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Daria groaned, wiping the sleep from her eyes. “What does it mean, Nik?”
Grimly, he answered, “I have no idea. I have to go, and I don’t want to.” He kissed her brow and released her, heading to the bedroom to quickly dress.
Daria made an unhappy noise, wrinkled her nose, and followed him down the hall. She stood in the bedroom doorway, hand against the jamb, watching him swiftly dress. “What can I do to help, Nik?”
“Nothing,” he told her tightly, pulling a black t-shirt over his head. “Just stay here. The meeting can’t last too long. Pavlovich wants all of us to meet him at the penthouse at 0900.” He sat on the bed, hauling on his socks and then his combat boots. “Stay out of sight, Daria. Stay here until I can put this all together? I’ll come back and see you as soon as I can.” He rose, running his fingers through his dark hair, trying to tame the strands into some semblance of order.
“Okay,” she said, moving aside as he stood. “I need groceries today, but I’ll wait until I see you, first. I’ll stay out of sight.”
Nik halted at the door, sliding his hands around her face, looking deep into her eyes. “I want you safe, Kitten. Korsak’s going crazy thinking he’s being demoted by Pavlovich. He sees me as a direct threat to his leadership. It’s a tense situation.”
She reached up, sliding her palm along his stubbled jaw. “Just go. Stay safe. I’ll wait here for you,” she promised gravely, holding his worried gaze.
Nik leaned down, taking her mouth, taking her hotly and without preamble. He slid his mouth against her lips, feeling her open to him, feeling her body move sensually against his, her arms going around his shoulders, drawing him tightly against her. There was no time. He had to get to the hotel. Tearing his mouth from her wet, lush lips filled with such promise, he caressed her hair. “There’s so much I need to say to you, Kitten. And I can’t. Not yet…”
Daria gave him a sad look of understanding. “It will wait. Get going…”
It was 0830when Nik entered the apartment once more. Daria had showered, climbed into twill hiking pants and boots, and a warm alpaca sweater of many colors that complemented the rest of her outfit. She was sitting at the table eating breakfast when he entered.
Daria saw the tension in his face as he shut and locked the door behind him. “There’s coffee in the kitchen,” she said.
“Good, I need a cup.”
She watched him stride across the living room. “What happened, Nik?”
He poured the coffee, sitting with her. “Korsak is ordering us to get ready to leave. He’s rabid and angry. He doesn’t know what to think of the new Don.” Nik gratefully sipped the coffee.
“Did he take it out on you?”
“No. But now, the team is wary of me. I was worried that would happen. They call me the ‘Golden Boy’, now. They know Pavlovich favors me.” His mouth quirked. “Hell of a position to be put in. I’ve lost my shadow position in the team.”
Daria reached out and took his hand, her fingers enclosing his. “They didn’t beat you up.”
“They don’t dare. Korsak knows Pavlovich favors what I say, now. He asked me what the Don wanted at dinner last night and I told him. Now, Korsak is ranting that the Don is trying to see if he’s skimming money off the top of this operation.”
“Is he?”
“I don’t know for sure. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was, but he’ll never admit it to the rest of the team,” Nik growled. He picked up a piece of bacon from her plate. “May I?”
“Sure. You haven’t eaten?”
He shook his head. “No. It was like stepping into a room of angry hornets. No coffee. No food. Just a lot of confusion, anger and distrust.”
“Damn,” she muttered, pushing her plate toward him. “Eat this, Nik. I can make myself more after you leave for that other meeting.”
He glanced at his watch and then gave her a grateful look. “Thank you,” and he sat down and hungrily dug into her fluffy scrambled eggs, ate the six pieces of bacon and two pieces of nearby toast slathered with strawberry jam.
Daria stood and walked away, into the kitchen. She saw Nik was starved. Stress made a person extra hungry, and she quickly whipped up four more eggs in a bowl and put them into the skillet for him. Dropping two more pieces of bread into the toaster, she felt his worry in the very air around him. “What else can I do?”
“Report this to Jack and the CIA. Keep them in the loop. It’s not much, but this is an ongoing train wreck as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know what the Don has up his sleeve, or what his real objectives are. Those two security guards with him are a lot more than just security. They run different branches of the Don’s operations from what I understand. And they both worked for Yerik Alexandrov before that. They are high-up in the chain-of-command.”
Daria stirred the cooking eggs in the skillet. “I need to go out for food, Nik. What’s a good time?”
“After the meeting gets started. I don’t want you seen by any of them. I want to keep you out of sight as much as possible.”
“A little late for that,” Daria teased, one corner of her mouth moving upward. She brought the skillet over, ladling out the steaming eggs on his cleaned plate. Nik was starved, and her heart went out to him. She heard the toast pop up on the counter. Turning, she went to butter the browned slices.
“Probably, but I don’t want the Don to see you, either.” Because Daria bore the same birth mark Pavlovich did. Nik had tried to find a space to tell her what he’d see on the man’s neck but things were moving so fast that he couldn’t. And Nik didn’t want to just blurt it out. He wanted quality time with Daria, to prepare her emotionally for it. He knew it would come as a jarring, life-changing shock. She had been a Russian orphan, later adopted by a loving Ukrainian couple. Two people would never have the exact same birthmark, but in a family, as he knew from his extensive training in genetics, a birthmark could go from one generation to another. Sometimes in the same shape, and same area of the body. But he’d never seen one like this. It was damn near identical to the one Daria bore on her neck. Nik grimly promised her silently that he would pick the time, have the time, to tell her the upsetting news. And then, Nik would hold her afterward because he knew it was a twisted conundrum.
