Page 83 of Scars He Gave Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 2)

“Faster.” I lower the gun and look down at Tomas. “Please.”

My whisper is full of every emotion I’ve ever felt about Tomas. My Tommy. Love and hate, anger and ecstasy, happiness and pain.

I lean down, kiss Tommy’s cheek, and whisper, “Don’t you die on me. Don’t you dare leave me again.”

* * *

It’s not until he is in surgery that I learn Kostya and Petr are the men who drove us out to this farmhouse that isn’t really a farmhouse. It’s a hospital, high-tech, well-disguised, staffed by real doctors and nurses who sew me up and insist I wait for Tommy in a wheelchair.

I look at the men across from me. Petr smiles. Kostya smiles and stares.

“I’m Corinne.” I don’t bother with shaking hands because it just doesn’t seem appropriate. We’re in an under-the-radar hospital seeing that their boss gets surgery to save his life from the gunshot wounds he sustained trying to save mine. I don’t think handshakes are designed for this kind of situation.

“Aren’t the cops going to find DNA at the warehouse? And bodies?”

Petr shakes his head but doesn’t elaborate or speak. My mind spins with scenarios of FBI headquarters and bright lights while Riggs and Murtaugh or Mulder and Scully interrogate me about my connection to the mob, my dead boss, my DNA being present in a room where the son of an Italian mobster is lying dead.

Kostya says only, “We have people taking care of it.”

Of course they do. Because doesn’t everyone have a cleanup crew like that? But it makes sense the Russian mob would. And judging by how calm and cool these guys are, the cleaning folks probably get a lot of overtime hours.

But I look horrible in orange jumpsuits and I want some control over my destiny. I want to be the one with the bottle of bleach and the scrub brush getting rid of the evidence. What the hell does that say about me that I’m so willing to break the law?

Then I remember I got a young man killed, and I feel the urge to puke again at the thought alone.

Maybe I should leave matters to the cleaning crew after all.

I look at Tomas’s men. His so-called friends. Able-bodied. Healthy. Uninjured. Maybe it’s a combination of everything I’ve gone through—the kidnapping, near-oral-rape, a book that felt like a sledgehammer to the face—but suddenly, I suspect everyone is against us.

“Why’s Tomas the one in surgery? Isn’t it your job to make sure he’s protected? Like the Knights of the Round Table or something? Like an all for one and one for all kind of thing?”

Kostya smiles and cocks his head. If I didn’t know better, I would say they all practice that arrogant, overconfident look. “Have you met him?”

Petr smacks him in the chest. “Of course she has. She’s the reason he ran in before we were ready.”

“Oh? This is my fault?” I don’t really need their confirmation. I already know who’s to blame. Because I got involved with him. If I’d just kept my head down—not that I would’ve ever stayed with Alvin—and been smarter. Instead, I decided to get re-involved with the guy who broke my heart, kicked the shit out of my ex-husband, and also happens to be a hitman for the Russian mob. Totally my own fault.

Now, Petr smiles the mysterious Russian guy smile. But he doesn’t speak.

“Okay. I know. But I wasn’t in that building for the sole purpose of having his back. You were.” My throat is thick, and it hurts to talk. “And he’s in there. And I don’t know what’s going on.”

“He’s going to be okay.” Through the tears blurring my vision, I can’t tell who said it.

“You don’t know that for sure.” It’s killing me because I don’t either and all I can think of is how I can’t lose him again. I won’t survive it this time. Every part of me belongs to him.

Petr leans forward, puts his elbows on his knees, and clasps his hands together. “I know that since he came to Bogan, he’s been working really hard to forget something. Someone. I guess that part didn’t work.” He stares at me hard, eyebrows up, mouth twisted. “Tomas isn’t a man who’s going to let dying get in the way of what he wants.”

I appreciate the implication. I just wish I believed it all the way. Things between Tommy and I have been … so … unsettled and strange. We’re adults now, adults with scarred hearts. Not the same people we were when we were teenagers who only had eyes for each other. Not naïve enough to believe we can make it through anything anymore.

All our childish dreams and ideas are gone. They died when he left.

But I nod anyway.

Because there’s still that one thing between us that can never die. I don’t know what to call it or how to express it. All I know is that I feel it more than ever right now. Love. Fate. Destiny. I’m meant for him and he’s meant for me.

So he can’t die. Because I know it now as much as I knew it that night he kissed me beneath the apple blossoms:

I love him.

---