Chapter 6
Nadya
Present Day
HOSPITALS SUCKED. I had no idea how Vera could spend all day working in a place like this, but my skin crawled every time the antiseptic smell hit me.
What I hated the most about it right now wasn’t the smell or the fluorescent lights. No, what I hated was the reason we were here. The same damn reason as back then.
Our adoptive father’s evil had caught up to us again. The last time, they’d poked and prodded the three of us until they found enough evidence to toss the bastard in jail. But here we were again.
He had gotten out and the first thing he’d done with his freedom was try to kidnap my younger sister. He almost succeeded, too.
Vera and I made it up to the fourth floor and found Ljuba’s room at the end of the hall. She had been out of it for most of the day, so when I heard a murmur of conversation, my heart did a happy flip at hearing her voice.
Dan was with her, hunched in the chair with a posture that implied he’d been up for two days straight. He wore an army hoodie, camo shorts, and a very manly-looking leather bracelet that matched Ljuba’s. Apparently, he was good at leatherwood.
Ljuba’s hair was a mess. Her face was pale, her lips chapped, and she had the bouquet of bruises.
I didn’t know all the details, but apparently she had jumped out of a moving vehicle to get away.
So badass for someone who always seemed fragile, but if she actually were that fragile, she never would've survived our hellish childhood.
“Finally, you’re awake,” I announced, walking into the hospital room.
Ljuba squinted. “I don’t feel awake.”
I shrugged. “I guess you could still be talking in your sleep, though your open eyes are worrisome, if that’s the case.”
Vera nodded. “You said something about human tuna. You should probably stop reading shifter romance. It’s messing with your head.”
Dan chuckled at that. “Tuna is an old friend. He was too full of himself about being a Navy SEAL, so we started calling him Tuna.”
I froze.
Tuna? What were the chances there were two Navy SEALs with the same nickname? Oh, hell.
I could practically feel his lips on me, his hands, his voice. Two years, and I still couldn’t get the man out of my head.
“Is that the guy who pointed the gun at me?” Ljuba asked.
That didn’t sound like him at all. Although, what did I know? Maybe he was a monster, and that fact would finally stop me from daydreaming about what could have been.
“He what?” Vera looked like she wanted to make tuna salad.
I was still too shocked to move.
When Vera had told me Ljuba was kidnapped and that Dan and his team were tracking her, that they had a friend in the FBI rushing to help, I never even considered it might be my Nick.
No, not mine. I had left and for a good reason. A man like that could never be mine.
“He wasn’t pointing it at you. He was pointing it at that George asshole,” Dan corrected.
I shuddered at the sound of that name. Out adoptive father with his fake smiles. That fucking.... Ugh.
“Let’s not mention that name again,” I said.
“Mention who?” a man’s voice asked from the door.
That voice. The one I heard so often in my dreams.
I turned to face him. Fuuuuck. “No one. We shouldn’t mention anyone at all. And I need to get back to... my aunt.”
We had no aunt. Hopefully, my sisters wouldn’t call me out on it as I hightailed it out of the room.
Him. It was him. What should I do?
“Nadya?” Nick asked. Of course he remembered me. Just my luck. Why couldn’t my one-night stand wake up not remembering my name or my face?
“Nope,” I shouted from down the corridor. “That’s not my name. Definitely not.”
I made it to the elevator and hit the button. Of course, the damn thing was on the first floor where someone was taking their sweet time getting in. There had to be a staircase somewhere around here.
I was about to look for the stairs when Nick’s reflection appeared in the stainless-steel surface of the elevator door. I spun around, ready to deploy some sarcasm as a smoke screen, but the look on his face stopped me.
He approached slowly, hands up like he was approaching a wild animal. “Hey. I’m not here to cause trouble.”
I snorted. Trouble was more my thing.
He leaned against the wall in a way that didn’t block the exit, which was probably a deliberate move. “You okay?”
“Peachy,” I said, instantly regretting the bite in my voice. “Sorry. That wasn’t about you. I just...”
Panicked for no reason? Yeah, that was really mature of me.
What the hell was wrong with me?
I mean, a lot was wrong with me, but why couldn't I face the man?
Nick nodded. “I get it.” He paused, then said, “Dan and I got Ljuba to the hospital together. I just had to get some paperwork so I could start working.”
Together. So, Nick was definitely that FBI friend Dan said helped him get Ljuba back.
“You’re an FBI agent,” I said, trying to sound unimpressed, but emotions and I were not friends. My brain was broken, so it threw whatever emotions it wanted at me. Right now, I felt like a trapped animal, but at least it was slowly fading. Very slowly.
“Yeah. Human trafficking and missing persons,” he confirmed.
“I’m going to try to get Ljuba’s case since the perp crossed state borders and entered my neck of the woods.
I’m in Philadelphia now, so it would make sense for me to take the case, especially since Ljuba might feel more comfortable dealing with me. ”
He was right, much as I hated to admit it.
Ljuba was like a feral kitten with men, any man except Dan.
Even now, all these years later, she was always suspicious.
Nick knew Dan. He helped get Ljuba back.
That had to count for something, right? At the very least, Ljuba would trust Dan’s judgement on it.
I imagined Nick and Ljuba in some interrogation room, her fidgeting with the leather bracelet Dan made for her. She would hate every second of it. Closed rooms were not Ljuba’s friends. But Dan would also skin Nick alive if interrogation rooms like that came into play.
No. She was a victim for fuck's sake. There wouldn't be any interrogation. What was I even thinking? Ljuba would be fine.
The elevator pinged. I darted a glance at Nick. “You’d better not drag her into interrogation rooms.”
Was I a little obsessed? Yeah, maybe. But I had woken up to her screaming from yet another nightmare too many times over the years.
His mouth twitched, maybe a smile, maybe a wince. “I won’t. But Dan said she’d want the perp to go away for the full ride, so...” He trailed off, then gestured for me to get into the elevator. “Can I ask you a few questions about the last few weeks?”
Last few weeks as in since that scum bag got out of prison.
As much as my brain wanted me to run—because that was a normal response—from the man who had starred in too many fantasies over the last couple of years, I walked into the elevator with him.
Our third elevator ride. The first one had been cautiously optimistic, as I had geared up for sex with a hot guy. The second ride had been scorching. Now, I was trying to force myself to feel something normal.
Nick wasn’t a threat. We’d had sex before, and he had been great. So, why was I feeling this way? My reactions made no sense even to me.
He cleared his throat. “We can go to the cafeteria, maybe? Or anywhere else you’ll feel more comfortable. I imagine it won’t be an easy conversation.”
Well, if he had looked into George’s file, then he’d know all about it. He’d know all about me and my ghosts, about all the ugliness that lived inside me. Maybe that was why I felt this need to run and hide, why I always ran.
Men didn’t want the nasty stuff. They wanted the pretty face, the banging body, the smiles, and the jokes. And here I was with the guy I couldn’t get out of my head, and he knew the ugliest parts of me.
I considered refusing, but George hadn’t gone after me— he went after Ljuba— and I couldn’t let that go.
If I knew anything that would help put him away for good, then I’d answer whatever questions Nick had, no matter what ghosts this conversation would awaken.
I’d just have to get drunk and laid afterward to silence them again.
“Fine,” I said. “But if the food sucks, I’m blaming you.”
“You’d blame me if hospital cafeteria food sucks? Does that mean I should take you out to a proper restaurant?” Nick teased.
I shook my head. A restaurant would feel too much like a date, and the last thing I wanted was to start hating restaurants just because I had to dig up the nastiest parts of my past. “Cafeteria is fine. I mean, they have ice cream, right? Can’t go wrong with ice cream.”
He looked at my lips. “You and your sweet tooth.”
Damn, did he remember that much of our night together?
The elevator dinged and opened, letting us out on the first floor. Nick guided me to the cafeteria, and as I had expected, there was ice cream to be had. Something sweet to make this day a little more bearable.
Nick found us a seat by the window, which overlooked the parking lot with trees slowly turning yellow and orange.
He bought us both vanilla soft serve in cups—the only flavor not sold out.
Clearly, the universe was conspiring against me.
Wasn’t that just the story of my life? But at least it was cold and sweet, and my insides unclenched a fraction as I let the first spoonful melt on my tongue.
He had seemed surprised to see me in Ljuba’s room. Did that mean he hadn’t had the time to really dissect the files or had he not realized I had been one of the victims?
I mean, it’s not like he would’ve been thinking of me or assuming something like that would be in my past, I thought.
Nick didn’t say much at first, just watched me with those too-perceptive eyes, barely touching his own dessert.
I could see his mind flipping through files, folders, flashcards—some part of me wondered if he’d rehearsed this conversation in the car.
How to handle me, what to say when the trauma-case with the quick mouth started throwing up deflections.
“So,” he said at last, tracing a lazy circle in the condensation on his cup. “I know you probably don’t want to rehash all this, but did anything feel weird the last few weeks?”
For a second, I was that kid again, driven somewhere as rain pelted outside. “Just a little road trip,” he had said. “Just the two of us.” I had known immediately that something was wrong.
The old compulsion to laugh it off, to swallow the truth whole and drown the nastiness in sweets, alcohol and sex, surfaced. Well, I had my ice cream, so that was one part of the equation.
“There was a shift,” I said. “With Ljuba. A couple of months back, she started having more nightmares. Usually, sleeping on the balcony helps her, but this time it wasn’t enough.”
Nick’s brow furrowed—he was listening, really listening, like he was supposed to be taking notes but didn’t want to break the spell.
“She ended up staying at a friend’s house for a few days,” I said.
“They have a backyard with a top-of-the-line security system and a massive fence. So, she just slept in a hammock or in the pool house. Indoors is the worst for her. She has to feel the air moving, or she starts feeling trapped, and then the nightmares sneak up on her.” I tried not to think too hard about what she was dreaming of.
Nick nodded, slow, probably filing away all the fears that normal people didn’t have. Even my nightmares had never been that bad, but I was older and Ljuba... Ljuba had been George’s favorite.
“You think someone was watching her?”
“I always think someone’s watching her,” I said, and looked down at my cup. “But yeah, she just didn’t seem like herself. She was jumpier than usual.”
“Did she say why?” he asked.
I finished the last bite of my ice cream, and Nick pushed his untouched cup toward me. Well, it might be just a cup of boring vanilla ice cream, but I wasn’t about to look a gift sugar in the teeth.
I shrugged. “No. Well, she didn’t say what was wrong, but she’d sometimes get phone calls she ignored, but then she’d act weird after, like it disturbed her.”
I had been so happy when Ljuba had started dating Dan. The guy was a bodyguard, and he absolutely adored my sister. I’d figured he would keep her safe, and I guess he had, considering he and Nick had gotten her out of this whole kidnapping mess.
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Nick said as he watched me eat. “Excuse me for being so blunt, but I'm afraid this is too important. From what I found in George’s file, he was into kids. Ljuba is all grown up now. Do you have any idea why he’d want her?”
Bile rose in my throat, and I took another spoonful of ice cream to bury the sensation.
George had only wanted to adopt Ljuba at first because yeah, he was into children, and the younger the better. Ljuba refused, saying she wouldn’t leave me and Vera behind. But George had found other uses for me, hadn’t he?
“God, this place doesn’t have enough ice cream for this shit.” Why had I ever agreed to answer questions? Right. I didn’t want Ljuba to ever have to deal with that bastard again. “He...”
The words got stuck as memories flashed, too fast to dwell on each one separately, but the montage was worse than any one thing. Hands. Grins. Fingers. Cigarette smoke. Pain. Blood. Screams.