24. Titus
TITUS
Cyrus managed to get off the property before any of my men could catch him, but he won’t last long if I have anything to say about it. I’ve got every available man searching the city for him.
I don’t know how he found out about Luka, and right now, I don’t give a fuck. I want his head. It’s all I can do not to go out searching for him myself.
I can’t leave Sofia alone. He tried to kidnap her tonight. Who’s to say he won’t try again if given the opportunity?
It’s been hours and I’ve been waiting by the phone for any updates. I can’t believe that Ignat is dead. I won’t believe it, in fact. Ignat isn’t as good of a fighter as Cyril and he’s not the strategist that Cyrus is, but he’s resourceful. If there were a way for him to survive, he would find it.
At least I hope he found it.
The sound of banging through the halls is grating on my nerves, but I’m dealing with it, gritting my teeth with every bang of the hammers being used to seal up the shattered door.
The sixes I called in to fix the door came about an hour ago and have been working to board up the glass doors ever since.
They’ve been careful to keep their questions and conversations to a minimum.
I’ve got snipers on my roof, men patrolling the grounds and the gates. If either brother dares to set foot on my property, they’ll be blown to bits before their feet fully settle on the grass.
I’m in the living room watching the patrols through the window in silence. I want to be the one out there. I feel like I need to be…
Sofia is in her room, and I was tempted to lock her door, if for no other reason than to keep her safe from another attack. I didn’t even know she’d gone out to the pool. If she didn’t know how to defend herself, she’d no doubt be gone too.
It’s crystal clear to me now that she means more than I ever intended. I have to address it when this is all done. The only kind thing for me to do is to let her go, leave this blood vendetta unfinished for the sake of her life.
When I close my eyes, my mind wanders to her. Maybe as an escape from everything in front of me. I don’t know. What I do know is that if I let it go on for much longer…
I don’t know what comes next. It’s uncharted territory with her. I’m not even sure if we could ever really have a ‘normal’ relationship.
Suddenly, her scent surrounds me. Sweet roses and honey.
“Titus?” she says softly. She’s near me, maybe a step behind me. I can feel the warmth of her body.
“Yes?”
She hesitates, then, “It’s getting late. You should get some sleep.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She doesn’t say anything and yet it sounds like she’s speaking volumes. I want to turn to her, sweep her up in my arms, carry her to my bedroom and forget. Just forget for a while.
But, then what? What comes next for us?
“I’m sorry,” she says softly.
I turn to look at her. She’s standing behind me, her head down and her hands clasped in front of her. “What could you possibly be sorry for?”
“I should have stayed inside,” she said. “Your door—”
“Never mind that,” I say. “It can be replaced. You can’t.”
She looks up at me with those eyes that shine like sapphires and I almost melt. I turn away. “Go on to bed. I’ll be fine.”
She hesitates a little longer, then I hear her bare feet padding away from me and up the stairs. It’s better this way. I know it is. In the end, it’ll be better if I’m alone. When I talk to her after this is done and over with, she’ll understand that.
I turn from the window long enough to consider making myself a drink when headlights flash at me from down the road. I stiffen as the lights get brighter, flashing on and off in a frantic kind of panic. As the car gets closer, something clicks in my mind. The lights are giving an SOS signal.
I pull my gun out of my holster and run out of the room and then out the front door. The car speeds up the drive and toward my front door, and my men all start running toward the drive, their guns drawn. They form a human barrier, blocking the path about a half-mile away.
I stand out on the steps and yell out, “Hold your fire!” I hold my fist up as well for anyone who didn’t just hear me.
I see guns lower as the car approaches and stops at the barrier of my soldiers.
The car door opens and nothing happens for a second, then I see someone tumbling out.
The closest of my men rush over to the body, then look up at me. I hear one of them say, “It’s Ignat!”
My feet move almost independently and I make it down two steps before I stop myself. “Bring him!” I shout.
He’s pulled to his feet, one arm over the shoulders of one of my men, and slowly, he’s walked the rest of the way up the drive. I watch and wait as the light of the moon and from my door and fog lights above me highlight Ignat’s beaten and battered body.
He lifts his head as soon as he’s close enough, but both his eyes have been swollen shit, his mouth is bloodied, and blood drips down his face from his hairline. His shirt has been ripped to shreds, showing streaks of oozing wounds through the fabric.
When he gets to the bottom of the stairs, I tell them to take him inside. As he passes me, he looks at me and says, “I tried… Titus… to protect him…”
I put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Don’t speak. We can talk when you’re better.” I motion to my men to take him inside, then I pull out my phone to call the medic.
Doc is here within the hour. I put Ignat in one of the half furnished spare rooms where he is stitched and bandaged up. I wait outside the door, hoping that his injuries aren’t so severe that he can’t be helped. Doc medic comes out of that room with the grimmest expression I’ve ever seen.
“He’ll be all right,” he says, “but he’s been fucked up pretty good. Honestly, he looks worse than he actually is. Outside of his face being beat all to hell, he’s got a couple of broken ribs and some closed fractures along his knuckles. Lots of lacerations. He should heal with time.”
Time. That’s something that we have very little of. I wonder how long it will be before Cyrus decides to try again. I wonder if he’ll succeed this time.
Now, I’m sitting in my study, drinking and sitting on the couch as the fire I built in the fireplace crackles softly. The temperature dropped from summer to winter in the early morning hours and all I can feel is cold.
The alcohol doesn’t seem to be doing much to warm me as much as the fire. It sits in my hand on the couch as I stare off into it.
Despite my best efforts, my son was taken. I wonder if I had just kept him here like Sofia suggested…
I don’t know. No one was supposed to know where Ignat was and yet, they still found him. No one was supposed to even know about Luka, but they found out about him all the same. It’s making me doubt myself for the first time, possibly, in my life.
I hear the door slide open slowly and I pick up the scent of roses and jasmine.
“Sofia, leave me alone.”
She doesn’t say anything at first, but I hear the door close. The room still smells of her and I can hear her soft breath.
“I heard Ignat’s okay,” she says.
“He’s alive. That’s very different from ‘okay’.”
Her feet pad around the couch and she stands in front of me. Her hair is loose around her shoulders and she’s in nothing but a night shirt and panties. I look up at her, the amber light behind her giving her body a strange halo.
“I’m not in the mood to spar with you tonight, Princess,” I tell her. “Please leave me alone.”
She doesn’t move. She just stands there, staring at me.
“What?”
She sighs, then kneels down in front of me. “You’re going to find him,” she says softly.
“Shouldn’t have lost him in the first place. I should have killed Cyrus when I had the chance.”
“You don’t know that he didn’t have someone ready to kill Luka if something happened to him,” she says. “It was smart of you to keep him alive.”
She’s right and I know that she is. It doesn’t make this better. It doesn’t make this feeling go away.
“Still,” I say. “I failed as Pakhan. If I survive this shit, I’ll be lucky if anyone decides to keep following me. Keeping a Bratva together after a rebellion is a challenge I didn’t think I’d ever have to face.”
She tilts her head. “Self-pity is a terrible look on you, you know.”
In spite of my emotions, I chuckle. “This is not self-pity. This is just reality.”
She nods slowly. “Well, I’m not going anywhere, so you can stop telling me to leave. But since I’m going to be here anyway…”
She lifts up a little and pulls the hem of her nightshirt out from under her bottom and then pulls it up and completely off her body, leaving her topless. The light from the fire behind her throws shadows on her perfect tits, enhancing the rose color of her hardened nipples.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I say, even as my cock starts to press against my zipper.
She doesn’t speak. She gets on her hands and knees and crawls to me. Then she kneels right at my knees and places her hands on them. “It’s been a very, very long day,” she says softly. “May I offer you some relief, Daddy?”
There’s something in how she calls me Daddy or even when she says my name that triggers something in my body. My dick is instantly hard and suddenly, my mind fills with images of fucking her in a million different ways.
But this distraction… I can’t handle this right now. “Sofia—”
“We haven’t fucked in a while,” she says as she pushes my knees apart and slides her body between them.
She undoes the buttons of my shirt, sliding it off my shoulders.
She leans in and kisses my chest, pressing warm, soft lips against my skin and trading that with the warm wetness of her tongue as her hands go to my belt buckle and she starts to undo it.
“Your thinking is clouded,” she murmurs. “Will you let me give you something to relieve the pressure?”
She drags a finger down my zipper and looks up at me, waiting for my response. I’m stuck between what my body wants and what my mind tells me is the better option.