Chapter 23
ROMAN
Amber was already up with the twins by the time I got out of bed. A deep sense of ease thrummed through me as I headed to the bathroom to shower. Maybe I overslept to feel this sluggish. A good sluggishness, but too boneless too.
It just showed how hard I’d worked to get Amber to come last night. An intense, brutal fuck.
I’d rendered her sleepy and lax, and I’d overexerted myself with a rabid need to rut her like I’d never needed to fill a woman before.
But she hadn’t gotten me up throughout the night, either. I was a light sleeper, or I had become a light sleeper after the twins came into my life. Not once was I woken up by the twins, and after the scare at the church, it was implied that they’d have restless sleep.
She must have hurried to tend to them so I would be able to rest. It was sweet. But that was just who she was. Too generous. Too eager to help, like she was a natural-born people pleaser who thrived on approval.
I never expected her to handle all of the nightly fusses or feedings on her own, though. We were a team, and I wanted the twins to always know that they could count on me to comfort them too. I hadn’t hired a nanny so I could be replaced.
As I walked to the bathroom, I heard her out in the living room. The sound of her making silly noises and the babies laughing reached me through the cracked-open door.
Smiling slightly that they could be in a good mood, I hoped that Emily and Henry would simply move past the incident of their almost being kidnapped. It would be a blessing if they didn’t remember the screams. The man trying to take them. The gunshots.
Even though I didn’t look forward to facing the inevitable questions that Amber would have for me—questions about what happened and would happen next—I wanted to be near her. To double-check that she was coping all right, aside from how she’d relaxed last night when she was wrapped around my dick.
As I washed up, just to wake myself up more, I thought back to all the questions and mysteries that didn’t add up.
Like how that man got in that room at the church despite security around the building. It was older, and less secure with the weird doors all over the place, but that was no excuse.
Sure, it was public knowledge that we’d been at the church. It wasn’t as though we walked around completely disguised. But the doors were locked. Guards were positioned around the building.
Maybe one of the guards positioned there was shot.
I cringed that I hadn’t found out whether someone had been killed.
That was my business, because I always cared about my brothers-in-arms and I never wanted to hear that we’d just lost one.
I didn’t ever want to hear the bad news that one of our own was dead.
But it happened. This world we lived in wasn’t all sunshine and joy—even though being here with the twins and Amber made me feel like it could be.
I heaved out a deep sigh as I turned off the water and stepped out.
Many discussions would greet me today. And that was all the more reason for me to get the day started—all so I could be back here again.
I dressed and exited my room, strolling out to see that Amber wasn’t alone.
Andre sat with Emily in his lap. She frowned at him and seemed skeptical.
Claire was next to Amber with Henry on the floor, and it seemed like they were celebrating how he was independently sitting and showing signs of wanting to crawl.
“Morning,” Mikhail said. He was there as well, leaning his hip against the counter.
“Morning.” I caught Amber’s gaze, always seeking her out in this innate need to mark where she was in my life. “Seems like I’m late to a party.”
“Look! Look, Roman,” Amber exclaimed, her voice nothing but enthusiastic as she pointed at Henry trying to crawl.
“Isn’t it too early for that?” I asked, crouching down low to see him.
He grinned, a big gummy smile with drool coming out of his mouth as he tried to rock on his hands and knees.
Before he could pull off any real move, he toppled over, smushing his face into the blanket on the carpet. He rolled with it, laughing.
“Okay, maybe he’s not quite there yet,” I said with a chuckle, patting his tummy as he rolled and kicked his legs in the air.
Amber smiled at me. “I’m excited and afraid for when they’ll be on the move.”
“Oh, there’s time yet,” Claire said as she urged Henry to roll toward her.
I stood and faced my uncle.
“We came to talk.” Uncle Mikhail stood, not waiting for any formalities or pleasantries. I took that as a bad sign while I followed him toward my office. Andre joined us, leaving Claire with Amber.
As soon as the door was shut, I sat at my desk and raised my brows. “What do you have?” They had to be here to discuss the incident at the church. The fact that any of that had happened at all was bad news.
“Sergei had a few men help identify him,” Andre said. “He was a contractor who helped several families get girls to sell.”
I gritted my teeth. We had never really focused on trafficking women for revenue.
Prostitution was another matter, but under Uncle Mikhail’s leadership, we didn’t sell women.
Since he met Claire, he scaled back even further with the prostitutes, going into other businesses, like with legal endeavors that I was in charge of.
Like the hotel. Maybe some would see that as his getting too soft, but he was still the powerful Pakhan. Still a legend in the city.
Now that I had a daughter of my own, though, I couldn’t stomach the idea of girls being taken or sold at all, either.
“He mentioned that he was last affiliated with the Popovs,” I said, recalling what my brother told me yesterday on the ride home from the church.
Andre nodded.
“So this could be a hit from Niko Popov,” I guessed wryly.
That stupid son of a bitch was always going to be a nuisance for us. Niko Popov would always want our success and try to attack in any way he could.
“But there’s another connection to the Popovs,” Andre said as he pulled out a printout from inside his jacket pocket.
I took the single sheet of paper and looked it over. It was another enlarged copy of Amber’s driver’s license. No. Wait. This was a state ID, since she was just a teenager on this version here. She was a minor when this was taken.
Another name was used, and I swore it sounded familiar.
“Rossen?” I asked, reading it again and glancing at both of them. “I’ve heard of that name before.”
“As in William Rossen the Second.” Uncle Mikhail frowned as he said it. “He’s a banker who hasn’t made it a secret that he’s good friends with Niko and other Popovs.”
Shit.
That was it.
I could place the name now.
We made it our business to always know who worked with which enemy, so we could avoid them or use them as a means to spy through.
“William Rossen,” I said, nodding slowly. If my faint memory served me well, he was a bloated, aging boomer who couldn’t hide the grays on his head or the gut above his belt.
“But what’s this got to do with Amber?” I dropped the paper. “And why does she have so many names?”
Andre produced another paper, this one an adoption agreement. I skimmed it and was glad he filled me in as I read.
“William Rossen adopted her. It seems that she didn’t legally take his name when she became his daughter, not at first?
But she tried to change her name and avoid his recently, per the ID she used to get hired through the agency that sent the nanny applicants.
That’s the most logical sequence we can figure out from this. ”
“She’s William Rossen’s daughter?” I scowled.
This was getting awfully fucking complicated fast. “I asked her about having an alternative ID and she wouldn’t really say.
I didn’t want to push her.” Deep down, I was desperate for her to want to come clean and tell me her secrets.
It was another form of winning her over, as in when she’d trust me with more than just her body.
“I got the impression, again, that she was scared.”
“Like she was running from something. Or someone,” Andre said, continuing for me. He nodded, familiar with how I’d mentioned my suspicions to them in the beginning.
“It’s getting a little twisted that she could be running from William Rossen when he’s got the Popovs in his pocket.” Uncle Mikhail stared me down. As if I were inviting more trouble from the Popovs.
I scoffed incredulously. “Running from William?” I shook my head. “She’s not a minor. She’s not a child. Even though he adopted her when she was a minor, she’s an adult and can’t be kept like an animal in a cage.”
Uncle Mikhail held up his hands. “There’s some kind of a connection going on here. A secret about her life, her past.”
I hung my head, unable to deny that. It had been gnawing at me for weeks how there always seemed to be something lurking beneath the surface with her.
Something she wouldn’t trust me with, and that hurt.
I wanted her to trust me fully. Because she fit, she belonged.
And I couldn’t invite a woman to matter that deeply and seriously in my life if I couldn’t trust her.
“And my priority is to keep my family safe…” he added gravely.
Andre stayed silent, watching me.
“I know that. But…” I stood and paced. “No. You can’t be implying that she is a risk to us.”
Once the words left my lips, I realized how stupid I sounded. How desperate I was that she not be viewed as an outsider or threat when she was very much inside my life and home. “She protected my son and daughter, was willing to take a bullet for them.”
It wasn’t only that. It was how much she mattered to me despite my best intentions to stay unattached. Amber couldn’t be seen as dispensable. She had to stay here, with me, with my children, because that was how far my obsession with her had gone.
Fuck it all.
Annoyed with myself, I tried to ignore this personal acknowledgment of how I’d failed.
How I’d screwed up in sleeping with my nanny and wanting her.
I should never have gone for her. Shouldn’t have seen her as someone within my reach at all, other than the young woman I’d hired to help me with the twins I hadn’t counted on ever having like this—without their mother.
“It’s my priority to keep the family safe,” Uncle Mikhail said sternly. “That includes you. And the twins. And Amber if you are going down the path of wanting her to be a permanent fixture in the twins’ lives.”
I exhaled a tense breath of relief. With the way he’d worded that, it didn’t sound like he was trying to make me get rid of her for a potential twist or complication from the Popov front.
“That’s why we should look into this,” Andre said, raising his brows. “We think it might help if we talk to her—not interrogate her, but to see what she has to say about her past she seems to be trying to hide from the world.”
No. Not like this. I rubbed that spot between my neck and shoulder, the usual tense part of my muscles knotting up more with this stress.
“I can have Sofia help me. She’ll be a good way to keep the questioning simple, you know?” he asked.
“No.” I shook my head. “I want her to come to me.” I hoped they wouldn’t push and make me explain.
It just mattered—a lot—to me that Amber willingly offered the information.
We could interrogate anyone. Torture and browbeat people for answers.
We could bribe for intel. We could spy and snoop and eavesdrop and tap her.
But none of those would indicate that missing piece I knew I needed to be able to know that she’d stick with me and want me for good.
Just like how Aunt Olga had never, ever wanted anything to do with Uncle Mikhail and had shaped my youth to assume women weren’t necessary or worthy for life, I had to know that Amber would choose me, choose to trust me with her truth.
My cousin and uncle watched me pace. The pressure of being under the spotlight gnawed at me until I snapped.
“What if we see if the Popovs are even after her?” I said. “If you’re thinking that they could want her and that they came to the church to get the twins to get to her, then we can see if they’d go for her again.”
Andre raised his brows. “You want to use her as bait?”
Uncle Mikhail shook his head. “No. That’s not right.”
“No. Not to use her as bait. Just another woman who looks like her. That red hair is unmissable. We can have Lorne and a couple of men go with a decoy in the park. Like where Amber thought men were watching her before.”
Uncle Mikhail nodded. “Have them push an empty stroller, too, make it look like the real thing.”
I exhaled another deep gust of air, glad he was on board with this.
“We can see if any Popovs take the bait and try to grab the woman who looks like her. We can stage it with backup nearby so Lorne could oversee a capture of the Popovs, too.” This trap would tell us how much Amber was sought after, if she really was.
“And if this trap doesn’t work?” Uncle Mikhail asked.
I’ll have to pray that she opens up to me and tells me that we should have no worries about her past and who she is.
“Then I’ll figure something else out,” I replied, feeling like I was running out of patience.