Page 63 of Deal with the Devil

“Kane Volkov.” I hold out my hand, noting the flicker of recognition in his eyesat my name. Many share the Volkov name, but my family has a reputation here in America that most of the underground know. My brother is in and out of the States, popping in on the goons who oversee his casinos, hotels, and more unsavory business here. He’s a ghost story the underworld knows well.

He doesn’t take my hand and I let it fall around Nevaeh’s waist, tucking her close.

A flicker of fear sparks in his eyes, but he kills it quick as his eyes sweep my face, looking for similarities with my older brother. I know he finds them when he asks, “Any relation to Ilya Volkov?”

I remain composed. Cool. Unaffected. “You know him?”

“Of him.” He lifts his chin. “Relation?”

“Brothers.”

“Fuck,” the man hisses. Nevaeh looks between us, a frown knitting her brow. Her innocence is arousing.

“What’s happening? How do you know Kane’s brother, Uncle Miguel?”

Ah, so this is the famous Uncle Miguel. I should have known.

“Small world, Princess.” His soft voice turns hard when he demands to me, “Garage. We need to have a little chat.”

My eyes move to Nevaeh’s father. “Join us.”

Miguel looks to Nevaeh’s father, who has no fucking ties to our world of darkness what-so-ever,with his blue collar, nine-to-five, cubicle life. The man follows anyway.

Once inside, door closed, I turn to the men who love my wife and state frankly, “I met Nevaeh a few months ago.” It’s a stretch on the timeline, but whatever. “She was being harassed by her ex-fiancé at the time.”

“Antonio?” Nevaeh’s father, Patrick, asks with a frown of disbelief.

I nod.

Miguel curses. “Never liked that guy.”

Patrick’s frown deepens, but I continue, “I intervened. Things got ugly. His pride was hurt, and I saw her to her car safely. I thought about her after that a lot. I wished I hadn’t let her leave alone that night.” Miguel’s fists curl at his sides as he listens, preparing for bad and having no fucking clue. “I was visiting a friend of mine who works in the ER when I saw her again. She’d been beaten. Badly.”

More curses. A breathy, “What?” from a pale, clueless Patrick.

“Antonio beat her?” I think Miguel might be capable of murder, if I’m not misjudging the look in his black eyes. That makes two of us, but I must say I’m better at hiding it.

“Not him personally, but she was beaten. Badly.” I paint the picture that has my guts twisting with sick and anger sparking fire in my veins. “Antoniohired the man who broke into her home and assaulted her.”

Miguel’s body vibrates around his wrath. “Did he?—”

Patrick’s eyes close, a soft, “No,” whispering from the shell of him.

“No.” I say firmly. “He didn’t rape her. But he hurt her badly, as I said. It took weeks before the bruising had disappeared.”

“Why didn’t she call me?” The desperation in Miguel’s voice echoes the pain I see in Patrick’s eyes for the woman they both love, and view still, as a girl. Their girl. But she’s my woman.

“It’s my understanding that you’re tied in with some shady characters. Antonio is a political sweetheart,” I sneer the word. “Or so she claims. She didn’t want you to know. Didn’t want him turning his vengeance on you, if you ended up confronting him.”

“So, she turned to you?” Patrick muses, eyeing me with that studious gaze.

“I vowed to protect her. To give her a place to heal with no demand for more. She’d been afraid. Terrified. My house is equipped with an alarm system not even the government could hack, and she spent her days inside while I worked. I tried, mostly, to give her space.”

“How did this marriage happen?” Miguel demands through gritted teeth.

I tell them about Antonio’s message through the man he hired to‘teach her a lesson’and how he wants her back. How he continued to tell the people in his life, and the public, that they were still together, the engagement still on. I tell them about Nevaeh’s best friend, and her betrayal. I lay every fucking thing bare, because I’d opened a message from Ian an hour ago when I’d left to take a piss. My blood has been simmering since.

Because the fucker sent another video message today, thankfully it was one Nevaeh would never see as Ian had everything rerouted to his personal account for inspection before he let it pass to hers. Was that an invasion of her privacy? Maybe. Probably. Most definitely. Did I care? Nope. Not when seeing that fucker broke her down, shattered her, dropped her into a spiral of fear like it did.

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