Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 62543 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62543 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
I snuggle my ass into the cradle of his hips, curve my back to meet his front. Adrian’s breath blows warm across my nape. My eyes drift closed.
As absolutely batshit crazy as it sounds, I feel in my bones that this is where I’m meant to be. Right here in Adrian Turgenev’s arms where I feel centered and strong.
6
Lucy
“Papa!” Benjamin shrieks, slapping his tiny hand against Ravil’s closed office door.
“You want your daddy?” I ask, scooping him up, ready to distract him.
“He can come in,” Ravil calls from the office. I open the door and set Benjamin down because he’s kicking and thrashing to be free. He just learned to walk and can’t get enough of it. He toddles toward Ravil in what looks like a drunken lurch, accelerating, then slowing when he navigates gravity to regain his balance.
Ravil’s normally impassive face splits into a giant grin, and he holds his arms wide. “Come here, son,” he says in Russian.
“Papa!” Benjamin repeats his first word, the one that lights up his father like a Christmas tree every time he says it.
My heart swells watching our tiny son arrive at the desk where Ravil snatches him up and tosses him in the air. To think I almost missed out on all this. I tried to keep our child from his father. Didn’t want him to know this man because he was in the bratva.
Every time I think of what a sad, stark existence Benjamin and I would be having right now if my plans had gone through, it makes me want to weep. I’m sure we wouldn’t have thought it sad or stark because we wouldn’t have known the difference. I would still be working my ass off at father’s law firm, trying to prove myself to all the mansplainers there. Benjamin would have some nanny to watch him while I worked long hours, and I would’ve thought it was enough.
But having enough compared to having everything is, indeed, a bleak existence.
I just had to compromise on my moral high ground about the Russian mafiya. Had to realize that love is stronger than prejudice or trying to make things fit into that neat little package I’d thought my life was supposed to look like.
Ravil tosses Benjamin again and again, then snuggles him in for a big hug.
“How much longer will you be?” I ask.
“I’m finished.” Ravil stands but rubs his brow–a tell that something’s weighing on his mind.
He’s the leader of the bratva and an alpha male, so getting him to even admit something’s bothering him can be difficult, but it’s worth a try.
“What’s going on?”
Ravil sets our son down, and he promptly goes to the shelving unit and starts pulling all the books out. Toddlers are tiny hurricanes ripping through rooms and leaving total devastation in their wake.
I pull him away, but Ravil says, “Let him play. He won’t hurt anything.” He rubs his brow again. “Adrian won’t take my calls.”
Adrian is a newer member of Ravil’s cell. The young man who brought us together when Ravil hired me to defend him.
“Do you think he’s in trouble?”
“No. Not yet. He’s communicating with Dima. I think he’s dodging me because he knows his plan is unsound.”
“He’s gone rogue.”
“Precisely, and if he fails, he could bring a shitstorm down on all of us. Not that I would have a problem taking Poval out myself. I just don’t like getting blindsided.”
“What is his plan–do you know?”
“More or less. If I tell you, you become an accessory.”
“Attorney-client privilege,” I shoot back. I represented Adrian the last time he went rogue going after the same man. The man responsible for bringing Russian sex slaves into this country and selling them at auction.
“He picked up Poval’s daughter, who is a college student in England. He’s holding her hostage.”
Dismay flushes through me. “Oh God.”
“You know Adrian.” Ravil catches and holds my gaze to reassure me. “He won’t hurt her.”
I nod, drawing a breath to calm my racing heart. Wishing I hadn’t asked. This is awful. But I cling to Ravil’s words, which I’m sure are true—Adrian wouldn’t hurt her.
“It’s a bit ironic, isn’t it? To kidnap a woman to punish someone for kidnapping women?” I manage.
“I know. I think that was his intention. He wants Poval to feel the way he did when Nadia was missing.”
“Oh God.” Now I’m rubbing my forehead.
“Yes. So I’ve been trying to reach him. Before he gets himself into a situation he deeply regrets.”
“It might be too late for that.”
“I know,” Ravil says grimly. “And the trouble is, Poval might be enmeshed with the bratva–with other cells. So Adrian could be stepping on toes in our own organization. I’ll have his back, but there may be complications and consequences from this. So his not taking my calls is pissing me off.”
Benjamin drags a book to Ravil and holds it out proudly. “Papa.”