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What the hell?Fear makes my spine rigid. I stand, opening my mouth, fully prepared this time to beg—but I’m too slow. One man releases me, in the same movement turning me roughly by the shoulders toward the other.
This one cracks his knuckles—one hand has on it a huge, glinting ring. It’s with that hand he backhands me first, so hard that I hear a resounding, horrible wetcrack, and think my nose might be broken. The other hand comes next, right away, and the other man must let me go, because the next thing I know,I’m on the floor, blood pouring out steadily from both of my nostrils.
I lie there breathing hard, waiting for the next blow. But at some point, I think I must slip into unconsciousness, because the next thing I hear is a voice, his voice, soft in my ear.You’re safe now, Kat, I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.
I thought, just last night, that maybe I hated Aleksander Lukin. But the warmth that suffuses me at the sound of his voice tells me that I do not hate him, not at all, not even a little bit. He warned me. He may be the reason all of this is happening, but he warned me, and in the end, he came for me; not just here, but to this town, to this state, to this damn country. He didn’t have to. He could have let me go. He could have let me die. Not even knowing that Adam is his son, this is how much value I have to Aleks.
Could it be…?No. It’s impossible. He can’t love me.Can he?
“You’re safe.” His breath against my ear, his fingers, so incredibly tender as they stroke my cheek. “I have you now, Kat. You’re safe. Rest.”
I do.
Chapter Fourteen
Aleks
The sight of her…it’s like something from a nightmare.
One of my men spotted Konstantin and his men leaving this place, this bar downtown. The place isn’t open, it won’t be for hours. However Konstantin got in here, by blackmail or sweet talking or bribery, it doesn’t matter. I force my way in, at gunpoint, and tell Yuri to deal with the owner. Whether he meant for Kat—my Kat—to be attacked like this, beaten like this in his restaurant, I can’t know.
Frankly, I don’t give a damn. He’s as complicit as Konstantin himself. As complicit as the men who did this to her.
Kat is lying on her side in the main body of the restaurant, wearing muddy, damp clothes, her hair a rain-wet tangle. She’s completely out, limp, in something deeper and darker than sleep. Her face is white as a sheet, a triad of bruises already rising on her cheek and jaw. Both nostrils are dark bloody craters, red streaming out of them and down her chin and cheek, a pool of it spreading from her face like a horrible halo.
When I touch her, she makes a soft sound, but doesn’t speak. When I lift her, she is dead weight in my arms, lighter than I expected. Even unconscious, she curls toward me, resting her bloody, battered cheek against my chest. And I realize something Konstantin must have long before this, somehow; with some deep, hidden, perceptive intelligence on me. Something I have never said aloud or even, really, let myself think.
I love her. I love Kat.My heart tightens into a hard, cold fist. But the feeling doesn’t lighten or burn off. It only intensifies, beating in me like a drum.I love her.How the hell couldKonstantin know that? And how foolish was I to prove him right, by flying across the sea to save her?
If it were totally up to me, I would go on a rampage. Scorched earth. I’d burn every building Konstantin has so much as glanced at in this piece-of-shit town. I’d kill every man he’s spoken to or crossed paths with. And eventually, finally, I would kill him, too—fuck the consequences. Fuck the ripple effect of this feud. It was personal, before.
It’s war now.
If it were up to me, and not at all my conscience, or logic, I would end this right now. But what’s more important is here. First, that she is safe; and second, that her family is, too. I don’t want to leave Kat. Not for an instant. But after I take her home, and have one of my men—a medic and surgeon back in Russia—take a look at her, I gather my things. Something has changed today, with this. I see now how serious all of this is. Some part of me, before, still felt a little flagrance. But to see Kat bleed for me…it sets many things in stone.
“We will guard her with our lives,” says Yuri, who stands at my side in Kat’s bedroom. The medic has just finished looking over her, having cleaned her face and stitched one of two deep cuts across her right cheekbone. A purple bruise has bloomed beneath it; I can almost picture the hand that delivered that blow. “Go. You don’t need to worry this time. She isn’t going anywhere.”
I look at Yuri and, to my own surprise, smile. I put a hand on his shoulder. “Some things can’t be helped. Our perimeter needs to be better. We need more men. And we need more eyes on the road, in case an enemy vehicle gets back over the boundary. But the rest was her—which means it was me.”
Yuri looks at me quizzically.
I look at Kat, sleeping, her lips parted. Now she has color back in her cheeks, and she’s dry and settled beneath her blankets,safe and at home in her own bed. She looks peaceful. I wonder if she’s dreaming, and if she is, what about? Am I in it? Are we happy there? Is she safer there than she is here?
“I forget, or I underestimate, just how strong-willed she is,” I admit to Yuri. “I should have known she’d up and leave like that. And I…”
“What is it?”
“It’s my fault, that’s all.” I don’t tell him the rest of what I’m thinking: which is that I should have been better with her. Kinder. More patient. I’m putting her through hell, and she’s handling it better than anyone could rightfully be expected to. But last night, I was cruel; forceful. And it’s no wonder to me that she ran away. But it can’t happen again. “And I know that you will protect her with your life. You already have, Yuri.”
His gaze is stoic. When I turn to leave, he inclines his head.
“I’ll be back soon,” I tell him. “Keep me appraised of any and every change.”
“Will do.”
I don’t look back at her; if I do, I know I’ll just have more trouble leaving. If I do, I know I’ll just want to stay.
***
