Page 20 of Surrogate for the Bratva
He hesitated for a moment, and I scoffed.
“Seriously? Fine,” I turned away. “I’ll wait for the cops out here.”
“Come on in,” he sighed.
“Don’t do me any favors Jacob.”
“I’m just tired and cranky,” he explained. “Come in. Take a seat.”
I stepped inside and took a seat without looking around. “I would think you’d be happy that I’m not here to ask you how you’re feeling.”
His lips kicked into a grin. “I was too shocked to respond appropriately.” He leaned forward and studied me for a long time, and I didn’t have to ask what he saw because I was still shaken and uneasy, still tired down to my bones. “Areyouokay?”
I nodded. “A little shaken,” I admitted and debated whether or not to tell him about the guy who was following me. In the end I decided to keep it to myself. “At first glance it doesn’t look like anything was taken.” A loud pounding started, and I jumped about a foot off the sofa, and a shriek escaped.
“April are you in here?” The voice was male and lightly accented, almost familiar but not quite. The pounding sounded again, so loud and so heavy that it shook the wall between our units. “April!”
“Boss, you have to calm down before you scare her.”
That voice Idefinitelyknew well. I spoke, albeit briefly, to that voice a few times each week. I stood and opened the door with a frown as I spotted not one but two familiar figures. I just didn’t understand why they were together. “Maxim?”
“April, you’re okay!” The man had perfectly styled dark brown hair and crystal blue eyes that were wide with worry.
I stared at the man again and a telltale tingling in my lips told me exactly where I’d seen him before. He was the man I kissed at the lake what seemed like forever ago. “You,” I pointed, my gaze narrowed in his direction. “What are you doing here? Did you do this to my place? Why?”
He frowned in confusion. “Why would I vandalize your home?”
“I don’t know! What are you doing here now and how do you know Maxim?” The pieces were all there, but my exhausted brain was having a hard time putting them together.
“Maxim works for me,” his tone was offended, almost haughty.
“You,” I shouted and took a step back as my body started to tremble. “Is this some kind of sick fucking joke?” I took another step back and shook my head back and forth as disbelief coursed through my veins. “What is going on?”
His jaw clenched but to his credit, he kept calm. “What is going on is that you are in danger. You are not safe here and I need you to come with me.”
“I don’t even know you!” It didn’t matter that even in the midst of fear and anger, attraction pulsed through me. He was as gorgeous as he was infuriating and that just made me madder.
His shoulders fell in something like resignation. “And now you see why,” he insisted. “But the truth is that your life and the life of my baby is in danger.”
I gasped instinctively and shook my head refusing to believe his words. “You’re just trying to scare me.”
“I’m not trying to scare you, but you should absolutely be scared. I saw the damage next door,” his eyes were wide and slightly wild, his chest heaved. “My oldest friend in the world, a woman who was like a sister to me was brutally murdered in her home last night.”
“No!” My hand flew to my mouth, but I couldn’t deny the thread of pain in his words, the flat look in his blue eyes.
“Yes. She was murdered and now your place has been destroyed,” he folded his arms, one dark brow arched. “Has anything else odd happened to you in the past few days?”
I looked away.
“Tell me. Please,” he added in a gentle tone.
“I thought a man was following me on my way home today. I assume it was a man, but the window tint was super dark, and I didn’t see anyone.”
“What the fuck April?” Jacob roared the question, and it quickly shut everyone up.
I sighed heavily and dropped back onto the sofa, looking between Jacob and Roman. “I took a different route just to see if I was being paranoid, but I wasn’t. He followed me until I parked my car on the street.”
Roman dropped down on his haunches in front of me, his hands on my knees and his blue eyes fixed on my face. “The woman who was killed, her name was Maria, and she was going to take care of my baby and now she can’t,” he shook his head, his voice so soft it was barely above a whisper. “These men, my enemies, they will kill you just on the off chance that it might hurt me, and I won’t let that happen. I can’t.”
