Nikolai 2 (Her Russian Protector #6) (27 page)

All hell broke loose in the house. Men ran through the front door and into the kitchen. There weren't any more shots fired, but the smack of skin on skin told me that the fighting was still at a fever pitch. Finally, Kostya's voice filled the house as he called out to Nikolai in Russian, telling him it was all clear.

Nikolai's arms relaxed around me, and he slowly stood. Grasping my shoulders, he guided me to my feet. I found the courage to stare up at him, but the expression on his handsome face made my stomach drop like a runaway elevator. The softness and tender heat that always warmed his eyes had vanished. He looked at me with the same cold indifference that he showed everyone else. That icy wall he used to keep others out had suddenly appeared between us.

Ten walked up behind Nikolai. The bruises on his face from his fight with Eric were even darker and more pronounced now. There were fresh blood stains on his shirt and jeans. I didn't even want to think about the ways he had earned those. "The judge is alive. So is the girl. The Pham crew is dead. Hector Salas took a bullet to the shoulder, but it's nothing our doctor can't fix." He glanced at me and winced. "There's fucking
llelo
everywhere, boss. It's not safe for her to be here."

His business-like rundown of the mayhem didn’t surprise me. This was Ten's element. This was what he did best.

Turning away from me, Nikolai clenched his jaw together so tightly I could see the muscles flexing in his cheek. He stared at Ten for a moment before finally speaking. "Get her out here."

"
Da
." Ten stepped toward me as Nikolai pivoted toward the living room.

"Kolya." I reached for my husband in a desperate attempt to make him stop, to make him come back and talk to me. Shaken up and in shock, I needed his strength. I needed to feel his arms around me. I needed to hear him whispering gently in my ear, reassuring me that everything would be all right.

But he didn't stop or slow down. He just kept walking—away from me.

I tried to follow him, but Ten stopped me. "No, Vivian. He doesn't want you now."

Ten didn't speak with malice or cruelty. He was speaking matter-of-factly. Nikolai didn't want me.

"
Dorogaya moya
." He wrapped a brawny arm around my shoulders and carefully held me back. Lowering his head, he spoke in a low tone only I could hear. "Leave him. Give him some space. He'll come around."

I stumbled out of the house with Ten guiding the way. By the time we reached an idling SUV, he was practically carrying me. I could hardly stand. He lifted me into the front seat and fastened my seatbelt. Not a word was spoken between us as we drove. There wasn't anything to say anymore.

With my forehead against the hot glass of my window, I closed my eyes and let the tears come. Ten's voice raced around my head.
He doesn't want you now
.

No
, I thought sadly,
he doesn't.

Chapter Thirteen

Sick to his stomach, Nikolai gritted his teeth and fought the urge to run after Vivian. The urge to shout at her for being so reckless, and the maddening desire to sweep her into his arms and kiss her until she was limp with pleasure gripped him like a vice. Somehow he managed to muscle control over his baser needs. He kept his back to her and his feet moving toward the kitchen. Ten would take care of her. Right now, he had more pressing matters to attend.

The kitchen looked like a fucking war zone. He stopped abruptly after two steps because of the growing blood pool and the haze of white powder in the air. His expert gaze took in the sealed bricks of product and the piles on the counter. He hazarded a guess at the weight and wondered how the fuck a low-end counterfeiter like Bobby Pham had scraped together enough cash to make the initial buy. This was millions of dollars in weight in pure Colombian candy. After cutting it, adding a premium to every gram and pushing it out onto the street, there was still a tidy profit in it for Bobby and his crew.

Or, at least, there had been.

He looked at the three bodies on the floor. Two of the faces he didn't recognize but the third he did. He would have to visit Mr. Lu personally to let him know what had happened here. It was a visit he didn't look forward to making tonight.

Judge Walker sat in a chair while his daughter knelt next to him and wept over the body of her boyfriend. Miraculously neither had been shot, but the daughter made Nikolai nervous. A coke addict with an axe to grind was a loose end he didn't like. He silently added her to the list he would be giving to Kostya. At the first indication that she might break, he would have to give the order. Vivian had been here, and he refused to put her at risk.

But what the hell had Vee been doing in this house? Why would she do something so stupid? Did she think of the baby even once? The bullet holes in the walls made him sick. He couldn't help but imagine the burning hot projectiles ripping through her soft flesh.

Finding her curled in a ball and unharmed in the entryway had been nothing but sheer dumb luck. He had fully expected to find her shot and bleeding on the floor. His heart threatened to burst as pain unlike any he had ever known struck him. He could have lost Vee and the baby.

A grunt of pain dragged his attention away from the trouble that would follow him home. Hector Salas sat in a chair and pressed a wad of paper towels against his bleeding shoulder. From the looks of the wound, it wasn't too bad. He would live.

As if sensing that he needed to explain what had happened, the judge raised a hand in front of him. The gesture was one that pleaded for understanding. "Listen, Nikolai, I didn't think it would go like this."

"Not another fucking word out of you," Nikolai warned. His anger toward the judge threatened to erupt in a fit of violence. "I told you to leave this alone. I warned you that something like this would happen if you got involved, but you didn't listen. Now I have three dealers dead at my feet, and a crime scene that has to be cleaned up. Unless you plan to take credit for this fucking nightmare," he added meanly.

Judge Walker had the decency to glance away and look chagrined. He didn't say another word. He kept his gaze glued to the bloody, dirty floor.

Speaking in Russian so the judge, his daughter and Hector wouldn’t get involved, Nikolai started giving orders. "Kostya, call the Liquidator. Get his cleaner in here tonight. I want this place gone over with a fine tooth comb, and I want us out of it."

Kostya looked relieved to not be in charge of cleaning up this mess. "What about the drugs?"

"Call Zec. He'll take care of it for us. We'll consider it payment for all this trouble."

"And the bodies?" Kostya used the toe of his boot to lift the head of one man.

"We'll take them to Mr. Lu after they've been cleaned." The old man would want to bury his nephew appropriately. Nikolai couldn't be sure about his degree of relationship to the other two dead men. If they were close relations, they had to be returned.

Nikolai motioned to Hector. "Take him to see the doctor after you make that call."

Kostya nodded, and Nikolai switched to Spanish as he addressed Hector. "You and I are going to talk later tonight so go easy on the painkillers when they patch you back together."

Hector's gaze fell to the dead men on the floor. He didn't seem the least bit fazed by the sight of three sprawling, bleeding bodies. "This alliance wasn't working out. It was time for a change."

The cartel man's reply didn't surprise Nikolai. A man like Hector didn't reach the pinnacle of power he had attained without being a cold son of a bitch.

Turning to Ilya, Nikolai pointed to the judge and his daughter. "Get them out of town tonight. They can come back on Tuesday or Wednesday."

"I'll take care of it," Ilya assured him.

Nikolai fixed the judge with a furious glare. "You're taking your daughter and you're leaving. Tonight. You aren't going back to your house or making any stops. You're getting in Ilya's truck, and you're going wherever the hell he tells you to go. Understood?"

The judge nodded tersely. "I get it."

"We'll talk about this," Nikolai gestured to the mess on the floor, "when I get back from London." He didn't have to say that he expected to be owed a huge fucking favor for taking care of everything. Studying the judge, he sensed the older man finally understood what Nikolai had been trying to tell him that night in his backyard. There was a way to go about these things and barging into the lion's den with a gun wasn't one of them.

Spinning on his heel, Nikolai left the kitchen and made his way across the house. He tapped Artyom's shoulder to let him know that he was needed. They left the house with their heads down, and he prayed all of these houses around them were truly empty. If not, the homeless squatters who liked to hide out in them would be easy to silence with money or a visit from an enforcer.

The ride to the house was one of the longest of his life. The image of Vivian curled into a tight little ball in the entryway while gunfire popped around her tormented him. He had come
this close
to losing her and the baby. He couldn't even comprehend a future without her or their child.

He scrubbed a hand down his face and thanked God he had found her so quickly. His anger toward Ten and Eric Santos would manifest soon enough. After two days of nonstop tension with Vee, he had cut out of Samovar early with the full intention of devoting the entire evening to her. The guilt of hiding his meeting with Tatiana was eating a hole in him. He needed to come clean with her about everything that had happened and why Tatiana had come back. Vee deserved to know the truth, even if it meant admitting that he had lied to her.

But he had walked into the house with Artyom trailing him to find Ten and Boychenko arguing in the kitchen. The sight of Ten's battered face had surprised him. Learning that Ten had attacked Eric, a damned Houston detective, in his home had infuriated him beyond belief. Didn't Ten understand that he had just given Eric the evidence necessary to have his probation revoked? The last thing he needed was Eric sniffing around in their business, especially while Tatiana was still hiding out at the Four Seasons.

When Ten had confessed that Vivian was missing, Nikolai had nearly strangled him. He had rushed the larger man but had refrained from hitting him. It wasn't necessary. Ten had instantly told him what they knew. Vivian had gone outside to get some space. Boychenko had spotted her talking to the judge while he was on his way to dump a dustpan filled with glass and ceramic shards. Not long after, he had passed the window on another trip to the trashcan and had discovered the backyard empty.

Nikolai had instantly known where she had gone with the judge. He didn't know what fucking sob story the old man had used to get Vivian to go with him on such a fool's errand, but it must have been a good one. She wouldn't have put herself at risk without a good, convincing story to get her out of the yard and into the judge's vehicle.

Artyom stopped in front of the house, and Nikolai was out of the SUV before the street captain even had the vehicle in park. He ate up the sidewalk in long, determined strides and took the porch steps two at a time. When he opened the front door and entered the house, he saw the destruction caused by Eric and Ten's fight. The debris had been cleaned away, but the ruined picture frames, the broken table and the water stain on the hardwood were evidence of what had happened here.

Ready to tear into Ten, he stormed through the house and followed the sound of voices into the kitchen. Vivian stood on one side of the island, a cup of hot tea clamped in her hands, while Ten was at the sink washing his hands. His gaze skipped from his wife's blotchy face, her eyes red from crying, to Ten's as the enforcer turned toward the sound of footsteps.

He hooked his thumb over his shoulder. "Get the fuck out. Now."

Ten didn't even bother to dry his hands. He left the kitchen without a single word.

Standing across the island from Vivian, he stared at her for a long time. The distance between them was only five feet in reality, but it felt so much wider. They were drifting farther and farther apart, and he didn't know how to pull her back. He was losing her.

His chest heaved as he tried to control his breaths with measured inhalations. Even though he tried to remain calm, he could
n't
keep the anger out of his voice as he demanded to know, "What the hell were you thinking, Vivian?"

She went rigid at that and glared at him. "Are you serious? That’s the first question you ask me? You're not going to ask me if I'm okay? You're not going to ask me if I need to go to the hospital? You're not going to ask me about the baby?"

"Are you all right? Do you need me to take you to the hospital?"

"Would you let me go if I wanted to? Aren't you worried someone will find out what happened back there?"

He couldn't believe she would even ask that. "Of course I would let you go! Jesus Christ, Vivian, I'm not a fucking ogre.
I
wouldn't put
my
baby at risk."

She flinched at his cruelly flung words. "This isn't my fault."

"Not your fault?" He repeated harshly and incredulously. "You ran off with the judge, busted into a stash house and escaped a shootout. Do you have any fucking idea how lucky you are? Do you have any clue how close you came to being shot?"