Chapter 29 Alik #2
Sera glares. “Are you teasing me right now?”
I hold out my palms, a gesture of surrender. “I’m not, I swear. I just don’t know what you want me to say.”
“The truth, Alik. I want you to tell me the truth.” Sera releases a deep sigh, sagging where she stands. “I’m not trying to provoke a fight. I just want us to be honest with each other. With ourselves, about what we’re doing here.”
I step forward, holding my breath until Sera lets me take hold of her hand. The contact loosens the tension in my spine. “We’ve talked about this already. We’re going after Renzo and the Albanian. We’re getting our revenge. We’re going to end this, once and for all.”
Sera’s brow is creased. “And after that?”
My mouth is uncomfortably dry. “The truth?”
She nods.
“I need to go back to Russia and to my family.”
“Immediately?”
“That’s always been my plan. I’ve been gone a long time, and my father is losing his patience. But...” I brush hair off her face, savor the feel of her skin beneath my fingertips. “I’m not in a rush to return anymore.”
Her furrow gets deeper. “But you still have to go.”
“I do. Yes. My life is there. My bratva is there. My duty is there.”
Sera nods, dropping her eyes to the floor.
Severing me off from whatever she’s thinking.
“Then this, us, whatever we are—it’s temporary.
” It sounds more statement than question.
“We’re attracted to each other and we both want vengeance.
Sex and blood. Once the blood part is taken care of, we say goodbye to the sex and each other. ”
“No.” I capture Sera’s head between my hands, tip her face to mine. “I didn’t say anything about goodbye.”
“You didn’t say anything about staying together, either.
” Sera grips my wrists. Her hold is gentle.
Her skin too cold. “Look, I don’t know what I want either.
I’ve been living by other people’s terms for as long as I can remember.
I’ve had to spend so much time surviving I haven’t had a chance to think about living.
I haven’t been to college. I’ve never had a real job.
I don’t know how to rent an apartment or buy a car.
I’ve been treated like someone else’s problem since the day I was born.
I haven’t had the chance to figure out who I am or what I want to become.
Despite all the money my family has, that’s a luxury I’ve never been allowed.
But I want it. I want a chance to be me, whoever that turns out to be”
“And you don’t think you can do with me?”
“What, in Russia?” Sera’s surprise shifts to discomfort. “In your bratva? So, I get to trade one mafia for another?”
I tangle my fingers in her hair, anchoring her to me. Just talking about letting her go is making me hold on for dear life. “The difference, moya voitelnitsa, is that this bratva is mine. You’ll be its queen. You’ll be revered, worshiped. Feared, even. Never locked away or abused or discarded.”
“But it will still be a life lived on your terms, not mine. You can’t tell me your family doesn’t have rules you are all forced to live by.
Loyalties to pledge and enemies to crush.
Wars to wage and win. I know what this life is, Alik.
I know all the accepted boundaries we mistake for honored traditions when they are really just restrictions meant to keep us in line. ”
Sera pauses, catches a breath. She traces my face with her gaze, the tension around her eyes and mouth fading. My scar, my cheeks, my jaw, my lips. By the time she finds my eyes, hers are ablaze with heat and desire and something even stronger that threatens to buckle my knees.
“I want you, Alik,” she says, voice husky.
“I want to be yours as much as I want you to be mine. I feel safe with you, alive with you. More myself with you than anyone I’ve known.
Even when you drive me absolutely crazy and I think I hate you, I know deep down it’s the opposite.
Maybe that should worry me, I don’t know.
But somehow being with you feels right. I’ve spent so much time surviving on my own that I never realized how lonely I was.
Not until I met you and the hollow ache in my chest vanished. ”
She has me spellbound, my brain useless and voice gone.
I want to tell her that I’m not the kind of man who deserves the things she’s saying.
That I’m not worthy of the trust she’s put in me.
I’ve failed in the past. There’s no way I can guarantee I won’t fail again.
But, I want her too much to warn her away.
I’m so caught up holding back the things I should say that I forget Sera is strong enough to say the things I’m not.
“As much as I love how I feel when I’m with you, I don’t want to trade one controlling family for another. I can’t live like that again, Alik. I just can’t.”
She breaks away from me and it takes everything I have not to haul her back. “I’ll never cage you.” There’s an unfamiliar burn at the back of my throat. A fear I’m not sure I can face, let alone conquer.
“You already have. At your apartment and again, here.”
“Only to keep you safe,” I counter, hating that she’s right.
“Safety isn’t something you can promise, Alik. Renzo just proved that to us. Besides, I don’t want a guardian, someone always two steps in front of me. I want a partner, someone to walk with, hand-in-hand. Someone to share things with, to be myself with.”
With every word, Sera is reshaping my vision of the future. My belief in what’s possible. Making me want something I never thought I could have. “I want that too. With you.”
Sera smiles at me and for a heartbeat I think we might be okay. Until she says, “Even if I did go to Russia with you, I don’t think your family would welcome me when they learn the truth.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your sister,” she says, drifting away and dropping onto a nearby sofa. “I can’t stop thinking about something Renzo said. I’m pretty sure my parents are the ones who killed Rina.”