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I lean against the counter, reluctant to sit in the remaining kitchen chair. As Mishka flicks on the light and opens the first-aid kit that still sits on the table, I take a moment to admire his broad shoulders and muscular back.
“What?” he asks when he turns to face me and finds me studying him. He closes the distance between us, a cotton ball doused in antiseptic pinched between his finger and thumb.
“Just trying to figure out how a man who looks so big and scary could be so ridiculously sweet and sensitive,” I say, attempting a smile, though my face feels swollen and sore from crying.
“Sweet and sensitive?” he asks, his tone indicating I’ve offended him on a foundational level.
“Yeah,” I insist as he gently cups the back of my neck and drops his eyes to focus on the throbbing cut at the base of my throat.
“I’m not sweet. Or sensitive,” he counters defensively, dabbing the antiseptic over my split skin.
Air hisses between my teeth as the stinging turns into a fiery burn.
“Sorry,” he mutters, his brow pressing into a frown of concern.
I arch an eyebrow, my lips curling into a small smirk as he proves my point without even realizing it. Mishka glances up to meet my eyes, his dark hair falling into them in the sexiest way. He humphs as if to concede to my point as he focuses once more on his task, but he won’t admit I’m right.
Then, “Wait, you think I look scary?” That idea seems to bother him even more.
Curling my fingers around the hand that’s cleaning my cut so tenderly, I wait until his eyes return to mine. “When I first met you? Hell yeah, I did. You’re so big and strong and intimidating. Not to mention you were always scowling at me.”
As if called to attention, the familiar dark look returns to his face. It makes me smile genuinely, even though I’m still shaking from the trauma of almost losing my life.
“Now I just think you’re beautiful,” I finish, gently smoothing his furrowed brow with my thumb.
“I can’t tell whether you’re trying to insult me or compliment me anymore,” Mishka growls. But the light dancing in his eyes tells me he’s teasing.
“They’re compliments,” I murmur, rising onto my toes as I bring my lips a hair’s breadth from his. “Every last one of them.” I kiss him softly, so grateful to have this wonderful man in my life.
38
MISHKA
It takes some time before Alina’s shaking starts to subside, and I can tell she’s putting on a brave face to ease my guilt. I stay close to her, keeping her in my arms, as much to calm me as it is to soothe her. We stay in the kitchen, talking softly—about anything and everything but the dead man not twenty feet away.
Fortunately, I live in a sketchy enough neighborhood that no one’s going to come investigate a gunshot. I doubt anyone even bothered to call the cops. To my neighbors, this is just the end to another rowdy night.
And while Alina seems to be avoiding even looking in Sascha’s general direction, I can’t stop stealing glances at the lifeless form of my brother. It feels as though someone punched a hole through my chest. Not only have I lost my brother twice, but to be responsible for Sascha’s death? It’s agonizing. It will haunt me for the rest of my life.
But I couldn’t live with the alternative.
Because a life without Alina is not one I’m willing to endure, and to stand by and watch my brother kill her and our unborn child? I couldn’t do it.
Still, it torments me to know that I'd failed my brother so completely.
He spent his entire life trying to protect me, and when it was my chance to return the favor, I fell agonizingly short.
It doesn’t matter that I did everything within my power to try and help him. The truth of the matter is that he suffered unbearable torture for me, and it drove him mad as a reward for his sacrifice.
There’s no doubt in my mind that’s what made Sascha capable of the horrific acts he performed. My brother, the one who taught me how to be a man, never would have laid a finger on Alina. He never would have sacrificed so many innocent lives to seek revenge.
“He knew, didn’t he?” Alina asks, breaking my dark contemplation. Her eyes are sad as they cast toward the makeshift alarm Sascha disarmed with such skill. “He knew how to avoid setting off your alarm.”
It all clicks into place with her words—how the intruders could get into my apartment without forcing their way in, why Sascha knew how to break in without a sound. He must still have a key to the front door. I never changed the locks.
“He’s the one who taught me how to set that alarm to begin with,” I explain. Of course he would know how to get past it.
Countless small details come together now, breadcrumbs I should have been able to follow to their inevitable conclusion if I weren’t so blind to the truth. The trail I followed with Rasputin and his men to track down the culprits who ambushed the Sakharov cars—it overlapped with the speakeasy Sascha and I used as refuge on occasion. The abandoned neighborhood where they took Alina when they kidnapped her—it was just a few blocks from where my brother and I sought shelter when we first fled home. Sascha was going back to the familiar places he knew he could lie low and stay off the radar.
