26. Irina
26
IRINA
A Baranov! Viktor was a member of the family my father considered his biggest rival.
Viktor Baranov . Not Remi.
The man I desperately wished for a future with wasn’t a normal man. He wasn’t a sexy professor who spanked me and made me feel so seen and worthy.
He was a Mafia man, someone indoctrinated into a crime organization, just like me. All this time, I’d been marveling at how different and good it was to have the attention of someone from outside my sphere of drama and danger.
Viktor was supposed to represent the other side of the world, the ordinary side where men simply desired women and cherished them. Not my side, where assholes like my father bartered their daughters for the highest price or reward and played mental warfare over the state of their virginity.
I growled, running as hard as I could as the live beast of fury crawled up through me. I couldn’t recall another time in my life when I’d been so livid, so furious and angry. It seemed like every cell of my body was rattling and shaking, vibrating with a campaign for me to explode. To scream.
Viktor was a Baranov!
Speeding around corners of the hallways, I struggled to compute how I could’ve been so stupid. I’d been so blind and dumb, falling for him and surrendering to this savage desire for him that I couldn’t deny.
He was the enemy, and I didn’t even know. I hadn’t been expecting this—at all—and as I ran from him, ran from the truth he’d revealed to me, I hated how hard this shock hit me. He’d blindsided me with his confession, striking me when I’d been so open and vulnerable to him. I wanted security and comfort from him, but he’d ruined the image of that by telling me that he was my damn enemy.
“Irina!” He chased after me, running without pause. Pursuing me madly, he sprinted to catch up and stop me from escaping.
Of course, he would.
He’d been hunting me all along.
This time, he wouldn’t capture me to make me feel good.
After revealing who he was, he would now grab me so I couldn’t tell anyone else his secret.
“Irina, wait!”
His footsteps sounded so loudly behind me, but I dug in and ran as fast as I could. The need to survive, the need to flee, pushed me to slam my feet down harder and pump my arms to strengthen my stride.
Floor after floor, I dropped down the stairwell. The thuds of our boots and shoes on the pavement echoed in the concrete chamber. But in my head, my pulse roared deafeningly louder, tuning out the sound of him shouting at me.
Before I could think to shove open another door to get out of the stairwell and run down another floor, he caught me. Grunting hard, he jumped down and cleared several steps to capture me.
His arms latched around me so tightly, there was no chance I’d break free. Kicking and flailing, I tried to wrestle out of his grip, but my efforts didn’t work. Not this time. The hard bulges of his biceps pushed against my arms. That lean strength in his forearms flexed as he hugged me tighter.
I had trained in self-defense. I wasn’t completely helpless. In his strong embrace, though, I had no hope to slip free.
Breathing hard, he growled and fought to hold me close. Still, I resisted. Squirming and bucking, I gave it my all. Every last reserve of energy I had was spent in a matter of survival.
“Let me go!” I screamed.
No one else was in here. I had no one to count on but myself, and I was tired of it. Not long ago, I yearned to be held by this man. I craved his arms around me and giving me that sense of security I’d never felt before.
With the knowledge that he was my enemy, a Baranov sent to dupe me, I had to shut down those stupid fallacies that I could’ve ever been safe with him.
“Let me go!” I repeated, my voice lower and hoarse from shouting.
He didn’t. Of course, he didn’t. Viktor was a man on a mission, ready to take me in.
For several minutes, a torturous length of time that felt like a long blur, he held me tight and didn’t relax for a second. All that while, I continued to fight to get free. Eventually, I tired, both from having to fight him and the strain of wrestling to no avail. I sagged against him, surrendering. I could not escape this time, and the daunting thought sliced my soul in half.
No escape. It was all I’d dreamed of doing for so long, running away from my troubles, from the prison of my life and finding a safe future.
Only surrender. It was all I’d done since I was born, giving in to what the men in my life dictated of me.
I caught my breath, focusing only on breathing as he maintained the vise grip of his steely arms around me. The more I gave up, the deeper I succumbed to defeat, he lowered with me. On his haunches, he turned me in his arms until I was cradled against him.
My body ached from fatigue. Stress knocked me down. Knowing I couldn’t get away, I fisted his shirt and closed my eyes, unwilling to face him. I couldn’t look into his eyes and feel the ironic disappointment that he’d deceived me. The one man I’d chosen to let in, the only guy I’d wanted to give my virginity to.
“It will be okay,” he said.
I was so spent, I didn’t have the energy to laugh, to mock his stupid claim. But I did get a second wind to lash out at him, venting every drop of anger that coursed through my veins.
“Nothing is okay! You lied to me. You deceived me. Seducing me and trying to get me to lower my guard like that— You tricked me.”
“I had a cover, Irina, and that?—”
“You lied to me. You just admitted it. You pretended to be someone you’re not all so you could capture the enemy.”
“Irina, it’s?—”
I reared back to face him, glaring and damning him for looking so sincere. “Don’t tell me how it is. I’m not stupid. No. I am stupid. So fucking cluelessly stupid to have ever fallen for any of your bullshit. Are you happy now? Are you happy that you tricked me and seduced me, just for the sake of getting to your enemy?”
“I’m—”
“You fucking lied to me! And for what? For what!” If he’d given me the clearance, I would’ve bashed my fists on his chest and pounded out my frustration on him.
“For answers, Irina, because you’re just as much of a liar as me.”
I went still, glowering at him. “I’ve never told you anything that could be a lie.”
“Exactly. You won’t open up.”
I huffed. “Don’t count on me to now! Not after you’ve tricked me into wanting you.” My God, he must have been cracking up in his head every time I said he was just a “normal” man. “Go on,” I goaded. “You’ve got me now. You fucked the enemy’s daughter like it was just another job. What are you waiting for? Deliver me like the useless whore I am so your boss can be happy.”
He stood, holding me and pushing me until my back slammed against the wall. “You are not a useless whore.”
I rolled my eyes, damning the tears burning behind my lids.
“And you’re not the enemy’s daughter.” He slanted closer to me, narrowing his eyes.
“You don’t know me, Vik.”
He shook his head, somehow calmly in control. “I do. I know more than you think.”
He could think that. I was sure he’d gotten a file on me to go undercover and pursue me. That hurt more—that he hadn’t come for me because he wanted me, but because it was a job.
“Then you know I will not be a traitor and tell you a single fucking thing. Oleg Baranov can rot in hell before I let him use me in this goddamn war between our families.”
“You already are a traitor,” he snapped. “You are not loyal to Igor. You can’t be if you helped Eva escape. You made yourself a traitor the second you wanted Eva and Lev to get away last year.”
I swallowed hard. My throat felt so raw and dry. That wasn’t what stopped me from speaking, though. He’d arrested me with that reminder. I had done a traitorous thing in helping them.
“Your actions define who you are, Irina. Not the fact that you were born into the Petrov family,” he insisted firmly, searching my face. “You chose to do a selfless thing for your enemy. That is who you are. You chose to trust me. That is who you are.”
I shook my head. He wouldn’t break me down. I was too familiar with having to look out for myself, for Maxim, to just blindly go along with what others decided. He’d put me in a terrible position, wedged between being captured and expected to tell all versus appeasing my father so he would spare my brother.
“You are a giving, smart woman, Irina, not a mindless messenger. It doesn’t matter that you were born as Igor’s daughter, that you bear his name. That doesn’t make you who you really are.”
“I will always be a Petrov,” I argued. I will always be my father’s pawn. “Nothing more.”
“Not anymore.” He lowered his gaze. “You could be the mother of a Baranov.”
Oh, fuck. With everything else going on, I hadn’t stopped to consider that we’d had unprotected sex. “That’s why you fucked me? That’s why you seduced me? To weaken me and bring me to Oleg for intel? And to knock me up and have this leverage over me?”
He shook me slightly, his hands tight on my upper arms. “No!”
“You took me to bed and lied to me just so you could use me.”
“No. I slept with you because I lo—” He stopped short. Taking a deep breath, he seemed to seek a pause for clarity before speaking again. “I care for you, Irina. I know those words can’t mean much in the face of my identity. I know you will resist listening to what I am trying to explain right now, but I care for you. When I told you that I would fight for us, for that future with you that seems so out of reach and impossible, I meant it. I mean it. I will fight for you.”
But it won’t be enough. It never will.
“I will fight for us .”
I shook my head. “There is no us .”
“There can be.”
I had gotten fanciful wishing that he could remove my father’s influence and I could stay with him for good. At the time, I saw him as just an average man. A professor who was illegally so sexy as an academic professional. Just one person who couldn’t handle the heat of the Petrov organization seeking retaliation on him.
Now, though…
He’s a Baranov. He’s my father’s enemy.
As a member of a rival Mafia family, Viktor was associated with a force that could end my father. If he wanted to prove that he cared about me, if he wanted to stand by this statement that he’d fight for me, for us, then he’d have to show me how.
“Just give me a chance. Come with me, and I will show you that it can be all right. That everything will be okay.”
I stared up at him, wishing it could be that simple. But it wasn’t. “You expect me to be a traitor to my father, to my family.”
He licked his lips and looked off to the side. “I expect you to stay true to yourself. And I know that deep down, you care. You have a good heart, Irina. You proved it when you helped Eva and Lev.”
“No. That was just?—”
“That was what?” he asked. “How can you call yourself loyal to Igor Petrov and your family if you let them get away? How can you stand firm that you’re a Mafia princess and nothing else if you let me in your life?”
“I only helped them because I saw how in love they were. I wanted love to have a chance.”
He stepped closer, flush against me. “What about others in love?”
No. Don’t do this. I couldn’t handle it if he tried to further his deception and tell me that he loved me. I was fighting the realization that I cared for him that much already.
“You lied to me. You tricked me. No love can be founded on that.”
He watched me closely, then smiled. Smiled! “Now you’re the one lying to me. You can’t hide that you want me. That you care?—”
“So what if I did? It won’t erase the fact I am my father’s daughter and…” I sucked in a deep breath, feeling torn in two.
“And what, Irina?” He cupped my face, imploring me with his steady gaze to tell him. “What? What is it that is keeping you loyal to him this time when you weren’t loyal to him before?”
I sniffled, afraid to reveal the one and only reason I ever tried to appease my father.
“Why can’t you believe in my love for you and know it will trump everything else?”
I huffed. He’d gone and said it. Love. A Baranov loving a Petrov. Enemies uniting in the matters of the heart. It was ludicrous.
“You believe that Oleg will just open his arms and let me in like that, huh? That I turn traitor to my father and spill all his secrets, and that’s the key to a happily ever after with you?”
He nodded. “It can happen.”
“It won’t,” I stated.
“Because you don’t want it to? You want to lie to my face and tell me that there’s nothing between us that’s worth fighting for?”
I furrowed my brow. “There is. But my love for you will not be enough to override my love for him.”
He went still. Stiff and hard, he studied me. “Him?”
I couldn’t speak, too afraid to tell him what drove me to tolerate this life.
“Your father?”
I bit back a sob. “My brother.”
He frowned, watching me as I lowered my head. “If I don’t do as my father asks, he’ll… he’ll hurt him. He’ll take his anger out and punish my brother.” Lifting my gaze to his, I let out a deep breath and took a risk to explain it clearly. “If he learns that I’ve betrayed him to his enemy, if I tell Oleg Baranov a single thing, he’ll kill Maxim.”