NIKOLAI (Her Russian Protector #4) (13 page)

Somewhat reluctantly, Sergei nodded and
lumbered down the hallway. With the house secured by men he
trusted, Nikolai closed his bedroom door and slowly made his way to
the comfortable reading chair next to his bed.

Mindful of his aching sides and throbbing head,
he sat down very carefully. He stretched out his tired legs and
closed his eyes. For a long time, he sat there and enjoyed the
silence. He lightly ran his hand over the stitched up hole in his
shoulder. He'd aggravated the wound badly today but had
miraculously avoided busting any of the stitches. The back of his
head pounded mercilessly. He touched the staples there and
winced.

"I'm getting too old for this shit." The
grumbled words sounded rather loud in the quiet stillness of his
bedroom. All too soon he'd be forty—and that was much too old to be
brawling in the damn streets and dragging his woman out of a
burning warehouse.

His woman? He stared at Vivian. The light of
the bedside lamp illuminated her gorgeous face. Even with the
bruises she was still the prettiest thing he'd ever seen. He
reached out to take her small hand. Guilt pierced his heart at the
sight of the bandages covering the nasty wounds on her
wrists.

He traced each slender finger and drew his
initials on the back of her hand. The tattoos marking his skin
seemed so starkly violent when compared to her pristine skin. He
wore the evidence of his misdeeds for the world to see.

And tonight she'd seen first-hand what he was
truly capable of doing. He'd shot an innocent child. He'd nearly
killed her. There was nothing that would absolve him of that sin.
Nothing.

Cradling her small hand, he tried to memorize
the feel of her skin against his. For all he knew, this was the
last time he'd be able to touch her. When she woke, she would be
furious with him—and rightly so.

Nikolai considered the way he'd gone from doing
anything and everything to ignore the siren's call of his love for
her to now wanting to do anything and everything to keep her in his
life. All the things that he'd seen as obstacles—her age, his
profession, her innocence, his darkness—no longer mattered to him.
Only their tangled mess of a past stood between them
now.

But he didn't know how to fix that one. The
truth would come out when she woke and then what? Would she hate
him forever? Would she demand to leave? Could he keep her here
against her will even if it was in her best interest?

The answer came swiftly. He'd let her go. He'd
send her anywhere in the world she wanted as long as it meant
keeping her safe and happy. It would kill him to give her up but
he'd do it if she truly wanted to leave.

A knock at the door drew his irritated gaze.
"What?"

Kostya peeked into the room. "You have another
call."

Not wanting to drag his tired, aching ass out
of the chair, Nikolai flicked his fingers. "Who is it?"

"Grisha."

Nikolai's lips pursed. The very last person he
wanted to speak with tonight…

"I called Ivan and Dimitri to let them know
Vivian was safe. Dimitri promised to call Yuri to pass along the
good news."

Nikolai accepted the phone from Kostya. "Thank
you."

"I'm going to leave for a while. I'll be back
by noon."

Nikolai nodded. "Take as long as you
need."

When Kostya closed the door behind him, Nikolai
rubbed his forehead and answered with a resigned exhale.
"Grisha."

"Kolya." The nickname sounded different coming
from his old acquaintance than it did from Vivian's sweet mouth.
With her, it was always teasing and light. From Grisha, it was a
warning. "I hear you got your girl back."

"Yes."

"Do you know who took her or who attacked
you?"

"Not yet." He didn't care to divulge what
details he knew. Things were still too uncertain to send
information up the chain. He didn't want poorly sourced intel to
spur a bad decision that would send his crew into harm's
way.

"The old man isn't happy. First, you had that
shit with the Albanians and the junkie who stole from them. You
stuck your neck out to buy protection for that crackhead's sister
even though you'd been told not to intervene. Then it was that shit
with Yuri and the crazy chick I tracked down from Moscow. Now
this?"

Nikolai didn't take the bait. Grisha liked to
argue but he wasn't going to play that game, not tonight. He'd
always been jealous of Nikolai's cherry assignment here in Houston
and Nikolai was too tired to listen to Grisha shit on the choices
he'd made for his crew.

While he wasn't thrilled with all the fucking
drama he'd dealt with this year, Nikolai also knew that his time in
control of Houston had been the most quiet, successful and
profitable in the entire organization's history. "If you're done
riding my ass, I'd like to go to bed. It's been a long
night."

Grisha chuckled. "If I had that sweet little
thing waiting in my bed, I wouldn't want to waste time on the phone
either."

Nikolai narrowed his eyes. Had Kostya told
Grisha that Vivian was staying in his room or was Grisha simply
guessing? "Are we finished?"

"Maksim says to get this mess cleaned up and to
do it quickly. He doesn’t like problems."

Nikolai marveled at the old bastard's
hypocrisy. In last few years, Maksim had dragged most of the
organizations many branches into some of the riskiest, high profile
areas of earning like identity fraud. There had been more trouble
than Nikolai cared to remember. His crew had been spared most of
the problems because of his rules but others weren't so
lucky.

"Neither do I." Ending the call, Nikolai tossed
the phone onto the bedside table. Closing his eyes, he found a
comfortable position for his head and began to work through the
various angles of this mess.

Kostya had managed to reach out to Sheets, the
pimp who frequented Wet, his strip club. The man had been
knowledgeable about the illicit trafficking occurring throughout
the city. While he'd confirmed that Mr. Lu was the man pushing the
shipping containers of women through customs, Sheets had surprised
Nikolai with the information that the Asian syndicate wasn't the
running game. He didn't know the man's identity—it was all
hush-hush—but he did know the name of the trucking company used to
run the women around town.

Nikolai had instantly recognized the company as
one owned by a man connected to the Calaveras. The alarm bells had
started ringing. Was Vivian's father involved in her kidnapping?
Was this the motorcycle club's way of getting back at him for
turning on them? Where did the cartel fit into all of
this?

Julio had seemed truthful when he'd sworn none
of the Guzman Cartel allies were involved in the kidnapping or
attack. He wasn't that good of a liar so either he'd been purposely
kept out of the loop about the Calaveras using one of their legit
businesses for trafficking or the motorcycle club had somehow
managed to keep that very quiet.

What went on in the spidery web of the cartel's
empire mattered very little to him as long as they stayed out of
his business and out of his way. Somehow they were tied up in this
and he needed to know how and why.

But who had ordered the attack and kidnapping?
Who wanted to hurt him? Who wanted to hurt Vivian? Those were the
questions he needed answered.

Mr. Lu seemed like the most likely place to
begin but whether or not he'd be willing to cooperate was anyone's
guess. The old man could be a cagey bastard. He was always very
careful to leave many layers of plausible deniability between him
and any illegalities.

It was a model Nikolai had been trying to
follow for the last few years. Slowly but surely, he was distancing
himself and his crew from the seedier, darker side of their world
and into legitimate forms of earning. Unlike Ivan, his desire to
leave behind this life wouldn't be easy or quick. Maybe it would
prove impossible—but he'd been trying.

Now there seemed only one way to find the
answers he so desperately needed. He had to wade deeper and farther
into those murky waters—and pray he wouldn't drown.

Chapter
Nine

I dreamed the same dream that had
tormented me since that fateful April night nearly eleven years
ago—but this time there was no abrupt end. This time I
remembered
everything
.

The scent of the house filled my nose. I
remembered the faint lingering mulberry aroma from a candle. I
could feel the weight of the too large hoodie my father had given
me, the black cotton draping my smaller frame. I felt the bite of
the window frame against my knees as I climbed in through a
bathroom window to open the front door for my father.

And then I was inside the pitch black house,
moving silently after my father. He signaled that I should go
upstairs and retrieve the valuables from the closet while he stole
from the office. I quietly climbed the staircase to the second
floor and made my way to the master bedroom.

Everything was exactly as my father had
described on the fast food napkin drawing he'd given me earlier
that night. I stopped in the doorway of the perfectly arranged room
and considered how very odd it was that my father had known simply
everything about this house. Even at that young age, I'd known
something wasn't right.

Instead of the dream skipping to the very worst
part, to the moment of sheer terror when I'd been blasted with a
9mm, the dream seemed to slow down. I moved into the closet, found
the wooden jewelry cases, and started stuffing my pockets with all
the valuables I could grab.

But a strange noise from downstairs drew me out
of the closet. This was something I hadn't ever remembered. This
was new.

Jamming a handful of jewelry into the hoodie
pocket, I came out of the closet and heard the sounds of a scuffle.
A muffled gunshot popped in the stillness of the house. Startled by
the sound, I jumped. Was that what had sent me running to the
window?

Even in the hours after the shooting, I'd never
been able to remember why I'd run to that window. It had never made
sense to me. Now I understood why I'd done that. I'd been a
panicked child looking for the first means of escape.

But I'd tripped over an ottoman and hit the
floor hard. The loud clatter had alerted the man fighting with my
father that I was upstairs. The sound of heavy footsteps running up
the stairs had scared me so badly I'd scrambled to my feet and
rushed to the window in a desperate attempt to flee. I had the
window open, the screen popped out and a foot on the ledge when a
harsh snarl stopped me dead in my tracks.

"Put down the gun!"

The gun? I didn't have a gun. Terrified and
unable to speak, I turned quickly and reached into the pocket of my
hoodie to remove all the jewelry I'd stolen. Almost instantly, the
first gunshot exploded in the room. It wasn't until the second and
third bullets slammed into my body that I realized I'd been
shot.

Staggering backward, I hit the window ledge and
lost my balance. In that final moment before falling, I saw the man
who had fired at me. There was just enough moonlight to illuminate
his horrified face. It was a younger, meaner Nikolai.

With a ragged sob, I bolted upright
in bed. "
No!
"

"Vee!" Nikolai was at my side in an instant,
his gentle hand caressing my face.

Suddenly averse to his touch, I smacked away
his hand. "Don't!"

Nikolai recoiled immediately. He stumbled
backward and put space between us. It took me a few moments to
clear my sleepy mind and come to grips with my surroundings. I
didn't remember anything after meeting the doctor in that
ultra-bright, state of the art outpatient surgery center he owned
with a couple of partners.

Was I in Nikolai's home? In his bedroom? The
space seemed so masculine with its leather furniture and earth
tones. It was exactly the kind of décor I would have imagined him
choosing.

Of all the ways I'd ever fantasized about being
invited into his bed, this absolutely wasn't one of them. Kidnapped
and nearly killed in a blazing inferno, I'd been brought here to
recuperate. I'd finally spent the night in the bed of the man I
loved so desperately.

In the bed of the man who had tried to kill me
when I was just a kid.

Voice croaking, I demanded, "Take off your
shirt."

Nikolai swallowed hard but didn't deny my
order. He slowly flicked through the buttons and peeled the white
cotton from his body. The shoulder area was stained with dried
blood from the seepage around the bandage covering his stitches.
With the heavy drapes drawn, the glow of the bedside lamp spilled
onto the many, many tattoos now revealed to me.

But it was that tattoo smack dab in the center
of his chest that interested me most. The strange cross adorned
with thorny vines was the stuff of my nightmares. It was the thing
that had inspired my latest selection of haunting art pieces. It
was the thing that threatened to tear us apart forever.