The card on the outside saidTo Papa from Sofiya, remember your promises and who you make them for.
So had Sofiya been here as well? Reaching past the tissue paper, I pulled out a framed photograph. It seemed fairly recent, with Kon in the middle of his five children, all of them smiling like they didn’t have a care in the world. The background was nondescript, perhaps a room in his house in Moscow that I hadn’t been in since Sofiya and I were in high school together.
My eyes should have sought out the boy—now a man—that I claimed to have a crush on to perversely try and get under Kon’s skin. Instead of looking at Mikhail, all I could see was Kon. So commanding and handsome, he dwarfed his huge sons, whowere equally attractive, but somehow didn’t have the aura that seemed to radiate from Kon.
Larger than life, even in a photograph that fit in my hands. I reached out to trail a finger around the outline of him, my mind casting back in time. How could someone who cared so much about family give up so easily on someone who considered him as close as a brother?
Bratva. It meant brotherhood. Family. It didn’t have to be blood.
But apparently it did to Kon.
I tried to bring back the boiling anger, but I was lost in the smile on Kon’s face, easy and carefree, though his eyes were still completely in charge. Someone like Kon never lets down his guard, even surrounded by his loved ones in his own home.
Unlike me, who was so lost in thought over this picture of Kon that I didn’t hear the real thing sneak up on me. Suddenly, he was right behind me, his hands caging me in on either side of the counter, much too close after the direction my mind kept drifting. My gasp gave away my surprise and also filled my nose with his cologne, a very light, spicy scent tinged with the sea.
I could feel his heat through the bathrobe I still wore, hear his low chuckle above the back of my head as he leaned closer, reaching to take the picture from my hands.
“You’re out of your depth,” he said. “The reason you’re here with me now.”
He stepped back a bit, smirking at my lack of situational awareness, and then laughed at something behind me. I swiveled around, still somewhat trapped by him against the counter. I’d have to brush against him to break free, slide underthe cage of his arms. Wanting and not wanting to feel his body heat again, I stayed put, but saw what he was so smug about.
Proving his point further, he waved at the guard who carried my suitcase in and left it in the middle of the living area. He had brought all the stuff I left behind in the hotel, showing off that he really didn’t need me to find out anything.
I shoved past him, no longer flustered by his nearness or the fact that he was too handsome for such a beast, with that triumphant grin curling his lips. I was furious all over again. Mostly at myself, because he was right.
I was in over my head.
Chapter 11 - Konstantin
I didn’t enter the apartment with any intent to surprise Tati, so it was unsettling to find her so lost in thought that she didn’t hear me or the guard enter. All alone, standing at the kitchen counter, completely in another world. She was breathtakingly beautiful, and that strange heat filled my chest.
Her head was tilted downward as she studied something she held in her graceful hands. Her long, dark chestnut hair fell in waves down her back, bunching up a bit in the thick collar of the borrowed robe. While the robe was oversized and swallowed her up, there was no hiding the curve of her hip as she shifted her weight to her other foot. I paused for a moment in the hall leading into the kitchen, my eyes moving lower, down her smooth, bare calves. The fire inside me burned hotter.
Not lust. Notonlylust. There was no denying how damn gorgeous she was. Any man would want her. Not that any would ever lay a hand on her. Not now. Not with this strange feeling consuming me.
This was the same wild, fiery thing that had me completely throwing all reason and caution to the wind to take her off the street. But she had been in actual danger then. Riku was just around the corner. I had acted on instinct, if not good sense.
While she was alone in the apartment, there was a guard outside the door, another at the ground floor. The place was rigged up with cameras, and the penthouse suite was hundreds of feet above the floor. She was in no danger unless Spiderman was somehow suddenly working with my enemies. Why that rush of protectiveness that had me wanting to rush to her side, grip her arms, and begin inspecting her for injuries?
Instead, I sidled up behind her, getting much too close. I couldn’t stop myself. Until I saw what she was studying so intently. Before Sofiya left, she had this picture from the last time we were all together on her phone. She wanted me to keep it close, offended that I refused to have it on my phone at all, least of all set it as my lockscreen.
“Have you not been paying attention?” I asked. “The moment anyone grabs me, they’d know instantly who to go after first in order to hurt me the worst.”
My brave daughter had gone pale until I quickly assured her that no one was going to get a hold of me. That I’d live through this threat like I lived through all the others. “You and your brothers are my good luck charms,” I told her. “Ones I can’t keep near, but always right here all the same.”
I thought it was a very touching gesture, laying my hand over my heart to try to get her to stop worrying about me. But she still had the picture printed out and framed before she left, after I made her swear up and down to stop keeping personal information where anyone could get to it.
Now Tati stared at the picture as if she was studying for an exam, and all the warnings Sofiya tried to get me to take seriously came back, making my hackles rise at the back of my neck.
Tati could be in league with her father. She could be working with the Yakuza.
She could be dangerous to everything I held dear.
What she was as soon as she realized I had snuck up on her and brought all her things from the hotel she’d been staying at, was simmering with barely contained fury. She shoved away and stomped to where the guard had left the one lone suitcaseshe’d brought with her from Moscow on this mission of hers, whatever it was.
“You should have worn that black wig that’s in there,” I said. “I might not have recognized you.”
“It didn’t fit,” she said, then huffed. “It’s not any of your business, and how did you know what’s in my bag, anyway?” When I only gave her an exasperated look, she railed at me for invading her privacy.