Page 74 of Immaculate Deception (Romanoff Bratva)

Keep fighting—for Dima.

* * *

I huddle on the bed and close my eyes. I don’t know how long I lay there, but at some point, I manage to fall asleep. The dreams I have are a mixture of fantasy and real life.

I’m still in the cement box of a room, but in this illusion, Dima is there, standing next to me. Huge. Bearded. Hooded, just like he was when we met. More shadow than man.

He bends down next to me and whispers in my ear. “I’m going to get you out of here.” He picks me up in his arms and cradles me against his chest like a baby. Kisses my tears away.

His beard is rough against my face. But his smell is heaven itself…

That dream flickers away. Another fades in in its place.

Lukas is brought back into the room. Immediately, just as I did after he was born, I bring him to my breast to feed him, to care for him.

But he cries out. Pushes me away from him. Like I’m not good enough for his needs.

Then Brigitte slinks back in like a snake. She plucks him from my trembling hands.

“You’re not his mother anymore,” she hisses.

I scream and scream and scream as they retreat back into the shadows she emerged from…

But no one hears me.

No one cares.

23

Dima

As soon as the deal with Ilyasov is struck, I get the fuck out of there.

That place is teeming with unsettling vibes. Seeing my estranged brother after ten years of utter silence didn’t help. Too many damn skeletons in the closet, I guess.

Or maybe I’m just fucking exhausted. I haven’t slept in God-only-knows-how-long.

By the time I get back to my car, the dawn sun is starting to peek over Lake Michigan. I could go looking for a hotel. Or I could hunker down inside Arya’s car on a deserted side street and close my eyes for a few hours.

The latter option is easier, but it’s also more dangerous. I’m exposed out here. Vulnerable.

I don’t have any reason to believe I’m being followed—no one has pointed a gun at me in a few hours, which is refreshing change of pace after the last few days. But I’d rather have a solid door with a bolt between me and the outside world when I go unconscious.

A hotel it is, then.

I’m climbing into the front to set out on my search for a lowkey hotel room—when I notice a patch of bright blue in the back seat, illuminated by the streetlight.

It’s Lukas’s blanket.

At once, I feel as if there’s a fishhook in my chest and someone is yanking at it like a motherfucker. The weirdest feeling I’ve had in a long, long time.

“Malyshka,”I murmur under my breath in the empty car.My baby boy.

I grind my teeth against this onslaught of unnamable emotion. It’s fucking ridiculous. I have a war to fight. Enemies to slaughter. And yet I’m sitting here, getting all torn up over the sight of a little blue blanket.

It’s totally impersonal. Hospital-issued. Every baby in the goddamn country gets given the same one.

But there’s only onemalyshka.

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