Page 115 of Vulnerate

I was until they touched my family.

I fought because it was fun. Everything in life was about my enjoyment. If I lost I didn’t give a fuck, I’d throw fights just to antagonize other people. But they fucked up and went after the only things I care about. No one touches my wife or my kid.

FORTY-EIGHT

Valentin

Burning flesh is a smell that’s going to be stuck up my nose for the rest of my life. I don’t mind it, it’s sickly but there’s peace in the scent knowing each chapter of their little club is going to become ash. I have the sense to scrub my skin and hair making sure that the smell doesn’t cling to me before I go back to my woman and kid.

Viktor runs to me as I enter our floor but he doesn’t seem angry. His eye is still swollen, he smiles up at me and pauses.

“Need a hug?”

I nod and he allows me to pick him up. He has his own motivations for doing it because he lays his head on my shoulder and whispers, “I’m going to stay with Nessa, she’s sad because Vlad’s not here. I’ll take her to the horses.”

He never tells me when he’s sleeping on another floor, and I kiss his cheek. “Okay little man, no riding though.”

He nods as I put him back down. The independence he has is annoying as fuck. He should be clingy andholding my t-shirt, instead he walks away to comfort an adult when he’s a child. He must have inherited his emotional range from a stranger because there’s no one who he’s been around that has anything other than violence and cruelty.

I thought I’d become accustomed to my reduced lung capacity when he was a baby, but I don’t think I ever will. There will always be something that he does that will knock the wind out of me. Fuck, I’m going to die if he ever moves out. Now there’s two of them, both Dani and Viktor are responsible for keeping me alive and allowing me to breathe.

I go to my woman once our kid is out of sight and that fist around my lungs clenches. She tenses her shoulders to reduce the pressure on her back as she gets up from the bed. I soften my voice as I step fully into the room and ask, “How you feeling, baby?”

She doesn’t look at me and looks around the floor searching for something. “Fine.” She doesn’t find it and audibly gulps before adding, “I’m going home.”

I know she’s hit her head, but the doctor said she didn’t have a concussion just that she was in shock.

“Yeah? Where do you think home is?”

There’s an edge to my voice despite how hard I’m working not to tie her ass up. She meets my eyes, and her defiance comes out.

“My apartment, where my things are.”

She doesn’t even have shoes on. She’s dressed in my clothes, she doesn’t need anything else. So, I dismiss it and gently hold her hips as I kiss the tip of her nose.

“You’re funny.”

I continue moving my lips around her face and kiss each mark on her skin with a promise that it will never happen again. But she presses the tips of her fingers to my chest and moves her head back.

“Did I make a joke?” she asks, voice hard and eyes narrowed.

My fingers tighten on her hips. “You better have because if you actually think you belong anywhere other than beside me you’re crazy.”

Her nostrils flare and she tries to push me away as I kiss her cheek and resist the urge to bite it. I love it when she’s pissed, it’s when she’s the most truthful and she keeps attempting to push me away.

“Get out of my face, Val.”

“Not happening.”

I press my lips to her pulse point, feeling her alive, breathing. She’s such a liar and her fingers weaken against my chest.

“I don’t want to be near you.”

Bullshit.

Her pulse is humming under my lips, not because of lust but because of how hard her heart beats when we’re together.

“Shame.” I shrug. “I want to be near you.”

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