Page 70 of The Pakhan’s Heir

“Yeah?” It presses against my though again, sliding between my legs. “Can you feel that?”

My thighs are already moist just from being so close to him. I open my legs a little, allowing him a little more access. “Sir,” I whisper against his lips. “Stay with me a little longer?

As if my words cast a spell on him, he leans into me his hands moving down to my thigh, lifting it up and around his waist. He slides himself inside me without question and our moans mix on the breath between us.

My heart is full with him. My love. My Alex.

“You know… I’m going to have to kill him. You get that, right?”

At the time that Alex said it, he had just gotten out of the shower and I was getting dressed in the bedroom. He was standing at the bathroom sink in just his towel and the sentence had just popped out, completely apropos of nothing.

I’m thinking about that statement now as I make coffee. He, Kostya, and Rikki are talking on the back stoop and I can hear pieces of the conversation through the screen door.

I know… I’ve known that my father’s actions were going to lead to something like this. I guess I haven’t really thought too hard about it before now. Before he said it out loud.

It’s logical that this is the action that has to be taken. He’s declared war on the Bratva and threatened my life, and apparently, the life of this baby. Alex is doing what needs to be done to keep us safe.

And yet… I don’t know. I feel responsible for all this. Listening to them talk about what happened has pieced together a few dots for me. It’s also become clear that if I hadn’t been so careless as to toss out the pregnancy test in the trash outside, his spies might never have found out about this baby.

The coffee’s made and I pour cups for everyone and put them on a tray to take out to them. My job here is to bring my husband and his men coffee then make myself scarce. That’s what I’m supposed to do, leave the men to the planning.

I take the tray out to the stoop and get part of the current track of conversation. The three of them are sitting on chairs with a small card table near the door.

“The bottom line is that we don’t know where he is now,” Kostya says. Rikki, who’s got a bruise under one of his eyes, shakes his head.

“Should have drawn and quartered that piece of shit for lying,” he mutters in Russian.

“It only means we’ll have to draw him out,” Alex says.

Kostya laughs. “Easier said than done. He’s an experienced Pakhan. He’s not going to stick his neck out knowing we’re looking for him.”

Alex glances at me, then the coffee. He takes two cups and passes them to Kostya and Rikki with a “Thank you” before grabbing his own mug and taking a sip.

“The trick,” Kostya continues, “is finding something to come out for. Something he would never say no to.”

“Maybe something like his daughter?” I say without thinking.

They all stop talking and look at me. Alex immediately says, “Not a chance.”

“He tried to set me up as a spy,” I say. “If I texted him with some fake information, he could be convinced that I’m still working for him.”

“Nona,” Alex says with a slightly impatient sigh, “he wants to end my bloodline. He knows that you’re carrying the next generation of Molotovs. It would be insane to use you as bait.”

“Hang on,” Kostya says. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s insane. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, you’re actually a bigger prize to him than this baby is.”

“How do you figure that?”

Kostya and Rikki exchange a glance and Rikki says, “Because you’re a Pakhan. A brand-new one at that. He has to know that with you gone, this Bratva will fall into chaos.”

“And a headless Bratva is one that can be destroyed or even taken over,” Kostya adds. “He may want to wipe you all out, but the most important thing to him has got to killing you any way he can.”

Alex’s brows knit together. “By that logic, I should be the one playing as bait, not Nona.”

Rikki scoffs. “Would you come out of hiding if the Pakhan hunting you asked to meet up after you tried to kill him? Slavik is a lot of things, but dumb isn’t one of them.”

“Which is why,” Kostya says, continuing the train of thought, “if we’re seriously talking about luring him out, then we’d be fools not to at least consider using the one person he might actually come out for.”

Alex shakes his head, ready to reject the idea once more. “Also,” I say, “this is kind of my fault, anyway. This whole rampage he’s on might not have happened if he hadn’t found out I was pregnant.”