212

Kira
After we shower, Maykl lets me put on some clothes. He has me uncuffed but keeps me within grabbing distance.
“I picked up your sister’s ashes,” he tells me.
The sensation of a swallowed stone in my stomach that I always have when I think of Anya returns. “Oh.” I can’t think of anything to say. “Where are they?”
He points to the cardboard cylinder on his desk.
I walk over and open the lid then quickly replace it. I’m not squeamish, but something about knowing what’s inside creeps me out.
“Do you…want to keep them? Or scatter them as a farewell?”
I look out Maykl’s giant windows toward the lake.
“Maybe…scatter them. Out there. Leave her to Chicago.”
He nods. “I’ll arrange it.” He pulls out his phone to text something.
I can’t help it. I throw myself at him, wrapping my arms around his sturdy trunk and squeezing hard.
It’s hard to fathom why he’s being so kind. What he could possibly hope to gain by carrying me through this.
He kisses the top of my head. A message comes through on his phone, which he checks and then pockets. “Get your boots and coat. We’re going now.”
“To the lake?” I blink in surprise.
“Yes.”
“I can go out? I mean, we’re going out to the lake?” I’m having a hard time assimilating this fact. That I could go from prisoner to pampered in just the blink of an eye.
“Even in war, there’s time given to bury the dead.”
“Are we at war?” I ask. Because I no longer want to be.
I want to find some way out of this situation that leaves us both on the same side. But is that even possible?
He tilts his head. “We are until we aren’t anymore. Go and put on your boots.”
I mull over his words as I pull on my boots and coat. When I return, he hands me the ashes then shows me the screen of his phone.
I gasp. Mika.
All grown up. I don’t know how I even recognize him, except the family resemblance is there. He looks like my sister.
“In case you need an incentive not to give me trouble.” I think I catch a tinge of regret in Maykl’s face as he makes the threat.
My eyes water and I press my lips together and nod. “He’s safe?”
“He’s fine. I’m not threatening his safety. I’m telling you to be good, so you can see him.”
I bob my head, still overcome with emotion. The relief that he’s actually been foundthat he’s still alive and Maykl knows wheremakes me want to drop to my knees and praise a god I don’t even believe in.
Maykl sees my emotion and loops an arm around me to lead me to the door. Outside stand two battle-faced bratva soldiers. I absorb that information. I’ve had additional guards at the door this whole time.
For some reason, it doesn’t daunt me. I don’t feel as concerned about making an escape.
We are until we aren’t anymore.
There’s a riddle in there. Something to work out. Some clue about what he’s planning for me.
“Follow us,” Maykl commands, and the guards tag along into the elevator. Someone else sits behind Maykl’s desk. An older man but clearly still bratva based on the tattoos that extend beyond his sleeves and across the backs of his hands.
Maykl keeps his arm around me. I’m sure it’s to keep me close, to make sure I don’t run, but it also feels protective. Comforting, even.
He leads me out to the sidewalk toward the lake. As we pass by the window of the building, I hear a knock and Kat gives me a friendly wave from her studio.
I smile back because it’s impossible not to return the friendliness.
It’s cold out, and I tighten the jacket around me as we walk into the wind. Maykl leads me to the end of a dock. I stand and stare out at the water for a long time. It’s a dark blue. The sky is grey to match the occasion.
Maykl doesn’t hurry me. Or lead. He just stands beside me, his hulk and strength giving me a pillar to lean into.
I take a deep breath. “Okay, let’s do this.” I open the lid of the ashes container and unceremoniously dump the whole thing. No scattering. Just a straight pour.
“May the earth be soft for her.” Maykl speaks the traditional Russian saying.
“Except she’s in water,” I say. I start to laugh. It’s a hysterical kind of laugh. The sort that could just as easily turn to tears. In fact, some tears do stream down my cheeks as I knock into Maykl’s solid form, rocking on my feet with hysteria.
He wraps me into his arms and sways with me gently as I laugh until I sob.
When the outburst finally dies, I pull away and wipe my tears. “I’m okay,” I say, even though he said nothing.
Behind him, the soldiers stand stoic and watchful.
I turn back to the water, to the swirls of ashes stretching away into the giant body of water. “Bye Anya.” I swallow. “I’m sorry I didn’t do more to help you. I’m sorry you were a shitty mom. I’m sorry you’re dead. I’m sorry…I’m sorry it wasn’t me.”
Maykl visibly flinches. “What does that mean?” he demands.
I don’t look at him. I keep my gaze on the trail of ashes growing longer as it stretches further and further away. “I mean when the bratva came. I could’ve taken her place. I wouldn’t have let it break me the way it broke her.”
Maykl’s brows draw together. “You…you feel guilty they chose her?”
I nod.
He moves closer, standing right beside me, my shoulder against his arm as we look out together.
“We all wish there were things we could change about our past. Things we’ve done. Things done to us. Unforgivable things. But that guilt serves no one.”
“I can’t just put it away. If I did, I’d stop caring. And I feel like I barely care for anyone or anything anymore.” Tears clog my voice.
“I…” Maykl seems to be struggling. “There’s something I’ve done, Kira. After I killed my father. I don’t regret that crime. He would have killed me if I didn’t defend myself. But I didn’t understand how it worked. The pakhan made me believe the brotherhood would take me in.” Maykl waits so long to speak that I know he must be wrestling with his memories.
“But they require initiation. A price to pay to become one of them.” He shifts away from me, like he doesn’t want to contaminate me with his crimes. “I didn’t know what a cost that initiation would have on my soul.”
I finally turn. He’s pulled me completely out of my own turmoil. The need to comfort him risesa surprising but sweet sensation.
“What was it?” I ask softly.
He faces me and works to swallow. His eyes are haunted. “An execution. A man who owed them money and tried to pay with counterfeit currency. I was” he draws a breath. “Thirteen years old. They put a gun in my hand and pointed me at him. I had to prove myself. If I didn’t…I’d be on my own.”
I reach over and pick up his hand on the rail of the dock. “Not your only killing, though, right?” I trace the X’s on his knuckles.
He shakes his head. “No, but…the one that ruined me.”
I feel the heaviness and constriction of his statement like a cloud of darkness in my lungs. “You’re not ruined.”
Somehow, I’m sure. Absolutely positive.
But he shakes his head. “You don’t know.” He looks so pained. I squeeze his fingers. “You don’t know who it was.”
I suck in a sharp breath suddenly picturing the worst. A child or old lady. Someone completely defenseless. “Were they innocent?”
“No. He was mixed up with bratva business. He tried to cheat his way out of his debts, I was told. And it wasn’t the first time.” Maykl searches my face. What he seeks, I don’t know. I feel the magnitude of it, though.
He’s not doing a great job of cheering me up, if that was his intent.
I blink back tears. For him. For me. For Anya and Mika. “Why are you telling me this?”
He drops his head and shakes it. “I lost the point. I meant to tell you that guilt serves no one. My guilt can’t change what I did. Questioning that choice won’t change it. Nor will stopping myself from experiencing the rest of this life. The guilt serves no one. It doesn’t bring back the dead. It doesn’t heal any woundsit only makes them fester.
“So you were thirteen when you joined the bratva?” I ask.
“Yes.”
Thirteen. The same age I was when Anya was taken by the bratva to pay my father’s debt.
“You were just a kid. You didn’t know any other way out of your situation.” I nod. “You did what you had to do to survive.”
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I would’ve died inside if the bratva had taken me instead. Sought out drugs to numb the pain, the way Anya did. To believe I would’ve done better is naive at best, arrogant at worst.
Besides, Maykl’s right. The guilt doesn’t bring back the dead.
I can only move forward. Live in the present.
I tug his hand. My fingers are chapped and numb in the cold. I have gloves in my pockets but didn’t bother putting them on. “Let’s go back. It’s done.”
Maykl clasps my hand in his, and then slides it into the pocket of his leather bomber jacket.
We walk back to the building in silence. Together. Apart. Somehow entwined in a way I don’t understand.
In this moment, I don’t need to understand it. I’m content to just walk by this man’s side. Receive his warmth and strength. The vulnerability he just offered me to match my own.
For the moment, I’m going to surrender. He knows where Mika is. He showed me a picture.
Maybe everything led me to this moment. To exactly where I’m supposed to be. In some cosmic arrangement of our fates, I was taken prisoner by the one person who could help me.
And then I feel Anya. Not the pitiful woman who overdosed, but young Anya. The one who tried to protect us both with a butcher knife.
She had warrior energy then. Same as mine.
And it feels like she’s here with me now. Right by my side.
It feels like a promise that everything is going to be okay.
Maykl
I’m reluctant to put Kira back in the handcuffs when we return to my apartment. She stands at the window for a while, looking out at the lake, and then she walks into my kitchen and starts opening cupboards.
“What are you looking for?”
“I want to bake,” she declares. “Anya is the one who taught me to bake. Do you like tea cakes?”
I swallow my surprise. “Yes.”
Russian tea cakes are my favorite, not that I’ve had one for years.
“Do you have any powdered sugar?”
“I’ll order some. What else?”
She rattles off a short list, and I order it to be delivered from the local grocery store. Forty-five minutes later, one of the soldiers knocks on the door with the ingredients.
Another thirty minutes, and my apartment is filled with the delicious scent of warm vanilla and sugar.
I wanted to tell Kira.
About her father.
I tried.
But in the end, I couldn’t quite choke it out. Especially when I realized she didn’t need me adding another layer of trauma to what was already a difficult day.
Now, nothing satisfies me more than seeing her make herself at home in my kitchen. It’s not that I think a woman belongs in the kitchen. I didn’t grow up with a mother at home. I never had that sort of ideal.
But I like the way she seems comfortable here. Like she belongs here.
When the cookies have cooled, we sit at the table and dip them into milk.
“How much older was Anya?” I ask.
“Four years. She was like a mother to me in many ways.”
“Did you have a mother?”
“Our mother was a ghost of a person. She worked very hard for very little pay. Our dad was a deadbeat, so I think she was just sort of checked out emotionally. Almost like a zombie. She did help us out with Mika after he was born. Babies have a way of bringing out qualities you didn’t know you had.”
Her eyes fill with tears.
“Mika is well.” Ravil forwarded me the photo of the teen. He is still discussing with the boy’s adopted father if they even want contact with Kira. “Kira, he may not want or need your presence in his life anymore. Are you prepared for that?”
She stares at me. Her light blue eyes are wide, causing some of the water in them to spill. She sucks in a sobbing breath and holds it then lets it out slowly. “Yes,” she nods. “I guess if he’s happy, I’m happy. I’ve been so worried about him. I guess I thought he needed to be rescued.”
“You were so brave to come here all by yourself to rescue him. In a foreign country, with no help. Going undercover into a bratva stronghold. Very brave.”
She lets out a watery laugh. “But I screwed up completely.”
I raise my brows. “Did you?”
We stare at each other across the table. I want her to feel what I do. That our explosive encounter was a gift. Something meant to be. She will get the result she desiredthe information about her nephew, but she also gets this.
The intangible connection forged between the two of us.
The one I want to keep forging until it’s as thick as a rope and stronger than iron.
“Didn’t I?” she asks, her voice softer than feathers.
I shake my head slowly.
She gets up abruptly from her chair. Considering she’s my prisoner and her hands are unfettered, I take note when she launches herself at me with vicious intent.
But it’s to kiss me. To straddle my lap and sweep her tongue between my lips. She tastes of powdered sugar and sweetness.
I grip her hips and yank her over my lap, needing that warm core rubbing over my swelling cock. My hands slide up inside her sweater, cupping her breast over her bra.
She unbuttons my shirt then loses patience and tries to rip it open. When she’s unsuccessful, I chuckle and do it myself, sending the buttons in a spray around us.
I yank off her sweater, unhook her bra. She removes my undershirt and works open my belt buckle, all the while moving her lips across mine in a frenzy.
I stand, picking her up with me. Her legs wrap around my waist, and we continue to kiss as I carry her to the bedroom. I lay her gently in the center of the bed and unbutton her jeans as I toe off my boots. She kicks off her boots and lifts her hips for me to pull off her jeans and panties. I shove down my jeans and step out of them. Her hands are all over me, stroking along my shoulders and up my neck, pulling me down to her. She wraps those long, lean legs around my back and uses them to draw my hips down to hers.
I grab a condom from the bedside table. She takes it from me and rips it open. We are working in perfect collaboration now. Our goals perfectly aligned. Our need for each other equally desperate. Wanting to make sure she’s ready to take me, I kiss down her neck to her breast and pull one nipple into my mouth.
She’s impatient, though, and she reaches from my cock. I kneel up so she can roll the condom over my erection. She pulls me to her entrance. Guides me in.
I sink into her heat like I’m coming home. Like it’s where I belong. Like nothing will ever keep me from claiming this perfect pussy as my own. Forever.
“I want you,” Kira moans.
“You have me.” I devour her mouth with a kiss, plunging my tongue inside to fuck her with matching thrusts.
She rocks her hips to keep time with mine, meeting me, taking me deeper, riding me on the downswing.
She is everything. Moonlight. And winter water. Snowflakes swirling in tiny eddies at the beginning of a storm. She is beauty and light and darkness and death all at once.
With each thrust I’m baptized in her energy. Her divinity. Her essence that becomes something erratic and wild.
I try to keep it, to hold it. I chase it down the path, knowing I will never fully possess it yet desperate to keep trying. To die trying.
“Kira,” I choke. I’m in a state of religious ecstasy. I’m worshiping at the altar of love. Of alchemy. I need her to make me whole again. To make me anew. Someone else, worthy of holding her, of keeping her forever.
She seems to be right there with me. The way she claws my arms. The frantic cries that come from her lips. Like she needs this more than she needs her own breath or blood.
“Yes.” She cries out in English then in Russian. “Da. Da-da-da-da-da. Da!”
There’s no kink involved in this coupling. No finesse. Nothing but wild, animalistic need. A feral claiming of bodies as if we could tear past the physical and claim each other’s souls.
My balls draw up tight. “I’m going to come,” I warn her, unable to slow myself, unable to think past my own driving need to take care of hers.
“Yes! Come!” she urges me.
I pound in and out of her as all the blood rushes below my waist. I choke on a breath, and then I’m hurtling over the edge, into oneness. Into infinite space. That floating, bodiless, wild realm where everything and nothing exist at once.
When I return to Earth, Kira’s in my arms. I’m still rocking into her, but gently now, a slow deceleration. A communion. A love-song lullaby that I want to last forever.
When it ends, neither of us says a word. I roll us to our sides, and we remain there, bodies intertwined. Hearts entangled.
Souls permanently stamped with the imprint of the other.