Page 50 of Savage Love

I see the glance exchanged between Connor and Liam. I don’t know if they’re aware yet of Elena’s trip to the hospital, of what happened. I have no doubt they’ll find out sooner or later—there’s nothing that happens in their orbit that they’re not aware of, and rightly so—but I’m not in any mood to explain. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t fucking matter.

My wife and child are in danger, and I refuse to sit on the sidelines and wait for something to happen. I’m not going to rush headlong in, as Niall was wont to do, but I’m also not going to sit back. Whatever Connor and Liam have planned, I intend to be in on it.

“Elena might be better served to have you with her,” Liam says slowly. “If something happens to you, Levin—”

“—then her sister and all of you will see that she’s taken care of,” I tell him sharply. “I’ve never sat by in the face of danger, and I don’t intend to start now. Sotell me what you need me to do.”

I have no intention of being told differently this time, and I think they’re both aware of that. They exchange another glance, and then Liam nods.

“There’s a trade shipment coming in from the Santiago cartel,” Liam says finally. “It’ll be coming in tonight, and there have been threats made to intercept or damage it. We’ve got men already assembled to deal with it, but we’ll put you on it as well. Jacob is heading up the operation—he’s aware of the fine details—but he can fill you in, and you can work alongside him, in charge of the others. How does that sound?”

“That’s fine.” My voice is clipped, flat. Connor raises an eyebrow at me.

“It’s not grunt work,” he says coolly. “If Diego sees that he can’t so much as get men to damage a shipment without us putting a stop to it, he may back off before trying anything more ambitious. That’s the hope, at any rate.”

“I didn’t say it was. And I’m well aware of why a job like this matters.”

Connor and I have never been adversaries, but we’re not close, either. I can feel the tension rolling off of him, and Liam, as ever, is the intermediary.

“Go home for a bit, check on Elena,” he says in a calming tone that tells me that he’s aware of what happened—no doubt because Niall knows and said something to him. “Meet Jacob a couple of hours before, and he’ll debrief you while you’re getting ready to go. This is nothing for you, I’m sure. Old hat. You’ll be back in bed before the sun’s up.”

I’m sure he’s right. A part of me doesn’t want to go home, doesn’t want to face Elena and all the fears that dredge up. But I also want to make sure she’s safe and that there’s no repeat of last night. So I do as Liam suggested and go home briefly.

When I carefully open the door to the guest room, Elena is sleeping. I stand there in the doorway for what feels like a long time, watching her. She looks peaceful and lovely sleeping there like that, and it makes all the fear of last night briefly feel like a bad dream.

But I know it wasn’t. None of it was a dream. And watching her like this, I feel the desperation to keep her safe, her and our baby, clawing at my throat like nails embedded in my skin. It feels like everything I was afraid of coming back at once, and I stand there, hating the fear of being helpless to stop it again that washes over me.

I can’t fail again. I can’t watch while someone else dies because of me—or worse, if Diego gets his hands on her. The thought of it is impossible, and I know that it would be the thing that breaks me. The thing I can’t come back from.

I’d been close to letting myself consider what Max and Liam told me, whether forcing myself to deny my feelings for her was hurting us both more than it helped. Whether or not I ought to finally, after all this time, allow myself a second chance at happiness.

I don’t believe in fate, or in anything higher than my own agency, really, but if there were ever a time when I felt like something seemed to be telling me what to do, it was last night. I’d gone out for those drinks, had that conversation, come so close to coming back home and letting myself fall into Elena’s arms without fighting it—and instead, I came home to her staring at me, shell-shocked in a bloody bed.

It felt obvious then, and it feels obvious now. I know what happens when I try to be someone other than the man I was told I would be, over twenty years ago now. I know the price I pay for reaching further than I should and what happens to those I take down with me.

Men in our world aren’t meant to have things they love. They’re taken away from us far too easily. They’re used against us. Men in our world should not have weaknesses. All other weaknesses are within yourself and can be overcome. Fear and pride can be conquered. The skills that the Syndicate needs can be honed. You are a weapon. A weapon should not have something that it can lose except its own sharpness, and that can always be regained.

Vladimir’s speech to me isn’t one I ever forgot. He repeated it to me when I came back from Tokyo, when I told him what happened with Lidiya, when I told him that I had married her. He warned me what would happen—that it didn’t matter that he had decided my punishment, and that it didn’t include expulsion or death, or anything that would be done to her. He warned me that someday, someone would come for what I loved. That conversation, too, isn’t one I’ve ever forgotten.

Someday, someone will come for what you love. It’s a part of the life you’ve chosen, Volkov. If you have nothing you love, nothing you hate, there is nothing that can be used against you.

I didn’t choose this life. I never did. I was pushed into it.

There is always a choice. You could have chosen to leave. Struck out on your own. You chose to stay. And I’ve been glad you did. You’re one of my best, Volkov. But you have a weakness now. I could exploit it, if I wished to. I won’t. But others will.

So I had tried to leave. I tried to walk away, to have the life that Lidiya and I dreamed of. A small plot of land and a house, outside of Moscow, near her grandmother. A place for our children to grow up, for us to grow old. A place far enough away from the ghosts of my past that nothing could touch us. A place without violence.

Vladimir had been willing to let me go. Not because he cared for me, or my happiness, or for hers—but because he knew that a man whose heart was no longer in it was a liability. That if my loyalties were split, I would get myself or someone else killed or incriminate the Syndicate. That I would fuck up, in his words.

He could have had me killed. I had feared that he might, and so had Lidiya. But instead, he had let me leave. Not without punishment, not without another warning. But he had let me go.

It was some of his men, angry and resentful that I had left, that Vladimir hadn’t imposed the ultimate punishment on me, who came for Lidiya. Who did, as Vladimir warned me someone would do, when I thought we were safe.

I had wondered if Vladimir was behind it. I knew him well enough to know he told me the truth when he said that he wasn’t. He gave me permission to get my vengeance for Lidiya, though I would have whether he allowed it or not. I knew that it wasn’t displeasure over her death that meant he gave me that permission; it was his fury at them for having acted without orders. He would have killed them anyway—he just allowed me to be the hand that did it.

He had hoped I would come back to the Syndicate. When I refused to come back in my former capacity, he sent me to work for Viktor’s family. And the rest is history.

It all comes rushing back as I stand there watching Elena sleep, and all I can think is that the moment I let my guard down, the moment I allow myself to be a man and not a weapon, those I love are hurt. If I do it again, the same thing will happen.

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