Page 44 of Secret Baby for the Bratva Boss

“I don’t doubt that, Kat, clearly you are made of steel.” His jaw is locked tight as a trap, and his eyes are frenzied. In the darting light of passing men, I see his face is beaten and bloodied. He’s been in some kind of fight. “But just now, I’d like to see you carried up to bed by myself. If you don’t mind.”

I lean my head into his chest, my own spinning, wild. I don’t mind at all, and though I don’t have the strength or wherewithal to say it out loud, I get the sense I don’t have to, and that Aleks hears me, nonetheless.

Chapter Eighteen

Aleks

The look of her is still in my mind’s eye: standing there on her own two feet, her hands in fists at her side. In the strangest getup of silk pajamas and boots and a heavy winter coat, her hair down and wild down her back. She looked sleepless, and yet like she’d just come up from a deep sleep, with lines under her wild, alert eyes; and blood so rich and thick it looked black, running from her bottom lip from one corner of her mouth to the other.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” she says to me, when we are alone in her bathroom. No bath tonight. I turn on the shower, and gingerly begin to undress her. She’s not the Kat I met so many years ago, the nervous schoolgirl; she’s not the unsure, uneasy girl I picked up on the highway just a week ago, in the midst of a thunderstorm. “I have to stop making you take care of me like a nurse.”

No, this Kat is a different woman altogether. Steel in her spine and a bloodthirst in her eye I recognize best from my own; certainly, she is still a soft thing, still a lover, a mother. But the ferocity I always knew to sleep within her is wide awake now, and I get the sense she’s the thing that woke it.

“You should know by now,” I tell her, “That I don’t mind taking care of you. Like a nurse or not.” In fact, it’s hard not to admire her now, just the way she is. She looks like she’s come back from war, and I should see the other guy. “Tell me. Everything.”

“Like I said. I thought I heard someone, or something, in the house. I got up. Checked the doors and windows. Then I heard something, or I thought I did, and I hid in the closet.” She rubs her eyes, leaving them steaked and grimy with blood. But it’s nothers, I checked—whatever the hell she did to Konstantin, he’s licking his wounds somewhere, and worse for it.That’s my girl. A real fighter, with real grit.“Someone came in, and they were talking, Konstantin and someone else.”

“Who?”

She gives me a wary look. Almost a warning look, and I frown.

“Who?” I repeat, and she shakes her head.

“He was speaking in Russian,” she says, and shifts to pull off her jacket. I move to do it for her, and she lets me. And then I kneel to help her out of her boots. “Aleks, I know you’re not going to want to hear this. But I’m sure you’ve thought of it, too—someone broke through the perimeter that night, the night that I was taken. At very least, two men. That shouldn’t have been possible. And tonight, Konstantin himself got into the house.”

Dread pierces me right between the ribs, a thick, long cold needle. I stand so we’re at eye level, and I can read the sorrow, the fear in her face. “You think there is a rat among my men.”

She nods once, not hesitating, giving me the dignity of believing I can consider this without my ego getting in the way. “I almost thought…” Her brows knit up and she looks away in consternation.

“Tell me.”

“I don’t want to speak out of turn…” She bites her lip, shakes her head. But seems to think better of it and straighten up. “It almost sounded like Toma. The man who came in.”

Cold floods my body, crystallizing every vein. I turn and grip the counter. I rake a hand through my hair.

“I don’t mean to speak against you, or the loyalty of your men—”

“You’re not.” I turn stiffly, taking her by the shoulders, looking into her battered face with my own. “It’s late. The middle of the night. So, I’m going to clean you, and we’re goingto go to bed, and sleep for what it’s worth. And as soon as daylight comes, I’m going to line up my men, and have them speak.”

She blanches, clearly mortified at the idea. But regardless of her feelings, Kat, like me, seems to finally grasp the stakes of what is going on here. So, she nods once. “If I can place the voice, we can place the rat.”

“Yes. And that may put us on a course to end all of this, once and for all.”

She’s shivering. I begin to pull off her silk pajamas. “My gun is down there,” she says. “And his, under the sofa.”

“Everything will be taken care of.”

She sways slightly, now naked, her eyes distant. Blood has run down the bare column of her neck, spreading like a dark downward hand over her collarbone; like the gristly roots of a red-brown tree. She looks nymph-ish again, less like the sleeping maiden or waiting princess of a fairy tale than its earthen, forest-dwelling witch.

She looks beautiful.

“I have to tell you something,” she says, suddenly, looking at me. Despite the disheveled, Pagan look of her, her eyes are clear as spring water. “I love you.”

I nearly flinch, and barely control the reflex.

“Don’t say anything back,” she adds, touching my chest. She seems so in control of herself, naked and beaten in front of me, fresh from a fight that could easily have taken her life. “I don’t want you to. I know you’re cruel with me to keep your distance, but I also know that some part of you cares about me, truly cares. I think you might even love me.”

“Kat—”

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