25. Viktor
VIKTOR
Nikolai came down the stairs at the mansion, shaking his head and laughing lightly.
Alexei and I had just arrived from yet another bust. We’d been tracking the Konstanov activity for a while now, since they weren’t on overly friendly terms with us.
But so far, we weren’t able to pin any direct activity between them and the contractor who could’ve been there the night Adrik and Wren were almost shot.
“What?” Adrik asked from where we were meeting down in the study for a change. It linked to the larger open space of the morning room and with the doors open, we saw the staircase as he descended it.
“They are still at it up there, like a freaking women’s club.” He smirked as he sat. He’d gone up there to get a file from Elena, and it sounded like Wren and Elena were still hard at work, and Carina and Mila were visiting.
I smiled, pleased and unafraid to let them know it.
The partnership that formed since I captured Wren was good for all of us.
Adrik was impressed with how she’d pulled off sneaking up on Brayden.
The others acknowledged her willingness to act as a double agent for us.
Elena had already made it clear that she was starting to see Wren as her new BFF, or maybe her first BFF since she’d been sheltered for most of her life.
Carina and Mila were opening up to her too.
If anyone asked me to compare my life now, with Wren in it, versus whatever it was before I’d stalked her down in that alley, I would be able to claim it was a night and day difference.
I had her in my life, in my home, in my bed, and I’d never been happier.
I saw her making an impact on our businesses, too.
Before, I’d been… just one more brother, lost and not really stuck on anything other than protecting them. The general worry about Gregori was there, but I had felt like a bystander to it all. Now with Wren’s information, I was that much more involved.
“Shit.” Alexei stood and grimaced. “Lev’s here with news about how it went spying on the Konstanovs at that property we’ve been talking about.”
Adrik and Nikolai stood too, clearly eager to discuss the matter with Lev.
“Sounds like it ended in a shootout,” Adrik said, looking down at his phone, which Alexei had probably been checking too.
“Anyone hurt?” I asked as they moved out of the room, likely going to the garages to check on Lev as he returned. I didn’t want to ask too casually if we’d lost anyone.
“Not enough to need to go to the hospital,” Alexei said over his shoulder.
Maksim stayed with me, sitting on the chair he’d been in for what seemed like hours. He was awake, but as he sighed heavily, he looked like he wished he weren’t.
“Rough going so far?”
He smiled sleepily. “Yeah, but it’s worth it. She’s… she’s the most important thing in my life.”
“Carina? Or Isabel?”
“Yes.” He sat up, regarding me after a yawn. “Carina, though. She is it. Seeing her give me a daughter…” Another sigh left him.
I patted his back. “I’m happy for you.”
He raised his brows at me. “It doesn’t seem like it’ll be long before you find out what it’s like.”
I huffed. “I think I already have.”
His eyes popped open. “You already knocked her up?”
“No!” Then I sobered and shrugged. “I mean, I don’t think so.”
It wasn’t like we were using protection. The one time I suggested a condom as a joke, Wren protested and said she never wanted to have the second-best thing to feeling me bare in her.
“Just a matter of time, then, huh?”
I shrugged again. “I think I already know what you mean otherwise, though. About realizing how different your life is. Wren has become essential to me.” I rubbed my chin, musing over how strange it felt to admit that out loud and not just think it.
None of us were really the kind to talk about feelings much.
Especially not Alexei, but Maksim seemed to be in a chatty mood and I didn’t mind it.
He didn’t act like a typical big brother like Adrik did.
Maksim could be more relatable sometimes.
“I can’t imagine not having her in my life.” I raised my brows. “Know what I mean? It’s like you think back to what life was like before and it’s just empty.”
He nodded.
“It startles me. How powerful the sentiment can be.”
“It sobers you, too,” he replied. “Because once you realize how much they matter, you have to embrace the fragility of life, the responsibility of never losing them in any way.”
I obsessed over that constantly. But I wondered if I was so sensitive about losing Wren because she’d come to us as an enemy, as an outsider. She had come to be here at all because I kidnapped her and forced her to be here.
I hadn’t been all that good at enforcing that, though.
It seemed like we’d clicked and connected almost instantly once I realized she wasn’t lying or bluffing about not having answers for us about that fateful night or about any bribes. Since then, she’d gone above and beyond to help us seek those answers.
“If I can give you a word of advice, though…”
I raised my brows at him. “What’s that?”
“Don’t take it for granted.”
I scoffed. “Don’t take Wren for granted? Yeah, that’s not happening.”
“Don’t take the gift of having her in your life in the context that she came to be here.”
Now he had my attention.
“I’m speaking from experience,” he said, almost like he needed to backtrack and give me a disclaimer. “I’ve gone through something similar. Like when I was arranged to marry Carina.”
“I know. But even that’s different. You and Arturo had an arrangement.” While it was an outdated concept, it still applied. As a matter of fact, I could’ve sworn that the old Pakhan of the Konstanov Family had wanted to arrange one of their daughters to us.
“Ha. At this rate, none of us will be available for an arranged marriage anymore.”
He nodded, smiling wryly.
Within one and a half years, in the recent past, three of us were taken. I was bound and determined to be the fourth.
“Nah.” He shook his head. “Alexei will never marry.”
“Nor would Nikolai,” I added.
“He’ll marry if he has too,” Maksim said. “But I doubt he’ll settle down with just one woman, married or not.” He rolled his eyes.
“I struggled with my marriage to Carina in the beginning because it was arranged. Forced. She was forced to be my wife and I struggled with letting myself think that she wanted to be married to me. That we could find love past the expectation to be together as an arranged couple.”
“I can see how that would’ve been a challenge.” He hadn’t really let any of us see that. He and Carina had gotten along well as far as I could tell. Some distrust was there in the beginning, but they worked it out.
“I think we all witnessed it with Lev and Mila too.”
“Well…” I tilted my head side to side. “That was obviously different. He bought her when she was still a contracted runner for the Cartels.”
“Yes,” he agreed and paused to yawn again. “But I saw how he struggled with that too. That she was only with him because she had to be. Not because she wanted to.”
I shook my head. “I know you can make a parallel to me and Wren, but it’s not like that.”
He sat back and laughed. “You stupid, smartass, whimsical son of a bitch. You kidnapped her. You snatched her right out of an alley after she was doing a stakeout. How is it not like that?”
“It isn’t.” I grinned at his disbelief. “Yes, we started out kind of rocky. I won’t deny that. But it didn’t take me long to see she wasn’t only some woman I captured.”
“Yeah. You realized she was a federal agent and put her to work for us.” He deadpanned. “That’s a hell of a love language you’ve got.”
“Love language?” I rolled my eyes.
“You know what I mean. You took her and forced her to be here. Then you forced her to work for us.” He held up his hands.
“I’m not saying that anything you did was wrong.
But in hindsight, it’s going to complicate how fast you might get in head over heels for her but prove to be lagging on her side. ”
“What you’re not realizing is that she wanted to.”
He gave me another look, deadpan and dubious. “You’re not going to get far in saying she wanted to be kidnapped.”
I grinned. “Now that you mention it, maybe she has some more kinks than what I’ve discovered.”
He groaned.
“No, she didn’t want to be fucking kidnapped. She fought hard to get away and that’s why I had to intervene and knock her out as fast as I could. Wren’s not docile, all right?”
“I’m saying that she wanted to work for us.
As soon as I showed her how we had files on Smithson and how corrupt he and Rico Johnson are, it lit a fire under her ass.
She wants to make the world a better place, okay?
That’s the background I’m dealing with. Her mom was a cop.
So was her dad even though she didn’t meet him.
She comes from a background of wanting to help the world and get rid of bad guys.
That shit still applies. She’s taking a while to really get to the understanding that she’s doing that.
That she’s helping to get rid of some of the evil in the world.
” I shrugged. “She is. And that’s a good thing.
It just so happens that as she stays with me, she does this with our brand of help. ”
“And here I thought you were just fucking around with her for the hell of it.” He smirked at me.
“Not anymore.” I smiled. “I don’t know if it even started off mediocre.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to believe in love at first sight now.”
I laughed. “No. She wanted to kill me when she saw me chasing her. And I was too pissed at the time to think straight because someone had just tried to shoot Adrik.”
He shook his head. “I wonder if all this intel she’s getting and going through from that other agent will clue you in to who tried to have her killed.”
“No, it’s not like that. We know who tried to have her killed. Smithson. He put her on that stakeout in his place because he had to have seen the writing on the wall that someone wanted him taken out.”
“Then it’s only a matter of time until his own mistakes kill him. If not by us, then by someone else.”
“Damn right.”
He scooted forward on his chair, ready to get up. “One last word of advice, though?”
I tipped my chin up, all ears.
“Finding Gregori takes precedence over everything else.”
“I know.” And I did. While it was different and invigorating to look forward to the future I wanted to insist on with Wren, I couldn’t avoid that truth.
“I agree,” I told him as we stood. “But that doesn’t mean that I can’t also get excited about when that won’t be the case.”
He patted me on the back in agreement.
I headed upstairs to see if Wren was almost through with her “work” for the day, but with every step that brought me closer to her, I looked forward to when I could devote more of myself and more of my time to the one woman I wanted to make my wife.
Isabel cried in the distance, and I smiled as I imagined that sound in my home with Wren.
I couldn’t wait to give all my attention to the woman I wanted to make my wife.
The woman I want to make the mother of my children, too.