Dancing for the Badman (Russian Bratva Book 3) (26 page)

I
LOOK AT
K
IRILL
as if he’s crazy.

Because he must be.

Certifiable
.

The man is certifiable.

He’s just informed me that we’ll be hosting my father, a man I haven’t seen in twenty years, for dinner—
tonight
.

“Seriously?” I whisper, unable to say any other word.

“Yes,
krushka
, I wanted to introduce you tomorrow when Kiska was at school, but he was adamant about tonight, and for dinner,” he grumbles.

I can tell he’s irritated, but he’s not floored, so I can’t seem to care too much about his feelings.

I’m sitting up in bed, naked, with a sheet wrapped around my breasts and a warm coffee in one hand. My hair is surely a train wreck, and I’ll be meeting my father in less than five hours.
My father
.

“Don’t
krushka
me,” I growl. Kirill doesn’t seem affected by my irritation. In fact, he
shrugs
.

“I picked him up from the airport, but I knew you had to work. He’s anxious to see you, Tati. He thought you dead all of these years as well. I’ve kept him informed and up to date on everything. He’s anxious to see you again. He thought he lost you. You’re his only blood child,” he murmurs, gently tucking a piece of wild hair behind my ear.

I gulp down some hot coffee and then bite my bottom lip.

“He came all the way from Russia,
moyo zolotse
, during a time where he should not have been traveling at all. He’s also brought a trusted man as your
Byki
with him. He was Haleigh’s when she lived in Moscow. He wants you safe. Allow this visit, allow him this.”

I close my eyes tightly, thinking about everything he’s said. I want to cave completely, because in all honesty, I want to see my dad—a man I only remember as a little scary, not warm, but tender just the same. But then I think about him leaving me. I never saw him again. Not for my high school graduation, not for—
anything
.

“Why hasn’t he come before, then? Why is he suddenly so worried now?” I ask, trying to keep my bitterness and anger at bay.

Kirill sighs. He knows. He knows it all. And from my guess, he knows both sides of the story. He knows how my father leaving me affected my childhood and teen years, because I told him late at night once while he held me in my dorm room. I’m guessing from his sigh he knows why my father left and stayed away as well.

“You were your father’s
shakhmatnaya figura
. He called you that for a reason, he left you for a reason, to keep your safe; but he never abandoned you, Tati. And as you know, he kept your mother’s apartment paid for, along with plenty of money in her accounts. You were his
printsessa
. He was doing what he thought was best. He kept you in a Russian neighborhood in New York, in Brighton Beach, so that his men could keep an eye on you, keep you safe. You were always under his watchful care.
Always
.

“When you were in college, he told me it was time to inform you of the contract, to take you and start our lives together. When I met you, I could tell you had no clue about who you were. I loved that about you. Your innocence, your naiveté. It was fresh for me. I wanted to woo you, make our relationship happen naturally, because I was falling for you. When you left, I was distraught. I called him and he went into a rage. You may not have known him for long, Tati, but his reports of you, those came daily, along with pictures. He watched you grow up. Every single thing you did was celebrated, and he was witness to it all by photos.”

By the time Kirill finishes his little speech, I’m a weepy mess. I open my mouth to say something. What, I don’t know, but he doesn’t let me. His lips collide with mine and he kisses me sweet and gently. His hand wraps around the back of my neck and he massages me there, his fingers tangling in my hair, but not pulling or gripping, just holding me.

“Come to this dinner, yeah? Meet your papa. I’ll have it catered. You just need to appear,” he murmurs, pressing his forehead to mine.

“Okay,” I whisper.

“Okay,” he confirms. He then lifts his head from mine as his thumb dashes away my falling tears.

“Now, you rest some more. Kiska and I are going to gather her school supplies. Apparently, there’s a fucking list a mile long. It’s bullshit. I pay thousands of dollars in tuition and now I have to buy fucking school supplies,” he grunts. I laugh softly at his words and then grab his hand with my own when he stands.

“I love you, Kirill,” I murmur, looking into his gray eyes.

“And I you,
moyo zolotse
,” he smiles.

I let go of his hand and watch him walk from our bedroom, quietly closing the door behind him. I stay seated, drinking the rest of my coffee as I think.

I think about everything he’s said. I think about my father and the way he left. Can I fault him for trying to protect me? I can’t; but that doesn’t mean that I’m still not hurt and mad as hell. I am.

I lie back down and try to sleep, but my mind is whirling a million miles a minute with thoughts of him. In just a few short hours, I’ll be seeing my father for the first time in twenty years.

I close my eyes and think about my mother. I try not to think of her often because it’s just so damn sad when I do. She tried to be a good mom, but her depression won out most of the time. She slept and drank vodka all day long. She drank herself to death right after I turned eighteen.

Maybe she knew that I was going to be Kirill’s soon, so she just let go of the life she had been clinging to.

Cleaning out her apartment is how I knew that my father had been paying her rent since he had left. She didn’t have much in the way of personal affects, and I found it strange that she had no pictures of me as a baby or child. It was a somber experience, throwing all of her clothes and things out and not learning a thing about her in the process. My mother, along with my father, have been these mythical creatures, people who were there hovering but not present. Maybe I need this; maybe this is closure that I can get for my messed up childhood.

I decide to get up and get dressed to meet him. This illusive creature called—
father
.

Once I’m showered, I walk to my closet and pick out one of the new outfits the bitch Sabina brought over. I take a royal blue sweater dress and pull it over my head. It’s low cut and short, showing off plenty of cleavage and thigh. I slip on a pair of high heeled, dove gray, suede, knee-high boots. Then I go into the bathroom and style my hair and apply my makeup. I want to look perfect, polished, and beautiful for him and for Kirill.

When I walk into the living room, I see Kirill in the kitchen, ordering staff around. Kiska is curled in a chair in the living room reading. She’s dressed in a beautiful dress, and her hair is swept to the side in a low ponytail. When I enter the room further, she looks up at me and smiles.

“You look pretty, mom,” she says softly.

“Thanks, Kiska girl,” I murmur with a grin. “You look absolutely stunning. Did your father talk to you about tonight?” I ask, feeling her out, trying to figure out what she knows and what she doesn’t.

“Yeah. He said that grandpa is coming from Russia. I’m excited to finally meet him,” she grins.

My innocent girl.

I hope that she always stays this way.

I walk over to her and take her hand in mine, giving her a gentle squeeze before I tell her to hurry and read before company arrives, because then the book goes to her room. She nods and turns back to her e-reader as I turn and walk into the kitchen. I enter the room just as the caterers are leaving. Kirill is looking around, lost.

“Do you need help?” I ask. His head shoots up and his eyes widen.

“You need to change,” he grunts as his eyes focus on my breasts.

“I don’t have time,” I shrug.

“I’m going to be hard for the entire visit,” he grunts. I burst out laughing. “Come to me,” he orders. My laughter suddenly dies before I walk up to him.

As soon as I am within arm’s reach, he wraps his hands around my waist and pulls me into his chest.

“My beautiful girl,” he murmurs before his lips brush mine.

“My handsome man,” I sigh.

“I hope that this night does not upset you,” he states.

“It won’t. It’s going to be a good night. I’m seeing my father again, and my daughter is meeting her grandpa, and we’re doing it all at your side,” I say, grinning up at him.

He smirks before he shakes his head once and then his lips are on mine again. Our kiss doesn’t last long as the doorbell rings.

“It’s time,” he whispers before he steps back and takes my hand in his.

“Let’s meet him; come on, Kiska,” I call out to the living room. Less than a second later, she’s at my side. Together, the three of us walk to the front door and greet my father.

I open the front door and slide my eyes to the side to gauge Tati’s reaction to her father. Her expression is stone, but I watch as her eyes widen as she takes in his face.

I can’t imagine going twenty years without seeing my father—what I would be thinking, or how I would handle it. Tati is strong. She simply shakes off her initial shock and nods before she takes a step toward him. Then, to my surprise, she wraps her arms around his middle and buries her face in his chest.

“Papa,” she breathes.

“
Shakhmatnaya figura
,” he murmurs as he wraps his hands around her back and holds her tightly to him.

I hate that he calls her that, his
chess piece
. Regardless of the fact that she is, I despise it; but that is her name in code and he’s always called her that. At least it’s more of a term of endearment now, rather than what she truly is. Tati is no longer a chess piece because she’s
mine
.

“It’s been
so
long,” she whispers dumbfounded as she takes a step back and looks into his cold eyes.

When he looks down on her, the intimidation is gone and there is nothing but love shining in them. Love for his daughter. Much, I think, like the way I look at my Kiska.

“This is Kiska Orlova,” Tatyana murmurs, holding out a hand to Kiska who takes a step forward and looks up at her grandfather for the first time.

“You’re tall,” she mutters.

The observation breaks the tension, and Sergei chuckles as he takes a few more steps further inside of the house, closing the door behind him. Then I watch as he crouches down to her level, his eyes on hers, soft like they are when he gazes at Tati.

“I am, Kiska. You are so very beautiful. I’m the luckiest man in the world, to have such beauty surround me,” he says, his voice rumbling and deep. Kiska grins back at him and she is exactly what he’s said,
beautiful
.

We spend the evening together. I don’t say much, content to watch my two girls animatedly talk to Sergei. They talk to him about everything under the sun.

Surely he’s tuned them out as I have, but I can tell he would listen to both of them talk for eternity, never caring what they were saying, just content to have them near, to hear their voices.

When dinner is over and we move into the living room, Tati looks at the time and excuses herself to put Kiska to bed, as she has an early morning. Her first day at her new school. Tati says she needs plenty of sleep. Sergei and I both kiss and hug her before she bounds down the hall with Tatyana on her heels.

I pour Sergei a tumbler of vodka on the rocks, and together we head out to the backyard. We stand a few feet away from each other and look at the twinkling lights of the city ahead of us.

“I didn’t want the organization to take her all those years ago. That is why I had the contract drawn and that is why I left, with men watching her every move in New York,” Sergei confesses before taking a sip of the cool liquor.

“Can I say that looking back, I’m glad that she ran when she did? Had she not, Kiska could have been taken from us,” I admit.

It’s something I have thought, but my anger and rage were too much. They clouded my thoughts. Once I let all of that go, the realization that Kiska could have been taken from us as a small girl crept into my head.

“Nobody in Russia knows why I allowed Maxim to go on his hunt to find his sister, to find out who was behind the girls and boys being taken. They’ll know now. But Tati, my Tatyana was the sole reason. How selfish of me, yeah?”

“No,” I snort. “I would do anything to protect Kiska. Just as Maxim was bound and determined to do anything to protect his wife and child. It is in our nature to protect our own.”

“I suppose,” he mutters, taking another sip of his liquor. “Have you discovered who is getting intel from the FBI?”

“No,” I grunt.

“We need to look closer at that Agent who talked Tati into leaving. He’s the weak link,” Sergei suggests. He’s right, of course he is, but I don’t know how to infiltrate.

“I have an in with the local cops, I don’t have one with the Feds,” I admit.

“You have a meeting with those motorcycle thugs this week, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I nod.

“Maybe they have an in for a price,” he shrugs. I add that to my mental to-do list when it comes to my meeting with
MadDog
Duhart.