry off this floor with him. “He’d been listening in and tracking them for a while. It sounds like they’d been hinting at taking her since she’s gotten here.”
“You’re sure they said Anya?” I asked, frantic to save her again. Pissed that she’d been targeted, again. Andre couldn’t be at fault for letting her leave the house. Roman and other guards were with her. Permitting Anya some freedom came with a cost, but it wasn’t like she was out there on her own.
Like Claire.
“That’s what they said,” Andre replied.
We called for backup, and all three of us split up to search for Anya.
The specific salon they were supposed to go to was on my turf.
It was part of the Orlov territory, which implied that she should be safe no matter what, treated with respect and viewed as royalty from any employee of my organization.
Roman still wasn’t answering his phone, but Sergei wasn’t too worried. He rode with me, skeptical. “Sometimes, the reception sucks there.”
I nodded. “It does.” I wasn’t ready to lower my guard, though. We’d just gotten Anya back home and I wasn’t willing to revisit the sensation of guilt for failing to keep her safe.
We pulled up, slamming on the brakes with the urgency to get there. In an orderly but rapid fashion, men filed out of the cars and ran into the salon. Guns up. Heightened senses.
Anya was there, seated in a chair while a stylist cut her hair. With wide-open eyes of alarm, my daughter stared at us all and dropped her jaw. The stylist screamed, crouching to hide her face as she lowered to her knees.
“Fuck,” Andre said, striding toward her.
“She’s right there,” I stated.
“What the fuck is going on?” Roman asked, standing from another chair where it looked like he’d cozied in to either bullshit with Anya while she got her hair cut or flirt with another stylist.
“Reports came in that the Giovannis had taken her.” Andre swallowed hard and lowered his head, relief clear in his eyes.
“I didn’t hear any updates,” Roman said.
“Didn’t you hear your fucking phone at all?” I barked, glancing again at Anya who still looked slightly worried.
“No.” Roman grimaced, pulling his phone out. “Something was busted with the construction down the street and damn near everything is down around here. Reception is shit.”
I exhaled a long breath and set my hands on my hips.
“Is… everything okay?” Anya asked.
I looked up to see that she was asking Andre.
He nodded. “We just heard a rumor and I jumped to the conclusion that you could’ve been in danger.”
She swallowed hard and glanced at me. “And that’s why the, um, the cavalry rushed in?”
“It will always rush in whenever there is a call for alarm,” I stated, turning to leave. It might have been wise to linger and try to talk to her some more, but I couldn’t. Still concerned and not viewing this as a coincidence, I stepped outside and beckoned for Andre to follow me.
“What the fuck?” I asked him.
“I don’t know…” He rubbed his jaw, furrowing his brow. “I know what I heard.”
“But what did your informants hear?” I asked. “If they weren’t talking about Anya, then could they have been referring to taking…”
Andre met my gaze, cringing. “Fuck.”
“Could they have been plotting to take Claire?”
She was already embroiled with the Popovs’ bullshit when those crooked cops pulled her into the station to treat the wounded soldiers.
But it wouldn’t be a stretch for Roberto Giovanni to set his sights on her, too. Not even to hurt her or kill her, but just to be able to taunt me that they had my woman.
My woman.
What a joke.
She wasn’t interested in that role, leaving me and Anya.
“Have a team look into tracking her,” I ordered, striding to the car to return to the building.
She’d asked me not to follow her, but that game was over. If she’d been taken before she could fly further away, I had to do all I could to make up for the misery—misery she wouldn’t have faced if she’d only stayed.