Chapter 14
Dominik
The city wakes before I do. For a second, I don’t move. I count the pull of stitches along my side, the dull ache that follows each breath, the heat of the bruises around the bandage.
I may not be at a hundred percent yet, but I’m alive, and I’m not finished with anyone who made me bleed.
It takes me longer than it should to notice someone else breathing in the room with me.
Not close, not hovering, but present in a quiet way.
Her scent gets there before the thought of her does—lavender soap, a trace of cinnamon coffee, and clean skin.
The same combination that sank its claws into the back of my throat yesterday when she leaned over me and pressed cloth into the hole a bullet thought it could make permanent.
She shouldn’t be the first thing I look for when I open my eyes, but she is.
I don’t have to chase the memory; it’s always with me.
The feel of her hands, small, shaking, fierce because they had to be, pressing down on my ribs, the ridiculous torn strip of her dress wrapped around Viktor’s shirt like she thought the small piece of fabric could put up a fight against that much blood.
The way she flinched when sounds escaped me, then held.
I don’t call out to her yet. I pull in a breath, slow and shallow, then sit up. The ache grabs at my side. I try to ignore it.
Alina looks up when the sheets rustle, her eyes glassy as her gaze starts at my bare chest and ribs before she works her way up to my face. She hasn’t slept. I can see it in the blue underneath her eyes and the way her mouth is set.
“You should have asked the doctor to give you something for the pain,” she says.
“I’ve had worse,” I assure her. It’s true and exactly the kind of line men say when they’d rather die than admit to any shred of vulnerability.
Alina stands and moves a glass of water and two tablets closer to me. Not narcotics. Something that takes the edge off without stealing your mind. She’s learning. Or Viktor told her my preference. Either way, she made the effort.
“Take them,” she says. It’s an order.
I accept the glass because it’ll save us an argument I don’t really want to have.
The tablets sit there until she lifts her chin and waits.
I leave them there a second out of spite because I enjoy her attempt to be angry with me on my behalf, then take them.
I’ll be damned if I reward her worry with stubbornness.
The day before replays in my head for the millionth time. Vans, the men who came to make us pay, the panic that I had put Alina in danger, the smoke blooming and then thinning. The relieved moment when I realized the blood under her hands was just mine.
Archer made a promise to me, to her, and then sold us out. I knew it when those vans cut their engines. Alina knew it too.
I slide my legs out of the bed and stand up too fast, when a bolt of heat snaps under the bandage. I ride it out and the room steadies. Alina moves toward me like she means to catch me and stops with her hands closed on air.
“I should get dressed. Gavriil will probably be here soon,” I say.
“Why?”
“Because our enemies will try to take advantage when they smell my blood in the water, and the Pakhan doesn’t tolerate any weakness in his world.
Especially not from his own brother,” I explain to her.
Then add on the part I wish wasn’t true.
“He’ll want to see you as well. Don’t make it easy for him. ”
Alina’s hazy green eyes drop to the bandage along my ribs, then my chest. I feel her eyes on my back as I go pull a clean T-shirt from the dresser and shrug it on with a practiced roll that makes me want to scream, but only a grunt escapes my lips.
She meets my eyes when I turn around, and we both pretend I didn’t make a sound.
“Why will he want to see me?” Alina asks.
She knows. She wants me to say it anyway. I retrieve a dress shirt from the closet, and only button it where it matters before throwing a suit jacket on top of it to hide the dressing.
“Because he can. Because he wants you for himself.” I then begrudgingly add, “He’ll want to confirm that I’m not treating you as anything more than a hostage.” Gavriil doesn’t want Alina, he just wants the power she would give him over me.
Alina’s mouth presses into a flat line, and then something like a smile ruins it. “You don’t plan to tell him about our agreement that makes me more,” she says, and then flinches like she gave away more than she intended. As if she’s not certain that she is more than my hostage I want to fuck.
“No, I don’t plan to admit that you’ve become more, but he’ll find out from someone else eventually,” I tell her honestly. Fuck, he’ll know the second he learns that I got shot covering her.
Which means he already knows.
As if he were listening right outside the door, the knock comes exactly when I least wanted it, three rapid taps of his knuckles.
“Bathroom,” I mouth to Alina. She listens without hesitation. I wasn’t kidding about her avoiding Gavriil. If he lays eyes on her today, he’ll know.
Once she’s out of sight, the door shuts softly and clicks, telling me she locked it. I move toward the bedroom door, ignoring the ache.
When I open it, my brother fills the space like he always does.
Immaculate suit, perfectly hanging tie. Quiet blue eyes that are always alert in contrast to my gray ones in the mirror usually filled with exhaustion.
He looks past me and inventories the room with a single pass.
His gaze lands on the closed bathroom door, as if he knows she’s behind it.
“Little brother. You look like a man who didn’t duck,” he says.
“I look like a man who put himself where he needed to be,” I respond, owning up to what happened rather than try to downplay it.
Gavriil steps inside the room without being asked because invitations are for people who think doors and locks protect them.
“Report,” he says. It isn’t a request. Even though I’m certain Viktor already gave him a full accounting of what happened, he wants to hear it directly from my mouth, to glean any tiny differences in our stories.
“You got it yesterday,” I remind him. “I’m sure Viktor can repeat the play-by-play if you need him to. You’ve no doubt spoken to Yelena since then as well.”
He tilts his head, unamused and unwavering.
So, I give him my unedited version. I tell him Archer wasn’t there and that he sold the location. I give him the name of the man I’ll take first when it’s time to send a message. Finally, I give him the thing he actually came for without making him ask.
“Alina’s staying with me until this is all over.”
Men don’t often make pronouncements like that to my brother. He turns his head slowly until his eyes rest on mine as if he’s reassessing me.
“You’re obviously injured. You can’t move at full strength. What if there’s another attack? Give the responsibility to someone who can protect her.”
“I can protect her,” I say. “Do you want me to prove it to you right now? If so, I’ll rip my stitches out with my teeth.”
A shadow of a laugh touches the corners of his mouth and disappears like it wasn’t welcome. “You think I’m testing your pride. I’m evaluating a risk. She is still a valuable hostage. You, today, are a liability to the family.”
The words set off a clean, violent impulse that has nowhere to go. I step closer to my brother. “This family is alive and thriving because I’ve been your right hand for a decade and made liabilities into leverage. You don’t get to ever label me with that word.”
“Give her to me,” he says, and there’s the command under the argument, the steel under the suit. “You hunt the brother. You find my money, my guns, as promised by the end of the week. And stop pretending that some girl you just met is worth the unnecessary distraction!”
“You can have her brother,” I say. “But you will not have her,” I tell him in Russian since I know Alina will be eavesdropping.
Gavriil looks past me again, past the edge of restraint, to the door where she no doubt stands with her ear pressed against it.
My voice is quieter when I continue, my resolve clear when I say, “She’s mine.”
He hears the words in English. So does she.
“Careful, little brother,” he says. “It’s dangerous to divide your loyalties. I didn’t pry you out of our father’s jaws just so that you could turn into an undisciplined, lovesick fool yet again.”
Our eyes lock for a tense moment, dozens of heavy memories flickering through my mind from our childhood. The struggle. The abuse. The fear. All the things that bound us together as brothers.
But we’re not kids anymore. Our bond has changed.
“You want results from me,” I say. “You’ll get them.”
“I better. You have twenty-four hours to prove that Archer isn’t a ghost in the wind with my money and that my guns aren’t scattered all across New Jersey. Only five days left to retrieve it all.”
He leaves the way he came after reminding me of his beloved deadlines.
I drag in a breath and let it out slowly, testing the wound beneath the bandage. Pain answers, but it’s manageable. I lean against the wall just as Alina comes out of the bathroom, pretending she wasn’t listening to every hitch in my breath.
She steps into the room, and I feel her eyes on me, her mind processing what she heard. I hold her stare for two seconds and break it first.
“He still wants me,” she says.
“Men always want what they can’t have,” I reply. “Especially rich, powerful ones.”
“You can’t keep doing that,” she remarks, and her voice starts to shake. “You can’t keep putting yourself between me and everything else. You can’t keep bleeding for me.”
“I can and I will because…” I start and struggle for the right words. “Because it’s my job.”
“No, it’s not,” she says, and then drops her gaze to my side, to the bandage where the edges have gone darker.
I watch her choose to step toward me even though every smart thing in her wants to step back.
She’s close enough that when she speaks again, her voice carries the heat from her throat.
“Sit down,” she says. Something steadies in her, a thread of steel I didn’t see before.
And for the first time, I’m the one who obeys.
I’d rather die than give a man that victory, but for her I sit.
I need a chance to wrap my head around my new deadline anyway.
Twenty-four hours to find evidence of where Archer has run off to, and where the guns are stored.
Alina abruptly leaves the room. She returns with a tray a few moments later, setting it on the nightstand.
“You should eat something and then get some rest,” she murmurs finally.
“That’s my line,” I remind her rougher than I intended. Her eyes flicker to mine, sharp, assessing, then she nods once and turns away.
If Gavriil had tried harder, had wanted to prove his point that I’m weak, she might already be gone. The thought is enough to make my fists clench until they ache.
“Go. You’ve done enough,” I tell her. I like having her fussing over me more than I can admit to myself.
Alina hesitates, as if my sudden dismissal hits her like a physical blow. Then, she walks out and closes the door behind her without another word.
I know that I shouldn’t take my anger, my weaknesses, out on her. It’s unfair. But in a way, I do blame her.
For showing up into my life unexpectedly, and for dominating my every waking thought, even my dreams.