Chapter 17
Seventeen
Cora
Iclose my eyes and focus on trying to get much-needed oxygen into my lungs.
Inhale. Wait. Exhale.
Inhale. Wait. Exhale.
I open my eyes and the first thing that hits me is the pain on Rowan's face. And it guts me.
I've watched this man absorb violence without flinching, take punches and dodge bullets and carry me through a war zone. He’s a bull in every sense of the word.
Everything visible stays locked behind a mask of indifference while the fracture to his soul travels underneath, cracking through stone nobody gets to see.
I only know because I know the signs to look for.
The way he turns the ring on his finger. The slight tic at the back of his jaw.
Then he smiles and my stomach turns over because the smile has no warmth in it. No ghost of humor, no trace of the man who laughed with his heart. This smile is cold, lifeless and brings death.
Nikolai's arm loosens a fraction around my throat. A millimeter of give, invisible from the outside.
I hold.
"It doesn't matter now." Nikolai's voice hardens, armor slamming closed over the rawness. "That was two decades ago."
Rowan's voice drops lower. "It matters to me. You need to know the truth."
Rowan takes a step in our direction and Nikolai retreats a step closer to the broken window. Wind whips through the office, but it seems no one is paying attention to that.
"You abandoned me." Something cracks behind those cold eyes and the boy underneath pushes through. He’s raw, furious and needs his father to hear him.
"Grandfather took me in. He taught me the Volkov creed. Told me you wanted nothing to do with me." The arm around my throat tightens and the muzzle digs into my temple hard enough to bruise. Cold steel and fragile skin do not make a great combo.
I don’t know when my luck is going to run out, but it hasn’t yet.
"You abandoned me after Mother died. You abandoned the family." His voice goes flat. Cold. "I'm next in line to be pakhan. But first I have to kill the man who stands in my way. Blood in, blood out. Right, Father?"
The hammer cocks.
My hands close around Nikolai's forearm. Survival kicks in. I have strong opinions about dying not today.
Very strong opinions.
I swallow and pull up courage from the depths of my soul and drive my elbow into Nikolai's ribs.
Every ounce of strength I've built up from carrying bagged soil is the force behind my blow. My heart pounds so hard in my chest it’s the only thing I can focus on for the next two point five seconds.
And then the pain hits. The impact travels up through my arm into my shoulder.
White dots dance in my vision and my knees want to buckle.
Instead, I focus on the painful grunt that punches out of Nikolai's mouth.
My heel slams into the arch of his foot and he staggers. I lean forward as far as the arm around my neck allows and crack the back of my skull into his face.
The wet snap of a nose breaking is a sound I will carry alongside the hammer click. Cartilage crunching against the back of my skull.
Pain blooms across the base of my head from the impact. I don't care because I'm free. The arm drops, and I stumble forward with my ears ringing and adrenaline flooding through me so hard my vision pulses white at the edges.
“You stupid bitch!”
I whirl around. Blue eyes shooting daggers come to rest on me.
A heavy hand comes down on my shoulder. “Behind me, Cora.” Rowan tries to put himself between me and his son, but not this time. This fight is mine.
Just as I shrug off Rowan’s hand, a gun clatters across the marble. I pick it up. The steel is heavy in my palm, warm from Nikolai's grip, and I wrap both hands around it. “Bitch? You come in here, shoot up the place and want to call me a bitch?” I snarl in Nikolai’s face.
The brothers surge forward to my right. Drake and Kon push through the remaining guards, closing the formation. Luca materializes from the corridor, joining the wall. Massimo crouches over a body. It’s one of Nikolai’s men, I realize.
To my left, Raine holds a gun on one of Nikolai's men with both hands and a posture that suggests someone taught her how to shoot, and I will be having a long, loud conversation with my sister about that later. Her face is ice. Her hands are steady. The Vale twins are armed in a mafia shootout. Go us, I guess. There’s a first time for everything.
Nikolai lunges for me, blood streaming from his broken nose. A pissed off Rowan forces me behind him. He absorbs the first blow across his jaw. Takes a second to the ribs. His body takes another before his hand shoots out and closes around Nikolai's throat.
“Enough,” he roars into the vast cavern.
His fingers wrap around his son's neck with deliberate restraint, holding where breaking would be easier. He controls the force of his grip when I witness murder and rage battle against that control for dominance.
“I told you I would end you if you hurt her.”
For a long second, I stare up at him in silence. He means to end his son’s life.
I can’t let him do that. It will destroy him. There’s no way Rowan can live with that on his conscience.
I step up and put a hand on Rowan’s arm. He doesn’t look at me but I see the veil of darkness suffocating him fall.
"That is enough." Rowan's voice fills the lobby, leaving no air for argument. "There will be no more killing. The blood on your hands, I take it as my own. Your sins are mine now to absorb and pay for when I get to hell. From here on out you will have no more reason to kill."
He wraps his son in a bear hug.
“Enough. My father filled you with poison. No more.”
A wall of protection closes in around me. Rafael places a hand on my shoulder and pulls me back. “Give them space, sweetheart.”
I follow his lead, but stay close enough in case Rowan needs me.
Nikolai fights it. His fists pound against Rowan's back, his body twisting against the hold. One second. Two seconds. The fists slow. The twisting stops. I watch as Nikolai sags into his father's arms, held by hands that should have been there twenty years ago.
“Let me help you, my son.”
Rowan catches my eye over Nikolai's shoulder. He nods. Soren, Cristian, and Drake cross the lobby with quiet coordination and close around Nikolai.
"Take him to Harlon. Tell him I will come later."
Nikolai pulls back from the embrace. Blood and tears streak his face. "Just like old times, right, Dad?" His voice catches. "Ship me off. Let me be someone else's problem."
“No, son. I’m keeping you safe and others. We will see each other again.”
Rowan's jaw flexes and he turns the ring on his finger over as the three men guide Nikolai toward a hidden elevator tucked behind a wall panel I never noticed. The doors open. Close. The lobby goes quiet.
Rowan turns, looking for me and I fall into his open arms.
"Where are they taking him?" I ask against his neck.
Rowan watches the closed doors. "Somewhere he can never hurt anyone else. He needs help."
“And we will see to it that he gets it. But what about after? We know what he's done. How do you balance the love you have for someone even though you know their sins?"
"Sometimes the darkness wins."
"True." I take his hand. His knuckles are split from the fight, blood drying in the creases. "But when you stop long enough to let some light in, the darkness fades."
“That’s how we save him.”
He looks down at our fingers laced together, his silver ring smeared with blood pressing against my skin. "I will work on that for me. And my son."
"That's all I can hope for."
Luca pulls his hair back in a knot. "Looks like we'll have to patch up the place again."
He surveys the lobby with his hands on his hips. There’s a resigned expression on his face that says he’ll hate every minute of it.
"This isn't the first shootout?"
Drake shakes his head. "Sort of. Last time it was bombs."
"Oh." I nod slowly. "Cool. Very normal work environment. Love the culture."
Rafael approaches, calm and measured. "Everyone okay?"
Rowan straightens beside me. "Rafael. I'm sorry for the damage my son has caused."
Rafael's gray eyes sweep the lobby, cataloging the broken glass and bullet holes and overturned furniture. "Family reunions. Always unpredictable, huh?"
I purse my lips and rock my head back and forth. "Yeah, but the coleslaw doesn't usually try to kill you."
Rafael’s smile is breathtaking. "True."
The two men share a look that carries twenty years of shared history and the humor men forge when they survive enough chaos to find it funny. Rafael grips Rowan's shoulder and holds it for a few beats. Then he walks away without another word.
He gets about ten paces away before I ask Rowan, “Is that normal?”
“He’s not a big talker.”
“Like someone else I know.”
The lobby hums with the aftermath. Security streams in and I suspect a few will be losing jobs.
Massimo speaks into a phone, coordinating repairs with contractors I assume don't ask questions about bullet holes.
Raine crosses to Soren and he takes her arm with a gentleness that sits at odds with the violence he just helped contain.
Rowan takes my hand and leads me away from all of it. Around a corner, down a short corridor, into a small alcove carved into the wall where the noise fades.
He cups my face with both hands. His knuckles are split and his blood smears across my cheekbones, warm and metallic.
“Come here.” He kisses me hard enough to bruise, hands shaking against my jaw.
The hard planes of his muscles force my body to mold to him.
"Are you okay, sunshine?" Russian wraps around the words. "Moye solnyshko."
"I should be asking you that." I press my hands over his, holding his palms against my face, his blood on my skin. "I'm sorry, Rowan. For everything you've been carrying."
His thumbs trace my cheekbones. His breathing is ragged, still coming down, and the blue of his eyes burns darker.
"I loved her." The words come out rough, as if pulled from a locked box he hasn't opened in decades. "My first wife. Nikolai's mother. She was gentle and kind and she loved our boy."
My throat tightens. I stay quiet so he can share the burden of his past with me.
"My father wouldn't tolerate a woman holding my attention. He considered it a weakness in a pakhan." Rowan's jaw works, the muscles along his temple bunching and releasing. "He had her killed."
The words hit me with the weight of cold water. Had her killed. My heart constricts.
"Oh my God." My fingers tighten over his.
“I was raised to be a murderer who could never love. After she was taken from me, I swore to never open my heart again. To never put another sweet soul in danger. I’ve done both now with you.
I’ve fallen for you despite the odds, Cora.
I love you.” His kiss is warm and tender, fused with all the passion I feel in his words.
“And I love you, Rowan. Never doubt that.”
I can feel the warmth of his body heat and I want to fall into his arms and forget about everything. Forget the pain, forget the past. But neither of us has that luxury.
“Is he still alive? Your father?"
"Da. We haven't spoken in decades." He pauses. His thumb brushes my cheekbone, spreading the blood in a warm streak. "I suspect with Nikolai in Chicago, my father is near the end. The old guard would not have pushed their weapon forward unless the hand holding it was failing."
I rise to the tips of my toes. Bring my mouth close enough to his that our breath mingles, coffee and copper and adrenaline.
"Yes."
His body goes still. His thumbs stop moving on my face. "Yes to what, sunshine?"
"You asked me to marry you."
For two solid heartbeats his expression doesn’t shift.
But when the words settle, his eyes light up and the smile on his face makes my heart swell with renewed love for the man.
He wraps his arms around me. Lifts me off the floor and holds me to him.
I throw my arms around his neck and absorb this moment for the miracle it is.
"You've given me hope again." His voice is thick and rough with the same emotions clogging my throat. "Moye solnyshko. My sunshine."
"You've given me the same." I press my face against his neck, his pulse hammering against my cheek. "You've given me a safe place and I can't imagine being anywhere else."
I pull back. Look up at him. Glass dust catches in the gray at his temples and glitters under the alcove light.
"We should talk about the cabin, though.
" I pull back long enough to look him in the eye, but I don’t loosen my hold on him.
"We can't raise a baby in a stone cavern.
And there's my flower shop to rebuild, the lease, the insurance nightmare.
Plus the garden beds on the terrace need better soil.
I have ideas on how to make it a blooming oasis of wild flowers. "
Rowan smiles down at me like I am the light of his heart.
"Anything you want. It's yours."
"I just want you." I take his hands, lace our fingers together. "And there has to be a way to fix your relationship with your son."
"One sin at a time." He squeezes my fingers. "But da. I agree."
I lean into him. The alcove is quiet. Down the corridor, glass crunches under boots and the Red Letter men work to put order back to their building.
"I never thought I would fall in love with a wicked mafia sinner." I smile against his chest, his heartbeat slowing under my cheek. "But here I am. Planning a life full of sunshine to make sure the darkness can't win for either of us."
Rowan’s arms tighten around me. His chin rests on the top of my head. His heart beats steady under my ear, settling into a rhythm that sounds less like war and more like the beginning of what comes after.
I press my palm flat against his chest.
"Take me home, Rowan."
"Da, moye solnyshko." His lips press warm against my hair. "Let's go home. But first we have to help our family."
“I love those words. Our family.”