Page 46 of Defiant Devotion

“Relax, Sonya. You’re safe here.”

I would never tire of his saying that. Because I believed it.

For the first time in years, I felt how secure I could be.

“We still have a lot to discuss,” he added as he dimmed the lights, waiting for me to settle in.

I nodded, already closing my eyes. “Yeah. We do.”

The baby. Us. My family. My captivity. His hit. The future.

I smiled wide as he joined me, spooning me. Everything was changing so fast. But I relished the idea that I could actually look forward to the future for once—that I had a future waiting for me that didn’t include being forced into a marriage I didn’t want.

18

BEN

Sonya rested on and off for two days. She didn’t sleep the entire time, but she was sluggish and safe to stay in bed after all that running and hiding. I’d never had a woman in my life for more than one night or one experience, so she was already an outlier. I’d also never pampered a woman, and it was becoming addicting.

I couldn’t begin to imagine how difficult it had been for her to be on the run while pregnant. I didn’t want to stop and consider how horrible it was to worry about her family after all the trauma she’d faced, either.

Kidnapped. Almost raped. Forced to witness her mother’s death. Withheld from the rest of the world and driven anxious with not knowing what had happened to her sister. Attacked.

I ground my teeth and tamped down the residual anger at the flashbacks I still suffered of her trying to protect her baby from being harmed.Ourbaby. We had yet to speak about the fact that we were having a kid together, but we would. I wouldn’t rush it. It’d be better to let her have her head on straight again and not be completely stuck in survival mode to discuss our child.

Mafia families were a different breed. Members of these kinds of families were stronger and tougher, born to endure hardships like no other. For a short time, I had been involved in a different Mafia group in Russia. My mother was a US citizen who’d given birth to me in LA, but she’d been taken back to Russia, where my father was, as a Bratva wife. When he was killed, my mother and I were rejected and sent away. Still, that limited time in a Bratva had given me a crash course on how thick my skin would need to be, how dangerous my life would inherently always be just because I was “one of them”.

And Sonya was no weakling. She was the bravest woman I’d ever met to survive what she had. Yet, her body and soul needed to rest. She had to lower her guard a little more and see me as a figure of help she could rely on for more than the offer of a warm bed and protection.

Her sleeping in and being lazy here with me at my remote cabin was probably the first time in years that she’d been able to lower her guard at all. And when she woke up and had meals with me, I enjoyed the gift of providing for her. Feeding her, bathing her, helping her get comfortable, I took care of her, and it was the first time in my life that I felt certain I was being what I was meant to be.

A lover. A partner. A father-to-be. Seeing to her comfort satisfied me, and I knew I was a goner. Just like that, making Sonya happy was my vocation in life.

It helped that she gradually opened up to me too, providing more information, but she was still cautious. I saw it in her eyes. When she gazed at me with desire, it was too easy for me to cave and give in to take her, but I held myself back. We hadn’t fucked since that first time she woke up here. And I wouldn’t let sex be a distraction from our connecting like partners.

“They took me at the same time they took my mother and kept us together at first,” she said over a lunch of tomato soup and grilled cheese. I was glad I kept this cabin stocked with non-perishables. A short trip into town while she napped got the fresh essentials, too. This was the mother of my child. Of course, she needed good nourishment.

“Was it always the Ilyins?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yes. No middle men. They took us and kept us together. No one but the same few men handled our captivity. The crews changed over the years, obviously. Eleven years is a long shift for a soldier, but even still, they were consistent. Except for the few who got too greedy. Like I said, they killed my mother.”

“No one ever knew,” I replied.

She nodded sadly. “I bet not.”

That had to be the hardest part of it all, the lack of knowing what had happened. Eva seemed a little bitter, resentful with her assumption that her mother ran and took Sonya with her, abandoning Eva at home. And Oleg was vested in learning what happened. He never stopped or gave up on the case. It sounded like he’d recently had Vik go to Moscow to follow a lead about Sonya that turned out to be a dead end.

Sonya had to have suffered all that time, worried about her family.

So why hasn’t she just gone back already?I wanted to be careful about how I posed that question. For a short while, I’d been playing with thewhat-ifthat she could’ve run away and was acting like a spy against her family. Of course, it was nothing likethat. I knew that now. But I couldn’t stop being curious about why she didn’t run right to her home.

Lev called me earlier, asking what was taking so long about the hit placed on O’Malley. It would’ve been better to come clean and just tell him that I’d found Sonya and was taking care of her, but that might not have ended well. He could’ve insisted I bring her to the house, and I didn’t want to until she and I talked about this baby, until I had all the information I felt I needed.

However, Lev had given the update no one wanted to hear. Oleg wasn’t doing so well. His vitals were mostly stable, but they were all getting more concerned about the length and depth of his coma after his heart attack.

Time wasn’t on my side. If Sonya wanted to get back to her family, I had to facilitate that sooner rather than later. Which meant I needed answers now.

“How come you snuck out to lose your virginity?” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t get quiet and closed-lipped again.

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