Page 13 of Defiant Devotion

Jenny frowned and nodded as she backed up and closed the bathroom door, intuiting that I wanted privacy.

“Were you?—”

“I wasn’t raped,” I answered, guessing where she was leading with this. “I was taken by…” I couldn’t identify the Ilyins. She could alert them. “I was taken by some men and?—”

“It’s okay,” Jenny replied from the other side of the door. “I… You don’t need to relive it or talk or anything like that. Take your time. Kyle was just worried and he’s been wondering if we should call the cops or?—”

I lunged over to open the door quickly. “No. Please, no.”

The cops weren’t allies of mine. I was a Mafia princess. No Mafia family wanted to rely on the same law and order normal people like Jenny and Kyle would. We had our own law and order, our own justice system. But she couldn’t understand that.

Jenny held her hands up in a truce. “Okay. Cool. I get it.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You do?”

She nodded, calm. “I do. My dad was an alcoholic.”

I couldn’t help a scoff. “Mine too.”

Still, she remained chill and unbothered as she led me back to the tiny guest room so I could lie down. Just walking to the bathroom tired me so much.

“My father was an abusive alcoholic and the cops, the social workers, all of them” —she rolled her eyes— “none of them would actually help. So, yeah. I get it.”

“Do you need a hand?” Kyle asked as Jenny guided me back to the room. He sat with the infant, rocking in a chair.

“No. We’re okay,” Jenny replied. She seemed to respect that I was more at ease with her, not her husband, but it was sort of silly. Kyle was clearly a gentle giant, a stay-at-home dad with their young baby son they’d named Damon. He couldn’t be a danger to me. Still, I was wary of another man nearby.

In my room again, Jenny helped me lower to the bed. She’d already checked me over. Even though she was a vet and worked with animals, she was medically knowledgeable. She tended to my cuts and bruises. She checked my lungs and heart. She even checked on the baby, the best that she could without an ultrasound machine or anything high-tech at home.

Over the past couple of days, she’d explained who she was and where I found them. Maybe she thought opening up about herself would put me at ease while I struggled to speak up about who I was. Perhaps she still feared I had amnesia or something.

I didn’t. I couldn’t trust her withmystory, though, so I appreciated her filling the silence with her gentle voice. She was a vet at a clinic in town, and Kyle was home with her on paternity leave since she’d just given birth to their baby boy a month ago. While she didn’t mention anything about a woman being missing or anything that might have to do with the Ilyins,I couldn’t take faith that I was far enough away. She did explain that they lived in a small town in New York, though, and she had commented that the city was three hours away.

Staying quiet about who I was and what I needed to do was the safest option. I knew that the second I said I was a member of a Mafia family, they could cast me out and not want anything to do with criminals. I suspected that the moment I gave them permission to contact the cops about a wounded stray woman showing up, the Ilyins could track me somehow.

But I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t put them at risk for helping me, and I wouldn’t give up on my mission to get home to Eva. After their kindness, offering me help without expecting a single thing in return, I was resolved to leave before they could be in danger for assisting me. There was simply no way for me to know how far or near the Ilyins could be, and I refused to put this small family in harm’s way.

As I lay in bed, hearing Kyle and Jenny in the kitchen as they made dinner, cared for the baby, and acted like an innocent, sweet trio, I fought the tears and wished I could have that. I envied their peaceful home and lives out here in the woods.

From the bottom of my heart, I wished that I could be a contented mother to this baby in my belly, comfortable and safe. That my child’s father could be there with me, present and helping, not a distant memory of a one-night stand. That we’d have a home, arealfamily.

Dreams could be sweet like that, but as I relaxed this one last night and accepted their generosity before I could leave, I guarded myself from letting these wistful visions cloud my brain too much.

I could fantasize all I wanted, but I had to remain level-headed and focused.

I’d escaped.

And now it was time to survive and return to the city for the security I could receive there.

Come dawn, while they slept in, I’d sneak out and figure out how to gethome. I had been gone too damn long, and I had to ensure a new future of my own choosing.

6

BEN

After hearing Igor and Geoff talking about the Baranovs and their mutual desire to bring the family down, I felt more inclined to accept that hit Lev wanted done. I wasn’t ready to sign up as an official ally of the Baranovs, but I was more intrigued about what it could be like if I leaned on them and affiliated exclusively with them.

Unfortunately, Lev wasn’t easily accessible. He’d gone through the proper channels to reach out to me. He’d left messages on my encrypted lines to give me the heads up that he was interested in my services. I still wanted more details before making my decision, and that was a caution I harbored before accepting any job. In order to discuss this hit on O’Malley further, I’d need to locate Lev and pin him down long enough to hold a conversation. Since Boris’s death, though, he was nearly unreachable.

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