Chapter 32
EVA
The restaurant is still festooned with garlands and red-and-silver baubles, some hand-painted with traditional figures. Someone added a silver garland that winks in the lights, bright against the deep-green velvet, dark wood, and low light that somehow reminds me of my father.
He has yet to call or ask Marco about me, not even over the holidays my brother and sister spent with us. Nor does he acknowledge me when I pick up or drop off Katie to spend time with me and to get her away from our father and his downward spiral.
And now I’m here, standing among Evgeny’s “family.” Russian floats around me, and a musician wanders with a balalaika, singing folk songs.
It’s like something out of the movies, with tables loaded with plates of food, champagne and vodka flowing freely, tough Russian mobsters with tattoos and scars talking and laughing.
Evgeny made them toss their cigarettes and cigars the minute we arrived, and everyone obeyed with only a few grumbles.
Evgeny holds absolute sway here. I’ve watched him most of the night and seen how everyone skirts around him with friendly deference, respect, and a bit of apprehension. They extend those same courtesies to me.
“Ponchiki?”
An older woman whose name I think is Maria offers me little cheese donut balls, but I’ve been introduced to too many people tonight to remember them all.
“No, thank you,” I say. I’ve spoken more Russian tonight than I have in a long time.
I’m exhausted, but I’m enjoying myself.
“You should eat. Keep up your strength for the babies.” She pushes the tray at me, and I finally take one of the donuts. She smiles and turns away to press food on someone else.
“That was wise.”
A man stands beside me. He is old, his tattoos faded and wrinkled, his hair wispy, his Russian accent still thick as the snow my father talks about in “The Old Country.” He offers a broad smile of yellowed teeth. “Maria’s one goal in life is to make sure people eat.”
“It’s how she shows love,” I say.
“It’s how Nikita grew to look like that.” The old man tips his chin toward the portly, bearded man across the room talking with Dmitri.
I can’t help but giggle.
“You are Eva, are you not?”
“I am.”
I’d seen the old man holding court in the corner of the room, the only other person aside from Evgeny whom people visited instead of the other way around. But Evgeny, swept up in the festivities, has yet to introduce me.
“I am Ivan,” he says, holding out his hand. His hand feels frail when I take it, his skin soft and thin.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I reply.
“I have heard much about you, koshecka.”
“You have?”
“Indeed.” His watery gaze turns toward Evgeny, both hands resting on his cane. “The boy needs someone like you. He was alone.”
“Have you known Evgeny a long time?”
“I knew Ev when he was only a gleam in his father’s eye. I earned my stars under his grandfather and served as his father’s second-in-command, as Dmitri does now.”
“He’s not alone,” I point out. “He has Vasya and Dmitri. And you?”
Ivan chuckles. “Oh, he comes to me for advice and to convince himself his choices are correct. But he won’t let anyone in. Not Dmitri, not Vasya. Not to those parts of himself that need someone to see them. To care for them. He’s hidden those since he was a boy.”
“When his mother passed away?”
Ivan nods his assent. “Partly. But to be pakhan, you must bury those parts of you. It is a job I never envied him, or his father, or his grandfather before him. We all bury parts of ourselves in this world, but to be pakhan, you must bury them so deeply that sometimes they are lost, and you become a shell of a person. A haunt. A dark specter. It was that way with his grandfather, and I saw it happen myself. His father, God rest him, found someone to share those deepest, darkest parts of him, and to lose her shattered him.”
The old man still stares at Evgeny, and I see regret in his eyes.
It’s clear Ivan cares a great deal for him, and I suspect he still sees him as the boy who suffered so greatly.
I can also tell he still sees himself as Evgeny’s protector, and I wonder if it’s a job Evgeny’s father gave him, one he still keeps, even now, old and tired as he is.
Evgeny turns from the man he’s speaking to, and our eyes meet as if he can feel me watching him. He smiles at me from across the room, the light in his gaze warm and soft. But the shadow remains, and I still don’t know why.
I had woken up to darkness outside the windows, having slept most of the day after my release from the hospital. Evgeny had been gone from the bed, and when I’d searched for him, I’d found him in his office again.
Except instead of the immaculate room I’d left, I stumbled into one torn apart. Lamps were shattered, books yanked from the shelves, everything on the desk swept to the floor, and curtains wrenched down to lie in a shredded heap.
I found Evgeny with his shirt hanging open, sitting on the floor and leaning heavily against the side of the desk, head down, one hand gripping a nearly empty bottle of vodka.
Nothing I said persuaded him to tell me what the hell had happened while I slept. And I had no idea what could turn the buttoned-up, severe man I knew into someone drunk and falling apart, someone who had ripped the room to shreds as if he’d turned into a wild animal in the hours we’d been apart.
Only half alert, Evgeny pulled me into his lap, one hand tangled in my hair, the other curled tight, possessive and protective, around the swell where our babies slept.
He held me for what felt like hours, murmuring the words to old Russian lullabies, the vodka so strong on his breath I was afraid I’d get a contact buzz.
He held me until he started snoring softly, his arms going slack, his head heavy on my shoulder.
It was all I could do, with the help of the guard trailing me, to get Evgeny up, undressed, and into his bed, especially while twenty weeks pregnant and with only one good arm. Then I stayed with him all night until he woke up, retching with his hangover.
Evgeny could be terrifying. The dark in him, the beastly, monstrous parts I’d seen, were like something out of a nightmare. But seeing him so wholly undone had frightened me even more.
To make the situation even stranger, once his hangover had abated, he had Dmitri drive us to the L.A. courthouse, surrounded by several of his men I knew had to be covertly armed.
Evgeny asked me to marry him right then, and when I said yes, we signed the marriage license in the presence of his men and a judge. Lunch followed, then Evgeny took me to Harry Winston to choose ridiculously expensive wedding bands.
Trying to wrap my head around the fact that Evgeny and I were married was like trying to wrap my head around the size of the Pacific Ocean, it was impossible.
I was the wife of the CEO of a billion-dollar company.
More than that, I was the wife of the pakhan of the powerful Kucherov Bratva.
I was visibly his, with the ring on my finger and carrying his children, just as he was visibly mine.
Without a doubt, I knew who and what my husband was, and I knew I should have mixed feelings about the entire thing. Except I didn’t. I had not an ounce of regret or a single question. It felt right.
Evgeny has promised to tell me what happened that day in his office when the time is right. He’s protecting me, he says.
It still shakes me to think about the pain etched into his face, the look of desolation in his eyes.
But tonight, the specter is farther away, and he’s caught up in the music, the festivities, and in showing me off.
He isn’t shy about his affection for me either, as his arm is often around my waist, and his kisses are many as the whiskey and shots he takes push him toward tipsy.
Then the dancing begins, and he is surprisingly good when more instruments join the balalaika, even though one of my arms is still in a sling.
We’re swaying together across the floor when Evgeny bends, nuzzles my neck, and whispers “My wife” in my ear, the words he’s used all evening that still don’t feel real. His whisper slides across my skin with a hint of whiskey and desire and sends a shiver of delight through me.
The heat between us shimmers, growing through the night until we slip out, seeking what has become our bed.
We barely make it there, stumbling into the house with our mouths locked, my fingers scraping along his back before scrabbling at the buttons on his shirt.
His hands find the zipper of my green satin dress when we make it to our room, and he slides it down, then lowers me onto the bed, gentle and reverent, his eyes roving my body.
He takes in every small change and sinks beside me as he kisses his way from my mouth to my neck to my breasts, which have become fuller, and down to the swell of my stomach, which he nuzzles before resting his forehead against it.
My heart swells at the sight, and I think of Ivan’s last words before we slipped out of the party. Take care of him, koshecka.
I will, I promised. And I meant it. I want this man, who has opened up to me as he has no one else, to feel as safe in my arms as I feel in his. I want to be the place he comes home to, where he can be himself.
My hand maps the tattoos on his neck and along the taut, bulging muscles of his arms, then traces the dips and valleys of the defined muscles of his chest and abdomen.
I kiss the stars at each end of his collarbone, marking him forever as a member of the Vory v Zakone.
My kisses trail over his face to the scars that so heavily mar his skin, a permanent physical reminder of his trauma.
My lips follow them down his neck, his shoulder, his arm, down his side to his hip, and over his leg, the skin twisted and bumpy and rough.
I love it because it’s part of who he is, the man I love, and I won’t let him hide it from me.
“Lie on your back,” I purr.
Evgeny lies down, his lazy, leonine smile widening. “I won’t say no to that.”
His voice is a velvet rumble, his eyes dark with desire, and his breathing hitches as I climb on top.
He moans and shivers at my touch, gripping my good arm as his hips arch up toward me, and I sink onto his iron-stiff dick, taking in every inch of him. A shiver jerks through me at the feeling, the extra blood rushing to my pussy making every nerve ending a thousand times more sensitive.
“Oh God.” The words melt off my tongue, and my eyes slip closed to take in every single sensation.
“My thoughts exactly,” Evgeny grits out through clenched teeth. He’s already moving within me, gripping my ass as he rolls his hips in a way that makes me almost incoherent.
I move slowly, rocking to match his movements, taking in every sensation as my fingers rake across his skin, the tattoos, and the unyielding muscle beneath.
Our movements grow faster until we’re both panting, crying out. I don’t hold back, and the sound of my voice ringing through the room drives Evgeny onward.
I’m already close, my stomach tightening, sweat slicking my skin, my toes curling, when one of Evgeny’s hands finds my swollen clit and begins to stroke it.
It takes only seconds before I explode and arch back, screaming his name as my world whites out.
Still shaking, jerking, I ride Evgeny for all I’m worth until he bellows as he finishes, the sound ripped from his very core, his hands clutching my hips as he jerks inside me.
We don’t say anything as we clean ourselves off and seek each other under the covers, Evgeny’s arm winding around me and our children as we drift off to sleep.