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“You should rest,” he murmured against my hair, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on the arm draped over his stomach. “It’s been a long day.”
“Then it’s your turn?”
“No.”
My brows furrowed as I tilted my face up toward his. “No?” So hehadjerked off. Knew it.
“No,” he repeated, skimming his knuckles across my cheek. “This was about you.”
What in the ever-loving fuck…?“I don’t understand…”
His bright blue eyes clouded over. “That’s because no one has taken care of you before. Let me take care of you, Marek. Let me show you how your lifeshouldbe.”
Either the answer was evident on my face or he didn’t want one. He kissed me again, one of his deep, toe-curling kisses that I thought only existed in the movies. I knew I didn’t deserve to have someone like him in my life but I was grateful he was, no matter how briefly he intended to stay.
I really,reallyhoped I didn’t fuck it up.
21
MISHA
While Marek slept,I fumed in silence, stewing in the darkness as his words echoed inside my head, churning in a cesspool of fury and disgust. It was bad enough walking in on him and that…man… unable to do anything, unable to show any outward reaction. But to learn the history between them? To know someone had been so utterly despicable to the person laying next to me and they continued to draw breath? It took everything in me not to hunt that vile piece of shit down and tear him apart with my bare hands.
So much of Marek’s attitude made sense now, as did the way he reacted in certain situations, to specific words. The words and actions of a fucking predator. I had pieced together his history with sex work easily enough but I should have realized what else was at play and I kicked myself for missing it. He was never in sex work for the money or any enjoyment of his own. It was about survival and that kind of prostitution, with the men he catered to, put him in a dangerous position. Knowing he wouldn’t go to the police,ever, they could abuse him with impunity—and they had. At leastonehad.
Not that I’d doubtedanythingMarek said but the evidence validating his words was everywhere, from the hidden scar on his shoulder, to the sporadic jobs and apartments, and the transactional way he viewed sex, because for him that’s all it had ever been. It was a means to an end, not anything to be celebrated. And now the monster in his life had returned once again, trying to take what wasn’t his.
As soon as Marek rolled away from me and onto his stomach, I slipped out of bed and padded into the living room with my cell phone. It was nowhere near as capable as my laptop but it was better than not takinganysort of immediate action.
I had three things to go on: Ken; alderman; Chicago.
In a city that prided itself on its fifty “mini-mayors,” he wasn’t that hard to track down. A quick internet search resulted in a picture of the motherfucker, confirming the man I’d seen earlier was the same one Marek was referring to. He’d also been the one who caused the other scene, prompting Marek’s first disappearance.
As soon as Sveta said a stranger had followed Marek into the locker room, I ran after them, recalling that very incident at Dalton’s. If I had recognized Ken in the moment, I would have been hard-pressed to let him leave that room alive. I regretted not looking into the man that first night but Marek had been my primary concern, not him. Now Marek was paying for that oversight, turned into prey once again, his security threatened by this deviant from his past.
Kenneth Foster, lawyer-turned-politician. Married, two children. Typical. He was everything the average American would want in their leader. He fit the image down to a T, including the level of corruption he apparently relished.
In no time at all, I found information on his wife and her various charities; his son, the stockbroker in New York; and his daughter, enrolled in a prestigious university in Virginia. That meant Ken and his wife lived alone in their massive brick house.Perfect.
I sent a message to Maxim with his new assignment. I pulled him from the search for Nirvana and tasked him and his men with surveilling Ken, gathering as much intel as they could on his movements.
Eduard’s orders came next. He was to get the blueprints and the location of all the city cameras in a five-block radius of Ken’s house. Once I had those, I could start properly preparing. Until then, I’d have to be content with running interference and making sure Ken didn’t come back to wreak any more havoc in Marek’s life.
With Dimitri no doubt spying on Marek, I had to delegate Marek’s personal safety to Valery. After Sasha, Valery was the most ruthless man I knew and even though he wanted to interrogate Marekhisway, I also knew he wouldn’t lay a hand on him without my say so. I instructed him to pick two of his best men and assign them to watch over Marek whenever he was at Delirium with the explicit order to put a bullet in anyone who remotely looked like a threat, including city aldermen.
No matter what I did or what security measures I put into place, everything had to be carefully orchestrated behind the scenes. If Marek got wind of any of it, he’d have one of two reactions and neither were pleasant. He’d either throw up his walls again because I was infantilizing him or he’d associate my actions with Ken’s and think he’d traded one brute for another. Both had the likely outcome that he’d disappear. Then what? He’d never come back a third time. So what other option did I have? Club him over the head and drag him back to the cave?
If Sasha were here, that would have certainly been his advice.
A pang of envy shot through me. When his lover had been attacked, the slaughter that followed was awesome in the truest sense of the word. I couldn’t have restrained Sasha if I tried, so I didn’t. I gave him my blessing to kill the offenders in the most brutal ways imaginable because anything less would have been an injustice to Roan. It wasn’t petty retribution; it was a reckoning and it needed to happen, a decision I stood by when Sergei demanded an explanation for all of the carnage.
Just like Ken needed to pay for everything he’d ever done to Marek—yet I could do nothing. Sasha was the Wolf, savage and unstoppable, whereas I was muzzled by my position, forced to dwell in a constant state of inaction while I examined the chess board and moved my pieces accordingly. Sasha bathed in the blood of those men; I had to stand by and wait for the precise moment, wielding a scalpel instead of a broadsword.
I fucking hated it.
* * *
“Are you sleeping with anyone else?”
