Chapter 20 Trent
About ninety percent of what just happened makes no sense to me. All I know is Dom is on Leo’s side. Leo and Dom took Charlotte and Jade and… Well, that’s about it.
Jade lost it, beating Dom silly while he refused to fight back or even defend himself. Whatever happened must have really upset her, and that can’t be good. I’ve seen her deal with so much and hardly bat an eye.
Zander eventually takes her upstairs. I’m not sure if she was asleep or just quiet, but she didn't fight him carrying her.
“What the hell just happened?” I ask the second I hear her bedroom door close upstairs.
Nobody answers. Spencer is already on his way out, but the rest of us just kind of stand around. At least I’m not the only one who seems a little lost right now.
Kratos turns to Elio, who still stands with us, looking uncomfortable. It’s strange, knowing he’s some big mafia guy, yet he seems at odds with standing in a kitchen with us. He was fine before all of this shit happened with Leo and Dom, though, so it must have something to do with that.
“Explain,” he demands, and I can’t help but shift nervously as I watch them stare each other down. Kratos is pretty high in the Vengeance world, but Elio is on a totally different level. Talking to him like that could get a bullet in Kratos’s head.
Hell, it could get one for all of us.
Elio takes a second to look around the room at the rest of us as we wait for his answer before he sighs, the tension leaving him as his shoulders sag.
He doesn’t look put together anymore, and for the first time, I realize just how hard this life is on all of them.
The more power someone has, the more they need to appear in control.
Too bad that’s all it is, an appearance.
So far, it seems they might be the ones who have the least control.
“Fine.”
Elio walks over to the island and falls onto a stool as if exhausted before folding his hands on the counter.
“But understand, I don’t have all the answers.
I can tell you what I’ve heard and what I think based on what just happened, but to know for sure, the best person to ask will probably be Danslav, or Dom, I guess. ”
Spencer comes back in a second later, a laptop tucked under his arm and a serious look on his face. I guess it’s time we sorted this out.
We spent the rest of the day in the kitchen with Elio, who tells us everything he knows about Dom, Leo, and the Bratva. Spencer dives into every piece of information we get, trying to put the pieces together, but in the end, we don’t get much out of it.
Dom and Leo are cousins. Vera, Dom’s mother, married Mikhail after Dom was already born.
Nobody knows who Dom’s father is. Vera and Mikhail had a daughter who went missing when she was around seven.
They looked for her for years, but they never found her.
After that, Mikhail was rarely seen. And while he still technically ran the Bratva, he sent his brother Ivan to do most things in his place.
Ivan is Leo’s father. He married Vera’s younger sister, Anya, and Leo is their only child.
Anya died about ten years ago, but nothing says how, just that she’s dead.
Spencer confirms most of this pretty easily.
Elio seems to believe that Jade is actually Svetlana. Which would make her Dom’s younger sister. Not only that, but also the daughter of the Bratva leader and the person who was supposed to be stepping in for him, the little girl who went missing.
Spencer searches and searches, but even with all his skills, he can’t seem to find anything that connects her to them. There are no photos of her, no files, nothing. She’s been mentioned a few times in Russian news articles from when she went missing, but that’s it.
Eventually, Spencer gets frustrated with his laptop and takes his research back to his nerd cave.
Rick disappears to his office, with Jake following, as they discuss the rings Jade’s taken down and the possibility of backtracking to find out who sold her.
Kratos and Elio keep talking, but my brain is fucking mush, and even with them right next to me, I struggle to comprehend a single word they say.
“I’m gonna go check on Zan and Jade,” I tell them before I head out, even though I’m pretty sure they aren’t listening.
I trudge up the stairs, exhausted. The last few weeks have been a lot, and today it feels like everything that had been building finally boiled over and exploded in one huge fucking mess.
I head right toward Jade’s room, expecting to find them there. Pushing the door open, I find the room not only empty, but destroyed. I’m not sure what the fuck happened here, but I can see why they wouldn’t be here, and for now, that’s all I really care about.
The only other place I can think they would be is Zan’s room. When I push open his bedroom door, my eyes are hardly open as exhaustion weighs on me, but I find her all the same. I can’t help it. Knowing she’s in the room, I have to see her as if to prove she’s really back.
Zander’s on his back in the middle of the bed, one arm propped up under his head on the pillows, the other wrapped around Jade’s waist, holding her close to his chest. She looks so small in his arms, curled up with their legs a tangled mess.
For a moment, I let myself imagine how she would look curled up with Rick or me.
Shit, Kratos is bigger than we are, actually.
It should be hard to picture, but it’s not. I’ve seen her with each of them and held her myself, though not nearly enough. Picturing her with any of them feels normal in a way I never imagined possible. She’s happy with all of us and safe.
The way it should be, and that’s enough for me.
“Hey, golden boy,” Zander says, pulling me from my thoughts, a teasing smirk on his lips. I shake my head at his stupid nickname, but don’t bite back. I'm too tired to argue with him right now.
No, right now, all I want is to curl up with Jade and hold her while I get some much-needed sleep. But no matter how happy I might be to have her back, I don’t want to push myself on her. These last few weeks have been a lot, and I’m unsure where we stand. It’s not something we discussed.
Damn it.
Not for the first time. I regret not having told her already. The signs were all there. I was just too stupid to put two and two together until she was gone.
“You look like a fucking zombie, dude.”
“Yeah, well, I feel like one, so I can’t really argue with you.
I just wanted to make sure you guys were alright before I turned in,” I tell him, nodding to Jade.
She looks a hell of a lot better than she did earlier.
Tomorrow, we’ll have our hands full again with everything we've just learned and everything she still has to tell us. I know it’s only temporary, this peace she has right now while she sleeps, but for now, she’s resting, and that’s the best I could hope for.
“Yeah, she wasn’t looking much better than you before she passed out, but I think we're okay for now. Why don’t you get some sleep?” He says, keeping his voice low, his eyes falling closed lazily while he talks. I can only imagine how peaceful it must be to hold her in his arms after all this time.
Jealousy swirls in my stomach at the thought, but I push it away. Now is not the time for that, and I have nothing to be jealous of. He’s offering Jade comfort while she rests. She deserves to feel safe.
She deserves everything.
“Yeah, just call me or have someone come grab me if you guys need something,” I tell him, stepping back out into the hall.
My hand rests on the doorknob, but I can’t make myself go.
I should head back to my room for some sleep, but I can’t.
I can’t seem to make myself do it. Instead, I stand rooted to the spot, watching Jade’s chest rise and fall as she sleeps, a wave of anxiety washing over me at the thought of leaving.
What if she disappears again?
What if someone comes for her? Her list of enemies was long enough as it was. Being the heir to the Bratva isn’t exactly doing her any favors.
“Or… you could just stop being the golden boy and just come lie with us,” he says, cracking an eye open to peek at me.
“I don’t bite. Unless you ask, of course.” His smile turns playful, and it washes away some of my anxiety. Zander has been teetering on the edge since he woke up in the hospital. Seeing him back to his usual teasing self is like a breath of fresh air.
I hesitate in the doorway, caught between the choices. On the one hand, I don’t want to push myself on her, but I also don’t think I’ll be able to get any real sleep in my room. Even right down the hall, I’m going to be worried.
“Damn, I can hear your brain overthinking from here. Chill out, would ya? She won’t mind, I promise,” he tells me with a chuckle that shakes Jade a bit, and I bite back the urge to snap at him, worried he will wake her.
“She likes you, Trent.”
His words startle me at the harsh contrast of his tone from just moments ago. Before, he was playful and teasing. Now he’s serious.
“Believe me. She would want you here. The same way, she would be okay with any of the others curling up with us. I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn't know that for a fact.”
I never thought he would find a girl he would spend more than a night or two with, but Jade changed everything, and he’s even willing to share.
Who am I to argue with that?
Walking back into the room, I push the door closed behind me quietly. I kick my shoes off at the end of the bed before pulling my shirt up over my head and letting it fall to the floor, forgotten.
Zander’s smile is the epitome of shit-eating as he watches me. “Fuck off,” I say, climbing into the bed, careful not to jolt Jade around too much and risk waking her.
“I didn’t say shit, man,” he says with a low chuckle, pulling Jade close and kissing her forehead. She shifts and sighs, but doesn’t wake.
Someone so deadly shouldn’t be so fucking adorable, but somehow she manages both with ease.
I scoot down until my head rests on the pillow opposite Zander. Jade lies between us, using Zander’s chest as a pillow instead. Now that I’m on the bed, I’m having second thoughts. What am I supposed to do now? Lie here and look at the ceiling? Do I roll over and cuddle her?
Shit. Why am I making such a big deal about this?
I’m seconds from getting up and going to my own room, unable to handle lying here like a dumbass for much longer. Before I get the chance, Jade’s moving, and I watch her in shock as she rolls off of Zander, curling up to my arm.
“Come on, man,” Zander says, reaching over her to pull my arm from her grip. She cuddles up to my side much like she was with Zander, and I can feel the stupid grin on my face, but I can’t help it.
Zander drapes my arm around her back, dropping my hand on her hip. It’s not overly intimate, but it feels like a lot to do while she’s asleep. I make to move away, but before I can, Zander rolls over so that his chest is pressed to her back, trapping my arm between them.
“I love being the big spoon,” he says with a wink as I shoot him a dirty look. Motherfucker knows exactly what he just did. He could at least try to be sneaky.
Jade’s breath almost tickles as she sighs, settling between us before she once again stops moving, falling back into a deep sleep. Her face looks so peaceful like this, no plotting, fighting for her life, or worrying about others. I can only hope that she can be like this all the time someday.
“Someday, this will be normal. We’ll spend our days doing whatever we want.
Rick in his study or running the businesses, Spencer with his tech, and Kratos being big and scary.
Jake will do whatever he does, and golden boy will be, well, golden.
I’ll run the shop, and you can find what you love, either with us or your own thing.
We’ll all be here together. It’ll be so easy, just like this,” Zander says, as if reading my mind.
It’s almost startling how easily I can picture it. All of us together in the future. How badly I want to give her the boring, everyday life I know she craves. The very thing I’d been trying to avoid for myself over the last eight years. Somehow, it doesn’t seem so bad when he says it now, though.
My thoughts run wild, picturing all the ways our future can unfold, but through them all, we’re together. Something about it feels so right that I can’t imagine it any other way, and for the first time in a long time, I feel content. I'm happy just to be here without a plan, enjoying this moment.
No matter what tomorrow brings, I know we’ll figure it out. We don’t have another choice because I won’t be letting this go, letting her go.