11. Andrei
Andrei
T raffic is light, but it does very little to help me relax. I’m not worried about cops tonight. Dmitri is driving like a perfect citizen, and all the patrols in the area are paid generously to look the other way when we’re making deliveries. Instead, I’m thinking back to what Alexei said.
I need to find a long-term solution to keep Blair safe. I can’t dump her at his place whenever I’m not there to watch her. It was pure luck that he was even home tonight.
I can’t let her stay at my place, but I can’t let her stay at hers, either. Not just because of tonight. I don’t want to gamble that Semyon’s orders to kill her died with him. He was a helpful pawn for Pavel, but he isn’t the only one who would jump at the opportunity.
When she became an informant for me, she unwittingly learned intimate details of Maksim’s drug-running operations.
Not just out west, but how he moves his contraband throughout the country.
If she were so inclined and could find a cop who isn’t on his payroll, she could put him behind bars—and probably keep him there until his eventual trial.
It'd be enough to take down our whole operation, and we wouldn’t be able to recover for years.
Would she? I fucking doubt it. If anything, her time working with law enforcement just left her jaded and untrusting of the whole damn system, and that was before she had a kid to think about.
But does Maksim care about that? No. And if he’s gotten it into his head that he wants to see her dead, my options are pretty fucking limited.
In fact, by the time we get to the warehouse, I’ve only come up with one idea.
Mikhail tips his chin in acknowledgment when we pull up, ready to unload the merchandise. “Everything go alright?” he asks, eyes glinting with malice.
“Yes, sir.” Dmitri lifts the door on the truck, turning his head to hide the small, proud smile on his face.
I’m dismissed almost as soon as I’m acknowledged, wasting no time as I make my way back to my car.
If Maksim’s already trying to get me away from her, I need to act fast.
Blair won’t like my plan. She’ll cry and try to find a way out of it, but she’ll fold.
With time, maybe I could come up with a different plan, but I’m a selfish bastard, and I don’t want to.
She can hate me and glare at me, threaten me with physical harm all she wants, but she’ll do as I say. At least in this.
I don’t realize how tightly I’m clenching my jaw until I walk into Alexei’s condo and see her on the couch, talking quietly with Nadya with Niko curled up in her lap. As soon as she turns her soft smile toward me, all my worry and stress melts away.
Yeah, she’s going to fucking hate me even more than she already does for what I’m going to do to her. I can’t even find it in me to be upset about it. As long as it keeps her and Niko safe, she’ll say yes, and that’s all I need for now. I’ll deal with the rest of it when it comes.
***
I shift Niko’s weight onto my hip, and Blair’s eyes are soft as she takes him from my arms. She’s smiling gently, absently rubbing his back as she carries him. Something about the sight feels intimate, like I’m an intruder watching something I shouldn’t be privy to.
When she lays him in his bed, she’s careful to tuck the blankets around his shoulders. Kissing his forehead, she turns off the light, softly closing the door as she meets me in the hall. I wait, unwavering, while she eyes me warily.
“We need to talk.” I nod toward the stairs, and she follows me without a word, a dismal air following her like a cloak.
Guilt is a heavy weight on my chest, both for everything I’ve already done to her, and for everything I’m about to do.
But she needs this as much as I do.
I take a seat at the dining table, waiting for her to follow my lead, but she remains standing in the doorway, hands shoved into the pocket of her hoodie as if it can hide the way she’s twisting her hands together .
“Blair,” I prompt, and she blinks slowly, as if startled out of a fugue before slipping into the chair next to me. Her expression is closed off, distress is pouring off her in waves.
“How long do you think Maksim’s going to let me live?” Her voice is blank, eyes unflinching as she watches me under her lashes. “Or is that why you’re here? Did he ask you to take care of me?”
I freeze, unable to answer.
In horror, I watch as she nods to herself, apparently taking my silence as confirmation. “Right. Did you volunteer?”
“Blair.”
“Will you still look after Niko?” It’s only with that question that her voice begins to shake.
Still, she holds her shoulders back, chin raised as her lips twist into a grimace, brows drawing together.
“I’m sure Mila will want to raise him, but he’ll still need someone to guide him, and Daniil trusted you. ”
“Blair,” I bite. “I’m not here to kill you, zolotse. If I have a say in it, no one will.”
“Oh.”
My jaw works while I take a deep breath. “Why the hell would you think I’d volunteer?” The word tastes dirty.
“When we met, you kidnapped me and threatened to kill me. And when you let me go, you continued to threaten my life. For months. It didn’t exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.” She shrugs.
I want to tell her it was supposed to be Daniil’s job to lure her into our clutches and kidnap her, that he only changed his mind and told me to do it when he first saw her, but that won’t make her feel any better .
“Fear is a powerful motivator. I needed you. If I’d walked up to you and asked you to work with me, would you have? Or would you have turned around and run in the other direction?”
She doesn’t respond, but that’s an answer in and of itself.
“I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I never would have hurt you, no matter what I said.”
She shakes her head, still not answering me while I pinch the bridge of my nose. This isn’t how I imagined this conversation going.
“Regardless,” I continue, “you’re right that someone wants you dead.
Either Maksim or Pavel, I don’t know which.
” She goes stiff as a board at his name, like it’ll summon him.
“I have a plan that’ll keep you safe. It’ll keep you around so you won’t have to worry about me or Mila looking after Niko because you’ll be there to do it yourself. ”
“What do you need me to do?” she asks instantly, just like I knew she would. Her endless devotion to her son is incredible.
“You’re going to have to marry me.”
She stares at me for a moment before she smiles, letting out a breathless laugh. In any other scenario, I’d revel in that sound. Instead, I keep my face blank, not looking away from her, letting my stiff posture emphasize exactly how serious I am.
Her smile lingers, but once she looks at me, it drops like a sack of bricks.
“No.” She shakes her head, the color bleeding from her face. It hits me like a knife to the chest, but I refuse to flinch.
“Yes.”
“Andrei, what the fuck are you talking about? ”
A better man would take her at face value and back off. I can get her and Niko new identities. I can get them far away from here, far enough that Maksim won’t be able to track them down.
Then she wouldn’t hate me for making her do this.
I’d also never get to see her again. I’ve been torturing myself by being around her for years, but I don’t know how I’d cope with the pain of letting her go. Or even if I could.
If she’s halfway across the planet, I won’t be able to check up on her as much as I need to. I’ll have no choice but to let her go and let her live her life without my interference.
If she’s close to me, I can make sure she’s safe. I look past her at a smear of something dark blue on the wall near the end of the stairs, forcing my hands to still so they don’t curl into fists.
“I have a respected position in Maksim’s Bratva. Your marriage to Daniil kept anyone from coming after you, right?” She nods slowly, tilting her head back to look up at the ceiling. “Marrying me would do the same thing.”
Her shoulders shake lightly, and when she opens them, her emerald green eyes shine with barely restrained tears. She blinks them back, but one carves a wet trail down her cheek regardless.
It takes every ounce of my control to not wipe it away.
“I know it’s probably the last thing you want, but this is the only thing that I know will work.”
Blair looks down at her hands, and I swallow thickly.
What am I going to do if she refuses? Even if she wasn’t widowed less than two months ago, she deserves to be with someone who makes her happy. Not someone like me, who has to strong-arm her into marriage to save her life .
“Daniil would hate this, you know?” Her voice is tight as she closes her eyes.
“He’d kick my ass,” I agree. Her eyes are glossy when she glances at me, and my breath catches in my throat. “He’d try to, anyway. His muscles were just there to make him look pretty.”
Another tear slips free, a dark stain blooming unceremoniously on her hoodie.
Silence fills the room, suffocating me until she gives a barely perceptible nod. Relief like I’ve never known makes my shoulders sag.
“Yeah? You’ll marry me?”
She sniffs, and it pours a bucket of ice-cold water on the flicker of hope in my chest.
“Yeah, I’ll marry you.”
“Thank you.” I take one of her hands into my own, no longer able to resist the urge to touch her, to comfort her.
There are still a million things to discuss, but this is enough for now. I’m not going to push it and ruin the small victory she’s handed me.
“Now what?”
“Now, you get some sleep. I’ll come by in the morning, and we can go to the courthouse.” I want her to be mine as soon as I can. “Do you think Mila would be willing to watch Niko tomorrow?”
She nods, shoulders slumped.
“She’ll be ecstatic to have another day with him.
” I frown, her dejected tone giving me pause.
Daniil and I never really talked about his mother.
He called her meddlesome and overbearing, but I have no clue how that might translate to her relationship with Blair.
I figured they’d be taking comfort in each other’s company, but maybe not.
“Then we’ll stop at her place and drop him off.”
She puts on a valiant effort of smiling, but it’s weak as she jokes, “What, afraid you’ll burn if we have a church wedding?”
“Hey, I made it through your wedding just fine. Remember?” I smile back, immediately wanting to kick myself. The last thing she needs is to be reminded of her first wedding. Fuck, I don’t even want to remember it.
She looked so fucking beautiful as she walked herself down the aisle, her hair shining like gold under the reflections of the stained glass. Her smile was delicate and radiant, and I wanted to steal her away and kiss her until she could think of nothing but me.
“It’s better to do this sooner rather than later. If you want to plan something grand further down the line, that’s fine, but for right now”—I shrug—“you’ll have to settle for something small.” I run a thumb over the back of her knuckles.
If things were different, I’d give her whatever she wants. If she wanted to get married in a massive church, I’d do it. If she wanted to get married on the beach in Fiji, I’d make it happen. If she decides that’s something she wants, I’ll arrange it in a heartbeat.
It’ll just have to wait until the dust has settled and I know she’s safe.
She nods, taking my words at face value, even while I want to kick my own ass.
“What happens after that?”
“Focus on step one for now. We’ll worry about the rest of it as it comes.”