15. Viktor
15
VIKTOR
J essica stared down Irina as she scrammed. I hated that Irina felt like she had to run. In the back of my mind and in the bottom of my heart, I entertained a fanciful thought that she’d stay. That she’d stick around and face off with Jessica. It would’ve been a sight to behold, Irina standing up to Jessica and staking her claim on me.
But it wasn’t happening. Irina took off, her face so pink with an uncharacteristic blush at being caught with me. I couldn’t blame her for reacting like that in this context. She was a virgin, and clearly, so unused to doing anything with a man that she lacked the experience of how to handle this kind of situation. I could hardly expect her to own up to her sexuality when she hadn’t ever really embraced it before.
This too-bold and pain-in-the-ass redhead, though, she knew damn well what she was doing by interfering like this.
“This is the last time that I will tell you to leave me alone.”
She sighed as though I were asking her to do something impossible.
“Do you understand me?”
“I suppose…” She smiled, coyly and too smugly for me to believe that she meant it. Turning slowly, she gave me a mischievous smirk as she left.
After she went away, I shut my office door and growled. This time, I locked the damn thing for real. The moment I spun and faced my desk, I groaned with need.
“Dammit.”
I’d been so close to sinking into Irina’s sweet little pussy. From sampling the pleasure I could get from being her first. The pride I would have in taking her V card.
But I hadn’t. Jessica just had to show up and ruin it all.
I dragged my hand over my face, hating how this evening was turning out. I wouldn’t admit that I’d failed. I had gotten her to relax around me. I did get her open up… or at least she’d opened her legs to me. What I hadn’t gotten were any answers. She didn’t tell me where she was last night or why she was late to class. Really, those answers couldn’t matter in the big picture of what I needed to find out for Oleg. They did matter in the vein of getting her vulnerable enough to speak up and not be so secretive around me, though. If she couldn’t tell me why she was late to class, what hope did I have to expect her to share any details about what Igor Petrov was planning?
I had one of two options now. I could chase her down, stop at her apartment, and pick up where we’d left off—if she’d let me. Or I could lurk and let her suffer under the pressure of this unfinished attraction that burned between us.
Either way might work. My seduction wasn’t complete. It boiled down to the matter of whether I could wait and be patient.
With the way I still burned for her touch and sweet kisses, I wasn’t sure I had it in me to wait for another chance to be alone with her.
My phone pinged with a text notification. The sound jarred me from my thoughts of what to do about Irina. Sighing, so frustrated that I didn’t know what to do with myself, I picked it up and checked the screen.
Lev: One of the men patrolling near one of the warehouses mentioned a party happening.
“What the fuck is with all these goddamn parties?” I grumbled. I wasn’t a fan of going out, most likely because for the last twenty years, I’d been working in one big orgy or party to the next. The whorehouses were like party central, and I’d tired of them.
Lev: It sounds like the Ilyins and Petrovs are angling to have a meeting there.
“Huh.” I rubbed the back of my head, missing the tight grip of Irina’s fingers in my hair.
Lev: I doubt that’s true, but since Rurik is tied up with something else, it might make sense for you to check it out.
It wasn’t an order. And Lev wasn’t exactly my superior just yet. Still, I would do my job. The whole reason for me to be on campus and near Irina was to get intel about Igor Petrov’s plans, not to mope and whine about my missed opportunity to sink my cock into her tight pussy.
“Yeah, yeah,” I complained aloud as I stood. I texted him back that I’d check it out, and he texted me the address a moment later.
I headed to my apartment to clean up. Wearing the residue of Irina’s cream on my face wasn’t an issue, but I did want to change out of this proper and professional suit. I couldn’t wear a damn tie to a party that dealers were setting up.
After a quick shower, where I jerked off to the memory of Irina on my desk just to calm myself from wanting her, I left for this party.
When I arrived, it was clear that I was getting there too late to really be able to notice who had been there. People were leaving, laughing and talking about bar hopping. It was either a lame party or just one of those things where people came and went. As I walked up to the place, more guests left and others came alongside me.
Deep bass of the music thumped and vibrated before I actually set foot in the apartment. Overhead, a disco ball spun in the entryway, its glittering lights competing with the snowflakes falling from the moonlit sky.
It was packed in here, and I tried to orient what was where. I had only come to scope the scene and report back to Lev, but I stopped short at the sight of something else.
Or rather, someone else.
Lev implied that I had to get myself into the position to listen in on or spy on a meeting between members of the Petrov and Ilyin Families, but I only saw one side.
Two Ilyin soldiers were in the corner of the large room. And both of them were in the middle of trying to drag a woman away with them. Fresh rumors about the Ilyins dispersing drugs and raping women would’ve made me suspicious of them, anyway. The fact that they were trying to force Irina to leave with them arrested me mid-step.
What the fuck?
I didn’t think. No plans flew through my mind. Reacting on autopilot and driven on the instinct to reach her, I pushed and wove my way through the crowd to get to them.
I shoved people aside, making them freak out at spilling their drinks. I plowed past couples dancing, earning their shouts about watching where I was going.
I tuned it all out. The noise and chaos of the party faded in my mind’s eye. My heart raced as I chased down the two men.
They’d gotten her outside before I could approach. Both men had their hands on her, grabbing her upper arms to force her out with them. She didn’t go easily. Kicking and yelling, flailing to get free, she resisted them.
And that made no sense at all.
Where are her fucking guards?
Why is anyone even letting this happen?
I didn’t ask any questions. I didn’t announce a single thing. Coming up behind them, I acted swiftly and lethally. First, I pulled back the arm of the man at her right. He fought back, surprised that someone was getting to him, but I was faster.
“Let her go.”
I swung first, getting him in the face and being rewarded with a satisfying grunt of pain. As soon as he flung back from my hit, the other man attacked. Neither of them released Irina until I beat on them some more. Two against one wasn’t terrible odds, and within several minutes and a few lucky hits they snuck in on me, I had them down on the ground, moaning in pain and grimacing. One was only just coming to after I’d knocked him out with a brutal punch to the side of his head.
“Are you insane?” Irina asked, watching me closely as I straightened from the last hit I’d delivered.
The whole fight couldn’t have lasted more than three minutes. It had started and finished with such a blur, but she was still there.
She hadn’t run off scared. She didn’t alert anyone to come to help, not even a Petrov who should’ve been watching her. She was a Boss’s daughter. No matter the details of their family or organization, she was a Mafia princess who should’ve been protected at all costs.
“No.” I winced, shaking out my hand as I staggered toward her. A few more seconds, and I’d be right again. The adrenaline rush of the fight waned, and the pain from the hits I’d received rushed in all at once.
“Those men…” She shook her head. “You can’t just?—”
“They were trying to take you away.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. Even though she’d questioned my sanity, she hadn’t asked it as a shriek or an alarmed shout. She was still cool and collected, almost as though she were numb to this kind of violence. She should be, as a Mafia princess. She wouldn’t have grown up in a sheltered home where she could’ve been spared all this drama.
And I hated that.
She deserved better. Deep down, I knew that without being able to explain it.
“Those aren’t just some college boys, Viktor.” She walked toward me, watching me with a guarded but non-hysterical expression as I shook my hand then rubbed my side where I’d been hit. “They’re dangerous men.”
I played stupid, letting her think I was just an ordinary man, a college professor. Of course, I knew who those guys were. I identified them as Ilyin men right away, but I couldn’t reveal that I was an insider to this Mafia world.
“And more of them are coming now,” I warned, noticing more men filing out of the party.
I reached out for her hand, hurrying to run with her. Tugging her along, I half-expected her to protest. She didn’t. Not once did she open her mouth to speak. No questions, no demands for me to stop.
As I got her to safety, returning to my car to get her in the passenger seat, she didn’t question me at all.
I had so many questions for her that I didn’t know where to start.
Why was she there unprotected?
What were those Ilyin men trying to steal her away for?
Weren’t the Petrovs and Ilyins enemies after the business with Lev killing Yusef Ilyin?
“Viktor,” she said once I drove off.
I glanced at her, scowling, but not at her. I didn’t like the thought of her being manhandled or forced somewhere against her will. While I lacked the clues and details about what was going on there, I didn’t like what I saw.
“Are you all right?” I reached over to check her arm, looking at her wrist where one of them had held on to her.
“Yes.” She pulled her arm back. “I’m fine.”
“Those men were trying to kidnap you.”
She exhaled a long breath and looked out the passenger window. When she should’ve seemed scared or even mad, she appeared resigned instead. Like this was just fate and she didn’t have the power to fight it.
And I hated it.
Irina was an enemy. She had to be an enemy of mine. The Petrovs and Baranov families were not friends, so therefore, as members of opposing sides, we had to be adversaries to an extent. Yet, the more I planned to seduce her and get close enough for her to talk to me, I was surprised with how much I wished things could be different.
That she could just be a woman I’d met and wanted so badly I ached to close my lips over hers again. That I could just be a man who’d noticed her and whom she wanted to welcome into her arms.
Because she had been born the daughter of Igor Petrov, though, she was my enemy.
Too many lines were getting blurred here. I wasn’t supposed to want her. She wasn’t supposed to get under my skin like this.
“I’m fine,” she repeated, monotone and matter-of-fact about it, which didn’t do a damn thing to convince me that she was anywhere close to fine after that incident. “It’s complicated, but I’m fine.”
“So I shouldn’t have fought them off for trying to force you away with them?” I asked, trying and failing to not sound testy.
“No. I appreciate that,” she replied, sincere but still resigned.
I frowned as I drove, nodding when she asked if I could just take her home. Listening to her give me the address, I pretended that I didn’t already know that detail about her.
Silence filled the car, but I didn’t mind it. I needed the quiet. With her company, I could attest to her being safe. During the silence, I mulled over the realization that I wanted to comfort her and see to her safety—not target her as someone who possessed secrets the Boss wanted me to pry out of her. I wrestled with the urge to pull over and just hold her. I ignored the reminder that I should be doing my duty to interrogate her and intimidate her into telling me family secrets.
Every time I glanced at her, I saw how scared she was. She wasn’t fine. Despite her cool mask, I picked up on enough clues that told me she was frightened and bothered by those two Ilyin men trying to get her away.
I hated that she’d feel like this. But like she’d pointed out, this was complicated, getting messier by the minute as I considered the very real possibility that I had already started to care too much for her than what was wise.