Chapter 31 Ivan
IVAN
I gently stroke her hair as she drops her head to my shoulder in exhaustion. Her panic has run its course, and she’s nothing but a treasure of warm, soft woman in my arms, fragile and precious, fitting so perfectly, you’d think I’d been born to cradle her like this.
Nothing in all the footage I watched of her with the girls prepared me for this.
Gabriella might be calming down, collapsed against me and falling asleep judging by her rhythmic breathing and the way her hand slipped from my shirt, but I have rage piling up in me, brick by fucking brick for what she’s endured and witnessed, which by the rough brushstrokes she’s painted was barbaric, depraved—inhumane.
She might have grown up in an isolated religious environment, but on the way to the convent, she’s been exposed to the worst. My constant nightmare. My biggest dread. My core fear.
She hasn’t told me everything, but I won’t push her tonight. I’m amazed she even shared this much with me. All I can do is hold her, make her understand and feel she’s safe here, while I stew in my own murderous wrath. I could kill so many people right now. A pity half of them are already dead.
First on the list is fucking Don Scalera for selling his only daughter for whatever fucked-up reason he had.
Second, Randazzo for buying her, trafficking her through some fucked-up Mafia gang, and then having the audacity to fucking die before I could get my hands on him.
Then this Antonio Mancuso pitstop fucker would choke on his own dick if only he was alive for me to sever and serve it to him.
All five of her brothers for stepping into my trap blindly, as if they never saw this day coming.
Myself, for making another fucked-up Mafia deal where she’s just a pawn. The Mafia is bad, but the Bratva isn’t any better.
Inwardly, I quiver because my girls could be dealt the same hand if I don’t put my house in order. If I don’t have sons who will see to it that they don’t come to harm. Who will avenge them if they do. I might not live long enough to even see them married, safely, with men I approve of.
What the fuck does that even mean? Men I approve of? Am I on that list? This is the type of shit that’s been giving me sleepless nights.
And then there’s Milana, hellbent on going back to Russia, the last place she can go right now.
I drop my head back, seething at this world we were born into.
I might be Bratva, and Gabriella might have been born in the Mafia, but at our core, we are the same, in the top echelons of two powerful organized crime rings, where the only way out is death.
And until death takes us, we will fight with our very last breath to keep our positions because that’s the only way to protect those we love.
She stirs against me, her hand brushing over my chest, over my clavicle, shoulder, and down my arm to come to rest on my biceps.
Her caress is slow and soothing, as if she can sense my rage tensing me up and she’s trying to calm me as I calmed her earlier.
It only makes me want to hold her closer, because I’ve never been soothed like this.
I should get her to bed, but not here, not in her room.
In my room, behind the security gate, where she can be with the girls and sleep close to me.
In my bed, for once, next to me—even better, in my arms. I know she’s been disobeying me, sleeping on the sofa in my room and not in my bed as I told her to do.
“Ivan,” she says softly, startling me.
She’s been quiet for so long, I thought she’d drifted off.
But finally hearing my name from her lips— “Yes, moya ptichka?”
“Where’s your dad?”
Her question comes from left field, and I sink deeper into the chair. I can’t hide this from her forever. Not when she’s living in the house with him, even if she doesn’t know it yet. When we get married, she’ll have to know.
“Why’re you asking?”
“The girls said he’s sick and it makes you sad…so I’ve been wondering. That’s all.”
“Milana hasn’t told you anything?”
Her hand shifts to my chest, covering the eye tattooed right over my heart. Where it could watch her expression and detect lies…where it will meet a bullet, fearless.
“We didn’t speak about him.”
“Who did you speak about?” I ask, worrying just how much Milana would give away in a drunken rage. But my sister has been a closed book for years now, and there’s no chance she’d open up to a stranger just because she’s a woman.
“The girls. Their births. Your wife and her…problems. And that she was using while she was pregnant.”
I huff out a slow sigh. Problems? Talk about a euphemism. Darya was pure poison until I forced her to sip from her own cup. At least now, I won’t have to ever fill Gabriella in.
“The girls are fine, mostly. It was really difficult when they were born.” I’m not in the mood to talk about Darya or how Irisha and Katya suffered. How I locked Darya up in an attempt to get her clean, but even then, she had her goons in place, slipping drugs to her.
I’m still digesting what Gabriella lived through, shell-shocked, trying to keep a cap on the anger that’s simmering in me. She’s been carrying this trauma with her for so long, it’s part of her background noise, sometimes turning up so loud, she can no longer ignore it.
“Anything else you want to know?” I murmur, keeping the conversation open, but really wanting to close it off.
“Who’s Dimitri?”
My anger seeps from me, leaving me icy cold inside. “Dimitri? Who talked about Dimitri?”
Yuri has been sworn to silence, just as everyone else has. But Katya and Irisha miss Dimitri, and they are too young to swear to silence—too innocent. The reason why I have two bullets that ripped through my chest. And Milana…whatever Gabriella and Milana spoke about, Dimitri might have come up.
“The girls mentioned him? That he’s gone? And that you’re sad that he’s gone?”
For a long while, I can’t speak, digesting her words and the girls’ observations that I’m sad.
Papa.
Dimitri.
Sad? I’m mauled and torn apart. Scarred for life.
“Ivan?” she whispers as she reaches up to cup my cheek, making me look at her. “What happened?”
Here, like this, so close, with her pressed to my heart, I bet she can sense the turmoil rampaging through me.
“Dimitri…Dimitri is my best friend.” Was my best friend, but she doesn’t need to know more.
“You know him from school?”
Such a sweet observation. “From school in Russia, yes, a bit, when I went there. But he came here and worked with our Pakhan for a long time.”
“You were close? No wonder the girls miss him. The way Irisha said his name was so cute, spelling it out for Katya.” She taps her nose. “Di-mi-tri.”
Fuck. It’s enough to break me. A simple gesture triggering a landslide of memories of a man I called my brother. Worst of all is he was always so good with Irisha and Katya, loved them as if they were his own kids.
“Yeah, he used to love doing that, booping their noses,” I say on a hard swallow.
“Is he coming back?”
“No.”
“He went back to Russia?” she asks softly, her fingers now toying with one of my shirt buttons.
I shake my head, but don’t answer as I place my hand over hers to still her fiddling.
She’s playing with fire and probably doesn’t know it.
I’m not burning her in this moment when she’s still vulnerable and trusting.
At this rate…fuck, who knows how she feels about intimacy—about sex—with what she’s witnessed.
“Where’s he now?”
So many questions. Like a child, almost, and not filling in the blanks left by my silence. She really is naive in many things, or maybe she just feels safe enough to really ask and not come to conclusions.
“Tell you what, moya ptichka,” I say, deflecting. “I’ll take you to meet my Papa soon. We’ll start there.”