Chapter 14 Julian
FOURTEEN
JULIAN
THE PAST
Nine months after Igor is taken
“He’s in Amsterdam, Jules. Meeting with Bratva officials there,” my brother says as he storms inside the office where Lana and I are gathered, pouring all our efforts into sifting through informants’ tips and getting nowhere.
This is the only time we meet nowadays. If it isn’t to discuss Igor, I don’t want to see her.
Her soft expression full of compassion, like she understands what I’m going through, makes me want to set fire to our entire empire.
“I knew you’d find him.”
I surge up and round the desk to kiss my brother on the cheek.
We’ve all been working night and day to find Igor.
But every spy I sent came back to me in pieces.
Literally. I received a severed head just a few weeks ago.
But if my husband thinks that will stop me from looking for him, he’s dead wrong.
I don’t care how many men have to die for me to get him back.
I’m not one for violence, but he isn’t either.
This display of gore is a ploy and a bad one at that.
Nothing and no one’s life is worth more to me than him.
“Let’s get in gear,” I tell Lana.
“I’ll brief the team, they’ll meet you at the airport. Dobrev and Ventura will meet you there as well with some of their men as reinforcement. I don’t have the numbers for a full extraction, Jules.”
“No team. I need to go alone.”
“Absolutely not, Julian,” my brother counters. “You need back up. Amsterdam is enemy territory, you know that. The only reason we’ll even be able to land our jet is because someone owes Dobrev a favour. He’s our ally, but it’s still a debt we’ll owe him.”
“Tell me, fratellu. If it were Lana, would you listen to anything I say?” His jaw clenches and he narrows his eyes, but his silence is loud. “Exactly.”
“But if it were me, you’d go with him and bring dozens of our best units with you,” Lana says.
I hate when she’s right.
I groan. “We don’t have time to argue. Meet me there. I need him home by tomorrow.”
Our team is small, but with ten elite soldiers, and the Ventura-Dobrev coalition sending more as part of our alliance, I’m confident my husband will sleep in my bed by tomorrow.
Anxious energy travels through my body the whole way there, as well as during our preparation to bust into Igor’s meeting with the local Bratva.
Except, once more, my husband escapes through the cracks.
The place the meeting was supposed to happen in is deserted when our team gets there.
And none of the local soldiers are anywhere to be found in the city.
The city centre made of canals and old buildings tilting sideways isn’t as covered with CCTV as many of the other European capitals and we lose track of the entire Bratva.
“Where the fuck are they?” I yell to my brother on the phone.
He stayed on Kalliste to be with Lana. They refuse to be separated and I fucking get it, but right now, a phone line isn’t enough.
I need him and his tech skills on fucking ground.
I close my eyes, taking a deep inhale not to curse at him. All my life, my brother has been distant with me. I need him one fucking time but again, Lana’s the one everyone fucking chooses.
She has PTSD from what she lived through while she was kidnapped by Misha Petrov.
Before that, there have been two abduction attempts.
Before my brother, she married a vile man to grow her empire.
It changed her. Made her more reserved and sad.
She only smiles anymore when she’s with Lisandru.
I know she’s been through enough. I know it.
I fucking know it.
Yet, resentment knows no reason. All her sacrifices and her pain don’t change the fact that I matter, too. And no one seems to see it.
“Their leader seems to be on a plane to Moscow, right now,” she says on the speaker, bringing me back to the present moment. Just hearing her voice makes me want to throw my phone in the nearest canal.
“Fuck!”
I punch the wall of the abandoned building, revelling in the sharp pain reverberating from my knuckles to my elbow and shoulder. I punch it again, and again. Until a hand lands on my shoulder.
“Take it easy, amico. The wall’s had enough.”
Dante Ventura’s face is tense. He didn’t hear what was said on the phone, but the absence of the enemies we were supposed to take out speaks for itself.
After a few more words with Lana and Lisandru, there’s nothing else for us to do, but capitulate, and go home. We hang up.
My whole body buzzes with energy that has no place to go. The mixture of resentment, disappointment and a rage like I’ve never known is a recipe for disaster. I’m in the mood to make bad calls. And I’m tired of holding it together.
“We’ll take the jet back in five hours,” I tell my men. “I’m going to see what the fuss is about in this fucking town.”
“We’re going to head back to London, amico. As much as I love weed, I prefer my wife’s company. Let us know when you need us, again, eh?” Dante winks, and he and his team clear out in a rigid formation.
“Sir,” one of the soldiers addresses me with an inkling of caution in his brown eyes. “With all due respect, we’re still in enemy territory.”
“And you think I give a fuck because?”
“Well… Miss Moretti instructed that you’d be guarded at all times.”
My nostrils flare in annoyance.
“Fine. Since Miss Moretti ordered you and you’re not good for anything else but obey, three of your men can come with me while I drink myself into a coma. The others stay on the jet.”
I’m being a dick and I don’t care. I need a stiff drink and to forget that I could have almost touched my husband again after he was taken from me but missed him by what seems like a few minutes.
After I change into a civilian set of clothes, discarding my tactical gear and switching my military grade weapons for a simple handgun, I take a cab with my three bodyguards to the Regulierdswaarsstraat.
As the queer street of Amsterdam, with a buzzing nightlife and choice of bars, I’m hoping to distract myself enough watching pretty people have the fun I’ll never be able to feel anymore.
If my bodyguards end up with people that will take their eyes off of me, that’d be a bonus but I don’t know them well to assess if they’ll be easily swayed.
The first club we enter is a vibrant lounge bar with performers walking and dancing under the heated gaze of male customers. It’s sultry and welcoming, but too bright and not what I’m looking for.
I long for a larger crowd where I can disappear. Ironic since it never seems I’m seen by anyone around me.
The club we enter next is exactly what I’m looking for. Spread on three floors, with hidden corners, extravagant lights, loud music that changes depending on the floor we step on and beautiful people dancing to the beat of their own drums, I’m exactly where I need to be.
The crowd is young. Too fucking young. But also too self-centred to care about four heavily armed men—though no one knows that.
The bartender, a beautiful black goddess with too many piercings to count, hands me a vodka soda.
I almost retch on the spot but force it down.
No way I’m going to ask for wine at a place like this.
When alcohol starts to flood my veins, I tell my bodyguards I’m going to the bathroom. They insist they need to follow me.
“If you follow me into the fucking toilet, I’ll cut your dick and feed it to you. Don’t fucking test me.”
I move through writhing bodies, transported back to an easier time, when Giulia, Lana, Igor and I would spend hours sweating on the dance-floor and laughing like life couldn’t catch up with us. Newsflash, it fucking did.
My bodyguards aren’t too far behind and I roll my eyes in annoyance.
I’m making my way back to them on the first floor when a hand lands on my mouth from behind and I’m pressed against a massive chest.
His scent hits my nose before I can react and push my attacker.
I’d recognise it anywhere. After all, I’m the one who gifted it to him.
I sag against him. Inhale deeper, trying to imprint the scent into my brain. My memories are already failing me, and the new hit of the man who became my everything and my ruin sends me to my knees. I can’t control the visceral reaction of my body. My cock swells in my jeans.
He pulls me back and away from the crowd. It probably looks like we’re dancing, two lovers in a sensual embrace. Not a Bratva assassin trying to kill me. Though if he really wanted to, he’d have done it already.
The bass of the music dulls. Metal scraps against metal, then the night air hits my heated skin, cooling the sweat gathered at my hairline and making me shiver.
My back hits the stone wall, strong hands framing my head. I’m faced with the man I’ve been searching for for months. His angry eyes meet mine, the tick in his jaw another clear indication that my husband doesn’t approve of my way of drowning my sorrows.
“Hello husband,” I croon, despite the pang of sadness hitting me in the gut. I forgot he was almost a head taller than me. And so much bigger. He could be a stranger for all the details I seem to have forgotten.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
His accent is heavier than it used to be, as though despite speaking English for years, a few months have been enough to erase his mastery of the language. It’s a small detail but a significant one.
To erase my husband’s true identity, his brother is stripping him of something that still ties him to his true home. I’m sure he doesn’t have much of a choice.
Despite that, I still find it sexy as hell.
I grin when my eyes land on the small scar at the corner of his mouth. I didn’t forget everything after all. “I thought I’d never find you.”
“You didn’t.”
“Semantics.”
“Julian…” he admonishes, his voice a growl. “You can’t be here.”