Page 2 of Seduced By the Russian

“Hey!” he bellowed angrily, irritated that his night had taken a rude and unforeseen turn. “Can you hear me?”

Only a slight grunt greeted Nikolai’s question, and it only irked him more.

Nikolai hadn’t known what to expect, and maybe that was the origin of his whole curiosity. He had always been able to discern every situation and its features before they even happened. But this? This was new. Her hair was in a mess, sticking out in odd places, yet there was something vulnerable about her that got Nikolai stopping.

He hated every shade of weakness. It was death in his own world.

And there was her face! He couldn’t place his hands on it, but the Russian Bear was quite certain that he had seen that face somewhere. Nikolai just wasn’t sure where. Was she a daughter of one of the leadership families? The Andreyevs, possibly? Last he had heard, their daughter wasn’t even in the country.

“Let’s get her moving,” he said in a low growl and lifted her off the ground easily. They walked together back to the car in silence while the onlookers remained in position, watching, waiting.

But even in the silence, Nikolai could almost hear the thoughts of his best friend as clear as day. Dmitri had never been one to hide how he felt, and Nikolai could bet all of his wealth that this was one of those days. Dmitri, however, said nothing but chose to remain broody beside Nikolai until they were back in the Jaguar, with the young woman kept in the back seat.

“Spill it!” Nikolai said, starting the car and heading in the direction of the closest hospital.

“You can go ahead, Boss!” Dmitri answered, watching Nikolai closely. “I’ll take it from here. The Bratva needs you tonight.”

“That can wait!” Nikolai’s tone of finality meant the end of discussion, but Dmitri was about to object. Nikolai could sense it from the way he jutted his chin out when he thought differently about something. But Dmitri also knew how risky it was to go against the Russian Bear, particularly after he had just made something clear.

So, he stayed put in the passenger’s seat, wondering why Nikolai was driving the girl to the hospital himself. As far as human empathy went, Nikolai lacked in that area, and everyone in the Bratva feared and respected him for that. Yet here he was, in the middle of the night, on his way to take a woman to the hospital -one who had obviously wanted to end her own life.

“I’ll tell the other men you’ll meet them shortly,” Dmitri tried again, pulling out his phone to make a call.

“I’ll wait here until she regains consciousness, Dmitri.” A nerve ticked in his jaw, and Dmitri knew better than to say something else. “And I’m not returning to the mansion either. I hit her, so I’m going to take responsibility for my actions.”

“Okay, what the hell is actually going on?” Dmitri asked as Nikolai carried the woman inside himself, ignoring the nurses who had brought out a stretcher to take her in.

And he didn’t let go until they reached the ER.

Chapter Two

Nikolai’s scowl was enough to send anyone in his path scrambling in the opposite direction, scared to have his head hung on a pole. But tonight, the Russian Bear did more than just scowling. He smirked, his lips curling up into what looked like a crazy version of a smile, but that was as good as it could get. Yet, everyone in the dark basement knew that it was worse than him scowling.

It was one of Nikolai’s secret locations, out of the prying eyes of New Yorkers, in Asharoken. Located deep in the woods, Nikolai had built a shelter stocked with the barest minimum, so there wasn’t enough light seeping in from the small windows, and the cold at night was enough to drive anyone crazy. But Nikolai knew what he was doing, leaving it that way. It made his interrogations easier.

A scraping sound resounded as Nikolai drew a cane along with him on the cemented ground, heading towards the bloodied man tied up on a high back chair in the middle of the room. Without the ugly bruises and bleeding that his face now sported, Oleg was a hard man with big muscles all over the place and a face that looked like he always had something he was angry over. He looked unconscious, with his limp hand hanging on the left hand on the chair, but Nikolai knew it was only a ploy. The Russian bear could still see the man’s chest move, and his left eye twitching from time to time.

Just a few days ago, Nikolai asked Oleg to move the ammunition at the port because he thought it was time to give him something more to do. Even though his intuitions told him something was amiss, he still wanted to give him a try, just for the sake of it. But he had asked some of his other men to keep a close watch on him. Nikolai had been a hundred percent sure that someone had been feeding information to a rival Bratva. He just needed to know who it was.

Turned out this fucker was the culprit.

“It’s time to wake up.” Nikolai stooped slowly in front of Oleg; the smirk far wiped off his face. This time, it was replaced by anger, and the dire need to stick a knife into this man’s bowels. The one thing no one did was to double cross the Bratva and the head of the Davydov family.

Oleg opened his eyes at once, fear etching on his features. He shook his head emphatically and lifted a broken wrist to plead with Nikolai, but pain shot through his bone at the movement, and he returned them to the hand of the chair at once.

“Hurts like Hell, doesn’t it?”

“No! No!” Oleg shook his head again, trying to scamper for safety, but only ended up accentuating the pain from his broken bones. “I deserve it!”

“Hm!” Nikolai was pleased that, at least, this one didn’t deny the fact that he had messed up. All the others, even though caught in the act, still at least tried to pin it all on someone else. “So, oblige me, why were you trying to sabotage the shipment? Who asked you to do it?”

“Boss, I didn’t know…”

“You didn’t know what?” Oleg was not in any way prepared for the authority in Nikolai’s voice, even though he spoke like that all the time. The strength and power in his voice still sent tremors down Oleg’s spine as starts shaking in trepidation.

“They …they told me that…they wanted to get rid of you. They have my sister. That was the only way to keep her safe.”

Nikolai chuckled, a cold, sinister sound coming from somewhere deep within him. His cold eyes fell on Oleg. “Did you ever think about coming to me for help? Or do you think I’ll watch the family of any of my men get toyed with?”

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