Nikolai 2 (Her Russian Protector #6) (51 page)

"It's some caviar, blinis, roasted potatoes and
olivje
. It's not like I was carrying a cinderblock."

"You aren't supposed to carry anything but that baby." He kissed me right there in front of everyone. A chorus of chuckles rose from the tables closest to us. "Go. Sit down."

I rolled my eyes and deliberately took the longest route back to our table. I made sure to stop and chat with as many guests as possible. Eventually Nikolai joined me on my meandering route. By the time we reached our party, they were already enjoying their appetizers and knocking back their drinks.

Sergei and Bianca looked adorable together, their brand new wedding bands so bright and shiny. Vladimir and Galina sat on either side of the happily married couple and created a perfect picture of the modern family.

Ivan had his brawny arm slung across the back of Erin's chair. He grazed his fingertips up and down her neck. She stole the caviar from his plate and earned a little pinch that made her yelp.

Dimitri and Benny relaxed and enjoyed the conversation while Yuri and Lena played with Sofia. I noticed the gentle yearning in Yuri's reflection as he amused Sofia with a noisy toy. Lena watched her billionaire boyfriend with a curious stare. She leaned her head against his shoulder and tickled Sofia's tummy. Yuri pressed his lips to the top of Lena's head, and I began to wonder how long it would be before Yuri finally asked her to marry him.

Surrounded by our large makeshift family, I had never been happier. That contented happiness followed us home. Galina and Vladimir left the restaurant with Sergei and Bianca so we had the house to ourselves. After the way Nikolai had ravished me last night, I had a feeling I was really going to be in for it tonight. My stomach did a wild, excited flip at that prospect.

Upstairs in our bedroom, I switched on the nightly news and started to undress. Naked except for a silk dressing robe, I went through my nightly routine. I had just finished brushing, flossing and rinsing when I poked my head out of the bathroom to see what the forecast looked like for my morning jog.

But the weatherman wasn't standing in his usual spot. The television showed chaotic scenes of flashing police lights and yellow crime scene tape. I spotted Eric in the background of one shot. He had a grim look on his face.

I crossed the bedroom, grabbed the remote from the dresser and dropped down onto the upholstered bench at the foot of our bed. I pressed the volume button until I could hear every word that was being said.

"…sources within the department are calling this a massacre unlike any seen in Houston history," the anchorwoman said. "There are unconfirmed reports of similar gangland-style hits taking place all over portions of Mexico controlled by the Guzman cartel. Reports indicate that this man—Lorenzo Guzman—once the richest and most powerful drug lord in Mexico, has disappeared. It appears that factions within the cartel have staged a bloody coup."

"To recap," the anchorman seated to her left interjected, "seventeen confirmed homicides have taken place in Houston tonight. All victims were tied directly to the cartel that controls the drug trade in and around the city."

Movement in the doorway of our bedroom drew my attention. Nikolai leaned against the frame and watched me. With the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows and the buttons undone almost to his navel, all those tattoos he had earned over the years were plainly visible. They were the marks Maksim, his own father, had ordered to be put onto his skin so that everyone would know what he had done for the family.

My gaze drifted back to the television screen where so much mayhem and carnage flashed before me. I was horrified that all of this had been happening while we were laughing and eating with our friends. Nikolai hadn't pulled the trigger. He hadn't used his own two hands to do this, but he had given permission to the men who had compiled this list of hits.

I cringed at the realization that I was yet again watching my father's handiwork splashed upon a television screen. He had done this. He was probably in Houston right now, kicked back in a Calaveras safe house, drinking a beer while he watched this coverage unfold. Was he pleased with his work? Would this be enough for him? Had he finally gotten what he wanted?

I glanced back at Nikolai. The mask he had been wearing since the zoo had slipped. I could see him, all of him, and he looked utterly destroyed and soul sick.

"Tell me."

Wordlessly, he crossed our bedroom and sat next to me on the bench. He exhaled a long, rough sigh—and then he told me everything. He told me about the hit that had been taken out on a daughter connected to Romero, Nikolai, Hector or Maksim. He told me about Kostya's discovery that Holly freaking Phillips was likely Maksim's daughter. Which made her Nikolai's sister and my sister-in-law!

"So then I decided to give Hector and Romero the green light to carry out their coup," he said, his voice sober and dark. "I gave them permission to do their dirty work here in Houston."

"Is that why everyone was at Samovar tonight? Ten, Arty, Danny, Ilya, Boy," I ticked off the names that matched faces I had seen at the restaurant. "You wanted them to have alibis."

He cast a sad smile my way. "I can't decide if I should be proud that you've learned to think like me or ashamed of what I've done to you."

"What have you done to me that I didn't ask for or want?"

"No,
solnyshka
. You didn't ask for this. You never wanted to be part of something so depraved." He dropped his head into his hands. "You asked me to love you. You asked me to build a life with you. You asked me to be your husband and the father of your children." He laughed, the sound raspy and sinister. "What did I do? I gave you a twisted, perverse version of the life I promised you when I married you. I've dragged you right into the middle of a bloody, violent coup." Nikolai lifted his head, but he wouldn't look at me. "I must disgust you.

I touched his face and forced him to look at me. "You don't disgust me."

"Vee, I let
that
happen tonight." He gestured angrily toward the television. "How can you even stand to be in the same house with me right now?"

"I love you." The answer was simple and imperfect. "I love you."

"You shouldn't." His voice cracked. "You should take the money and the diamonds and run. You should take the baby as far away from me as possible."

"You're probably right." Nikolai's head snapped toward me, and I was glad to see the glint of panic reflected in his pale eyes. "But I love you. I don't like what you've done. Frankly, I'm sickened by it. I can't stand the thought that all of that violence and death happened because of money and greed and your desire to protect me and the baby and Holly."

"There was no other choice," he insisted. "Hector and Romero were going to make this move whether I said yes or no. It was better to give my permission and control the situation as much as possible than to have them running wild in the city. There were rules tonight. No women, no children, no innocents."

In Nikolai's world, those distinctions meant something. To men like him, men who were more comfortable in the darkness of the underworld than in the bright light of day, tonight's events had happened in a carefully managed and wholly acceptable way. I would never fully understand that mindset. It simply wasn't possible for me because my life experiences were so different.

"I love you, Vee. I love you, and I'm sorry that I've disgraced you tonight, but I would make this decision again. I'm sure that disgusts you and angers you and confuses you, but it's the truth. I won't sit here and lie to you."

I tried to wrap my head around the fact that he could tell me that he loved me and that he would allow a night of carnage in the same sentence.

"This wasn't just about you and me and the baby. It wasn't just about Holly or your father or mine. The choice I had was to let Romero and Hector take out a handful of men or to let the entire city descend into chaos. The police would not have been able to contain this. It wouldn't have been a slow spreading cancer that crept across the border. It would have been a full-blown contagion that infected everyone."

In his view and I'm sure in the view of all the underworld bosses, he had made a decision that sacrificed a few to save countless other lives. In a different context, the decision might have been viewed as heroic, but this wasn't a war being fought for freedom or any other noble reason. This was a war being fought by my father and Hector Salas so they could gain control of the drug and gun trade.

Suddenly very tired, I reached for the remote and shut off the television. I plucked the decorative pillows off my side of the bed and tossed them onto my reading chair. When I slid under the sheet and comforter, Nikolai stood up and watched me from the foot of the bed. He seemed uncertain and bewildered by my behavior but too anxious to ask me what I was thinking.

"I don't like what you've done. I think it's cruel and vicious and brutal. I'm not happy with you right now."

Nikolai gulped. "I'll sleep across the hall."

"No." I pointed to his side of the bed. "You'll sleep here."

"But you're angry with me."

"Yes, I am." I didn't know what else I could say. I didn't trust myself to say much more anyway. I feared that I would say something I couldn't take back or that we would get into an ugly shouting match that would do nothing to solve this situation. What had happened tonight couldn’t be undone. I had to find a way to live with it.

Nikolai walked into the bathroom and shut the door. I heard the shower start. Alone in our bedroom, I tried to make sense of this terrible situation. I felt like an awful human being as I searched for ways to make this ugly episode more palatable. I began to understand why so many mob wives didn't ask questions. This was complete and total hell.

Sometime later, Nikolai came out of the bathroom stark naked. He entered the closet and came back out in just a pair of boxer shorts. After turning off the lights and flipping the switch on my night light, he slid into bed but left a wide space between us. The tension in the room grew unbearable.

Nikolai's warm, strong hand found mine. His voice, thick with regret and desperate for my love, echoed in the darkness. "Vee. Please."

I closed my eyes and exhaled a slow, deep breath. I gave his hand a squeeze and then tugged on it before I rolled onto my side facing away from him. Now that I was getting so far along in my pregnancy, I couldn't sleep comfortably any other way. Nikolai scooted across the mattress and curled himself around me, tucking me into his chest and pulling his thighs up until they cradled my backside. He buried his face against my throat and breathed in my scent.

Our love was complicated and messy, but it was strong and real. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was weak. Maybe I was stupid. But I couldn't punish him. I just couldn't do it.

And when I felt that first hot tear splash onto my skin, I realized I didn't need to punish him. The punishment and castigation he heaped upon his own shoulders would be far more painful than anything I could ever dream up. He had made bad choices early in his life—and now he was paying for them.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Five Weeks Lat
er

"I bet Danny and Boy aren't being used as slave labor," Ten grumbled as he tapped a tiny nail into a thin piece of wood. We were seated at a worktable in the warehouse Nikolai owned and had converted to a studio space for me a few years earlier. This was a project I couldn't tackle in my home studio.

"Seriously? Are you really going to whine about helping me build canvas stretchers for the class I'm teaching?" I rolled my eyes at my hulking bodyguard. "If you wanted to babysit Bianca while Sergei is out of town with Ivan for that tournament, you should have asked."

"Sure," Ten said with a harsh laugh. "Then I'd be sitting here banging my thumb with this hammer and crying about my wired jaw. Because you and I both know Sergei would have planted his fist in my face if I had asked to spend all day and night with his hot fucking wife."

"Wow." I made a face at him. "Maybe we could not refer to my friends as fucking hot? Maybe?"

"But she is."

"Way to miss the point, Ten."

"I'm just saying—"

"I heard you the first time. We're good." I used a pair of clamps to hold a glued corner together. "Besides you couldn't have been Bianca's guard today. She and her mother are meeting Adam today at the prison. You're on parole, remember?"

"No," he stated dryly. "I forgot all about the rules and regulations I have to follow for the next four years of my life." Holding out the stretcher he had built, he scrutinized the corners. "Do you think it was a good idea for her to visit the man who killed her brother?"

"No, I think she's crazy to do it, but that's Bianca for you. If I were allowed to bet anymore, I would put money on her mother pressuring her to go to this meeting."

"It's dangerous. Especially now," he added with a shake of his head. "Until Hector tracks down Lorenzo Guzman, we're all in danger. That guy is not going to go quietly into the night. He'll want revenge, and he'll take it wherever he can get it."

The Lorenzo situation was one that continued to vex me. Instead of having more freedom after that terrible September night, I had been restricted even further. My father's crew had missed Lorenzo during their hit on the drug lord's compound. Now he was out there somewhere, lurking in the shadows and biding his time until he found the perfect time to strike at us.