19. Adrik
ADRIK
M y solution to wanting Elena was more distance. Tangible separation.
I warred with going to the guest house all that night after I’d fucked her.
But I held back.
The morning after, I left with Maksim and Alexei to look into the matter of my uncle still being alive.
I’d texted Elena before I went, and that was the only communication that I wanted to have with her until I could think straight and not obsess over the memories of how damn good it had felt to take her so hard.
How absolutely gorgeous she’d looked sprawled out on that desk, taking my dick so tightly.
Some kind of purge was necessary.
She couldn’t have this power over me when it was so crucial for me to be obtaining and maintaining the power of the Volkov throne. Especially with the threat of my uncle out there.
While I waited for my brother and cousin to join me in the car after one of the meetings in New York, where we’d flown to speak with some people who might have intel about the chances of my uncle being alive, I reread the texts I’d sent her.
Adrik: Investigate as far as you can about what you presented to me in the office.
My office.
It was harder to think about that room as just being any old place. I felt like fucking her in there had somehow made it my space.
Elena: Yes, sir.
I gritted my teeth at her reply. I wanted to hear her say my name again, dammit. Sir could apply to too many others. Any man in the world could be called sir .
Elena: Just to confirm, you are referring to the name of the individual who is likely behind the network I uncovered through the shell companies?
Adrik: Correct.
I couldn’t be referring to what else she’d presented to me. As in her sweet pussy or the sight of her pink nipples so hard from my touch?—
“Fuck.”
I shook my head at how easily I could fall right back down to thinking of her and how spectacular she looked on that desk.
I furrowed my brow.
My desk.
It didn’t seem like my father’s piece of furniture anymore when I’d taken out my anger and energy on pounding her pussy on top of it.
Adrik: I expect more reports while I am away.
Elena: Yes, sir.
Again, I growled.
Adrik: Specialists from our security team will be contacting you as well, to work alongside you on this assignment.
Before she could’ve shot back an obedient yes, sir reply, I added another message.
Adrik: They can help you. You can task them with specific paths of interest. I will spare no expense at getting to the bottom of what you’ve found.
Elena: I understand. Thank you for the directions.
As I looked at my phone now, I frowned and deciphered her words in several ways.
She was grateful for my guidance. That was fine. And I expected as much. She was a people pleaser and she enjoyed having something to sink her teeth into.
But I doubted she understood what really mattered.
She couldn’t possibly comprehend the enormity of what it meant to let me fuck her.
I was going out of town for a few days strictly to get her out of my mind.
She was digging in deep, tormenting me with replays of how she’d sounded when she came, how relaxed she looked when I’d pushed her to come so hard.
Do you?
Do you understand what the fuck is going on here?
Because I sure as hell don’t.
I had no time for the complications of a woman. Even one as wise and sharp, gorgeous and sexy, or hardworking and diligent as Elena was.
Every day, she reported to me with thoroughly worded emails.
Every night, she concluded her progress with text messages.
She was on it, working every day to monitor what Morovov Financials was doing with our accounts, fixing any issues, and investigating this shadow network.
Sacha and Igor, the two IT specialists I’d ordered to assist her, also reported with updates that they were working on it.
I wasn’t expecting them to babysit her. She didn’t need to be babysat or micromanaged.
And that judgment wasn’t based on anything stupid. I was impartial. I could lean on trusting her, not because I’d had my dick in her but because since she’d been in my custody, she was nothing but loyal.
Lev called me on the third night I was away.
“I had to explain a little more,” he said. “I told her why that name would matter.”
I furrowed my brow, leaning my free hand on the railing of a balcony.
We’d been staying as guests with another family—a family unrelated to ours and one that ruled on the other side of the country.
The Rossis were annoying as far as any greasy Italian mobsters went, but they were allies.
They’d been impacted that day when Uncle Gregori killed my grandparents and almost killed my father.
One of their elders had been at that meeting, and they had interest in the matter.
“You explained why I would be interested in her finding Gregori’s name?” A flicker of annoyance crossed through my mind, but I reined in any angry reaction. Lev wouldn’t sabotage this. He wouldn’t toss out intel for the hell of it.
“Yes. She had been searching for more information about him, and she wondered if it was a fake name or identity. Sacha and Igor tried not to divulge too many details, as you’d requested, but I could tell that she was thinking one step ahead.
It didn’t seem right to ask her to look for a ghost when she wouldn’t know that he would be a ghost.”
I supposed that was fair enough.
“I think it will make a difference. Once I told her more, about who he was—is?” He growled in frustration. “He'd better be dead. And if he isn’t, he’s still dead to me.”
Lev’s hatred for his father ran so deep, partly because of how young he’d been when his traitorous act happened. I’d never cautioned him to lose that hatred. It could fuel him, for all I cared. He’d never been anything but loyal to my father, and he would stay loyal to me as the next Pakhan, too.
“Once I told her more about who he was and the time when he’d died, she had more things to explore.
I think she was working with Sacha on how to piece together a timeline of when companies were started.
Almost like she was basing her research on the hypothetical that he’s been alive all this time and has been starting up this network over the course of years. ”
I rubbed my face. Of course, she would. Elena was a hardworking woman and had the spirit of never quitting.
Your loss, my gain, dumbass.
I still couldn’t understand how John Morovov had ever thought to give her up.
Just to save his own ass? To give me his daughter as a payment to spare my hurting or killing him?
“Thank you for the update,” I told him sincerely.
While I had been debating when and if I’d tell Elena more about the sensitive nature of the Volkov family history, I couldn’t fault Lev for what he’d shared with her.
If it would enable her to do her job better, then that was for the good of all of us.
In the middle of the night, when Lev called me again, I instinctively knew that it wasn’t to update me about what he or any of my brothers could have told her.
Seeing the call come in triggered something in me.
Something’s wrong.
Something had to be wrong with me, since being away from Elena wasn’t working in regard to getting her out of my mind.
Because I was still obsessed about her, my first thought went to her.
And my instincts were right.
“Someone trespassed on the property,” he said. “And they tried to break into the guest house.”
A stain of red filtered through my soul. Hot fury consumed me, and my body reacted to the threat of danger.
Not here.
Not toward me.
But danger targeting her.
It was all that it took to get me rushing back home. I’d been planning on returning later that day, but with the news about someone trying to reach Elena, all my protective instincts flared into overdrive.
Maksim and Alexei were also on their phones as we headed to the airport shortly after Lev called me.
Countless orders were given to the men at the estate.
Checks were done on the perimeter. Staff and guards were interrogated.
In a flurry of action—despite my being across the country and boarding our private jet—the matter was taken seriously and looked into.
But I didn’t contact her.
I couldn’t.
I had to see her.
I had to feel her.
Because anything short of those two things would seem like an illusion. The panic and rage in my heart that she could’ve been hurt or taken wouldn’t abate until I could know with my own eyes that she really was all right.
Nikolai was running interference, anyway.
He called toward the end of the flight, explaining that Elena had slept through it all.
“She didn’t even wake up,” he said as the plane landed. “The guards were on it. They noticed the activity, a team went out to counter the intruder, and they killed him before he could even turn the doorknob twice.”
That appeased me.
But the fact that this happened at all still alarmed me.
“They killed him, clear shots to the head. So we can’t question him,” he added.
“Any identification?” Maksim asked, listening in via speaker.
“None,” Nikolai answered. “I’m sure she’ll be spooked when she wakes up and realizes what happened, but?—”
“Don’t tell her,” I advised.
“I think it might be impossible to keep this from her. I mean, we’ve got the cleanup going already, but with the stucco of the exterior walls and the position of where the men shot him… it’s going to take a while to get all the blood and splatter erased.”
I winced, just imagining her reaction to something as grisly as a corpse or brain matter near where she stayed.
“Anyway, it wouldn’t hurt for her to be aware of the danger,” Nikolai said.
“How the fuck is it going to help her?” I argued.
Knowing this was encroaching too close to making it sound like I cared about her, I cleared my throat. “She will be protected. She’s too valuable to allow anything bad to happen to her.”
I meant it. I meant every word.
Elena was valuable. She was an asset I’d never take for granted. She was a symbol of loyalty and possession I’d never dismiss.
I only struggled with how I valued her personally. As the woman I wanted to hold close again.
By the time we arrived, she was scared and frantic to know what happened. Guards surrounded her. Since Nikolai was so easygoing and the most personable of all of us, I let him act as the mediator and explain what he could to her.
I kept my distance. From the office— my office—I tightened security for the whole estate.
I questioned the guards. I watched the security feed.
And when I passed the hallway near where she had come in to work, I listened in and eavesdropped on what Nikolai and Maksim told her as they visited her in the office space I’d given her in the big house.
“I’m scared,” she admitted.
My heart squeezed.
I detested that she’d ever feel like that while I was in charge of her.
“But it doesn’t matter. I know that,” she added.
“What doesn’t matter?” Nikolai asked.
“Me. I don’t matter. I understand that I was given to your brother and that I’m…” A sigh cut her off. “Just a thing. Forget it.”
I wouldn’t. The fear and defeat in her tone ensured I wouldn’t forget this conversation or her remarks.
She mattered so fucking much.
And even worse, I knew exactly what she meant with that negative opinion.
She mattered as an accountant. Even as an investigator. She knew that. She wasn’t cocky about her skills, but dammit, she knew her stuff and wasn’t afraid to admit it.
She meant that she didn’t matter to me . To be alive and matter as someone in my home and in my life.
Because of how I’d dismissed her after I’d fucked her. Because of how I vacillated between wanting her and resisting her. Because of how much I strained to keep myself under control and deny that she could be a complication I couldn’t afford with my attention at this moment.
She’d think that. But I refused to admit how wrong she was. The second I admitted that she mattered to me, that she had put a spell on me, it would only make me weaker, more dependent on keeping her as not something John Morovov had given to me but as someone I desired with all that I was.
That night, as I holed myself up in my office, I held a drink in my hand and stared at the desk. Zoning out and letting the sounds of her coming replay in my mind, I tried to get my head on straight.
Why would someone target her?
Because John Morovov was—and is—trying to fuck with me?
Because she’s onto this shadow network and it’s making someone nervous?
Or because she’s the woman I can imagine making mine forever?
It was too soon to guess why she’d been targeted, but as I fought the urge to correct her about how wrong she was, about how intensely she mattered to me, I had to war with the internal admission of how I could let her in without letting her weaken me.