"Yes?" He answered a bit gruffly, the stress and physical exhaustion irritating his already frayed nerves.
"How is she?"
Nikolai's watched Vivian for a few seconds. "She's sleeping."
"Good. Look, from what I've heard, the whole damn warehouse burned to the ground. There's no evidence connecting us to it yet but—"
"The police are already hounding me for an interview. My lawyer informed them that Vivian was recovered and is here at my home. Two detectives have asked to interview us in a few hours."
"Yeah, I know. I got called about five seconds after your lawyer informed the station Vivian was safe."
"And what did you say?"
"I acted surprised. Whether Katrina bought it is anyone's guess."
"As far as I'm concerned, I haven't seen you since the other morning at Vivian's apartment."
"I was seen going into your hospital room."
"Where I was unconscious," Nikolai reminded him.
"You don't need to protect me. I willingly went with you tonight. I crossed that line of my own accord."
Nikolai's gaze returned to Vivian. "I'm not protecting you. I'm protecting her. If you get disciplined, she'll feel the guilt."
Santos sighed. "What's the story you're giving the detectives?"
"I received a phone call with a ransom demand, slipped out of the hospital, gathered the money and exchanged it for Vivian."
Santos grunted with uncertainty. "Let's hope it works."
"It will."
"I'll drop by later to visit her." Santos hesitated. "Just—take care of her."
He heard the subtle dig. Take care of her better than the last time…
A second later, the phone line went dead. Nikolai frowned at the phone before handing it back to Sergei. The behemoth looked like he was about to drop from exhaustion. "Go home. Get some sleep. Ice your hands."
Sergei shook his head. "My place is here, guarding the two of you."
"I appreciate your loyalty but Kostya already has five men on the house. If you won't go home, use one of the guest rooms and take a nap. I need you rested and alert."
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.
Not even trying to hold back, I wept pitifully. "You shot me."
Nikolai dropped to his knees. I'd never seen anything like it. He seemed to have lost all control of his body. Falling forward onto his palms, he crawled to me. The agony carved into the angular lines of his face told me how much he regretted what had happened. "I am sorry."
"Sorry? You lied to me." Rearing back, I started to slap his face but remembered at the last moment that he'd suffered a head injury. The blow landed in the spot where his neck curved into his shoulder, narrowly missing the place where he'd been stabbed.
Anger and betrayal surged through me, burning me right up. I balled up my fist and slammed it into his chest again and again and again. He didn't try to stop me. If anything, he seemed desperate for me to continue, for me to pummel and beat him until the physical pain overcame the emotional hell he suffered.
Weak with hunger and exhaustion, I finally stopped hitting him. Nikolai slumped forward. He pressed his cheek to my naked thigh, the rough stubble of his jaw rasping my skin. The warm spreading wetness of his tears stunned me. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Trembling with shock at his emotional reaction, I stared at his head and the broad expanse of his back. Seeing the scars and the tattoos drove home how incredibly broken he was. How agonizing had it been for him to keep this secret all these years?
Though my anger and betrayal over the lie we'd lived for so long wouldn't fade overnight, in time it would irritate me less and less. In some strange way, the lie between us hadn't pushed us apart. It had bound u
s together so tightly there was no way to know where one of us ended and the other began.
I threaded my shaking fingers through his thick hair. I carefully avoided the ugly wound along the back of his head as my fingers trailed down toward his neck. I marveled at the surprising softness of his inked skin. The marks stood out so starkly against his pale skin, each one a reminder of some terrible deed.
He carried the evidence of his crimes on his skin for everyone to see. Part of my fascination with gang-related tattoos was the willingness of a person to display their sins to the outside world. I couldn't understand it. All the stupid, criminal things I'd done as a child were my greatest shames. I wanted no one to know about them.
But men like Nikolai and Ivan and Kostya? They wore them brazenly—but not with pride. I'd quickly learned that most of the subjects I'd interviewed for my paintings weren't proud of the things they'd done. They regretted them immensely yet they marked their bodies with reminders. Was it a form of penance?
Nikolai's tattoos set him apart from others. They were the types of markings that made people give him a wide berth. Did he want to be shunned and treated badly? Did it make him feel better or ease the guilt?
Even Ivan who had reformed himself often received the leper treatment. Erin had told me of a time they'd gone to one of the city's best restaurants and been informed their reservation had been mysteriously lost. In some ways, Ivan was still being punished for crimes he'd answered to years ago.
Feeling so conflicted, I tried to remember the faith that gotten me through difficult passages in my life. I closed my eyes and considered what my faith had taught me. There was only one thing to be done.
"I forgive you, Kolya."
His head popped right up. Bleary-eyed, he gawked at me. "Don't say that."
I brushed my fingertips along his square jaw. "I said it. I mean it. I forgive you."
His rough exhalation ruffled the thin fabric of the blue hospital gown covering my nakedness. "I don't deserve it. I’m a monster who shot a child and then lied to her for eleven fucking years."