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“It had to happen.”
“I think your men would be just as pissed off seeing you got your ass handed to you.”
“It’s not that. The gun belonged to one of the Neon Kings we grabbed earlier. Should the police get involved, ballistics puts the gun at both murders, as well as my attempted murder, which we made sure to stage near one of the cameras at Delirium, so it automatically rules me out.”
“It’s still risky,” I huffed after a moment, even though itwaspretty thorough as far as plans went.
“Risk versus reward.”
“Oh yeah? What’s the reward for you getting fucking shot?”
“You.” He smiled at me. “And freedom. For both of us.”
42
MISHA
“Areyousureyou want to bring him?” Sasha asked in Russian as we piled into the Escalade.
“He deserves justice for what happened to his brother,” I replied, pressing a hand to my side and trying not to grimace. Marek was already pissed at Sasha, I didn’t need my pain reigniting his anger every time he saw a flash of it.
“He’ll get justice. It doesn’t mean he needs a front-row seat to it.” Sasha shot Marek a look, which earned him a glare in return. It must have been strange for Sasha to meet someone who wasn’t intimated by him and had no qualms about letting him know that.
The last few days had been interesting, to say the least, as the two of them circled around each other in the penthouse, barely acknowledging the other’s existence. The children, however, were fascinated by our visitor. Ezra, in particular, made up for Marek’s silence by asking Sasha so many questions about everything and anything that the poor man locked himself in the other guest room for half of the time.
“You mean to tell me if this were Roan, you wouldn’t let him come?” I raised my brows at Sasha and smiled politely, waiting to see how he’d dance out of that answer.
“No,”he snapped.“And I don’t ‘let’ that little shit do anything. He just does it. To hell with the consequences.”
I tried to stifle a chuckle but it was impossible. The idea of Sasha being pushed around by anyone was amusing, let alone by a bright-eyed American with the sunniest disposition on the planet. “Marek is much the same way—he’s just more assertive than Roan about making his opinions heard.”
“Yeah. I could tell. He’s… charming.”
At that moment, Marek glared at the two of us. “Do I even want to know what shit you two are talking?”
“Nothing bad,” I assured him, squeezing his thigh gently. “Sasha was saying how much you remind him of his lover, Roan.”
Marek reassessed Sasha with an arched brow. “Wow. Gaydar was way off on that one.”
“A lifetime of hiding it,” Sasha replied icily.
“We’re almost here,” Anton cut in from the driver’s seat before announcing the same thing in Russian over his cell phone to Valery in the SUV behind us.
“Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” Marek said, leaning into my shoulder and lowering his voice. “You were just fucking shot. I don’t know if Dr. Zhivago over there told you, but bullet holes take weeks to heal!Weeks, Misha. Not four fucking days.”
“It’ll be fine,” I replied, ejecting the magazine from my Kalashnikov and double-checking the bullets before jamming it back into place and racking a round. “But I want you to stay with Anton all the same.”
“Yeah, sure. Whatever.” Marek slumped in his seat, staring out the window and chewing on his thumbnail, displaying a remarkable amount of self-control instead of pressing his point.
“Is he going to listen?” Sasha asked, holstering his pistol after similarly checking the magazine.
“He will. Unfortunately, he grew up around gun violence. He knows when to keep his head down.”
Sasha’s gaze flicked to Marek, narrowing. “I never pictured you with someone like him.”
“I never pictured myself with anyone. But from the moment I met him, it felt… right. Making him happy, making sure he’s safe, that’s all I care about.”
“And his siblings? You know you’re stuck with them, too, right?”
