Page 59 of Defiant Devotion

“Let’s go back,” I said. “Let’s make sure?—”

“Are you all right?” Oleg asked.

She shook her head at both of us. “It’s just from the impact of stopping. I put my arm up too.” She showed us. “Because I saw it coming. I put my arm up just in time, but the edge of the door frame still cut into my skin. I’m all right.”

“Are you sure?” I had to check. Nothing would stop me from keeping her safe and healthy.

“I am sure.” She nodded at me once, as if to further validate her words. “I just want to go home.”

We all turned to look outside, watching Vik hold Irina close. They hugged, no doubt shaken by the enormity of what had happened.

Igor had chased us in an attempt to kill Oleg. Or all of us. In the end, a Mafia family leader had been killed—him.

Igor Petrov was no longer a threat.

“Let’s go home,” Oleg said as the crowd of men dispersed outside the car.

“Yes.” Sonya sighed, and Irina and Vik made their way back to us. “I’ve waited eleven years to do just that.” Locking her vulnerable gaze on me, despite her family members surrounding us, she said, “Take me home, please.”

I tried my best not to get ahead of myself with the implication that she could see the Baranovs’ place as whereIcould belong too, at her side.

23

SONYA

Surprisingly, the SUV got us home. It wasn’t a smooth ride, and I was sure it would be taken to a junkyard after that collision. But it got us home. Oleg checked again that I was all right from that bump on my head.

“You’re the one who was just in the hospital,” I reminded him.

Ben turned and frowned at me. “So wereyou.”

“What?” Oleg didn’t rest easy until Ben and I explained how we’d come there to see him, then saved him from that Petrov soldier and that nurse.

I hoped that talking would help jar Irina out of the stupefied daze she seemed stuck in, but she remained quiet the entire ride back to the mansion I’d grown up in.

I’d dreamed of making this final return trip so many times. I’d tried to hire someone to drive me there since I escaped. And now that we were pulling into the long drive, the magic of the experience faded.

Too many other things were going on. Igor was killed. Irina had murdered her father. We’d been chased. Oleg was alive, not dead like I’d believed for so long. He survived more attempts on his life, too.

Danger was ever-present in this world, but I realized as the SUV stopped and the doors were opened that I’d been sheltered from it for years. After the Ilyins killed my mother, I’d been left alone, secluded and isolated, captive and guarded. Of course, I was in danger all that time, but not present danger.

Returning to it now felt… normal. Like what my life should be like.

Ben took my hand as we walked toward the mansion, but I kept our pace slow. No one rushed me, and I appreciated the chance to look at it all. The house was the same, yet not. Anything could look different after eleven years, but the second I walked up the steps, a deep sense of coming home hit me.

I was home.

I wasn’t stuck on that property.

I was in control of my life, returning where I belonged.

A wide smile lifted my lips, and I didn’t try to hide it.

“You’re okay?” Ben checked, squeezing my fingers.

“I’ve never been better.” I looked up at him, knowing this return was more complete with him at my side. I wasn’t just coming home. I was starting the first step toward my future with him here.

So far, no one seemed offended or confused that I was with him. Plenty of questions had to linger about how Ben and I kneweach other and when and how we’d conceived a baby. Those answers would come, but until we could sit down and discuss it all, I had every bit of faith that he would be accepted as my partner. It helped that he was already working for them, or with them. I doubted he considered himself much of an independent contractor anymore, not since he was so helpful in my uncle’s room at that time of threats.

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