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“I hate them too,” I breathe. “Not the entire people, obviously. I hate the Bratva. But, I can find them on my own. I just need somewhere to lie low while I do. If you’ll still have me here?”
“Of course we will,” Conor nods as he walks over and kisses the top of my head, and then he straightens up. “I’m going for a shower,” he adds as his eyes glaze over and he walks out of the gym.
An hour later, I’ve answered as many of Liam and Mikey’s questions as I can. They’ve asked me about my family, particularly interested in my twin brothers after I told them how much they remind me of them. Eventually, Shane intervened and told them to give me some space for a while. They dutifully obeyed him and have left me alone. Shane has left now too, and I should probably go to my room and have some quiet time to myself. Reliving the worst time of my life has left me mentally and emotionally exhausted. But I can’t stop picturing Conor’s face when he walked out of that gym.
I go to his bedroom and knock quietly.
“Come in,” he shouts.
Opening the door, I step inside to see him lying on his bed in his boxer shorts with a book in his hand.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Can we talk?”
“What about?” He frowns at me.
“About what I told you earlier?” I say as I walk over to the bed and sit beside him.
He puts the book down beside him and holds out his hand to me. When I take it, he pulls me down to lie next to him and wraps one of his huge arms around me. “You can tell me when you’re ready, Angel,” he says softly.
I place my hand on his stomach, my fingers flexing over his hard abs. “My parents came to the US when my mom was pregnant with me. I never knew what my father did in Russia – whether he worked for the KGB or the Bratva, but I do know that he spent the rest of his life running from it. He thought he could build a better life for us here in the States. But he was always on the move. Always looking over his shoulder. We never settled anywhere for long. I never went to school, or made friends like regular kids did.”
Conor runs his warm hand over my arm, and I press myself closer against him. “But we always had a really happy home. My mom home-schooled us and made sure we always had everything we needed. She was an incredible woman,” I say as I recall her beautiful face and her soft hands. “She always made wherever we were feel like home. And my dad, well, he was the smartest man I’ve ever known. He taught me so much. All about computers and how to cover your tracks. He taught me how to fight too. He used to tell me that one day our pasts would catch up with us and that I would need to be strong. I always got the sense there was something he wasn’t telling me, but I never got the chance to find out.”
“You have no idea who ordered the hit on them?” Conor asks as he brushes my hair from my face in that way that makes me feel completely cherished.
“I’ve figured out plenty of people that it wasn’t, and I suppose that’s a start. I also suspect that there is a lot more to it than my father simply refusing to work for them or a fear that he would reveal their secrets.”
“Hmm?” Conor pulls me tighter to him. “What happened to your family is almost like an urban legend. And the Wolf disappearing with the daughter, well, you,” he says quietly. “You must have been terrified.”
“I was. I’ve buried it all so deep that I wonder now if my memories are reliable anymore. And I promise I’ll tell you anything you want to know, Conor. I’ll never lie to you again. But can we stop talking about me for a while?” I press my cheek against his chest.
“Of course, Angel.”
We lie in comfortable silence for a few minutes and then Conor draws in a shaky breath. “You’ve never asked why we killed Nikolai Semenov and his men?”
“No. I figured you’d tell me if you wanted me to know.” I whisper.
“The Christmas before last, they kidnapped me and kept me chained in the basement of that house where we found you, for four weeks.”
My head snaps up and I look at him. Bile surges from my stomach, burning the back of my throat as I think about this man I’ve come to care for so much being at the mercy of Nikolai Semenov. Because I’m aware of exactly what kind of man Nikolai was, and what he did to his enemies. “What? Four weeks? Why did they take you?”
“They figured me and my brothers had something to do with some deal they had that went south. It was another family, but Shane is the head, so Semenov held him responsible. And he took me as payback.”
“Did they hurt you?” I ask, the tremor in my voice clearly audible.
“What do you think, Angel?” he breathes, and I feel kind of dumb for asking such an obvious question. “But mostly it was psychological torture. Sleep deprivation. Hardly any food or water. No contact with anyone. No light, and no idea of time or space.”
“Is that why you don’t like the dark?”
“Yup. Or small spaces. Or Russians,” he laughs softly. “Present company excluded,” he adds.
“You do know that Leo Tolstoy is Russian, don’t you?” I nod toward the tattered copy of Anna Karenina beside him.
“Yes,” he says with a dramatic sigh, making me laugh too.
“How did you get out?”
