Chapter 41 - Clem
Warmth and peace washed over me as I snuggled closer to Rurik. The night went by in a blink, and I was never so happy that I made the decision to confront him and invite him in. We barely slept a wink, but I wasn’t tired at all as I lay in his arms.
This felt too right. It was too easy to slip back into the way he wanted things to be. Everything was always perfect when we were in bed. Nothing had really been resolved, at least not to me.
I wanted to be convinced. Not of his feelings.
Of those, I was certain. But feelings didn’t always match how a person acted.
As far as I could tell, Rurik Fokin was the most loyal, caring, considerate, and protective man to ever exist. If there was a monster lurking inside him, it had never come out. Not yet, anyway.
He woke up, stretching luxuriously and making my bed squeak and groan under his weight. He turned, gathering me closer and kissing me.
“Best morning ever,” he said. “I thought I might have dreamed last night.”
I relaxed into his arms, then stiffened when he told me to get up and get dressed.
“Why?” I asked, rolling out of his embrace. “Do you want me to come back to work?”
“I want you to come home,” he said, brows knitting together as I jumped up and wrapped myself in my robe. “Where you belong.”
There was the command I both longed for and feared. Just say yes, just go home. The home I had grown to love, that felt so real. Every fiber of my being wanted to do as he said, but then what?
“That’s not going to happen,” I said, watching him carefully.
He sat up, looking more confused now than anything else. “After last night?”
“Last night was a mistake,” I said. Bracing myself for the worst, I kept goading him. “I still can’t trust you. I had a moment of weakness. A lapse in judgment. That was all last night was.”
I turned away, waiting for the lies designed to make him furious enough to finally snap at me.
“Clem,” he said, voice deep and rumbling. Forbidding. I refused to turn around. “Look at me.”
When I didn’t, I expected his hands to grasp my shoulders, whip me roughly around. “You need to go,” I said. “Nothing’s changed.”
He sighed, and I flinched as the bed creaked and his feet hit the floor behind me. His hands were on my shoulders, but feather light. He gently turned me to face him and tipped my chin up with his fingertip. A soft smile wreathed his handsome face, and his eyes searched mine.
“There’s nothing you can say or do to make me harm you,” he said. “You can spit on me, curse me out, kick me in the shin.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” I whispered.
“But you could.” He gripped a little tighter, shaking his head. “The thought of you being hurt makes me sick. The idea of hurting you myself makes me want to die. It’s never going to happen.”
“So you’ll go?” I asked. Was I hoping he’d fight or really prove his words?
“I hate it, but yes, I’ll go,” he said. “You can live here as long as it takes for you to believe I’m nothing like your ex.” His smile made my heart roll over. “I’m only crazy about you, not plain crazy.”
He pulled his clothes back on as I stood there, still clutching my robe around me, my heart and mind a whirlwind. As soon as he was dressed, he kissed my forehead and headed toward the door.
“I’ll bring dinner tomorrow,” he said calmly, his hand on the knob. Just as calmly, he added, “Come back to work whenever you feel like it. We all need you there. Especially me.”
“You can handle it?” I asked, still perversely trying to get a rise out of him. “Even if I don’t go home with you at the end of every day?”
“It’ll tear me up, but I’ll find a way,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”
I said nothing as I watched him walk out the door.
It closed with a quiet click, and his footsteps got farther away until I couldn’t hear them anymore.
What the hell was I doing? I should be running after him.
Everything in me was fighting my old, ingrained fears so I could go back where I belonged and be who I was supposed to be.
Rurik Fokin’s wife.
And yet, I just couldn’t. I was rooted to the spot, tears streaming down my face.
The lack of sleep hit me like a tidal wave, and my body sagged, no longer buzzing and glowing from Rurik’s touch.
It was only nine in the morning, but I found myself back in bed, burying my face in the pillow that still smelled like him.
Later on, when I could drag myself out of bed, I went outside to ask the guard if his boss had arrived yet. Rurik said he’d come for dinner the next day, but foolish hope made me peer down the street, looking for a car with a tall presence inside, watching in my direction.
Foolish because I had been the one to send him away. He wasn’t there, and I ate a frozen meal that tasted like cardboard, ending up throwing half of it away before collapsing back into bed. The next day, I decided not to go to work. The truth was, I wouldn’t be able to handle it either.
I spoke to my Aunt Gigi for over an hour, not telling her everything because she would have been on the next plane to console me, or rescue me, or whatever it was I needed. She only knew I was having a hard time, and told me I was the greatest and I’d get through it because I always did.
Nice words that didn’t do a thing to raise my spirits or help me figure out what was right.
“Why are you even thinking about this?” I asked myself out loud as I flipped through channels with the TV muted.
Rurik was a criminal, and the only crime I ever committed was shoplifting a candy bar when I was ten.
And I couldn’t even eat it because I was convinced it would make me sick.
The last time I got a traffic ticket, I cried the whole way home, wracked with guilt that my impatience might have gotten someone killed.
And yet… I didn’t feel a speck of guilt when I thought about the scuffs on Rurik’s knuckles when he admitted they were there because of whatever he did to Jordie.
I found I didn’t give a single shit what happened to the man who used to make me jump with fear every time he put his damn game controller down.
I wasn’t that woman anymore. I had found the strength to get away, and Rurik had helped me believe I could do a job I never thought I’d even get without my degree.
He didn’t mock the goofy sci-fi books I read—he read them along with me.
He told me I was beautiful instead of warning me that if I ate a second slice of pie, I’d get fat.
His hands only ever gave me pleasure, never once pain.
I may have saved myself from Jordie, but Rurik took him out of the equation. I no longer had to look over my shoulder or flinch at every gangly guy in a hoodie who was anywhere near me. Even if I never went back to Rurik, I was safe. Because of him.
Oh, hell. Could I deal with a little crime or not?
A knock on the door jolted me out of my thoughts, and I jumped up, hoping it was Rurik to convince me to at least come back to the office.
Instead, it was three of his cousins at my door. Mila, Nat, and Lilia were decked out in Beverly Hills finery, looking incredibly out of place in the outer corridor of my apartment.
“Lunch,” Lilia said, the first to crowd in. “You need lunch.”
“And shopping,” Mila added.
Nat scowled. “I thought we were taking her on a gallery crawl?”
I couldn’t get a word in edgewise as they told me to get out of my pajamas without a hint of judgment that I was still wearing them so close to noon. “Hurry up,” Lilia said. “I skipped breakfast.”
The other two snorted and teased her for still being a newlywed, insinuating she’d been occupied in bed for too long that morning.
“It’s a benefit to Gavril working from home.”
I threw on some designer jeans and one of the nice silk blouses from all the clothes that Rurik had bought me, and let them steer me out to their chauffeured car waiting at the curb. Seeming to recognize the guard, they waved and greeted him by name.
“You don’t think that’s a little weird?” I asked when we were pulling away. “I think he might be armed,” I added.
They burst out laughing, nodding toward their driver. “Do you think he’s not? He’s not just there to carry our bags, you know.”
“So not weird, then.”
“Now that you know the truth, we’re here to answer any questions,” Mila said. “And no, Rurik didn’t send us.”
“Gavril’s sick of listening to him complain, though,” Lilia said. “And I don’t like seeing him suffer, either. He’s my favorite, no offense to you guys,” she told Mila and Nat.
We ended up at a fancy pizza restaurant, and there were so many questions I wanted to ask that I couldn’t think of where to start. Their kindness was overwhelming to an orphaned only child like me. My aunt tried her best to be everything to me, but I always wished for a big family.
“We’re not here to put any pressure on you,” Nat said when our red wine and salads arrived. “We honestly think you’re the best thing to ever happen to Rurik.”
“So, basically, what’s the problem?” Mila asked, making Lilia give her a harsh look. So much for no pressure.
“I don’t want to offend you,” I started and stopped.
“Can’t happen,” Nat assured me. “Katie was my best friend growing up. She married my dad for goodness’ sake, and we’re still besties.”
I blinked a few times upon hearing that, then lowered my voice. “You’re Bratva,” I whispered. “I didn’t even know what that was before last week.”
“You don’t have to be part of it. My gallery is one hundred percent legit,” Nat said, then wrinkled her nose. “Okay, more like ninety-eight percent. But still. You get what I mean.”
“He did say he’d never let it touch me,” I said, more to myself than them, but they all vociferously agreed he’d go to the ends of the earth to protect me. I let out a long sigh. “He tricked me into marrying him,” I said, waiting for them to be shocked.
They weren’t. Not even a little bit. I found out why when they began regaling me with their own stories about how they ended up married to men who’d previously been their family’s worst enemies.
And yeah, after those tales full of kidnappings, explosions, and shootouts, signing some documents I wasn’t given time to read didn’t sound like such a big deal anymore.
In fact, Mila and Nat seemed more offended by the fact that I didn’t get a real wedding than the fact that I never got asked in the first place.
“You should demand a big winter wedding,” Mila said while Nat nodded. “We can have it at my place. Katie will definitely jump to do the food. We can be ready by then, right?”
“Piece of cake,” Nat said, pulling out her phone and scrolling to a designer’s website that she seemed to already have ready to show me. “Look at these gowns. I think a corset waist and long sleeves, and velvet, of course.”
“Oh, of course, velvet,” I said sarcastically, making Lilia laugh.
“It’s easier to go along with them,” she said, then turned serious, reaching out to pat my hand. “If you love him, that is.”
They paused, silent for the first time during the entire lunch, waiting for my answer. My eyes filled with tears that I blinked away, giving them the answer they needed. My new family members, who accepted me wholeheartedly solely because Rurik loved me, handed me tissues and hugged me.
“Cheesecake,” Mila called to a passing server. “We need cheesecake, stat.”
The server rolled her eyes, but smiled at our little display, and pretty soon we were all eating dessert, and somehow I was scrolling through a florist’s website.
This family might be involved in crime, but they had huge, loving hearts. I would have given anything to be part of what they had. I realized I already was, and when the day was over, I asked them to take me home.
“Not the apartment,” I clarified. “Rurik’s house.” Our house. Home.
A little tipsy from the wine at lunch and the champagne the high-end shops plied us with to help pad their commissions, Mila, Nat, and Lilia all cheered my decision.
I asked them not to tell Rurik, and they begged to come in and help me plan a surprise, but I told them I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.
“I just want to settle in,” I said, waving as they crowded back into the limo, disappointed but happy for me at the same time.
The quiet of the huge mansion settled over me. Now that I wasn’t bolstered by Rurik’s exuberant cousins, I began to come back down to earth. I loved Rurik, and he loved me, but could I handle his life? Not just where the money came from, but the violence he dealt with on a regular basis.
Now that I knew for sure what sorts of things went on when he left in the middle of the night, could I deal with the worry and fear that would bring? What if he returned one morning with worse than cuts and bruises?
What if he didn’t return at all?
Now I wasn’t so sure I made the right decision. Was I really cut out to be a Bratva bride?