Chapter 25
EVGENY
“Ithink that was a success, don’t you?”
Dmitri leans back in the leather chair. The bumps and jerks of taxiing down the runway barely ripple his large frame.
“Hmm.”
My attention is on my phone. I reread the text I sent Eva when we took off. I haven’t received a reply yet, and the wait has my fingers drumming on my thigh.
“You don’t think so?”
“I think we got what we wanted.”
Dmitri levels his gaze at me, and I can almost hear his thoughts. Aren’t they the same thing? Except they aren’t. I wasn’t myself at the meeting, and I could tell the men who run my East Coast operations noticed.
This is the first time in memory that I have been distracted, pushing the agenda so my time on the East Coast would end sooner.
And all because, for the first time, I have a reason to go home.
I have someone to go home to, someone I’m desperate to see, to hold her in my arms and feel her warmth, breathe in the scent of her skin, kiss the lips I’ve missed so much.
I should be angry about my distraction during the meetings, especially where the Bratva is concerned. But I can’t bring myself to be upset when the reason is Eva.
“You have it bad, Evgeny.”
My attention returns to the phone screen and the blank space where Eva’s reply should be. I keep thumbing the conversation up and down just to keep the screen from going dark.
At Dmitri’s words, I meet his eyes again, only to see the shit-eating grin on his face. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, come on.” The grin widens. “Everyone can see it. You’re completely gone for Eva.”
“I’m not ‘gone’ for anything,” I growl, locking the screen and stuffing it into my jacket pocket.
The smirk Dmitri gives me says yeah, sure as clearly as the flight attendant’s announcement that we’ve arrived and can deplane.
The woman’s eyes linger on me as I pass by, and I give her a cursory glance.
She’s model-beautiful, tall and thin, her skirt following dips and curves that at one time would have had me telling her to come to my house later in the evening.
And she would have had no objections based on how her tongue runs over her lips as she watches me go.
Then her gaze lands on the scarred side of my face, and she looks away quickly.
I let out a short laugh as I push past her to the door, used to it.
The pilot thanks me for my business as I pass through the doorway and head down the steps to the tarmac.
Dmitri is already there, his phone pressed to his ear, and he’s gesturing in short, jerky movements to the man who’s serving as my driver today.
That’s the first warning I have. The second is the expression on Dmitri’s face when he turns toward me.
I know that look, the pinched expression that deepens the fine lines around his mouth, showing his troubled eyes.
My heart skips a beat before plunging into my gut. “Eva?”
“No, but—” he swallows, his throat bobbing with the action “—it’s her brother, the younger one. One of our guys found him. He’s—”
My second-in-command doesn’t have to finish his sentence for me to understand.
“Take me to him. Now.”
Dmitri nods, and our bags are barely in the trunk before we’re off.
The address takes us to an empty warehouse near the port, a maze of warehouses and shipping containers from all over the world.
Dmitri, the driver, and I draw our guns, my two men advancing in front of me and clearing the area before we slip inside, keeping our faces turned from the security cameras. Whether they’re live or not, I don’t know, but none of us are taking any chances.
They do another sweep inside to ensure it’s empty, and when they give me the all-clear, we search for Eva’s brother.
It doesn’t take long to find him. Dusty light filters through rows of grimy windows, highlighting motes that swirl and fall over the figure lying facedown, a pool of blood staining the concrete floor.
For a moment, all I can do is stand there, staring, regret and frustration welling in me.
I’d hoped my man’s report of finding the kid here had been exaggerated, since everyone within the Kucherov sphere, down to the last man, knew what I would do should anyone harm a hair on the head of Eva or anyone in her family.
I’d made that abundantly and painfully clear.
When I bend down to check his pulse, the kid is cold, and my fingers find no thready beat.
“Fuck!”
My only thoughts are of Eva. This will destroy her. She tried so hard to save this kid from himself, to protect her family and keep them on the straight path forward.
I knew the kid was in trouble, and I hated how it affected Eva. But had someone done this to get to me now that I’d made it clear to the world she’s mine? Or had her brother’s antics finally caught up with him? It’s impossible to tell just yet.
“Who the fuck did this?” My words are a frigid whisper, a killing rage already rising, the red haze tunneling my vision.
“Who the fuck did this?” I demand, my bellow like thunder.
“Nobody knows yet.” Dmitri’s face has gone pale. He’d met Jordan before, when he’d accompanied Eva to her family home. The only time I’d met the kid was in the bookstore. “Yoseph got a call from an unknown number. He didn’t recognize the caller, but the guy told him to look here.”
“Shit. Fuck!”
What the hell was I going to tell Eva? How was I going to tell Eva?
Running footsteps from the front entrance are all the warning I get before I hear the scream.
“No!” The scream is a heart-wrenching, haunting wail that echoes against the steel, concrete, and glass around us. “Jordan! No!”
Eva pelts past me toward her brother’s body, but I manage to snag her around the waist, pinning her against me.
“Don’t look, Eva.” I hold her close, hold her tight. But she pays me no heed.
“No, Jordan, please!”
I can feel her sobs and the heave of her body as she struggles against my hold, trying to reach her brother.
“No. No, no, no, no, no, no. Please, no.”
Eva’s struggles grow weaker with each denial, her voice fainter though her gaze is still on the unmoving form of her brother.
A shudder runs through her body, convulsive and violent, and she turns into me, dissolving into sobs, her hands fisted in my shirt.
I hold her without a word. I know nothing I say will ease her grief, nothing will make this tragedy better.
The woman I love has just lost a brother.
It drives me insane that I can’t make the pain go away. The only thing I can do is hold her.
I look around and find Vasya standing away from us, his eyes on Eva. Anger rises in me, is he the one who brought her? Why? How did he know? Why the fuck would he bring her to see her brother’s body?
I will my anger away, knowing it does Eva no good. I will deal with Vasya later.
I’m about to pull her away, take her to the car, and go home when she suddenly shoves away from me. Her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy with tears still tracking down her cheeks. But the look in her eyes isn’t the grief I expected.
All I see is fury.
Her gaze drops to the gun I still have in my hand, then returns to me. “You did this,” she hisses.
Behind me, Dmitri lets out a sound of surprise, mirroring my own confusion. “Eva, what the hell are you talking about?”
“You did this,” she hisses again, her hands balling into fists. “I know Jordan owed money to Tsepov. He called and said he’d told a secret to the guy he owed money to. It was about you, wasn’t it?”
“Eva, what—”
But she’s not done. “He was scared. I could hear it in his voice…” Her words drop into a sob, but she swallows it, rage replacing the grief. “What secret did he tell? That you’re using me to get information on him? That we’re sleeping together?”
“People already saw us together.”
“I wish I’d never met you!”
A sob makes her jerk, and she has to put a fist to her mouth to stop it.
I step toward her, holding out my hand. “You’re in shock, Eva. You’re not thinking straight. This doesn’t have anything to do with me. You know that.”
“I don’t know shit,” she bites out as she backs out of my reach, tears streaming down her cheeks again. “I don’t know who the fuck you are. I don’t know why I ever thought you were anything other than a monster. I don’t know how I ever saw any good in you. Vasya and my father were right about you.”
She wipes viciously at the tears on her cheeks. “I should have listened, and now my brother is dead because of me.”
I reach for her arm, curl my fingers around her wrist. “No, Eva. Don’t blame yourself.”
Eva rips her wrist from my grip and backs away from me again. She’s ferocious, her hair a wild halo around her in the dusty light, the look in her eyes an inferno of pain and fury.
“Get away from me, Evgeny. I swear to God, and all that is holy, if you try to contact me again or do anything to my family, I will go to the FBI with everything I know. I will end you like I should have before.”
Her words and the viciousness with which she says them freeze me in my tracks, and I can only stand there as she runs past me, her footsteps fading away. Vasya gives me an odd look I can’t read and turns on his heel to follow.
He is her ride, after all.
Only when I see my driver lift his gun in Eva’s direction do I move.
“Pull that trigger and you forfeit your life,” I snarl.
“But Boss. She knows too much about you—”
I have his throat in my hand a heartbeat later, my gun pointed to his temple, and I can feel his pulse against my palm as he stares at me in fear. “You fucking touch her, and you will pray for death.”
“Aren’t you going after her?” Dmitri demands, gripping my shoulder, and I let the driver go.
I hesitate. I never hesitate, but my entire being is screaming at me to go after Eva, to rip her from Vasya’s car and make her listen to reason. To not let her go until she knows I would never have touched Jordan.
But a small part of me knows this was always how it would end. My life is no fairy tale and, more often than not, it’s a nightmare.
Eva has become a part of me over the past months in a way I never thought possible, and my heart is crumbling even as I hear the sound of an engine start up. I love her and would have done anything to prove it to her, to show her I would never hurt her or her family.
Except I didn’t. Not in the ways that matter. I realize that now. If she believes I’m truly a monster, then she’s far better off away from me.