Chapter Twenty-Two
We landed nine hours later at the small SeaTac airstrip where my hangar was located. I barely slept the entire flight as Andrei and I worked on getting to know one another. In one word, it was surreal. Tomas filled the void Kirill had left within me as a child, and I’d never wanted another father. To have the chance at getting to know the father that would have loved and kept me if he could have shifted something inside me.
Something I wasn’t quite ready to name.
Maksim and Nikolai awaited me as I stepped off the plane and back onto the blessed terra firma of the city I called home. The two men greeted me with wide, bright smiles and firm hugs. None of us had ever been separated from each other for longer than a week at a time. Five weeks was nearly unacceptable.
“Your woman is causing quite the stir.” Nikolai smirked at me. “And she’s learned a few things since you’ve been gone.”
Vas had been keeping me apprised of Ava’s every move. Not that I would interfere, but I did have him caution her a few times about her actions.
It hadn’t worked.
“I’d honestly wear a bulletproof vest when you decide to tell her you’re still alive,” Maksim joked. “On second thought, maybe something to protect your legs. She’s got a thing for shooting out kneecaps.”
Andrei laughed boisterously behind me. “I like her already.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “And you said she was sweet and na?ve.”
“She was,” I muttered.
Nikolai smirked. “Then this idiot went and made a fool of her. On top of that, he faked his death.”
“Nothing worse than a woman scorned.”
“Where is she now?” I slid into the backseat of the G-Wagon.
“In Portland with Vas and her father,” Maksim reported. “Looks like O’Malley’s niece stole some evidence from her mother’s case from lockup for her.”
I wish I could have been there for her.
“How did O’Malley get Kavanaugh to agree to a sit down?” It was well known the two Irish families had a long, blood-filled history with one another.
“O’Malley threatened to withhold the evidence pertaining to Ava’s mother if he didn’t agree.”
“And no one is dead?”
Nikolai laughed.
“According to Vas, everything is groovy.” Nicolai pitched his tone at the last word. It made him sound like a blond-haired surfer boy named Crash who smoked pot. Or Shaggy from Scooby-Doo.
“Get me something more than groovy,” I told him, mimicking his tone. Andrei smirked at me, and for the briefest of moments, I wondered how he saw me.
Would he think I was a good leader?
Would he accept how I ran my organization?
Part of me felt like a teenager again, begging for approval. I wanted my biological father to be proud of what I’d built.
“Where to, boss?” Maksim asked as he pulled through the gate and onto the main thoroughfare.
“Let’s regroup at the penthouse and head out from there,” I told him. “Let Damon know to have the helicopter fueled and ready to go in two hours.”
Maksim nodded.
Sitting back in my seat, I sighed. It was good to be home.
“So,” Dima broke the peaceful tranquility that had settled over us. “Who’s gonna tell Ava about Kenzi being a badass ninja and you miraculously being raised from the dead? ’Cause,” he tapped his finger to his nose, “not it.”
The whole car—save for Andrei—followed suit with a chorus of “not it” ringing through the small space.
Fucking children.
My biological father laughed heartily before shrugging and sticking his finger to his nose.
“Not it.”
The whole car broke into a fit of laughter.
Yes—it was certainly good to be home.
* * *
“Your woman has a thing for kneecaps,” Vas groaned into the phone. “She’s obsessed with them.”
I chuckled. Apparently my sweet, defiant wife had turned into a bit of a psycho. I would be lying if I didn’t admit it turned me on.
A lot.
“Doesn’t surprise me.” The noise of the helicopter was nothing but a dim sound in the background with the headset on. “Look who she lived with for half her life.”
“Kenzi is a bit of a psycho herself,” Dima grunted next to me. Kenzi slapped him across the head, and he grinned. “Just saying.” He shrugged.
“What’s our next play?” I asked my Sovietnik.
“About that…” Vas trailed off. “We can’t target Cartwright yet, but we’re working on it. Your wife has a business date tonight, and she fired me, but otherwise, we’re doing pretty good. The entire restaurant will be filled with—”
“Did you say date?” I interrupted him. “Why the fuck is she going on a date?”
“It’s not a date date,” Vas explained. “She’s meeting with Joseph O’Neill’s son, Conrad, to discuss merging our assets.”
“Conrad O’Neill is a narcissistic abuser,” I growled, the corner of my lips turning up in a snarl. “Why the fuck are we talking about merging our assets?”
“We aren’t really going to merge our assets.” Vas’s eye roll was audible. It didn’t take a genius to realize he was irritated that I wasn’t catching on quick enough for him. “We needed him to believe that so he would go to dinner with her.”
“The only person she should be going to dinner with is me.”
“Well, you’re dead,” Vas deadpanned.
“If he lays one fucking hand on her…”
Vas chuckled. “She’ll go straight for his kneecaps, trust me.”
“Vasily…” I warned.
My brother sighed. “We needed a way to get to him, and dangling her out there was the only way to get him to bite,” he tried to assure me. “She can handle herself, and she has been for more than a month now.”
Sighing, I pinched the bridge of my nose and blew out a breath. “I know.”
“Plus, I’m a little hurt that her date was what you focused on first.” He sounded affronted. “I tell you she fired me, and you don’t have one ounce of pity for your best friend.”
“She didn’t actually fire you,” I pointed out.
“Well, she sure as hell thinks she did,” Vas grumbled. “All because I won’t tell her where Dima is. Something about trust. Okay, maybe there are a few other reasons, but still. I’ve never been fired before.”
“I heard McDonald’s is offering a fairly competitive wage,” Dima crowed. “You’d look so cute in that uniform. Maybe even Wendy’s. We could dye your hair and give you pigtails.”
“Hm, I could also smash your face in and make you look like that man from the Goonies.”
“Hey,” Dima gasped. “Don’t knock Sloth. He was the best part of the movie.”
“Children,” Kenzi groaned. “Can we please get back on point?”
“Since when does Nikita get to butt in on conversations?”
“Jesus,” I groaned. “We’ll be there in about ten minutes. Make sure everything is ready.”
“Got it, boss.” Vas paused before hanging up. “Are you going to see Ava or…”
Was I?
I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. My mind had been focused on things other than how I was going to approach Ava about the fact that I had been alive this whole time and hunting down Kirill.
She was going to be pissed.
I wanted nothing more than to take her.
Make her mine all over again.
But something was stopping me, and I didn’t know what it was.
“We’ll talk about that later.”
“Sure thing.” The line clicked off, and he was gone. A wave of regret hit, crashing me against the jagged rocks of the shore.
“Really?” Kenzi raised a brow at me from across the helicopter. “We’ll talk about that later?”
I sighed.
“Are you saying that you know exactly how you’re going to approach her and spill your guts about being an assassin?”
Kenzi shrugged. “It’s not that hard.”
“Yeah?” I asked. “Go ahead. Tell me how you plan to explain all that before she goes in for the kill.”
She snorted but then bit her lip nervously.
“Exactly.” I pointed my finger at her. “Don’t pull that holier than thou shit without thinking it through yourself.”
“What does it matter how we tell her?” she questioned me. “Either way, she’s going to see it as a huge betrayal.”
“Probably run off to Daddy’s,” Dima piped up.
“And that’s after she guts you,” Maksim snorted.
“We’re all fucking comedians today,” I groaned. “Why don’t we all sit silently and think our private thoughts?”
Andrei snorted. “This is certainly going to be the best vacation I’ve had in a while.”
Great.
* * *
“This guy’s a douche,” Dima growled into the comm line as we watched Ava’s dinner with Conrad O’Neill. He wasn’t wrong. The man reeked of the worst kind of narcissism and misogyny. They had barely sat down before he started into his personal exploits about sheiks and presidents.
It was nauseating.
“Can I kill him?” Andrei growled when the man had tried to order my wife a salad.
“Only if you can make it look like an accident in front of all these people.”
“Poison always works.” Kenzi smirked. “I’m sure I could sneak some in. Also, these people are Sully’s men. Wouldn’t matter if we made it look like an accident or not.”
“Right then,” Andrei chuckled. “This will be good.”
“I have to admit,” Maksim grinned, taking a sip of his wine as he watched the video screen of my wife dining with that fucking bastard, “she has definitely turned into a badass.”
“Must run in the family.” Dima winked at Kenzi, who rolled her eyes dramatically at his poor attempt at flirting.
“So does the sudden urge to murder people.” She winked right back at him and ran a finger across her throat.
It wasn’t too long before their dinner arrived. Pride swelled within me as I watched Ava break down the O’Neill boy bit by bit. She wasn’t the kind of woman he was used to dealing with. They were just empty, airheaded bimbos looking for their next sugar daddy. It didn’t bypass my attention that he wasn’t aware she was the CEO.
He thought we’d sent him the company whore.
A mistake he was currently regretting as Ava laid into him about his company’s sudden drop in shares and his habit of overspending.
“Oh, shit.” Dima guffawed. Conrad O’Neill had gone to leave, but my wife wouldn’t be dismissed so easily. Without blinking, she’d dug her steak knife into his hand, cutting through the skin like it was supple leather.
“Did I say you were dismissed?” She crooked her head to the side, her eyes wide and innocent. My cock jumped to attention. He called her a psychotic bitch, but my body and mind were calling her perfect.
My perfect little psycho.
I didn’t think my cock could get any harder.
Then I watched her knife his other hand. I lied. I was harder than granite now. Fuck.
“Let’s go,” I said abruptly, standing from the table in the small room we’d rented to run surveillance. “Now.”
Maksim stood and murmured to Dima over the comms to follow.
“Are you seriously going to leave?” Kenzi darted in front of me, blocking my path.
“Yes,” I growled. I wasn’t about to explain to her why I needed to go. That seeing her sister like that was driving me to the point of madness.
“No.” She stood in front of me, arms crossed against her chest, eyes adamant. “You need to wait and own up to what you did.”
I stared down at her in fucking disbelief. Is that what she thought I was running away from? She thought I felt guilty about leading Ava to believe I was dead? Or that I didn’t want to face her wrath?
The woman couldn’t be more wrong.
It had nothing to do with either of those things.
What I didn’t want to face was the one thing I had always refused to. My feelings for her.
My love for Ava bordered on possession and obsession. The more I fell for her, the harder it was to keep control of the animal inside me. I didn’t call her Little Red for no reason. I was the Big Bad Wolf, and I wanted to devour her.
Every. Single. Inch.
But the more obsessed I became with my love for her, the more I was afraid of losing her. Not her love, but her life. Every woman I had truly cared about had either died at the hands of an enemy or at my hands for betraying me.
The deeper I fell, the deeper the wound would be if either of those two things came to pass. I knew I had to face my fear of that, but it was often simpler to ignore it. I wanted Ava. There was no doubt in that. And I loved her. But showing her that love gave her access to a vulnerability I wasn’t ready to exploit.
“You’re scared,” Kenzi taunted me. “It’s written all over your face.”
“Easy, malen’kiy ubiytsa,” Andrei cautioned. Even he could see how thin the rope was and that it was about to snap.
“Why?” she snarled. “My sister loves you. Even now, in your death, and you can’t muster up the balls to face her. Why? Huh? What are you so afraid of?”
“Don’t push me, Kenzi.” My face darkened as I stared down at her.
“I’m not afraid of you, Matthias,” she sneered. “I stopped being afraid a long time ago. You don’t want to face her? Fine. I’ll do it for both of us.”
“Shit,” Maksim cursed. He reached out to grab her the moment he saw her body shift into gear, but he was too late. She was a slippery assassin, that was for sure.
“Dammit.” Running a hand through my lengthening hair, I tilted my head back and closed my eyes. “Fuck.” Deep breaths, I coached myself, deep breaths.
“She’s right, though.” Andrei spoke up from beside me. “Not about you being afraid of her rage. But you do need to face her.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Andrei smiled sadly. “You’re afraid your love for her will ruin you both.” His eyes were brimming with sadness and loss. “You’ve been hurt time and time again. I can see that. I know that. But you can’t hide behind that wall forever, Matthias. At some point in time, it’s going to have to crumble. Give yourself the chance to truly love her. Because if you don’t, you’ll lose her for good, and it won’t be to death.”
His hand clamped on my shoulder and squeezed.
“Think about that, moy syn.” Then he left.
Moy syn.
My son.
He’d called me his son.
“Hey, boss.” Dima interrupted my thoughts. The pride that welled in my chest at being called Andrei Tkachenko’s son. He’d told me he would earn the right to be called father. It would appear I didn’t have to earn the right to be called his son, and that broke a piece of the wall I had so carefully constructed when I was younger. “You might want to catch up with Kenzi. She took your Martin.”
“Point?”
“Umm…your wife is currently hauling ass after her?”
Shit.
“Tell Vas. And make sure Sully shuts down the police radios. I don’t want them being followed.”
“Got it.”
Badass indeed.