Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Kazimir
Four days. Four fucking days since I last saw her and I was getting fucking withdrawals.
I dragged a palm through my face, hissing in self-disgust. The fuck was wrong with me?
“The jet will be ready in thirty,” Nikolai said, sitting next to me. “You sure you don’t want to stick around to monitor things a little?”
“We already took care of the bastard responsible for the chaos. Enzo is keeping an eye on things. What’s there to monitor?”
“And the women?” He wiggled his brows. “You always loved your Scandinavian models.”
I stretched in my seat, willing a bit of tension off my body. “You’re welcome to stay back and indulge. I have things to take care of.”
His lips curled. “And do these things have hazel eyes and nice legs?”
I didn’t waste another breath on him. It was 10:00 a.m. and if we left in thirty minutes, I should make it back to New York at 7 in the evening.
Hopefully, she would be working late like she did most Fridays.
I sounded like a fucking stalker, but I had long given up fixing it. It all narrowed down to one thing, and it was that I wanted her and I wanted her bad. Everything else was secondary.
“So about Dallas.” Nikolai surprisingly applied wisdom for the first time in his life. “Svet coming alone or with her family?”
“Family,” I replied, relieved by the change of topic. “Everything is sorted and on track, and with what happened, it’ll be wise to recheck agreements.”
“So we review terms and conditions,” he noted. “Anything you’d like to change?”
“None I can think of, but have the lawyer send me the revised copy tomorrow.”
Nikolai pulled out his phone, tapping furiously at his screen while I diverted my attention to the city outside.
Moscow held lots of bittersweet memories for me. It was the city I grew up in, the city that gave me everything, and the city that took it all from me.
If I reached back enough, I could hear my father’s voice cautioning me and my mother’s softer voice telling him to go easy on me.
He was one of the few men in the Bratva who actually loved and respected his wife, and I had seen firsthand what it did to him.
“All set,” Nico announced. “You’ll have everything on your desk first thing tomorrow morning.”
I sent him a nod of appreciation. I was largely independent but sometimes—actually more times than I’d love to admit—I’ve found myself wondering what I would do without the idiot.
We both didn’t need each other. He did very great for himself, came from an upstanding family of aristocrats, but we had somehow formed the most unlikely friendship.
But I guess that’s why we worked so well together. The knowledge that we didn’t need to stick together, no one was dependent on the other, and no one was forced to stay with the other.
It was all choice. One we’d made on a random Thursday morning when he told me he wanted to be a part of my family, one I’d made when I fought with the men to make him my Sovetnik, and one we’ve kept making every day since then.
I never had to watch my back around him and he need not glance over his shoulder when I stood next to him.
Finally, the jet was ready sooner than we were told and we boarded for New York, something in me stirring with anticipation.
It took almost ten hours to get to New York and another thirty minutes to get to the office.
Nikolai stuck around, insisting he had a couple of things to take care of.
To my disappointment, Genevieve was not working late. The entire floor was almost empty.
“Sir.” A man I couldn’t recognize greeted me. “We didn’t realize you would be back so soon.”
“We?”
He whipped out his phone. “I could call everyone back if you want.”
“No need.” I waved his phone away. “It’s past work hours.”
Almost immediately, a thought struck me. He had used a collective in his statements repeatedly as though everyone was in the same place.
“Where is everyone?”
He froze, his phone trembling in his hands.
“The monthly get-together,” Nikolai answered behind me.
“What is that?”
“It’s a Friday of the month when your staff choose a spot to drink and be merry.”
I didn’t bother asking how he knew the details. My head was already preoccupied with flashes of a party with Genevieve dancing and letting loose, and the possibility of a certain bastard dancing with her.
I had told her I would chop him to bits if I saw him anywhere near her, but I knew the woman enough to know she would straight up go against me.
“Take me there.”
Nikolai’s lips curled in amusement. “Since when are you interested in affairs of the staff?”
“Since you left your duty of keeping an eye on everything to hover around me with unsolicited contributions.”
Nikolai fell into step with me. He didn’t say another word, but from the amusement on his face, I could tell he was very entertained.
I walked into a low-lit lounge with my staff packed in a corner playing charades.
One of them was currently flapping his elbows and rising from the floor simultaneously.
The expression was clearly that of the phoenix, but the other party was stuck on the different waves of the ocean.
I stood in a concealed corner, slowly scanning the crowd for a leggy brunette. I’d spotted Caroline and Rose, but no Genevieve.
Against my better judgment, I decided to search for another face and found it missing too. My fingers curled into fists.
“Oh my God, Sir.” Abigail stumbled over her words, the cocktail in her hand splashing all over her as she tried to contain herself.
“Where is my assistant?”
“Bath—restroom. Restroom,” she stuttered. “She went to take a leak.”
Her face contoured into the picture of mortification at her choice of words, but I was long gone before the apology arrived.
Restroom. The word echoed in my head with every step I took. Everyone knew what happened when two people snuck off to restrooms in gatherings like this.
Red blurred my vision the closer I got. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I did know there’d be a casualty.
I got to the door of the female restroom, taking a deep breath to prepare me for the worst, when a muffled scream caught my attention.
I threw open the door and the red dusting my vision became blood.
A wave of rage I’d pushed aside for years resurfaced, taking control of my body before I could consent.
I was on him before I could take full note of the scene in front of me.
He put his hands on her. He put his fucking hands on her against her will.
Images of how she struggled against him flashed through my head with every punch I delivered.
I was going to disfigure his face, body, and I would ruin whatever was left of him.
“You dare touch what is mine?”
He coughed out a mouthful of blood in his struggle to come up with an answer, but I drove another punch through his throat before the first sound escaped.
I went for his eyes, wanting to make sure he never set sight on her again, but a hand wrapped around mine, holding me back.
Only one person was stupid enough to come between me and a fight.
“Let me take it from here,” Nikolai said. “She needs you,” he added when I did not budge.
I looked up to find her cradled by Rose while Caroline draped silk around her exposed boobs.
My rage was renewed and I wanted to turn back and finish what I started, but I knew she needed to get to safety first.
Getting off the floor, I pulled off my jacket and draped it around her shaking frame.
The entire office had gathered around the tiny restroom, witnessing the event while I took her arm and led her out from their devouring eyes.
We walked in silence till we got to the sandy river bank at the back of the restaurant.
Genevieve was clutching tightly to my jacket, her eyes still wide even though her body had stopped shaking.
“He said it was my fault.”
Something tightened in my chest, pulling at every part of me till I had to dig my fingers into my palms to quell it.
“He said I was intentionally leading him on while feigning innocence.”
“He’s a dead man,” I gritted out, hating how he reduced the strong fighter I knew into a quivering, scared woman.
“But what if he was right, what if—”
I grabbed her face, forcing her eyes to mine. “Look at me. You did nothing wrong. You are not responsible for the actions of a swine, and I would chop his hands to bits for thinking he could lay them on you.”
Her eyes glossed over, but she didn’t let the tears fall.
I pulled her into a hug, holding her till her body stopped shaking and her breath evened out.
“He’ll never touch you again.” I pressed a kiss into her hair. “I swear it.”
She pulled back, looking into my eyes. “Thank you.”
“It’s nothing. I’ll never let any harm come to you.”
The promise took me by surprise, but it felt more natural than any commitment I had made in the past.
“How did you know to find me?”
I smiled. “Funny story, I’d come to see if you were defying me.”
“So I have your possessive ass to thank for my salvation?”
“It’s not possession, baby.”
“What is it then?”
I smiled, pressing another kiss into her hair because even I had no answer for the question.
We fell into a comfortable silence, the sounds of the waves drowning out every tension left in the atmosphere.
“What are you going to do to him?” she asked, worrying her lower lip between her teeth.
I reached out, pulling the innocent flesh from her teeth. “He won’t see you again.” I repeated my earlier promise.
She looked at me for a moment as though she was trying to decode what a claim as such could mean.
Eventually, she lowered her gaze, pulling back from my embrace.
“I’ll be going to Dallas on Monday.” I broke the silence. “And you’ll be coming with me.”
Her eyes snapped up. “You’re not serious.”
“I am.”
“Is this because of what happened? You don’t think I can take care of myself in your absence?”
“This is hardly about what happened, Genevieve,” I lied through my teeth.
She folded her arms in front of her body. “Really? Then what’s it about, then?”
“It’s about the fact that you’re my personal assistant and should be wherever I go for business.”
She scoffed. “Yet you conveniently passed me by on this one.”
“Because Russia is ten hours away and I was only going to be gone for a few days. It didn’t make sense to drag you through it.”
She swept her eyes over my face, taking her time to scan my features before her gaze finally dropped.
“Just work, not a pity travel because you walked in on me being harassed by one of your staff?”
My lips tilted at the corners. “You should already know I don’t host pity parties, little bird.”