Nikolai 2 (Her Russian Protector #6) (31 page)

Nikolai turned his head and closed his eyes. He remembered every cruel word that had come out his hateful mouth. He remembered the cold way he had treated her after the shooting, the way he had punished her with his silence and sent her away with Ten rather than comforting her. At the time, he hadn't wanted to reward her reckless behavior.

But she had been a victim.

And he had treated her terribly.

"There's something else," Kostya reluctantly added.

"Just fucking tell me."

"Ten and I had a chance to speak while you were in the hospital with Mr. Lu. He came to the parking garage to find me because he didn't want to do it over the phone."

"What did he want?"

Kostya tapped his fingertips on the steering wheel. "Vivian knows about Tatiana."

"I know. I told her. A reporter was poking around and asking questions about Tatiana's new identity. I told Vivian what she needed to know."

Kostya shook his head. "That's not what I meant. Vivian saw you."

"Saw me? Where?"

"At the Four Seasons," Kostya finally said. "She and Erin went to Quattro for lunch. You hadn't told Ten that you were meeting with Tatiana there so he didn't stop them. Somehow she wandered back to the cellar—and she saw you with Tatiana."

Nikolai's heart fucking stopped. He tried to breathe, but his lungs refused to work. Memories of the last week flashed before his eyes. Vivian had been sick on Thursday. She had seemed so sad and fragile when he had returned home that evening.

And no fucking wonder! He replayed the conversation he had shared with Tatiana. It had been tense at first, but once they were down in the restaurant, they had warmed to one another and had remembered their fondness for teasing. The flirtatious remarks between them were harmless.

But Vivian didn't know that. If she had overheard them, she would have gotten the wrong idea. It would have been painful and confusing for her. He could only imagine the heartache she had suffered because of him. His own chest hurt so badly now he could hardly breathe.

"I can't get it right anymore," he muttered. "Everything I do is wrong. Everything I touch turns to shit. Everyone I have ever cared about gets hurt because of me."

"Nikolai." Kostya rarely spoke his name so it drew him out of his self-pitying wallow quickly. "Look at me."

He did. "What?"

"Don't come back next week."

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I'll take care of Houston. I've got Artyom and Ilya. Ten is back, and if shit goes bad, he'll step up and help."

"No, Ten is on parole."

"Ten is a grown man. He can make his own decisions." Kostya gripped his shoulder and squeezed. "We can hold the city, but we can't help you save your marriage. You have to do that hard work yourself." Kostya's grip tightened. "You love her. You've risked everything for her.
Fight
for her."

A pent-up breath that he hadn't realized he had been carrying rushed out of Nikolai's lungs. He felt the stress and tension roll out of his shoulders and back. Kostya was right. He had that uncanny knack for always knowing the right thing to say. "I will."

"Good."

Old habits were hard to break so he quickly gave his last orders before climbing out of the SUV and entering the airport. He made his way to the ticket counter for his airline and waited patiently behind a family of seven who were taking the late-night Houston to London flight. The parents seemed to be in their mid-to-late thirties, and their children ranged from nine or ten to less than a year.

Nikolai's gaze settled on the chubby baby chewing on her fist and drooling all over her father's shoulder. He hadn't been around babies much. Holding Dimitri's daughter had been a strangely eye-opening experience for him. She was the tiniest little thing with big, beautiful eyes and the sweetest smell. He had been struck by the realization that in a few short months he would be holding his own child like that every single day.

But mixed in with the happiness and the excitement was dread. He feared the sins of his past would come back to haunt his family. The sins of his father and Vivian's had fucked with their lives more than once. He didn’t want that for his child. He wanted his son or daughter to have a good life.

More and more, he thought of Romero's statement that day in Corpus Christi about cutting their leashes. Was that the answer? Was it time to break away from Maksim? The complications and repercussions would be heavy, maybe too heavy, for him to bear.

Armed with their tickets and relieved of their checked baggage, the family left the counter and headed for the nearby security line. Nikolai stepped forward and smiled at the woman behind the computer terminal. "Hello." He pushed his driver's license and passport across the counter. "I'm checking in for my flight to London."

She picked up his license and glanced at his information before tapping at her keyboard. "How are you tonight, Mr. Kalasnikov?"

"Fine. How is your night shaping up?"

"Busy." She flashed him a smile and then concentrated on her screen. A flicker of a frown crossed her face. "You've flown with our airline before, sir?"

"Yes." He tried to think back to the last time he had gone overseas. "Four years ago, I think."

"Hmmm," she hummed aloud. "Did you have any trouble boarding your flight?"

"No." He didn't like the tone of that question at all. "Why?"

"Well, Mr. Kalasnikov, it seems that you’ve been put on the No-Fly List."

He blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Your name is on the list. It means we can't allow you to board our flight. In fact, it means you can't board any flight in the United States."

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. "That's a list for terrorists."

"Yes." She eyed him warily now and pushed his driver's license and passport back toward him with one finger. Her gaze flicked to the left, just behind him, and he glanced back to see a pair of TSA agents and a police officer coming closer. "Sir, I'm sorry, but you'll have to go with these men."

It took every ounce of his self-control not to blow up with anger. The last fucking thing he needed was to spend the night sweating in some interrogation room. "Sure," he ground out between clenched teeth. "I'll go with them."

He jammed his driver's license back into his wallet and his passport back into his jacket pocket and allowed the TSA agents to surround him. Without saying a word, he followed the police officer to the nearest station. On edge and feeling his fight-or-flight response kicking in, Nikolai clenched his fingers at his side. He dropped down in the empty seat offered to him and glanced around the cold, stark room.

Could this night get any fucking worse?

Chapter Sixteen

The night got worse.

In fact, it went downhill quickly, and Nikolai resorted to waking up his lawyer and dragging his overpaid ass out of his mansion in The Woodlands to the airport holding cell where he had been corralled. The sun was rising, turning the Houston skyline a hazy pink, when David finally popped him from the TSA's custody.

"This is a mistake," David assured him as they drove away from the airport in a private car with darkly tinted windows. "You have no criminal convictions or arrests in this country. On paper, you've been a model citizen here."

"Here, yes," Nikolai agreed, "but back home?" He shook his head. "I was in deep, dirty shit, and it was all out in the open. You saw the printouts they were waving in front of my face. Those records were supposed to have been destroyed when I came over here."

When he had agreed to come to Houston to help Maksim expand the family's control, the old man had used his government connections to destroy their criminal records and convictions. They came halfway across the world on clean papers and with clean passports. So how the hell had the TSA gotten their hands on records that weren't supposed to exist anymore?

"Obviously some of those records exist." David stated the obvious. "If you want to be able to board a flight or re-enter the US anytime in the near future, I would highly suggest you get one of your friends with useful contacts to take care of that. I'll do what I can from here, but you need to be realistic, Nikolai. Publicly, you've kept your nose clean. You've stayed out trouble."

"Yes, but the government knows everything about me." It was his turn to state the obvious. An alphabet soup of government agencies kept a close eye on him—DEA, ATF, FBI, CIA. There was a reason his home, cars, Samovar and his favorite meeting spots were swept by Kostya every week. He tried to keep his cell and landline use to a minimum and gave orders of a sensitive nature directly to the two or three men he trusted most.

But he was going to have to be more careful now. It was clear that he was on the government's radar.

Nikolai sat forward and tapped on the glass divider between the rear and front seats. The driver lowered the partition, and he ordered, "Drop me off at the convenience store on the next corner."

"Yes, sir."

"I can take you home." David seemed surprised by the instruction he had given their driver. "It's not a problem."

"I'm not going home."

David's eyes narrowed. "Where are you going?"

"To see my wife," he replied matter-of-factly.

"Your wife? Vivian is in London. Unless you plan to sprout wings—"

"There is more than one way to get across that fucking ocean, and I'm going to find one." The car slowed to a stop, and he unbuckled his belt. "I'll fucking swim if I have to because I'm not missing her show."

"Nikolai." David grabbed his arm. "As your lawyer—"

"I know, David." He shrugged off the other man's hand. "I'll be careful. If not, I'm sure you can point me in the right direction for a good attorney overseas."

To his credit, David didn't seem flustered by the realization that a client was about to do something stupid. Instead, he muttered, "If I have to fly to London, I'm going first class and staying at a five-star hotel and eating at the best restaurants, and I'm charging it all to your account."

Nikolai laughed. "I'd expect nothing else from you."

David smiled at him. "Good luck, Nikolai."

Nodding, he stepped out of the car and closed the door. He went inside and bought a cup of coffee and three prepaid cell phones. He made sure to get his change in quarters and dimes so he could use the ancient payphone along the side of the building. Trying not to think about the grime coating the headset, Nikolai inserted his change and punched in Kostya's number.

From the gruff, heavy sound of Kosyta's voice when he answered, he had been asleep. "Yeah?"

"Kostya, I need you to come get me."

"Nikolai? What's wrong? Where are you?" Fully alert now, he asked questions quickly in Russian.

"It's a long story." He sipped the too hot but surprisingly good coffee. "I'm at the Shell station on the corner of JFK and Greens."

"I'll send Boychenko. He goes to see his grandmother at the nursing home every morning. It's right there next to the airport."

Knowing how close the kid was to his grandmother, he didn't want to keep him from her for long. "I only need him to drop me off somewhere."

Kostya didn't ask where. "Be careful, boss."

"Yeah."

After hanging up, he activated two cell phones and placed a call to a private number that went straight to a voicemail box for a travel agency. The line beeped, and he left his message. "I'm following up on a lost piece of luggage. The ticket number was…" He glanced at the other cell phone and rattled off its number. "Thank you."

When the call was finished, he broke the phone into pieces and retrieved the SIM card before tossing the rest into the trash can. Not long after, Boychenko arrived at the gas station in his '67 Chevy Impala. The kid had put hours of work into restoring the muscle car, and it showed.

"Boss," Boychenko greeted as he slid into the front passenger seat. "Is everything okay?"

"No." He closed the door and enjoyed the cold blast from the air conditioner. The hot, muggy morning air made his rumpled suit feel heavy and uncomfortable. "I know that you're on your way to see your grandmother so I'll make it quick."

"It's fine, boss. She'll understand, and she won't mind, not after everything you've done for her."

When Agnessa had first started to have complications with her diabetes and heart condition, she had come to him for help. Nikolai had gladly given it. She had been one of the first people to welcome him to Houston. Her door had always been open to him. If he had needed a hot meal or a place to do laundry, she had always obliged. When he had opened Samovar, she had helped him staff the place by suggesting cooks and servers and other people she knew and trusted.

So he had purchased the small grocery store she owned, paying more than it was worth, to ensure that she would be able to get the medical care she would need. Without insurance, she had gone through the money quickly. Once he had learned that she was facing the prospect of spending her final years in a state-run facility, Nikolai had made arrangements for her care and paid the bill personally.

"That's not a debt your family owes," he told Boychenko and not for the first time. "Everything I've done for Agnessa was because of her kindness to me."