16. Rurik
16
RURIK
K elly moved in with me over spring break, and it was as perfect as I could have imagined it could be. She didn’t “technically” move in with me. But she was there for the whole week. She didn’t ask to go back to her place once, and when Eva and Irina asked her to go shopping with them, I talked Kelly into playing along and letting me pamper her.
“You’re going to go with them and enjoy yourselves,” I told her, smiling.
She backed up as I advanced toward the door, shaking her head. “Rurik. I don’t want you to spend money on me.”
“I want to.”
“But I’m not your burden. I’m not your responsibility to provide for.” Her back hit the door and she frowned.
“You’re my girlfriend,” I said, leaning down to whisper in her ear as I put my hand on her side. Caging her in like this seemed to turn her on instantly. Now wasn’t the time to fuck again. I was expected at the house to talk with Lev and Vik, and Eva and Irina were waiting downstairs for her to get moving to shop.
“And if I want to treat you, I will.”
She sighed, bracing for another line of her argument. “But?—”
I kissed her hard, making her moan and clutch for me. Again, now wasn’t the time, but I liked the idea of her walking around with her panties wet from desire for me. “But nothing. If you come back here without spending my money on whatever you want and need, I’ll fuck this little pussy so hard you won’t be able to sit for a week.”
She shivered, gazing at me with pure lust shining in her eyes. “Is that supposed to be a threat?”
“Oh, you fucking gorgeous tease,” I growled before taking her lips again. “How about this?” Once I made sure she was panting and desperate from another kiss, I backed up and smiled at her again. “ No sex until you come home after spending my money on whatever you want and need.”
Her mouth hung open as she pouted, then scowled. “That’s not fair.”
I spun her to exit my apartment so I could walk her downstairs. “It’s also not fair that you delude yourself into thinking you’re not worthy of being treated like this.”
“That’s not…” She cleared her throat. “That’s not what I was thinking.”
“No?” I held her hand and kissed her on the elevator again. I couldn’t get enough of this woman. I was addicted to touching her, kissing her, enjoying her. Every smile or laugh she gave me felt like a trophy.
“Fine. I can sometimes struggle with accepting help.”
“Sometimes?” I laughed.
“Don’t tease,” she warned playfully.
“I won’t. I’ll just break you out of that habit instead.” I framed her face and stared at her before the elevator reached the garage floor. “You are worthy of everything you dream of, Kelly. I promise you that.”
I kissed her forehead, and with what looked like a slight frown, she folded into a hug against me, squeezing me tight.
Why? Why would she think she wasn’t worthy of anything good? Because of her past? Because she was unwanted when no one adopted her? Because her parents rejected her when they were nothing more than drug addicts?
On the drive to the Baranov mansion, I battled with the strong possibility that it was a mix of several of those things. And I wished that I could erase it all from her mind.
We’d been sleeping together since I saved her that night. Every night. During the day. All she had to do was freaking look at me, and I wanted her so badly that I couldn’t—and didn’t—resist. Even though sex was usually only physical, it was a demonstration of my desire for her, how worthy she was of being with me, of being with a man at all.
But it wasn’t enough. That was part of my reasoning to agree to her going with Eva and Irina today. She needed the “girl time” and to know her worth as a friend. She would benefit from the distance from me before she could be overwhelmed. It wasn’t easy to let go and surrender her security to the guards assigned to the women on this outing, but I realized that the pros of her spending time with Eva and Irina were important, too important for her to miss out on the opportunity. Besides, she needed clothes and any other necessities a woman would want for day-to-day things. If she wasn’t going to ask to go to her apartment and pick up things, then we’d provide for her at my place. I didn’t need to ask to know she was frugal, and I suspected that was a big part of her struggling to accept that I’d give her my card and expect her to use it.
At the mansion, I saw that Lev and Vik had beat me there. Oleg was just walking in with me. His hair was still damp from most likely a recent shower, and he seemed more alert than usual. I bet he’d just finished with a workout—his attempt to counter the effects of old age and his love of cigars.
“What have you got for me?” he asked as he sat.
“We’ve been following the rumors and reactions to the Petrov deaths,” Lev said.
I furrowed my brow, already feeling so lost. “Deaths? Plural?”
He nodded. “The dealer who attacked Kelly was a former Petrov dealer. Like Irina told us, that particular man wasn’t ‘in’ with Igor anymore. He’d turned traitor and stole from them, and Igor had ordered him to be killed, but he escaped. No one on the Petrov side is upset to see him gone.”
“Good.” The last thing I wanted to do was cause more trouble. Or attract any more. “Then what other Petrov has been killed who could be relative to this case?”
“Marcus James,” Vik said. “I’ve collected intel that he was basically a Petrov fan. He was most interested in buying the product from him to have it sold on that campus and elsewhere.”
“Marcus openly admitted his alliance with the Petrovs?” Oleg asked. He shook his head as he spoke, unable to believe it even as he inquired about the matter. “No. He wouldn’t.”
I doubted that any politician would be so open and vocal about a connection to any specific Mafia Family. They were too careful to walk a fine line between crime and the law. The only deciding factor that pushed them toward one side or the other was how they could make the most money.
“He was in favor of giving Petrov more demand,” Vik said, “whereas Eric Benson seemed to be a fan of the Ilyins doing business and supplying drugs on the campus.”
“Then what, any Ilyin could’ve taken out Marcus James at that meeting?” I asked.
Vik shrugged. “No one is owning up to it yet.”
“And if an Ilyin had done it,” Lev added, “they would claim it as a show of power.”
They would have. Claiming a kill wasn’t only about glory, but to show power and superiority.
“Speaking of claiming a kill,” Lev said with a tired groan that followed his words, “word is spreading that Igor Petrov ordered the hit on Yusef Ilyin.”
I stared at Lev, confused how these facts could be changed. Lev was the hitman who’d taken out Yusef Ilyin. That was his last assignment before being Eva’s bodyguard on campus. He’d had to hunt the Ilyin leader for months, and it wasn’t a simple stakeout and shot to kill him. Yusef’s death had been an important factor in the recent trouble because all the drug trade issues started with Yusef interfering with drug trade routes. He screwed over the Baranov distribution outside the city, and Oleg had tasked Lev with taking him out. Lev had killed him, and he had the pictures to prove it, too.
Vik shook his head. “That’s not true. We checked with Irina, and she said Igor had nothing to do with Yusef’s death.”
“Regardless, rumors are spreading with these lies,” Lev said. “And we can only interpret that as someone wanting to stir doubt and spread doubt about the Baranov power.” He shrugged.
“It’s probably that one man you didn’t kill,” I reminded him.
Lev glowered at me. “I did kill that man. I have the picture to prove it.”
I shrugged, unsure what to believe. After Lev returned from that assignment, one of the Ilyin guards who’d been protecting Yusef came back from the dead. Lev shot him. And he did have a picture as a timestamp and proof, but the man’s face had been spotted in the city and even on the campus. I wondered if the man had a twin or if it was just an uncanny likeness. But some soldiers—from all the families—were talking about this man being another spy from some other entity or power.
“All I care is that this… John Doe,” Oleg said, “for lack of a better term, doesn’t interfere with my interests. Like looking into the Benson family.” He turned his attention to me, and I winced at being put in the spotlight about this matter. “Have you talked with Kelly about the idea of her wearing a wire in the office when Benson is next expected to have a meeting at the dean’s office?”
Honesty was best. I shook my head. “No, I haven’t talked to her about this, not specifically. I’ve been trying to get closer to her and make sure she’s interested in caring enough to help.” That was a lie, though. I knew Kelly cared. While she was passionate and fiercely protective of her independence, she wasn’t a cold-hearted person. She cared about me. I saw that every day and night when she tried to please me and make sure I wasn’t in pain. She’d make food with me. She’d rub that medical cream on my scars and over the injury I’d had. She even did my rehab exercises with me to encourage me and show support.
“I want to solidify my relationship with her before talking more in depth about how she could help,” I explained. “But I still really don’t like this idea.”
“Why not?” Oleg asked bluntly. “She’s not afraid to help, is she?”
I shook my head. Kelly wasn’t a fearful woman. She had been spooked by something in her past, but she was so independent that she refused to let it rule her.
“I will hate any plan that even potentially puts her in danger,” I stated plainly. “I want her safe.”
“She would be,” Oleg said. “Of course, she would be protected.”
“Because she’s Eva’s friend?” I asked. “That was why the offer of security was extended to include her before.”
Lev nodded. “Yes, she would be protected because she is Eva’s friend. But also because she’s your…?” He raised his brows, indicating that he wanted me to finish that.
“My girlfriend,” I said. I was confident I could call her that. We were moving fast. This was new and it could be considered sudden for how quickly we’d acted on our attraction for each other, but it wasn’t as though we’d just met. I knew her from before. She’d started to feel something for me back then too, but we’d had to go through that separation spell of a couple of months when I wasn’t on campus.
Lev held his hand out, as though to say see? “Ergo, Kelly will be protected.”
“Only to an extent,” I argued. Lots of soldiers had girlfriends and fiancées. Wives and kids, too. The Baranov Family was a large organization, and there were many people to keep track of. We looked after our own, but there still was a noticeable difference between how deeply safety was a priority for girlfriends, who could come and go, and wives.
“She’s not family,” I reminded them.
After our discussions over the week, it seemed like she could be one day.
“For now?” Vik asked.
I shrugged, then rubbed my hand over my face. “For now. She’s still so nervous to trust me—to trust the family—that it doesn’t seem like a good idea to push her on if or when she’d be in the mindset to think about marriage.”
Oleg grunted. “Then make her family.” He looked me in the eye, making sure I didn’t glance away. “You care for her, don’t you?”
I nodded. I was getting close to the belief that I loved her. “I do.”
He shrugged. “Then marry her.”
I narrowed my eyes. “So I could order her to spy at that office?”
“Maybe you wouldn’t have to then,” Vik said. “She be personally vested in the security of the family then and she would want to help, right?”
She would, but asking her to marry me would seem like an afterthought with the suggestion that she spy for us so recent.
I wished I could marry her this instant, but only if I knew it was what she really wanted. If I were to push the matter and she agreed, I’d live the rest of my life assuming she’d only said I do because she felt like she had to. A marriage out of obligation wasn’t the future I wanted with her. I wanted the whole deal, the real deal, because that was what my affection for her felt like—real and true. Like she was The One , the only woman I’d want to grow old with.
I sighed. “I’ll talk to her again. I’ll see what her biggest worries are about this assignment and I’ll go from there.”
“Thank you,” Oleg said, getting up to leave since he apparently considered this meeting concluded. “If she can get me a little more intel about the Bensons, then we might be that much closer to understanding what happened to Sonya.”
And Amelia? He always seemed to focus on finding his niece, not his sister-in-law, and I couldn’t believe I’d never noticed that before.
Hmm.
Now wasn’t the time to concentrate on what I thought was a cold case. My priority had to be getting Kelly to help us out and hope it wouldn’t turn her off from wanting to make her dreams a reality with me someday.