Chapter 26 - Raya
The car ride back to the compound is silent.
Outside the tinted glass of the SUV, the city blurs into a smudge of winter gray, but inside, the atmosphere is heavy and warm.
Yakov has me pulled up to his side, his massive frame enveloping me, the warmth of his body comforting as it chases away the cold that seems to have leeched into my bones.
He doesn’t speak, and neither do I. I think he understands that for now I need to process that I’m safe, that he has me; even if I tried, I don’t think any words would come out, just terror and noise that I am trying to swallow down.
Every time I close my eyes, the sidewalk tilts again.
I see Lev’s throat—poor sweet Lev—and the blood; I’ve never seen so much blood, a never-ending sea of it pulsing from his body.
The smell of the chloroform is stuck in my nose; I can smell it, I can feel it moving through me.
I don’t understand; I don’t understand why it has to be this way, why someone would want to hurt me so much when I’ve done nothing to hurt them.
How can someone carry such viciousness and cruelty and feel it’s okay to inflict it on others?
It’s something both Selene and Yakov have had to live with all their lives, and I get now why Selene feels the need to talk about it, to try and understand why.
When the tires finally crunch over the gravel of the main driveway, and the vehicle comes to a stop, I move to unbuckle my seatbelt.
“Stay, malysh.” Yakov’s voice cuts gently through the dim interior, carrying a quiet command that makes my hands drop.
He throws his door open, strides around the hood of the car, and opens my side.
Before the cold air can even bite at my skin, his large arms are sliding beneath my thighs and my back, lifting me from the leather seat and cradling me against his chest. I don’t fight him.
I don’t insist on walking to prove a point.
To be honest, I need him to hold me and not let me go.
So I lean my head against his neck and inhale the familiar scent of him—leather, cold air, and the faint, comforting trace of his cologne.
I hold on to his jacket as if he is the only fixed point in a spinning universe; he is the only fixed point; he has been for a while now.
He carries me through the entrance of the house, his stride even and unbreakable.
He has barely clicked the door shut behind us when the reality of what happened at the clinic hits me face-first. Selene and Sofie are standing near the staircase; they’d obviously been waiting.
I imagine Simon texted Selene to tell her we were on our way.
The second my eyes land on my sister, a sob catches in my throat.
Sofie is alive and upright, and given how I’d last seen her in a bloody heap over Lev’s body, I was convinced they’d killed her too.
Her beautiful face is a brutal map of the ambush.
Her left eye is heavily bruised, her nose is swollen and packed, and a long cut above her eyebrow has already been closed up with a neat line of butterfly stitches.
My eyes fill with tears at the sight of her, spilling over my cheeks before I can stop them; the sheer relief of seeing her breathing obliterates all attempt at trying to hold it together.
Sofie takes one look at me, opens her mouth, and lets out a classic Sofie remark. “I’m fine,” she says, her voice nasal and thick behind the swelling. “You should see the other guy.”
A laugh rips out of me through the crying.
There’s my sister. Yakov gently lowers my feet to the floor, keeping a steadying hand on my waist as Sofie steps forward.
She pulls me into her arms, hugging me with a tight fierceness that tells me exactly how terrified she was for my life.
I hold her back, my hands clinging to the fabric of her sweater.
Over Sofie’s shoulder, I see Yakov standing two feet away.
He is watching me like a hawk, his hands resting on his holsters.
Selene steps up beside him, her expression a mix of fierce maternal relief and sorrow as she gently strokes his arm, an unspoken sisterly gesture trying to bring him back to the land of the living.
The air in the house is fractured. Beneath the relief of our return, there is a palpable, suffocating shadow.
Four of our men are dead. As Yakov guides me toward the large living room sofa, my ears pick up the low, serious murmurs filtering through from the entrance where my brothers are also arriving home, their voices hushed but lethal.
“...the crew had the street scrubbed in less than fifteen minutes,” Simon’s deep voice rumbles. “No sirens. No witnesses. Trifon has already spoken with Lev’s widow and the other families. The payouts are cleared, but the streets are talking.”
“Matvei’s already on a secure line with Mikhail Nikolai,” Egor murmurs back. “There’s a full command meeting with the Nikolai leadership first thing. Everyone’s expected to be there. Alek Mykros crossed a line; this won’t go unpunished.”
The cold, hard truth of mafia warfare hums in the background, a reminder of the price that was paid for my safety.
Selene and Sofie sit on either side of me on the plush cushions, bringing a basin of warm water and soft cloths.
They work in tandem, gently wiping the dried parking lot grit from my palms, soothing the red chafing where Bogdan’s plastic zip-ties had bitten into my wrists.
The doctor steps into the room. I recognize him instantly—he’s the personal physician from the private clinic Sofie and I visited this morning.
Matvei’s people must have cleared him from the scene and brought him straight to the compound to maintain absolute discretion.
He checks my pulse, shines a light into my pupils, and carefully presses his fingers against my abdomen.
A cold spike of terror hits my chest. Did the chloroform hurt the baby? The thought has been playing on a loop in my head since they took me. The chemicals, the suffocation... did it hurt the baby?
The doctor catches the frantic pulse in my throat.
He looks directly at me, his eyes soft and filled with understanding.
“Everything looks stable, Raya,” he says gently, his voice pitched to soothe me.
“Your vitals are adjusting. But given the chemical exposure and the trauma of the struggle, I want you to go to the hospital this afternoon for a proper ultrasound scan. Just to be certain. I’ll ring ahead and let them know you’re coming. ”
I take a breath, the knot in my chest loosening enough for me to nod. “Okay. Yes.”
The doctor stands, giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze before turning toward the door. “I need to find Matvei to sign off on the medical clearing documents. It’s a formality.”
As his footsteps fade, I reach my hand out across the space to where Yakov has been standing against the wall, watching. He doesn’t hesitate. He crosses the room and sits on the coffee table directly in front of me, taking my hand, his grip possessive and warm.
“I was going to tell you today,” I whisper, my voice breaking as I look up into his dark, tortured eyes. “When we got back from the clinic. I was going to tell you as soon as we got back. And then... then everything went to hell.” I can’t help the warm tears that spill from my eyes.
Yakov swallows, his thumb wiping my cheek. “I know, malysh. I know.”
“No, Yakov. Listen to me.” I stop, leaning forward, taking his face into my hands so he has to keep my gaze.
My eyes won’t stop leaking, and a flash of irritation at my own emotional state ripples through me.
I don’t make a habit of crying like this, but looking at the man who just tore through his father’s men to drag me out of the dark makes my usual armor disintegrate.
“I was terrified, Yakov. I was so fucking scared that I would never see you again. That they were going to kill me and I never got to tell you.”
He opens his mouth, his throat working; I know that if he could, he would swallow my pain whole, but I shake my head, interrupting him.
“I love you,” I whisper, hoping that he can see how much I mean it as I look in his eyes.
“I love you so much, Yakov; it turns me inside out. I need you to know that down to your goddamn bones. I love you for protecting me before we had even met, for protecting me with your life. For the way you have shown me continually how much you love me too, and have never once let me doubt it. I love you for letting me into your head when it would have been so much easier for a man like you to keep the walls up. I never thought... with this family, with this life... I’d kind of accepted I’d probably always be alone, thought what I had inside me would be enough to get by.
And it was. Until you kidnapped me and forced me to marry you, actually.
” I give him a wet, teary smile. “I love you, Yakov. Thank you, thank you for coming to get me, and thank you for loving me too, even when I was a bit of a bitch.”
His chest rises and falls as he looks at me for one long, suspended second, like he’s memorizing the exact moment of my assignment to him.
Then, he reaches out, his hands cupping my face with an exquisite tenderness.
He leans in and kisses me; it’s hungry, desperate, and thick with the raw relief of two people who have survived something monumental.
I hold onto him, my fingers bunching into the leather of his jacket, pulling him closer until there is no air left between us.
The sound of footsteps breaks us apart. The doctor comes back into the living room to say his goodbyes, and behind him, the entire family filters in—the room is suddenly packed with the formidable collective of the Volkov name.
The doctor stops near the doorway, looking over at me with a knowing, professional nod. “This afternoon, Raya? Don’t delay.”