Alexandr's Cherished Submissive (49 page)

As if summoned by the thought, Krom stepped from behind a tree, quiet as a ghost but obviously letting Dimitri see him. “Welcome to hell.”

With a grimace, Dimitri nodded. “Don’t worry. I came to drag him back to the land of the living. I need him.”

“You’ve tried it before.”

“I know, but this is different.”

“He won’t leave willingly.”

“He will when he hears what I have to say.”

Krom shrugged then motioned to a trail leading through the thick forest to the left. “He’s down there, making his men suffer.”

Following the trail, Dimitri came to a small clearing, drawn by the retches of someone throwing up.

When he walked up next to Alex, he made a disgusted sound as he stepped around a steaming mound of puke. The men before him were doing pushups in the snow, their grunts of pain loud in the silence of the forest. Having done pushups many times during his own training, Dimitri grimaced at the memory of the agony of his hands being frozen by the cold. This was a punishment, and he wondered what they’d done to piss Alex off. These days it could be anything. His brother was easy to anger.

“What do you want?” Alex’s voice was low, cold, and dead.

Dimitri studied his brother’s profile, taking in the new scars on his face he’d gained during his torture. The one on his upper lip was the largest visible one, but Dimitri would never forget the crinkly, tough skin of the scar shaped like a clothing iron on his brother’s lower ribs. He forced his gaze back to Alex’s face, knowing he hated it when Dimitri felt guilty about what had happened to him.

If only he’d managed to find Alex sooner, he could have spared him the pain.

“Did you come here to moon over me or say something?”

“I need you to come back.”

“No.”

“I need you.”

“You are doing fine on your own.”

Months of frustration from trying to do his and Alex’s job filled his voice. “No, I am not.”

For the first time in what seemed like forever Alex really looked at Dimitri, his tired eyes distant and unfocused. “Maks can help.”

“No, he can’t.” Running his hands through his hair, Dimitri jerked his head in the direction of the men still doing pushups. “Get rid of them.”

Displaying no emotion, Alex curtly dismissed them, and the men ran off like their backs were on fire.

Beginning to pace, Dimitri glared at Alex. “Yesterday, a nuclear warhead almost made it off the black market through a broker associated with us. A fucking
nuclear bomb
was almost on the way to the Middle East to who-the-fuck knows, and we would have been responsible for it. It was only because of one of our men’s quick thinking that we avoided a catastrophe. It’s too much. I can’t do it alone. Please, Alex, I need you.”

“I can’t.” Alex stared down at the snow, not moving. “I don’t know how to live without her. Do you know why I stay out here? There is nothing to distract me from thinking about her, from remembering our time together. If I think hard enough, it is almost like her touch is real, and for a brief moment, I no longer feel dead inside. Yet no matter how much I think about her, no matter how hard I try, I know I’m slowly forgetting things. I can’t remember if she was left- or right-handed, what she wore on our second night in Rome, and a thousand other things. I can’t forget anymore, can’t let any more of her memories go.”

His heart breaking for his brother, Dimitri blew out a hot breath that instantly turned to vapor. “But Alex, you aren’t dead. You’re alive.”

Slowly shaking his head, Alex gave Dimitri a look filled with such grief that he wondered if he was going to lose his brother to his mourning like he’d lost his father. “Many times I wish I wasn’t.”

“Do not say that. Ever.”

With a sigh, Alex stared out into the woods. “Do not worry. I will not be ending my life. I have tried, many times, but I cannot do it.”

Fear made Dimitri step forward and grab his brother by the shoulders and shake him—hard. “Have you lost your mind? Do you really think Jessica would want you to do that?”

His face was expressionless as he held Dimitri’s gaze. “No, I don’t. I think, if she is watching me from heaven, it would hurt her.”

“Alex, please, don’t leave me alone.” He pulled his brother into a hard hug. “You are the only family I have left.”

His brother let him hug him for a moment, but he stiffened before he broke away. “I will not desert you.”

“Swear it.”

“Do not be so worried.” He stroked the hilt of the hunting knife strapped to his upper thigh with his gloved fingertips. “I decided that God has me here for a reason, and if I do whatever his task is for me, I will get to go to heaven as my reward. See my wife and child again.”

“Alex, you can’t go on like this. You sound like a mad man.”

Instead of being offended, or laughing, Alex returned his unseeing gaze to the forest, “I’m not sure how to live anymore. How to want to be anywhere but lost in my memories.”

He closed the distance between them and stood by his brother’s side. “I will help. You have friends that love you, people that want nothing more than to help you deal with your loss.”

“I do not want to forget anything about her. I want to remember her forever.”

“And you will. Your location won’t change that.” He switched tactics, worried his balls might freeze off soon. “Your people need you. You cannot abandon them like this.”

They stood out there long enough that Dimitri was sure he was going to get frostbite despite his cold weather gear. The sky began to darken, and Alex finally let out a shuddering sigh. “I will come back. I will help protect our people, but I never want to see our father again.”

Relief swept over Dimitri, so profound it almost brought him to his knees. He’d tried dozens of times to get his brother to return to Moscow, only to be turned away over and over again. “You don’t have to. He knows what happened to you, knows he witnessed and ordered it. Even if he can’t remember it clearly, he feels guilt. He will not force his presence on you.”

Alex turned to the direction of the massive house with its barracks and began to walk. Snow crunched beneath their boots, and the wind had calmed down, pushing now at their backs as they walked the trail. Dimitri moved next to his brother, where he belonged, vowing to try and bring Alex back to life.

Nearly Two Years Later

Jessica tried to smile through her tears as she read the perfectly timed letter from a headhunter interested in hiring her for some overseas contract work. Goosebumps broke out over her skin at how perfectly everything was working out, and she wondered if her luck might finally change. She managed to stifle a sob while her live-in nanny and best friend, Gwen, went to check on Tatiana before coming back to Jessica’s in home office. She partially shut the door behind her then headed over to Jessica’s desk, her midnight black hair hanging in a long braid down her back with a red ribbon woven through it.

The woman was a godsend, and more friend than employee, so she didn’t take offense when Gwen said in her sweet, smooth voice, “What the hell is going on with you? First, you’re late and you don’t call. Then when you do come home you look like a zombie. You’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? Where do I begin?” A watery laugh burst out of Jessica, and she wiped at her cheeks, knowing her makeup was long gone after her frequent crying bouts during her humiliating afternoon. “I’ve been fired, and it sucked so bad.”

“Oh, oh no! Sweetheart, that’s terrible.”

Gwen gathered her close in a hug, her curvy body soft and comforting. Even though the cute Latina was around Jessica’s age, she had this mothering instinct that was bone-deep, and she tried to take care of everyone. Unable to have any children of her own, Gwen treated Tatiana like the most special thing in the world, and Jessica’s daughter adored the woman. Giving her back a brisk pat, Gwen began to swear up a storm that eventually made Jessica laugh. Then she dried her face off on the sleeve of her discarded suit coat.

“Fuck them,” Gwen declared. “Fortunately for you,
chica
, you have a big fat trust fund to fall back on. I know, I know, you don’t like to touch it, want it all for Tatiana, but it’s worth dipping into the money your husband left you rather than work for such faithless bastards. I cannot believe they thought you were stealing from them! Like you need it!”

The usual guilt nagged at Jessica as she heard Gwen repeat the lies she’d told her about her past. Gwen had no idea where the small fortune in Tatiana’s trust fund and Jessica’s bank accounts came from, that it wasn’t her daughter’s inheritance from her fictional dead father but blood money from the child’s grandfather. Gwen knew the state of Jessica’s finances because she paid the bills and kept the house bank account, often teasing Jessica about living like a miserly old woman when she had over six million dollars in liquid assets. While Jessica had used Jorg’s money to buy her small, lush beachfront home outside of Miami and had invested some of it as well, she tried to use it as little as possible, and then only for things that Tatiana needed.

Waving her hands in front of Jessica’s face, her silver bangles clattering, Gwen yelled, “Hello? Earth to Jessica?”

When Jessica had run all those years ago, she’d taken the advice of the man handling the forging of her documents and stuck with her first name since it was so common, but picked a new last one. So now she was Jessica St. Cloud, single mother and unemployed forensic accountant. Well, maybe not unemployed for long.

“Yeah, they fired me. Well, let me put it this way, they said I could quit and they won’t press charges.”

“Jeeze, what did they say you did?”

“Embezzled a bunch of Colombian drug money! But I totally did not. Someone pulled one on them, and they set me up to take the blame. I was the scapegoat, paraded through the office with my box of things and security following me as I did the walk of shame out of the building. It was horrible. Everyone was whispering, and those bitches in marketing were so damn smug looking I wanted to drop my box and kick their butts just so I had the satisfaction of being fired for something I’d actually done! I’m innocent.”

“Well duh. You’re the most honest woman I know.”

Once again, there was the internal wince of shame at how little Gwen actually knew about the real Jessica. Forcing herself to bury that feeling, something she had a lot of practice doing, she took a deep breath, her anger deflating as reality set in. “I quit, gave them some humiliating and tearful rant, then packed up my shit, and left.”

“Wow, that is a shitty day.”

Giggling, somewhat hysterically, Jessica nodded. “It was...really, really shitty.”

She would have suspected Jorg was somehow behind her being fired, but that didn’t make any sense. He hadn’t bothered her since he’d had her kidnapped and had his goons show her Kia’s funeral, a day that still caused her nightmares. She’d wake in the middle of the night, convinced Jorg had finally come to take Tatiana from her, dripping in sweat. Those dreams always made her run to her daughter’s room just to see her little sleeping form in her princess-like canopy bed, to touch her soft red hair, to kiss her little freckled nose and breathe in her sweet scent. More often than not, she’d climb into bed with her daughter and fall asleep holding her close.

“We need to go on a cruise.” Gwen clapped her hands together. “Another Disney one. Tatiana had a blast on the last one, and we can ask hunky Mark if he wants to come. I’m sure, with your free time now, you can finally date him. Nothing better to do while unemployed than hook up with your rich, hot, single neighbor.”

Mark was their good-looking, charismatic neighbor who’d been after Jessica for as long as they’d lived next to each other. Never pushy, never overly aggressive, but always there and letting her know that he would take their friendship further if she desired. She was tempted—hell, she was human—and she hadn’t been with anyone since Alex, but she couldn’t get involved with Mark. If shit ever hit the fan, he’d be target number one as her boyfriend, and she had no doubt that is what he would become.

Plus, she had this weird feeling that he was submissive in the bedroom, and that would not work.

The whole situation with the man formerly known as her husband had messed her up so bad she hadn’t even considered dating since she left him to save their daughter. A decision she never regretted from the moment she held Tatiana in her arms. Well, she may not have regretted it, but that didn’t mean she didn’t hurt every moment of every day in those first years. Ached inside of her heart in a way that wouldn’t heal. At least she had her love for Tatiana to keep her strong…and over the last few years he had his hundreds of women.

Panic hit her as she realized she was doing the forbidden, thinking about him. No, the only way she survived was by not thinking about him. She quickly cleared her mind, irrationally fearful that even thinking about
him
would somehow call Jorg down on her, on Tatiana. Her heart raced at the memory of the feel of
his
lips on hers, of his scent filling her as he held her so securely in his arms. No matter how much she tried to keep
him
from her mind,
he
haunted her as surely as any ghost.

“Jessica?”

Her hands trembled so she crossed her arms like she was cold. “What?”

“Want me to book that cruise?”

She blinked for a moment then remembered their conversation. “No, no. I won’t have the free time. I’ve been head-hunted.”

Putting her hands on her ample hips, Gwen pursed her lips. “I don’t get what you’re saying. Explain.”

“It means that I’ve been given a crazy good job offer on the very day I got fired. I’m to fly out to Spain to meet the owners of a technology firm who need my expertise in American fraud schemes. And they’re giving me a generous signing bonus along with an amazing five-bedroom home right on the Mediterranean.”

Gwen collapsed in the comfy, floral padded chair across from Jessica’s desk, her dark eyes wide. “Shut the front door! You’re lying.”

“No, I’m serious! Look!”