Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Alfonzo
Maksim watched as I smoothed the wash cloth over his skin, avoiding his injury.
He’d been quiet since the fuck against the bathroom counter, but he was slowly coming out of that headspace I was so damn good at putting him in, his eyes becoming a little more alert with each passing minute.
I was desperate to find out more about what happened to him since all I had to go on was Anatoly Balakin, just from what he’d said earlier, but I wasn’t enough of a bastard to just rip him out of the headspace he’d fallen into.
He shifted on his feet, then hissed. I looked up at him to find his cheeks turning the slightest shade of pink. He shot me a small, sort of shy smile that had something in me melting. “Ass is sore,” he explained. He looked down at himself, blinking in surprise. “Oh… all the blood is gone.”
“Mhm.” It was the first thing I’d gotten off of him. Seeing it kept sending me into a murderous rage, and it just made my anger even worse when I kept remembering I had nothing to go off of so I could get fucking revenge. Whoever did this was going to eat my fucking fists.
Realizing my hand was clenched, I quickly loosened it, flexing my fingers before I gently turned him so I could wash the back of his thighs. “You in a good enough headspace to talk?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he quietly responded. “Um, Rurik woke me up at like three A.M. Told me to pack a bag and that he was getting me out of town. Someone found out you and I fucked, and they reported it back to Anatoly. Rurik overheard.”
Rurik Tarasov was Anatoly Balakin’s right hand man and a crazy mother fucker.
He was a psychopath at his core, and his morals were even looser than mine, and I barely had any to begin with.
Like me, anything on Rurik was swiped out of every system in the world.
He barely existed according to any database that got searched.
Which meant that he was Anatoly’s most dangerous weapon, just as I was Rico’s.
Smart men didn’t make their weapons well known.
“Rurik did this?” I asked. If he did, it’d be harder to take him out, but it could be done. A man like me stopped at absolutely nothing to get what they wanted.
Maksim sighed, the sound weighted. “I don’t know, but I don’t think so.
Rurik isn’t one to go out of his way to help someone just to put a bullet in them.
If he wanted me dead, he’d have shot me while I was still in bed, unaware of what was happening.
He’s cold like that.” Something akin to fear bloomed inside my chest, a feeling I was wholly unfamiliar with considering how little I ever felt it.
The thought that Maksim could have fucking died and I’d have never known until it was way too late left me feeling cold and horrifyingly empty.
“He gave me a burner phone. Dropped me at a motel away from the family and told me he had a flight to get me out of the country scheduled for this morning—or well, yesterday morning now. He told me he’d call me on the burner once he got everything sorted back home. Right as he left, I got shot.”
“So, if you don’t think it’s him, then someone followed the two of you.”
Maksim nodded. “That’s what I’m gathering, too.
Had to be a sniper. And the motel was practically in the middle of nowhere.
So, I’m guessing if they do know they only caught me in the shoulder, they left me there still alive because they thought I wouldn’t survive—not when I know Anatoly is after me and there wasn’t a hospital for quite a few miles. ”
“It’s definitely an inside job,” I growled.
Maksim nodded, his shoulders drooping even more.
Sighing, I stood and wrapped my arms around him from behind.
I fucking hated the Bratva with every fiber of my being—apart from him, that was—but I understood the meaning of family.
If I lost this one, I’d struggle coping with it.
Rico was all I’d known for years, and it was because of him that I was alive and standing here today.
He’d found me sleeping at a bus station while he’d been on his way here to Washington.
He bought me a sandwich from the vending machine and a bottle of water, then bought me a ticket to come with him.
We’d been glued together ever since. It was the only reason I’d gotten away with bringing my target into our home to be fixed rather than killed.
Our bond ran deeper than brotherhood. I’d helped him build his empire from the ground up.
“Since we know it’s an inside job, I’ll get with Niran and have him start digging.
We’ll find who did this to you, mouse, and when we do, I’ll rip them to fucking shreds for touching you, you got me?
” When he nodded, I pressed a kiss to his shoulder.
“Let’s get you rinsed and dried off. Then, I’m going to need that burner phone, if you still have it. ”
He nodded. “It’s in the bag I brought with me.” When I frowned, not remembering a bag, he sighed. “If I didn’t have it, I probably dropped it in your driveway. But I remember getting out of the taxi with it.”
“Alright, mouse. We’ll find it.” And when we did, I was calling Rurik and demanding a meeting. If he truly was on my man’s side, then he’d help me. And if not… well, I’d take him out, too.
Anyone standing in my way of revenge was a dead man walking.