Chapter 28 #2
I lay her carefully on the bed and look at her tearstained face, with mascara streaks on her cheeks. The image squeezes my heart for the thousandth time.
I quickly take off my blood-spattered jacket and lie down beside her without making another sound. I only kiss the top of her head again and again while my hand strokes her back, giving her the comfort she needs to fall asleep again.
I exhale in relief when her breathing becomes calmer, but this is the right moment to start thinking about the blood of those who brought the woman I love into this state. Blood that is still on my clothes, just as it is on her white dress.
I don’t need to look in the mirror to know I need a shower, which I decide to take at lightning speed, just so I can return to her as fast as possible. Very carefully, I detach myself from her soft body, but this time she doesn’t wake, so I head quickly to the bathroom.
When I come out of the shower, she is motionless. She barely had time to move in the few minutes I was gone. On an armchair, I see the clothes my brother left for me, and I put on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt.
I grimace, displeased with the clothes he chose for me. I haven’t worn anything like this outside a training room since I was a teenager.
But I don’t have the luxury of being picky right now. That’s beside the point. What matters is that they’re clean and that now I can immediately lie down beside her and gently pull her into my arms, returning my lips to the crown of her head.
In the distance, the sun is getting ready to set, and I wish I had the power to erase this day completely from her mind, so that when she wakes, she won’t remember anything.
For a moment, I let sleep and her warm, increasingly calm breathing wrap around me. I fall asleep with my lips pressed to her forehead, but I stay alert to every movement she makes and every sound beyond the door.
Today I allowed myself to be caught when they stormed into my office, at the club, where I only go when there’s something very important to handle there. It was the ideal place for a trap.
But I won’t allow it a second time.
No more games.
It’s my turn to attack, and I will make sure I exterminate their filthy bloodline from the face of the earth.
Starting with the Prescott family.
A warm hand gently touches my cheek, and every thought braided with dreams fragments disappears. I open my eyes at once.
If I’m still dreaming, I don’t want to wake up. Even so, reality is far more beautiful when Ekaterina’s blue eyes look at me sleepily, with that same warmth that changed my life completely from the day I first saw her.
“Is it all over?” comes her hoarse question after all the crying she did today.
“Yes,” I say just as softly. “Forgive me.”
She lets her heavy eyelids hide any wet shimmer that might have threatened to return, and exhales slowly. Then she opens her eyes slightly and tries to sketch a smile.
“I was born and raised in Bratva. It could have been worse.”
“It could have happened without anything like this at all if I had let you go from the beginning.”
I press my forehead to hers and let the despair show in my broken voice.
“But I couldn’t. I love you too much to let you go. But if that is truly what you want, I will make sure no one ever bothers you again.”
“But I won’t be happy,” she whispers.
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes, I can. Because you wouldn’t be beside me.”
I pull away from her forehead and remember the words she said to me before firing the last shot. To me, they were the sign that I had to end the madness that had stretched on longer than I could accept.
Though they had given me the light I needed in the darkness that had surrounded me my whole life, for a moment I thought it had only been a declaration spoken in panic.
That moment when you love everything that has ever existed in your life, knowing you won’t have any of it anymore. But now I need her confirmation.
I cling to a painful hope that she can forgive me and that she loves me as much as I am desperate for this woman.
“I thought you were unhappy with me.”
“For a moment, so did I. But with every day I slept in a separate room from you, I realized I can’t live with the emptiness that would stay in my soul if you weren’t beside me.”
Tears dampen her eyes again, and I pull her closer, savoring the simple touch of her fingers on my face.
“I love you too much to live without you,” she tells me warmly.
Inside my head, there is a sound like a drum announcing the most beautiful seconds of my life.
All the weight of the world lifts from my body, and I can breathe again, while the scent of her hair is the dose of air without which I cannot exist.
“So you don’t want to leave anymore?”
She shakes her head. “Never. But you can’t leave me either.”
With her thumb, she strokes the sealed wound on my split lip.
“If something happens to you, I’ll suffer just as much as if someone hurt me in the same way,” she whispers, pain in her voice.
“I will do everything I can to avoid that scenario, but your safety will always be the most important thing to me. I won’t allow anyone to touch you again, even if that means bringing every mobster in the world into my organization. Whoever isn’t on my side will be eliminated.”
She laughs a little.
“That’s not exactly a comforting thought, knowing you’ll start a war with anyone who becomes your enemy.”
“That’s exactly the point. There won’t be any war. Only negotiations and eliminations. Without giving anyone the chance to strike back.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“All I want is for our family and our children to have a peaceful life, without being captive in golden cages.”
“Children?” she asks, smiling more now, though still skeptical.
“Three. That’s all I want.”
This time, her crystal-clear laugh throws me into a euphoric state of fascination.
“That’s all?”
I don’t miss her irony, but I ignore it.
“So you better start thinking about the gift you want after the first birth. I was thinking of a summer house, two red luxury cars, three rare-edition Hermes bags, and a lot of diamond jewelry from Cartier and Van Cleef.”
She is laughing, but I am completely serious. She has no idea I’ve already found the house.
“I have an even better idea.”
I don’t even blink, waiting for her answer.
“A vacation together, far away from everything, where the phone doesn’t ring and we cut ourselves off from all the organization’s problems.”
I frown.
“We’ll do that as often as possible anyway. It has nothing to do with the gift a mother should receive after giving birth.”
“I’ve heard of that custom before, but not where we’re from.”
“Whoever wants to practice it does,” I inform her, remembering the stories a sheikh told me at the Christmas party. “And I want to give you everything you desire.”
“Right now, all I want is for you to kiss me, but carefully, so you don’t hurt your lip.”
I grin.
“You think I care about my lip? It will be my absolute pleasure to stain you with my blood, dusha moya.”
I lean down to press my lips to hers, but she places her palm against my chest and stops me, immediately moving a few centimeters back. She fixes me with her azure eyes – the ones I lose myself in every time.
“Now tell me why you’ve called me that since I first came to your house.”
I don’t even try to hide my smile.
“Because since Christmas, I’ve been a little obsessed with you. And when I saw you again, in my house, I felt you were the piece missing from the puzzle that should have formed my heart. You brought peace to my soul and silenced all my voices with your music.
You have come to hold more power over me than I do.”
I pull her closer again. I don’t like her being away from me, not even by a few inches.
“If people knew how much I love you, they’d be terrified. Some would try to hurt us right here, but the smarter ones will know is better for them to run. Soon, the whole world will know what happens to those who touch my wife.”
She frowns a little. “There’s someone I don’t want you to hurt, though. Oliver’s sister. She’s innocent, and believe me, she’s completely different from everyone in that family. I don’t want anything to happen to her, especially since she was the only one who seemed to be on my side.”
“There are no innocent people, my soul.”
“Maybe some deserve a second chance.”
This is not the moment to argue with her, so I choose to let go this subject that has no place in our bed.
“You’re too good for this world,” I say, bringing my lips closer to hers. “Good thing I’m here to bring you onto the right path.”
She giggles, just as an older curiosity returns to my tongue, and now it’s my turn to pull back slightly.
“Why did you dye your hair?”
“What?”
“At Christmas you were blonde,” I clarify, looking at her chestnut strands.
She smiles.
“I was going through a period where I was trying to find myself. We had just made the engagement official, and I couldn’t find my place anywhere. Something wasn’t right.”
She laughs, visibly embarrassed.
“I thought blonde would help me feel like part of the world Oliver was taking me into. But at Christmas, I saw a raven who radiated power precisely through his dark naturalness. He wasn’t pretending and wasn’t trying to be someone else. And I realized I wanted to be just as strong,
without pretending I was anything other than what I am. Meaning a brunette with Russian blood, not a lady of the British court.”
Kissing the corner of her mouth, I speak the words with absolute certainty. “Dusha moya, you are more noble than any queen. You are my queen. The entire Bratva will kneel at your feet.”
I can’t resist kissing her anymore. My lips seek hers gently, remembering how fragile she is and what an ugly day she’s had. But she grows hungrier, taking the lead as she pulls me closer, her fingers buried in my hair.
“Kiss me, Artem,” she asks hoarsely.
“I am.”
“Not like that. You know how I like to feel you...”
“You had a difficult day, my soul...”
Even the voices revolt at my words.