72

Oleg
I pass out for the rest of the afternoon, falling in and out of feverish dreams. The worst kind-the type that picks up right where real life left off, so I can’t be sure if they’re really happening or not. I know Natasha came back to check on my wound and change the poultice. Dima stood behind her like her bodyguard. Or maybe that was a dream, too.
In one dream, Story walks out of the Kremlin while I’m asleep, and the bearded asshole from Rue’s guns her down in cold blood.
In another, Skal’pel’ operates on her, removing her tongue, too, so she can never sing again.
Then he’s here in my bedroom with a gun on her. I jerk awake, a hoarse cry coming from my lips. I lunge for my gun in my nightstand.
“Hey.” Story’s voice cuts across the room. “Are you okay?” She’s curled up in a chair by the big windows, her guitar across her thighs.
I release my grip on the gun before she can see it, my pulse racing. Blyad’. What if I’d pointed it at her before I got my head on straight? The thought does nothing to calm my pounding heart.
Story puts the guitar down and comes to the bed. She has a way of moving that’s more childlike than sultry-woman. She skips steps. Leaps onto the bed with a bounce instead of crawling. It’s part of what makes her so fascinating to me. She yanks the covers back and tucks her legs into the bed to sit with me then shoves the iPad Dima brought me under my nose.
I stare at it for a moment, remembering what I’m supposed to be doing with it.
I had a bad dream, I type. The Australian mudak speaks the words to her.
“What about?” she asks.
I point at her. I dreamed he cut your tongue out, too.
Fuck. I feel so raw and exposed giving voice to my nightmare, but Story’s been demanding communication from me.
“Scalpel?” she asks.
I nod.
“What was he to you?” Her brown eyes search my face.
Damn. I haven’t told this story before, not that I ever talk about my past. But Story, of course, deserves to know. I frown over the letters, using both index fingers to hunt and peck.
When I was fourteen, my mother took a housekeeping job with a wealthy plastic surgeon named Andrusha Orlov. I sometimes helped my mother after school, and the doctor took a liking to me. He paid me to do odd jobs for him and took a fatherly role with me.
“Did you have a father?” Story asks, folding her slender legs underneath her to sit cross-legged.
I shake my head. I never knew him. He left when I was young.
“I’m sorry.”
I shrug. When I was seventeen, Dr. Orlov asked me if I wanted a job as his personal bodyguard. I was already almost this size. He had a security team, and the head of it was former military. He trained me to shoot a gun. To fight with my hands. He taught me seventy-two ways to kill a man.
I didn’t know why Orlov needed protection, but I didn’t care. I was getting paid more money than my mom made as his housekeeper and feeling like a man. As time continued, he took me to meetings he held with people in public restaurants or bars. I sat in on meetings where large sums of cash changed hands. Over the next five years, I witnessed more and more of Orlov’s identity-changing business.
Then things got too hot. The St. Petersburg bratva came after him when they got word he’d performed surgery on a man they wanted dead. I killed three men who showed up at his residence. It scared me.
I tried to quit. He persuaded me to stay just until he closed out his operation, changed his own identity and disappeared.
I stop typing. The rest of the story isn’t worth telling.
Story slips her hand in mine. “And he cut out your tongue to thank you.”
I rub my aching head and nod.
“Where’s your mom?” Story asks.
Pain stabs through my chest. My sweet, honest, hard-working mother. She lost her job and her son when Skal’pel’ left, I type.
“Does she know you’re alive?”
I rub my head again.
“Oleg?” Story leans her head forward to peek at my face.
I was too ashamed to see her again. I went straight from prison to Chicago. I needed a new start.
Story leans her head on my shoulder, curling her body against mine, her knees folding over the top of my thighs. “I hate what happened to you.” She sounds choked up.
I stroke her cheek, brushing her hair back over her ear. Dredging up my shitty past sucked, but now that it’s out-now that Story knows it and Ravil and Maxim know part of it-something that’s been blocked all these years has moved. I used my pain as a wall to keep everyone out. To keep myself out. I was half a man, barely living half a life.
I was missing far more than my tongue.
But now that wall is down. The path isn’t clear-far from it. There’s fucking rubble everywhere. But I’m willing to pick through it.
“You should contact your mom,” Story says, threading her fingers through mine. “I’ll bet she’s dying not knowing about you.”
My chest constricts, and I fight a lump in my throat. I nod my agreement.
“Speaking of moms, I need to call mine. She’s kind of a mess.” Story slips off the bed and retrieves her retro flip-phone.
I type on the iPad, What happened? It’s strange to have a real conversation with anyone, but Story makes it seem possible.
Story comes back to the bed and sits cross-legged again. “My mom suffers from depression. She’s amazing, but totally unreliable as a parent. I’m more the parent in the relationship. I mean, when things are good, she’s there for us-for me and Flynn and Dahlia, our baby sister. But her life is a rollercoaster of falling in love and then falling apart. And last time I talked to her, it seemed like things were going south with her boyfriend, Sam. I’m just going to check in with her.” Story dials a number on the phone while I type on the iPad.
“Hey, Mom. Just checking in. Give me a call when you get this.” Story closes the phone. “Voicemail.”
It was hard for you. I pass the iPad to Story. I’m sick of the Australian asshole speaking for me. I’d rather she just read it.
“It was okay. I felt loved. I just couldn’t rely on anyone.”
You can rely on me, I want to tell her, but I hold back. She’s skittish when it comes to commitment, and I’m in no position to push. Not when I can’t even keep her safe.
“My dad’s life was also pretty crazy with sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. Now I worry that Flynn’s going down that path, you know?” Her eyes shine with tears, which she blinks back. “But music is really the one thing we have. It’s what holds our family together, even though it’s not the most stable unifying force. I couldn’t go to college because things were just too crazy with my mom being in and out of psychiatric care. I needed to stay home and make sure Flynn and Dahlia were okay. So my brother and I ended up in a band. Only Dahlia went to school.”
What else would you want to do? I type. If you could? Story tosses her phone back in her purse. “I don’t know. I’ve never even thought about it. Maybe I would do nothing different. I love the band. And I like teaching guitar. I really do. It works, you know?”
I study her, trying to decipher whether there’s something hidden in there to decode, but my skills at conversation and women are so lacking, I can only take her words at face value.
I try again. What would you have studied if you’d gone to college?
“Probably something completely useless like French literature. Or Art History.” She shrugs and gives me an impish smile.
I fucking love this girl.
She touches the iPad. “I like talking to you.”
You’re mine for the next five days, I write. I don’t suggest anything more permanent, even though I don’t intend to give her up. Ever.
“I guess so. You’d better get better, so we can hang out. I mean, watching you sleep is fun and all, but…”
She wrenches a smile from me. The unfamiliar expression is happening more and more with her around.
I’m already better, I tell her although it’s not entirely true. My head aches, and I could probably fall back to sleep again in a heartbeat. Tomorrow I will wear you out. She sucks in a breath and shoots an excited look at me. “Is that dirty talk?”
I nod, and her smile widens. “Oh my God, I can’t wait to hear all the filthy thoughts in that big head of yours.”
I arch a brow. Careful what you wish for.
Story straddles my lap, grinding her warm core over my semi, turning it into a full-fledged boner. “How much better are you feeling?” she purrs.
Well enough to fuck the daylights out of you, shalun’ya, I type, using the non-translate feature on her other pet name, then toss the iPad aside and flip her to her back.
“I hope shalun’ya means something very naughty.” She tugs up my shirt.
I growl and claim her mouth, showing her exactly how I treat my little minx when she’s a bad girl.