7. Gleb
Ipull up into the courtyard of Pyotr’s estate, putting the Land Rover into park. In the rearview mirror, I catch Lev and Denka parking behind me. Since we weren’t sure how many girls there might be, we wanted as much room as we could manage on our own, so we each drove to the edge of Mikhail’s estate.
The extraction was easier than I thought it might be. Then again, from what Mel told me on the ride home, the Zhivoder were a bit overconfident that the Veles would no longer be a problem for them. Serves them right.
What I wouldn’t give to make a second run tonight and prove Mikhail even more wrong by slitting his throat in his sleep. But the girls are my priority. And after hiking through the woods barefoot on the snow, wearing far too little clothing, and after days of malnourishment and abuse, they need care and attention. So, revenge will have to wait.
We escort the girls inside, and their wide-eyed astonishment mirrors the look Pyotr’s Upstate home inspires the first time anyone sees it. Massive and luxurious, it somehow manages to feel warm and inviting despite its sheer size. I think the current Mrs. Veles has a lot to do with that because it wasn’t always so… welcoming.
“Each of these rooms has been made up for you girls, so you can pick whichever you want to sleep in for the night,” I explain as I lead them to the wing of the house containing the guest rooms. “Tomorrow, we’ll fly to New York City. From there, we can arrange to get you five back to your homes—if you have one to go back to.” I make eye contact with each of the five new girls we found chained alongside our five I came to rescue.
While still cautious—as they have every right to be—with Mel and the other four clearly glad for our presence and the fact that we set them free, the new girls seem far more willing to trust us from the get-go than the last batch we saved from Mikhail.
“In the meantime, you each have an en suite bathroom. Clean clothes are in the drawers. Feel free to claim whatever fits. The on-call doctor will be here shortly to make sure your injuries are addressed.”
“Thank you, Gleb,” Annie murmurs, tears glistening in her eyes.
Beside her, Mel has an arm wrapped maternally around the youngest girl’s shoulders. And the vision of her, rock-solid and willing to lend others her courage despite everything she’s gone through, strikes awe in my heart. She’s fearless, a fiery force of nature. She has been from the moment I first laid eyes on her.
I have no doubt Mel’s past has forged her into the iron-willed creature she is. Though it can be infuriating at times, it”s moments like these that make me realize just how priceless Mel is.
I give Annie a curt nod, then clear my throat, suddenly uncomfortable with the number of tearful faces. I’m not good with emotion. My father drilled the necessity for it out of me at a young age, so I don’t really know how to handle it when girls cry. But I’m trying.
I respect Pyotr, and he and his wife, Silvia, have proven how important empathy can be. It’s what separates us from the monsters like Mikhail, and despite what my father raised me to be, I want to be more than that.
“Get cleaned up. Once the doctor has come and gone and you’ve had a chance to get settled, we’ll leave you be. If you need anything, Lev, Denka, and I will be just down the hall.” I gesture toward our rooms. “But we won’t bother you if you’re looking for space.”
“Do you have… food?” the girl in Mel’s arms asks tentatively, her chin trembling.
“The staff is preparing it now. It should be brought to you shortly.” I can only imagine how hungry they might be. From my cursory inspection at the cottage, I wondered if it had been days since they’d eaten anything of substance. Another reason I could break every bone in Mikhail Sidorov’s body.
Mel gently strokes the younger teen’s hair. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” she offers.
* * *
“The jet will be thereat seven tomorrow morning. But take whatever time you need,” Pyotr states.
A long silence settles across the line as I pace across the open space of my designated room. I called to give him an update now that the girls are settled in for the night, and he was more than thrilled to hear I managed to find all five of our girls alive. But I’m still on edge because my pakhan is back in New York City with a traitor while I’m miles away and can’t do a single thing about it.
I keep finding myself in these positions, torn between where I am and where I should be. And while Pyotr has Val to watch his back, with Efrem dead, we’ve lost not only a valuable soldier who would do anything to protect Pyotr, but he was also my only real suspect for who could be our rat. I need time to reassess. But I can’t do that from all the way up here.
“The girls are all okay, though?” Pyotr asks, finally breaking the silence.
“Doctor confirmed they’ll all heal just fine. Tif has a concussion and a gash on her face. Otherwise, it’s just a lot of bumps, bruises, and, unfortunately, some minor frostbite because they didn’t all have shoes for the escape. As far as the girls reported, no one was raped, though they’re all pretty traumatized.”
I can almost hear Pyotr’s disgusted nod. “You figure out Mikhail’s plan for them?”
“From what the girls have said, they were going to be sold off. They came in a truck with a bunch of other girls, but most didn’t unload there—only a select group. The rest probably got shipped out of the country. To me, that says Mikhail has moved his VIP auctions Upstate. Didn’t take him long to find a solution after we blew up Ebony and Ivory.”
The gentleman’s club that we targeted not long ago used to host Mikhail’s high-priced auctions, the ones where his special clients with more particular tastes were willing to pay top dollar for what they wanted. In return, Mikhail has developed a business out of hunting down the girls that might match these proclivities. That generally means young girls, virgins, and women of extraordinary beauty.
We put a good dent in his business when we obliterated Ebony and Ivory. Mikhail had to make do with his scummy nightclub, Kaleidoscope, for a while, which I’m sure offended a good number of his wealthiest clients. But I guess that’s over now.
“Blyat,” Pyotr growls. “We’ll reconvene and reassess once you get home, but I want to make this mudak pay. For everything he’s done.”
“Agreed.”
A soft knock draws my attention to my door as soon as I get off the phone with my pakhan, and I frown. It’s late. The girls should all be in bed by now, and Lev and Denka retired at the same time I did, so I hadn’t anticipated company.
I haven’t had a chance to clean up yet, and I smell like a campfire after the blaze we started inside Mikhail’s kitchen, but that will have to wait. Stalking to the door, I open it to find deep-onyx tear-shaped eyes peering up at me expectantly.
“Mel.” Her name trips off my tongue as my pulse breaks into a sprint. Why this girl—out of all the women on this earth—affects me so much, I can’t say. But it’s visceral, an all-consuming transformation that happens whenever she enters a room. “What are you…?” I clear my throat. “How can I help you?”
“Hi, um.” Mel bites her full lower lip, as if she’s suddenly shy, and her chin dips until she’s looking at me through her thick, dark lashes. “I just… wanted to come by and thank you properly—for saving us again, I mean.”
Her apparent nerves send a tingle up my spine as my body reacts instinctually, always ready to neutralize some hidden threat. But I’ve learned that my hyperawareness when it comes to Mel doesn’t always mean danger. And right now, I can’t tell if she’s nervous about approaching me after our last encounter at her house or if it’s a residual effect from her most recent kidnapping.
“It was nothing,” I assure her, keeping my tone measured. I try to keep myself under careful control when I’m around Mel because her presence tends to cloud my judgment.
She’s beautiful, intelligent, funny, brave—far too many appealing qualities I find deeply attractive—which is why I try to keep her at arm’s length. It takes considerable effort to remind myself that she’s just eighteen and she’s been through so much already for having just become an adult legally.
I refuse to take advantage of that, though the connection between us feels tangible. She put her faith in me because I saved her from the worst kind of fate. I don’t want to exploit that trust. I want to be the kind of man she sees me as—even if it’s far from reality.
Still, the air crackles between us as Mel continues to hold my gaze. Her eyes drop to my lips, and when her pink tongue darts out to wet hers, an ache of yearning comes to life deep in my belly.
“Gleb, I?—”
Moisture makes her eyes shine, and Mel quickly blinks it away as she steps close to me. The fresh smell of rose shampoo fills my nose, not her usual scent of vanilla and lemon, but still appealing.
“I really want to kiss you,” she breathes, her voice wavering uncharacteristically.
It shatters my resolve. My desire to touch her has been near-agonizing. But I couldn’t imagine she would want that after what she’s suffered. And when I accidentally brushed against her earlier, she all but shuddered with revulsion.
So hearing she wants what I’ve craved desperately and refused to acknowledge is like taking a sledgehammer to a cracked-glass window. Because amidst all the turmoil, tension, and violence of the last few days, I haven’t stopped thinking about the kiss we shared in her kitchen—and the way she panicked so immediately afterward.
I don’t want that to happen again.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I rasp, my voice suddenly hoarse with the effort to maintain control of my impulses. I swallow hard, the words bitter on my tongue. Because I want nothing more than to claim her lips right now.
She nods, her eyes dropping to her hands, which fidget nervously near her navel. “Because I’m damaged goods?”
Fucking hell, she must be joking.I don’t know where she came up with an idea like that, but it infuriates me, bringing to life that unfamiliar intensity of emotion that I’m still learning to manage. And before I think through the intelligence of my actions, I grasp her chin and tilt it up, forcing her to look at me. “Why would you say that?”
Her eyes widen, her lips parting in a soft gasp, and the way her pulse flutters through the vein in her throat tells me I’ve frightened her. Blyat. This is why I shouldn’t touch her. She deserves better than me. Someone gentle, civilized, someone who knows how to handle her. Good intentions will only get me so far, and I’m well outside my comfort zone here.
I release her with a hiss of frustration, stepping back to force space between us.
But to my astonishment, she follows me, crossing the threshold into my room.
“Why would I say that?” she demands, angry in an instant. “Because it’s true. I mean, that’s what all men want, isn’t it? Someone untouched that they can claim as their own. And as soon as that’s done, we’re just worthless. Damaged.” The fresh fire that ignites in her eyes burns away her timidity. This is the Mel I know, the fiercely proud woman who refuses to be seen as someone’s possession or a commodity.
But as much as I’m grateful to see her return, Mel’s words disturb me deeply. Does that mean she puts me in the same category as the men who value her chastity over everything? Then a worse question arises: Is she trying to tell me she was raped while I was looking for her?
She told the doctor she wasn’t. But to my understanding, when we first brought them home, Silvia established that the truckful of women we stole from Mikhail—including Mel—were all virgins meant to be sold for top dollar on the black market. So if she’s “damaged goods,” does that mean someone violated her?
Clenching my teeth, I work my jaw as I study Mel’s furious expression. Beneath her anger, I detect a pain that wrenches my heart. The subtlest tremble in her chin warns me that she’s on the brink of tears, and I want to fix whatever’s hurting her.
“You are not damaged,” I state flatly, trying to voice my emotions without making things worse.
“But you don’t want to kiss me,” she says, tone laced with accusation.
I can’t do this. I can’t be the reasonable one right now. Not when she’s looking at me like I just told her she’s undesirable. Meanwhile, it’s taking every drop of my self-control not to touch her. “I never said that,” I snap, my words coming out hotter than I intended.
“You said it’s not a good idea, and you obviously didn’t like the first time I kissed you?—”
“Fuck, Mel!” I throw my hands in the air, exasperated that I somehow managed to become the bad guy here. “You think I don’t want you? You think I haven’t thought about it a hundred times since you kissed me? I want you so fucking bad I can’t trust myself around you. But I can’t touch you without making you shudder, and I’m pretty sure you just told me you were raped in the last few days. So, no, I don’t think it’s a good idea!”
Mel falls silent, her expression stunned—probably because that’s the longest speech I’ve given in her presence. It’s definitely the most emotion I’ve expressed. Then she takes another step forward, closing the space between us.
“I want you to touch me, Gleb,” she breathes, her palms finding my chest and intensifying my heartbeat. “Only you.”
Fuuuuck.If she’s serious, despite everything she’s been through, then I don’t have the strength to deny her. Straining to keep my movements slow and gentle, I wrap one arm around her waist. I comb my other fingers into her thick black locks as I cradle the back of her head, and I pull her against my chest.
Our lips come together with that same jolt of attraction that lit my body on fire the first time she kissed me. Mel gasps, her lips parting, and I deepen the kiss. Stroking my tongue inside her mouth, I taste a hint of cinnamon.
Mel’s arms snake up around my neck, pulling me closer. And without breaking our kiss, I release her waist to reach behind her and swing my door shut.