11. Timur
TIMUR
Waking to the feeling of Kira draped over my chest is the best feeling in the world.
She's snoring light and she's naked, the press of her tits on my ribs making my dick stir again.
And her breath smells like vodka still. She finished that bottle like a pro and might've put me to shame had I not eaten a full dinner.
I sigh contentedly as I listen to her heavy breathing and pull her closer.
Last night wasn't planned at all. When I came home, I hoped to ask her to join me for a night cap but I saw she'd already been drinking and one thing led to another.
The first time was so gentle, but after that—and several more drinks—she became an animal, just like me.
I'm exhausted and spent, but my cock is telling me I could go again if she woke up right now.
But I watch her sleep for a while, admiring the soft lines around her eyes that reveal how very drunk she was by the time we collapsed into this bed and how very tired she'll be when she wakes up. I'll have to ask Sonya to prepare her breakfast and help her make sure she's hydrating too.
Part of me knows I can use this—whatever is happening between us—the chemistry that showed up uninvited and won't leave.
It's leverage. If she cares about me, she won't run to her uncle with a story that destroys my family.
She'll protect me the same way I've been protecting her, and the whole problem solves itself without anyone getting hurt.
It's so perfect I couldn't plan it or think it up on my own.
And it's so crafty and manipulative, I'd never have done it. Not even if Roman had ordered me to do so.
It's not why I'm lying here holding her.
Her chest rises and falls in a deep, regulating breath, and I watch her eyes flick back and forth beneath her eyelids.
Studying her has become my favorite thing in the world to do over the past week, and I'm finding myself thinking of her even when I'm not around her.
She's wormed her way into my mind and my heart, and I've started seeing things outside this home that remind me of her.
I like her. A lot.
Women like Kirianna Belova don’t come along very often.
Everything about her screams power and class.
She's not the floozie type who throws herself at me, nor is she whiney and overdramatic. Her art was sensational and her mind is brilliant. And I don’t know why but I hang off every word that comes out of her mouth, especially when she's praising me for how good I make her feel.
I don't know how to process it, but I'm falling for her and fast.
I slip out of bed carefully, pulling my arm from under her without waking her.
She shifts and murmurs something in her sleep, then settles back into the pillow.
I pull the blanket up over her shoulder and stand there for a moment, wishing I didn’t have to go out today, because I'd really much rather stay here and explore whatever this is. But I have to leave.
Still, I know this thing between us is dangerous. Every rational part of my brain is telling me to stop letting whatever this is cloud my judgment. But I've been rational my entire life—the careful one, the quiet one, the brother who sits behind a screen and makes sure everything runs cleanly.
None of that ever got me what I want in life.
I'll spend every day I have left typing away and staring at security monitors, forgetting that life is out there and that adventure awaits and miss every opportunity to find someone who's right for me.
And this woman who drinks vodka like it's water and sings at the top of her lungs at two in the morning when she's wasted may just be the thing I’ve been needing to wake me up to how short life really is.
In order to not wake her, I collect my clothing and get dressed in the hallway. Dryden's at his post outside my door. He straightens up when he sees me, but I hold up a hand before he can say anything, and he averts his eyes as I tug on my clothes.
"She's asleep..." I tell him, fumbling with the buttons on my shirt. My head is still spinning from too much to drink. "When she wakes up, make sure she's comfortable. Breakfast, coffee, whatever she wants. But she stays in the house."
"Understood, Boss." Dry is a quiet man, but he respects me and he does what I ask him. After losing so many good soldiers last year, I value his presence more than he knows.
"And be decent to her," I continue. His eyebrows rise as he smirks at me, like he's reading my mind. Yes, she's in my bed, and yes, I walked out of my room naked. He can put two-and-two together as well as anyone else.
"Anything else, Boss?" he asks through a grin.
I chuckle and shake my head at his immaturity, and it feels good to be the one being picked on about a woman for a change.
"Yeah, she'll have a hangover. Get Sonya to make her something salty and take care of her.
" I narrow my eyes playfully. "And don't get any ideas...
She's mine." I punch a finger into his chest and he swipes it away with another grin.
Kazimir is already at the café when I walk in, wedged into a corner booth with a plate of eggs in front of him and his phone propped against the salt shaker playing a video.
When I slide in across from him, he turns the phone toward me and I see a baby in a diaper holding onto the edge of a coffee table, taking two wobbly steps before sitting down hard on her backside.
"She's walking," he says, grinning so widely, it changes his whole face. Watching my nephew become a father before me was a gut punch, but I'm proud of him. After the rough shit he pulled in his teenage years, he's really grown up.
"She's falling," I say, snickering as he plays it again. That little girl is so spoiled, she has no clue. Kaz is gonna have a nightmare on his hands by the time she's thirteen. Hopefully by then, he's grown up a little more too.
"Ah, you know... Kids fall before they walk." He takes the phone back and watches the video one more time before putting it away. "Zora recorded it this morning. I think I've watched it thirty times."
"How's Zora handling it?" The waitress across the room holds up a pot of coffee, eyes wide and brows high, and I raise my finger at her, beckoning a cup. Then I turn back to him.
"She cried. Then she baby-proofed every piece of furniture in the house in about forty-five minutes. I came home and there was foam on everything." He shakes his head and takes a bite of his eggs. "I love that woman but she's going to wrap our kid in bubble wrap. She's too soft for this world."
"Ah, but isn't softness what little Kaz needed?" I lift my eyebrows as he rolls his eyes at me and shovels more food in.
When the waitress arrives with my cup of coffee, I order something to eat, and we spend a few minutes going over logistics for the fights this weekend.
We've got three bouts on the card and attendance is looking decent, though not what it used to be.
Kazimir runs through the matchups and I take mental notes on a few things I need to check from the tech side.
Security protocols, camera placements, the usual.
When the food arrives, I eat half of it before I push the plate aside and finally start to get real with him. I need someone's input before I let this cat out of the bag and Roman finds out who is lying in my bed.
"I need to tell you something and I need you to keep it between us.
" I'm apprehensive that this is the right move, but with Stepan out of town, I have no one else to ask.
Kaz may be a little violent and really impulsive, but he's loyal to a fault.
He'd take a bullet from Roman for me, and he'd apologize to Roman while doing it.
Kazimir sets his fork down. He reads the shift in my tone immediately and his posture changes, the grin gone, his eyes focused. "Alright." He wipes his mouth with his napkin while I gather my thoughts.
"The woman from the Mirov raid. The one Morin brought in.
" Apprehension rankles my peace, but if I don't talk about this it’s gonna eat me alive.
Now that I know who she is, it'll be easier to deal with, but it won't make telling my brother easier.
I'm walking a fine line between protecting Morin and nuking my relationship with my brother, the Pakhan.
"Yeah. What about her?" Kaz pushes his plate back and sits straighter, sipping his coffee.
"She's not a Mirov." I let that sit for a second and watch his face for any hint that he might not like what I'm about to say. "She's a Belova. Kira Belova. Sergei's niece."
Kazimir leans back in the booth and runs both hands through his hair. His expression flashes through a dozen emotions—surprise, confusion, anger—before settling on sympathy. "You're kidding."
"I wish I were." It's a good thing I've finished eating what I wanted because my appetite is gone. The look on his face tells me this is every bit as bad as I feared it was.
"So Morin fucked up real bad this time, huh?"
"That's about the size of it."
"And Roman doesn't know who she is?" Kaz continues to sip his coffee, but I know if I took a sip of mine, I'd throw it up. Putting this out into the universe is making me very nervous.
"No. He told me to deal with the situation.
He doesn't know the situation just got a hundred times worse.
" If Ro found out, I know he'd want to talk to her and ask her a billion questions.
Then he'd want to talk to Morin and the only answer would be his head on a platter.
Sergei will never let Morin walk for this. But I owe him my life.
I'm between a rock and a hard place and Kazimir will be on a short chain after this, knowing he knows my secret.
Kazimir blows out a long breath and shakes his head. "How do you know she's a Belova?"
"She told me herself. Sergei's her uncle. Her father married one of Sergei's younger sisters. She was placed inside the Mirov operation as a mole by Sergei."
"And you believe her..." He lifts a skeptical eyebrow and sets his mug down. He has every right to be skeptical. After he took Zora into his home and she wreaked havoc before we realized who she was, he learned the hard way. But I've done my due diligence.
"Yeah, man. I did it... She's Kirianna Belova in the system. I swear she checks out. I ran the checks myself." Maybe I wasn't as thorough as I could have been, but when you find gold, why keep searching?
He shakes his head slowly. "After what happened with Zora, you know we can't be too careful with this kind of thing. People lie about who they are, Tim. They do it well and they do it for good reasons."
"I know that. But I've done my homework. I swear she checks out." He's frustrating me, but I know he wouldn't be saying these things just to piss me off. He is here to protect me the way I was there to protect him once upon a time.
"Yeah, well..." He leans forward and drops his voice. "Talk to Stepan. If anyone can confirm this girl is who she says she is, it's his wife, right? She's a Belova—or she was. Get a photograph, something concrete. Don't just trust a database."
I know he's right. I've been so focused on managing the situation that I skipped the step that would put it to rest. A photograph, a conversation with someone who's actually met Kirianna Belova face to face, any of that would be more definitive than what I pulled off a screen.
"I'll reach out to Stepan today," I tell him, though it makes me feel like a jerk to doubt her, especially after having slept with her last night.
"Do it before anything else. This takes priority.
" He picks up his coffee and takes a long drink.
"And for the record, I'm not saying she's lying.
I'm saying we owe it to ourselves to be thorough.
If she checks out with Stepan and Marina, then we deal with the fallout the right way.
We go to Sergei, we apologize, we make it right.
But we don't do any of that until we're sure. "
"Agreed..." I mumble, and I start thinking of how maybe I've exaggerated Roman's potential response.
I don't have the proof yet, but when I do, I can tell him how Kira and I have connected.
If she and I really hit it off—which I'm not saying we will, but if we do—telling Sergei she was with me the whole time will be less of a shit fight than telling him my douche of a right-hand man stole his niece in the dead of night.
"Good." He points at me and cocks his head. "Don't sit on this too long. If she is a Belova and Sergei finds out we've been keeping her, it won't matter how well you treated her. He's going to see it as an abduction. Then you've got a whole different problem."
"I'm aware."
I pull out my wallet and shell out a few rubles, enough to cover my breakfast and his, and then I stand. "Don't tell Ro yet. Let me figure some shit out first before this goes sideways."
"You're keeping a secret?" he asks, eyes narrowed.
"I don't consider it a secret." My chest knots up as I think about what he's asking. I'd never keep anything from Roman, but this situation is tricky. "I'm getting all my facts before I say something. That’s all."
Kazimir gives me an accusatory expression as I walk away.
Now if Stepan and his wife Marina can get me a picture of the real Belova girl, I can compare and confirm Kira's identity.
Until then, I fully intend to follow through with my backup plan.
Kira is mine, and I want to make her so comfortable with me that even when I offer to let her leave, she wants to stay.
Stalking toward my car, I feel my phone vibrate and pull it out. It’s a message from Morin with a video attachment, so I click on the video to let it play and what I see stops me dead in my tracks.
One of our best fighters, Rostik, is at a local convenience store and he’s not alone. There are two men with him, and they’re beating the hell out of him. I don’t recognize the men, but the text that comes in after tells me what I need to know.
Morin: 8:29 AM: Are you satisfied with this proof? They jumped Rostik. You better get to Levin now. Find out what Rostik saw.
I grit my teeth in anger and glower up the street before typing in a message to Kazimir. We have to stop this shit now or Roman is gonna hurt us all. Morin needs to get back on his feet and finish this job.
Or we’re gonna have to find a way to do it without him.