Chapter Twenty-Six
AXEL
I called Maksim for backup before finding Anton sitting on the bottom steps, nursing his head.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, checking out his pupils. They both looked normal.
“I’ve got a headache.”
I wanted to rage against someone, knowing how close Mila and Anton had come to getting hurt. “Maksim is on his way. He’s going to take you to the hospital.”
“I’m good. I don’t need a doctor.”
“It wasn’t a suggestion,” I told him.
He squinted at me, studying my battered face. “You sure you don’t need a doctor too?”
Fifteen minutes later, after reuniting Bandit and Mila, Maksim and my men took the intruder out of my house, along with Anton and the guard, with strict instructions to make sure they got checked out at the hospital.
“What do you want me to do with him?” Maksim questioned me about the man who’d just threatened my wife and destroyed my house.
This was about to spiral and had to be contained. “Don’t touch him further. Just drop him off at the Volkovs’ front door.”
Back inside, I found Grisha sitting at the island on one of the only chairs that was still intact. He was smoking his cigar while reading on his phone.
Aunt Lena was waiting beside him. “Where’s the girl?”
I walked to the freezer and took out a bottle of vodka. “If you’re referring to my wife, then Mila is upstairs with Bandit.”
“Is she clearing out the master bedroom?”
I knew exactly what she was getting at, but I ignored it. “No, she’s resting right now.”
“Must be nice. We’ve been traveling for hours, and you haven’t so much as offered us a drink or a bed.”
“Would you like some vodka?”
“I’d like to go to sleep, and the sooner Mila gets the master bedroom ready, the happier I’ll be.”
Her entitlement was staggering. “You’re welcome to stay in our guest room.”
She raised one eyebrow at me. “I think you forget who you work for.”
I poured a generous amount of vodka into my glass and tossed it back with a hiss. “Oh, trust me. I don’t forget that.”
Grisha grunted but didn’t look up from his phone.
“I understand that Mila has been attempting to play house here, and although I commend her attempts, the master bedroom belongs to us.”
“The only people who sleep in my marital bed are Mila and myself.”
Her eyes widened, and then she looked over at Grisha, who snorted with amusement but didn’t look up.
“What about that mutt?”
“Bandit? What about him?”
“Will it be staying in the backyard while we’re here?”
“Bandit will be living inside with the rest of us.”
She lifted her chin at me. “You’re losing control.”
I looked around the room. Remnants of the fluffy tree and glitter were everywhere. Everything that had made this place a home had been smashed by the fight. I felt bad knowing how much effort Mila had put into her Christmas tree and the rest of our home’s decor.
I was losing control, but that was not my fault. It was because Grisha continued to fail to see Sergei’s staggering faults. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t started that fight at the Volkovs’ bar.
My phone buzzed.
Yuri: Issues with the Canadians, call me
“Make yourself at home,” I told them both. “I need to go out.”
Lena looked at Grisha for support, but he ignored us both. She lifted her chin in defiance. “We’ll talk more about the sleeping arrangements tomorrow.”
I refrained from telling her I wouldn’t be changing my mind. Instead, without looking back, I moved upstairs to my bedroom. I found Mila sitting on the bed with her chin on her knees. She looked small, and folded in on herself in a way I didn’t like.
Too quiet.
Too still.
Bandit was curled up next to her, and his tail thumped when he saw me.
“Are you going out?” Her voice sounded wooden.
I could handle angry Mila and sad Mila, but I didn’t know what to do with numb Mila.
“Just briefly, something’s come up. I’ll be back in an hour, tops.”
“How’s Anton?”
“He’s going to be fine. I sent him to the hospital to get checked out, along with the guard.”
“Okay.”
I glanced at my reflection in the mirror. My face looked like crap. Maksim had put butterfly tape over the cut on my cheekbone, but I was definitely getting a black eye to accompany my swollen and split lip.
My face hurt like a bitch, but not as much as the rest of my body.
“There are two guards on tonight, and Oleg is on his way over.”
“Thank you.”
She looked too small sitting on the bed. I wanted nothing more than to crawl onto that bed, lie down beside her, and pull her into my arms, but the best way I could protect her was to do what I needed to do.
I sat down on the bed briefly. “It looks like your uncle and aunt will be staying in Canada for a while.”
Her unfocused gaze was fixed on nothing. “I figured.”
I reached over and grabbed her hand. Her slender fingers were cool to the touch. “You okay?”
She blinked slowly as she looked at me with concern. “Your face.”
“Doesn’t even hurt,” I lied.
“Did you see our living room?”
“It’s a mess.”
“There were fluffy balls everywhere.” Her voice was faint.
I lifted my hand and touched her hair. “We’re going to get through this, okay?”
“You’re coming back?” Her voice hitched when she asked.
“I’ll be back soon. Why don’t you lie down and rest?”
Without hesitation, she curled up on her pillow and Bandit shifted on the bed to lie against her back. I pulled a blanket over them both.
I stood at the door, watching her for a moment, but she didn’t move.
I closed the door softly, fighting every urge I had to stay by her side.
Twenty minutes later, I sat in the parking lot of Jungle’s Chicken and Ribs, which had been closed since I moved to Vancouver.
I called Yuri’s number, and he picked up on the first ring. “We just got word that Grisha is in Canada.”
“He showed up at my home about an hour ago.”
“Oh.”
“Is that what you wanted to talk about?”
“I just got off the phone with Giselle’s handler, Richard.”
“And?”
“The Canadians are aware that Sergei and now Grisha are in Vancouver, and they think it’ll just be a matter of time before they remove you from your position.” Yuri was delivering this news in a hushed tone that told me he was trying not to rile me up.
It didn’t bother me that they thought I would get ousted by Sergei. I had been warning all of them of that exact thing for weeks. But I was curious to know what the Canadians were planning. “What’s their play?”
“They’re escalating the plan to try and pull both houses down.”
Silence hummed between us as I processed that statement. “When?”
“They wouldn’t say, but I think sooner than you think.”
I was so exhausted it was a struggle to stay focused. “Got it.”
“I’ll keep pressing them for details, but in the meantime, try and get as much intel on them as possible.”
I could see Viktor walking toward me. He was right on time. “Will do, Yuri. Have a good night.”
Viktor got into my truck cab and looked long and hard at my face. “What does the other guy look like?”
“Not bad enough.” I was relieved that he had gotten my message. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”
“I heard things are getting rough out there.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. My brother knew better than anyone what the streets of Vancouver were capable of. I was surprised I’d made it this far. “Can I ask you for a personal favor?”
“You don’t even have to ask.”
I handed him a thick manila envelope. “It’s a copy of my will, which covers my assets in Canada and Russia. I’d like you to be my executor. It should be easy. Everything I own I want to go to my wife, Mila.”
He frowned at the envelope. “Should I be worried?”
“You don’t have a backup plan for your wife?”
He gave a slight nod. “Point taken. Consider it handled. She’s one of us now. I’ll guarantee that.”
“One more thing. I’ve put all her documents, our marriage certificate and her passport into a safe deposit box. You have the bank details. She’ll have the key, but for her protection, she doesn’t know which bank it’s at.”
“So if there is any coercion, they’ll have to go through me first.”
This family had controlled her previously by holding her documents, and they had basically trafficked her for her passport. I had been a part of that, but it stopped with me.
“Yes. I’ll give her the key and your phone number.”
He nodded seriously. “Tell her she can come to me for any kind of help, not just finding the bank.”
His words hit me deeper than I expected. The tension I’d been carrying between my shoulder blades loosened. Viktor was backup. Real backup. For Mila. “Appreciate it.”
He looked around the parking lot with vigilant eyes. “Watch your six.”
“You too.”
And then he was gone.
I worked through the next day, helping Maksim put out a dozen fires that Sergei’s fight at the bar had started, and it was late when I came home. I was stiff, sore and running on fumes, but nothing prepared me for what awaited me inside the house.
In the last day, someone had moved everything familiar out of the main floor of my house.
There were now heavy curtains at the windows that blocked the view and the light.
There was new furniture that looked stiff and uncomfortable.
Plastic plants, ornamental vases and cushion slipcovers completed the look.
I walked slowly into the kitchen, looking around. Grisha and Lena were lounging on the new couch, watching a movie in Russian on a new television.
“What happened here?”
“I decided to fix things up,” Lena said.
I worked to hide my annoyance. “Did Mila have anything to say about this?”
She shrugged, uncaring. “She was gone most of the morning.”
Grisha barely looked at me. “I need you to take me down to the docks.”
He didn’t tell me why, and I didn’t ask. “Give me ten.”
I moved upstairs and found Mila curled up on our bed, watching a movie.
She gave me a cute little smile. I could tell she was trying to act normal, but her shoulders were rounded with tension and she looked tired.
I sat down beside her. “How was your day?”
She shrugged. “It was okay, you?”
“Could have been better,” I confessed.
She gave me a sad smile. “Did you see downstairs?”
“She’s taking over, isn’t she?”
Mila looked worried. “It doesn’t even feel like our place anymore.”
“When they’re gone, we’ll just redecorate.” I knew it was a lie, but I couldn’t help pretending that we could one day go back to where we were right before they arrived.
She studied me as if to gauge if I was telling the truth. “Okay.”
“In the meantime, we can go back to David’s and replace the fluffy tree.”
She looked at me with more wisdom than she should have had at her age. “That’s okay.”
I couldn’t tell you why, but her soft refusal nearly broke me. In any other world, Grisha and Lena wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes as my houseguests, but here I was, pandering to them like some sort of soft idiot.
All for the sake of the job.
All so they would refrain from letting me go too soon.
So we could continue to strategically set up our ambush.
So we could maximize our impact on this family.
All I wanted to do was rage against her relatives, give them a satisfying boot to the curb and tell Grisha to take his job and shove it. Instead, I looked like a spineless man who couldn’t protect his own wife.
That was the point that really burned me.
“What’s wrong?”
I refocused on her. “Nothing.”
“You just looked so mad for a second.”
I reached forward and touched her hand. “Not at you.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” I changed the subject. “I have to take your uncle down to the docks, he wants to see something.”
Her nose wrinkled in distaste. “Tonight?”
“It’ll just be a couple of hours.”
She pulled her hand away. “Okay.”
In another marriage, I wouldn’t have let her pull away from me emotionally, but here, I couldn’t even blame her. I wasn’t showing up the way I should have, and I think she knew that.
Grisha rode beside me in silence, my truck cab filled with the thick, suffocating smoke of his cigar. Outside, the city slid by in a blur of wet cement and dim lights. I kept my gaze on the road while he sat beside me, radiating judgment.
I didn’t give him the satisfaction of starting the conversation.
Finally he cleared his throat. “You’ve lost control.”
I refrained from letting frustration seep into my tone. “I had complete control until Sergei started to sabotage our progress.”
He made a gusty sound of disapproval. “This again. He’s only been trying to help.”
“Retaliation is bad for business and your bottom line.”
“Well, what about Mila?”
It felt like the hairs on my neck bristled. My tone dropped two notches. “What about her?”
“Well, for starters, she shouldn’t be shooting people. Lena thinks you’ve gone soft when it comes to her.”
“I won’t apologize for protecting my wife.”
“Lena thinks that maybe Mila should take a trip home.”
I didn’t speak while I parked. I waited until I turned off the truck. “My wife’s home is by my side. If you send one of us back to Russia, we’re both going back.”
He was annoyed. “Then you need to get over this rift you have with Sergei.”
“It’s not a rift. It’s a fundamentally different approach to how we want to handle the Volkovs.”
He rolled his eyes. “If I knew you’d be this dramatic about things, I never would have sent you over here.”
“We’re sitting on a powder keg here. You don’t want to go to war with this family.”
“I’ve been waiting my entire adult life to take them down.”
I didn’t know why I was arguing. The Canadians would never let it get to that point. Everyone would be arrested before a single shot was fired.
“Come on,” I told him. “Maksim told me he’d meet us at the ship.”