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“You said Michael was staying with his aunt today, Anna…”
“Oh!” She blushed and looked down momentarily. “Sorry, I didn’t mean… She’s not a blood sister. She was just my neighbor growing up in the group home. We’re very close and Michael sees her as an aunt. As a matter of fact, I see her as a sister, myself. Her family was always busy and her brother was already working, so a lot of the time she didn’t have anyone either. We bonded quickly, growing up.” She was clutching the glass with both hands, not seeming to notice it or the shaky way she took her little drinks. “I don’t know what I’m going to tell her about today.”
She again looked on the verge of tears. “I don’t know what I’m going to tell anyone!”
I took her gently by the shoulders and looked at her firmly. “My men were discreet. The most that will be discovered once they are done cleaning up after the Puerto Ricans’ mess is that someone tried to break in a side door during the auction. You don’t have to give the real details.”
She swallowed and nodded, eyes wet. “I already told my boss that Michael was sick. But I’m not comfortable lying like this, Viktor.”
“That is exactly why I wanted to keep you out of all this bloody business.” I couldn’t keep the frustration out of my voice. “I lost my innocence at ten. I’m used to this. But I know that you are not, and I…” I sucked air through my teeth, trying to find the right words. “I do not wish to scare you off.”
She let out a harsh noise, half laugh and half sob, and buried her face in her hands. “Oh God,” she mumbled, and I realized she was trying to hide her tears from me.
“Olivia.” I let all my regret out into that one word. There were a million things I wanted to explain, what separated me from the men who had tried to kill us, that I had a code, that I did not hurt innocents nor allow them to be harmed if I could do something about it. But it was too much, too soon.
I held her instead, bundling her onto my lap and nestling her against me, letting her hide her wet face in my neck.
“It will be all right,” I promised her, though I knew I couldn’t actually predict that. “Trust in me. I will find a way to work every bit of this out with you. You will be safe. Michael will be safe.”
She looked up at me, her eyes lit with tentative hope. “Do you promise?” she whispered.
“I swear it,” I said, and prayed that time and circumstances would not make a liar out of me.
Chapter 18
Olivia
We didn’t make love at the safehouse. My body wanted it, and I knew he wanted it. But my head was too much of a mess.
When he touched me, a war kicked off inside me. Wanting more, wanting to pull away from him, wanting to cling to him, wanting to run. I wanted to lose my mind and all sense of time in his arms. I wanted to make my excuses and hurry off quickly to hide in my home with Michael. To hide in my last shrinking scrap of normalcy, in my quiet world where people did not try to murder me and then got their heads blown off to stop them.
Instead, he held me, seeming to understand that sex would have only added to my turmoil instead of resolved it. I felt bad about denying him, and frustrated about denying myself, but I wasn’t okay, and he could see that.
Now I was on my way home, in a butter-soft jade-green jacket dress that fit so well I wondered if he’d snuck a measuring tape into bed with us. Grateful, but also conflicted, and still a little terrified.
If only he was less understanding than I expected, not more.The irony stuck in my mind. It was true. If he had been petty or pushy or thoughtless with me after today’s insanity, I would have fled. But instead, the more I knew of him, including how he was under pressure, the harder I fell for him.
No matter how dangerous that got for me.
He had put himself between me and a bullet. He had sworn to go all out to protect me and our son. He had put my needs before his, even in extreme situations. He had even apologized for the scare afterwards, though God knew he had been the one trying to protect me from the men who were really guilty.
He was perfect. Well, not perfect, but amazing. More amazing the more that I knew about him. Except, he was a gangster who just shot three people in front of me.
The memories of those deaths sat strangely in my head. The horror surrounding them was dreamlike and distant. But then I would remember looking away from those terrible red blurs with such nauseating clarity that I would go cold and start trembling.
He killed in front of me. But he did it to save our lives. Maybe more lives than that. Viktor was heroic and monstrous in one action. And I couldn’t have one without the other.
This was his life. This was his terrifying world. If I wanted him in my life, his world would leak into mine. Into Michael’s. Maybe not as much as I was afraid would happen, but enough that I had serious reasons to worry.
A smart woman wouldn’t fall for him. She would figure out the minimum contact she and her son could legally get away with and stick to that. She wouldn’t be craving his body and his touch in the middle of all this turmoil.
Apparently, I was not a smart woman.
***
On my way to pick up Michael, I was right on the nose of ‘on time’, as if nothing unusual had happened today. When I pulled up, I noticed two strange cars in Anna’s driveway—a scratched-up black sedan and some kind of fancy Italian sports car in silver. Curious, I walked up the brick walkway and onto her porch, listening before I knocked.
Two men were arguing inside, while a baby wailed in the background. I could hear Anna’s strained voice asking them to stop fighting in front of the children. Their Spanish was so rapid and full of slang that I couldn’t pick up on all of it through the closed porch window.
