Claimed by the Pakhan (Ruthless Mafia Daddies #3)

1. Fia

FIA

“Somebody turn my alarm off,” I groan.

“She’s awake,” someone whispers.

I open my eyes, a horrible white light incinerating my vision.

Perhaps I’m dead, my soul wandering through the gates of Heaven. If so, the place is a lot more miserable than people make it out to be. My muscles ache, everything hurts.

Maybe I’m mistaking heaven for hell.

“Careful, Fia,” says the voice. “Stay perfectly still. You’ve been in a coma for two days.”

I barely hear them. “Someone turn that goddamn alarm off before I kill myself.”

“It’s the heart rate monitor.”

“The… What?”

The more I use my brain, the harder it is to focus. No matter how many times I blink, the white light above me makes it impossible to focus on the two faces above me.

“Do you know where you are, Fia?” asks one of them.

“It’s not heaven, that’s for damn sure.”

“No,” says the other. “You’re in hospital.” She pauses. “Do you know why you were brought here?”

“Probably my boss’s idea of torture,” I huff.

“Torture?” repeats one of the nurses, her tone apprehensive.

“There’s no rest for the wicked in financial forensics,” I drawl. “I was one day over the deadline, and this is how he punishes me. Fucking typical.”

I sense the two nurses look at each other, whispering something.

“What is it? Something on my face?” I go to touch it, but my hand is dragged down my something. I’m attached to another machine.

Scoffing, I try untethering myself from the wires, only I’m lacking the strength. My entire hand feels like jelly, fingers struggling for purchase, unable to grab anything. I look down, watching my hand from the third person, like it’s turned into a grabber machine, grabbing nothing but air.

“What the fuck…?”

“You were hit by a car two days ago, Miss Ranger. Do you remember that?”

“I wasn’t hit by anything.” My vision finally focuses, and I see both nurses looking down at me sympathetically.

“She only woke up a few minutes ago,” says one nurse to the other. “Give her time.”

“She should have a vague recollection,” says the other nurse. “Even a small fragment of what happened would be more promising.” She turns back to me, raising her voice a touch, like I’m deaf. “Are you sure you don’t remember?”

I wrack my brain, pushing through the fogginess to try and remember. Thinking hurts. It’s much easier to close my eyes and slip back into the dreamless sleep I’ve apparently been in for two days.

But then something catches my eyes, causing them to widen when I see how swollen my belly is.

Fear injects itself into my bloodstream, the beeping machine increasing in tempo as I sit up, gasping for air, watching the baby bump move with the rest of my body, since it’s very much attached.

“Is that…?” Horror takes away my ability to speak. “No, no, no…”

“You’re twenty weeks pregnant, Miss Ranger,” confirms the nurse. “Are you having trouble remembering that, too?”

“I’ll take it from here,” says a third voice.

A man in a white lab coat materializes, the white almost as bright as the lights in this room.

“Miss Ranger,” he begins, slipping a folder from the foot of my hospital bed, leafing through a few pages. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I want more drugs.”

The man plucks a pen from his breast pocket, jotting a few sentences down in the folder before slotting it back into its home. He turns to the heart rate monitor, analyzing statistics. I thrive when it comes to numbers but I’m struggling to understand these.

After checking the rest of my vitals, the doctor grabs my arm. “Sharp prick,” he says before jabbing my arm with a needle.

Good heavens. I wince, turning the other way as he takes some of my blood without my permission.

“I’ll send this over to pathology right away,” says the doctor, fastening the container, “so we can take a closer look at the placental condition.” He circles back around to the foot of my bed, offering me a smile.

“You are incredibly lucky, Miss. Ranger. The twins’ heartbeats are both healthy, and everything came back clear yesterday from the tests.

We’ll wait to receive the bloodwork and go from there.

If everything looks good, I’ll be able to discharge you. ”

“I’m sorry,” I say, blinking repeatedly, still focused on one word in particular. “Twins?”

“Yes, Fia. Congratulations.”

“But I’m not pregnant.”

The doctor’s smile fades, replaced by a neutral expression, which translates to concern in the healthcare world.

“You took quite a hit from that car,” says the doctor. “You have some retrograde amnesia, but your memory should start to return over the next few days and weeks. Patience is virtue.”

“But I haven’t had sex.”

The doctor looks pointedly at my swollen belly.

My mouth keeps moving. “The last time I had sex was years ago, back in my final year of college. Believe me, work consumes all aspects of my life. Sex is for people who have too much time on their hands.”

“Well, it looks like you made time,” says the doctor. “Is there a next of kin we can call for you? We’ve been struggling to find an emergency contact on the system.”

“My parents are useless in emergencies.”

“What about a friend?”

“Chloe.”

“Do you live with this person? Can she look after you?”

Clouds drift through my mind again, sending everything hazy. I lose myself in the fog, forgetting what I was searching for.

“Fia?”

I blink a few times. “I’m not sure.”

“What’s your home address?”

More fog. “I’m… not sure.”

The door creaks open, another person stepping in.

I roll my eyes. Some peace and quiet might help me recover my memories. Being hounded is giving me a nasty headache as I’m forced to keep my eyes open and concentrate on what is being said.

But suddenly, my eyes fly open on their own accord. I lock eyes with a dark brown, almost black pair of eyes and forget about my problems.

The man enters my hospital room, the black suit and tie suggesting he’s walked straight out of an important business meeting to visit me.

Who the hell is this?

“Sir,” begins the doctor. “Fia isn’t taking visitors at the moment.”

“I’m sure she can make an exception for her husband.” The handsome man peers over the doctor’s shoulder, his gaze stronger than any painkiller. “Isn’t that right, Fia?”

I stare at this impossible man before me, trying to work out if I’m hallucinating. The doctor is acknowledging his presence, which tells me this is real. Men this handsome are only supposed to exist in movies and books, but they apparently barge into hospital rooms without consent, too.

“Husband?” I try the word out loud.

The doctor flicks his gaze between us both.

“I signed in at reception,” says the man. He stands an entire foot taller than the doctor, his shoulders wide enough to cross over into the next state.

“You didn’t sign in at reception,” says the doctor. “Visiting hours aren’t for another?—”

“I’m here to see my wife,” says the man again, his voice scratching against the deepest part of his throat. He steps closer to the doctor, casting shadows over the man.

I watch the man, the heart rate monitor beeping frequently as I find the will to live. I certainly won’t find it looking at this man’s face, my body disconnecting from my head even more than before as I allow a stranger to turn me on.

This is so unlike me, wet between my legs from staring at someone I don’t even know. Personality is everything, and this guy appears to have a very bad one as he shoves the doctor straight into the wall, threatening him with a fist.

“I will speak to my wife.”

I gasp, the monitor beeping rapidly, matching my erratic heart rate as my so-called husband threatens the doctor.

“Stop!” I screech, clenching my thighs together, really feeling the disconnect between my mind and body. Ten minutes ago, I was waking up from a coma. Now I’m wanting this perfect stranger to fuck me.

My memory needs to return, and fast. I’ll die if the rational side of my brain doesn’t return soon.

The doctor slips something from the lab coat, a device of some kind that must connect to security.

“Don’t,” I find myself blurting out. “He’s fine. My husband is upset, that’s all. Let me speak to him for ten minutes. He might help jog my memory.”

The handsome stranger throws the doctor off, flashing me a look.

“Okay,” says the doctor. “Ten minutes. If it’s any longer, I’ll call security.” He shoots the man one last look and shuts the door on the way out, leaving me alone with someone I know for a fact I wouldn’t choose to marry.

His attitude sucks.

The man steps toward the bed, muscles flexing in his jaw. He sighs, running a hand through his gray streaked hair, tipped black at the ends. He could get away with murder with hair like that. And with that body? Nobody in this city stands a chance.

The man wipes a hand across his face, exhaling a frustrated sigh. He looks down at me, his eyes somber, like he’s mourning me.

“You don’t remember me,” he mutters to himself, swiping his hand across his mouth. “Blyat.” After drowning in misery for another beat, he closes in, caging me between him and the bed. “You have to remember me, Fia.”

“Take your frustration out on the driver who hit me,” I say, leaning back into the bed, afraid of what I might do if he gets any closer.

His hot breath bristles my neck and his eyes dart all over my face, his gaze powerful enough to leave marks.

“I don’t understand,” he mutters to himself again, taking a step back to stare at my belly. A muscle ticks in his jaw again. And then he’s inviting himself to touch my stomach.

“Hey! Hands off!” I swat him off, crawling up the bed as far as these wires let me. “You don’t get to fucking touch me. Stand over there and help me fill in the gaps.”

“I’m your husband, Fia.”

“Yeah, like you keep saying.” I turn away from the man, searching for the will to live on the floor since I’m having no luck with the man.

He has to be lying. I would remember seeing a face like his.

People tend to look the same in Seattle, blending into the bleak atmosphere, grayer than the color gray.

Telling two people apart on the street is sometimes more of a challenge than the records I deal with at work, and hell, it takes a genius to crack forensic finance.

If I’m still familiar with work and my irritating boss, how the fuck can I forget my husband?

“Who are you?” I drag my eyes up and down his body. I deal with ultra wealthy clients at work. This guy fits into the category with the William Westmancott suit. His sleeves are clipped back with cufflinks that have to be made from solid gold.

I narrow my eyes. Something tells me his fist is the most expensive thing about him, the eyes second. One look into those things could snap a person in half, and if all else fails, he has the fist as a backup.

He still looks upset, which must be a rare look for him. “I’m Emil Volkov.”

“What’s that? Russian?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly the accent makes sense.

My heart still beats rhythmically. “I wouldn’t marry you.”

Emil clenches his jaw and breaks eye contact, sticking his hands into his pockets and walking around the room.

His polished shoes clack against the hardware floor, accompanying the heart rate monitor.

“You did more than marry me,” says Emil, glancing at my belly.

“What will you say next? How you wouldn’t have slept with me? ”

He comes to a halt at the other side of the room, his eyes cutting across at me.

The latter is more debatable, but it’s besides the fucking point.

“You’re not the kind of man I want to marry.”

Emil keeps looking at me, his gaze hardening. “Well, you did. Look down at your hand if you’re struggling to remember. That might jog your memory.”

I gasp when I see the diamond ring on my finger.

It catches the light as I turn it in assessment, staring hard at the jewel, needing the fog to clear in my head so I can understand why I would marry a man who thinks it’s okay to threaten a doctor in his own hospital.

People who play by their own rules hurt others.

And I’m pretty sure Emil represents everything that is wrong with this world.

But nobody else is breaking rules to come and pay me a visit. This man must really care, which means something about this situation is seriously off…