11. Ivan

11

IVAN

I paced through the living room, peeking at Becca napping on the couch each time I passed her.

Or, rather, each time we passed her.

Emily patted, then grabbed at my hair. Her fingers were small but mighty as she gripped tight, testing how hard she could play.

Gritting my teeth, I reined in my annoyance and tried to turn my head to the side and discourage her. It hurt like a bitch, but if it made the baby happy, if it kept her quiet, whatever.

She blinked up at me, sucking on her pacifier as I held her. Gazing into her innocent eyes never failed to hit me hard.

What did kids—infants—think about?

What did she think of me?

Why did she want to be carried nonstop?

What was so bad about sitting down?

Did she see in color?

I Googled about a baby’s vision last night, curious, and I got hooked on the fact that at birth, as eyes developed, they made out black and white, high-contrast pictures best.

Was that why she kept staring at my tattoos?

Questions and curiosities ballooned every time I stopped to think about what her perspective on her short life was so far. Being near a baby was a new experience, but it wasn’t a bad one. Different, but not awful. Every time I tried to help Becca handle her with this fussiness, I learned how to hold her better, how to balance her in my arms and multitask. How to adjust to the slow way she seemed to want to take over my life.

Margie finally answered, and Emily reached for the phone again, giving up on my hair.

I shifted her to higher in my arms, keeping my phone between my shoulder and head.

“Hey, Margie.”

“I am on vacation, sir…” she answered in a teasingly scolding tone.

“I know. But I need your help.”

This housekeeper was the only motherly figure we’d had at the mansion for years. All of us brothers appreciated her help and guidance, and she was the first one I’d thought to call for help.

“With what, Ivan?” she asked.

“A baby. My… The…” I sighed. She could be trusted, but I simply didn’t know what to call Becca anymore. While she remained locked here as a hostage, I had to face the possibility that she had been an ineffective one so far.

“A baby. She’s teething, according to her mother, and…”

“Is her mother there?”

“Yes.” I glanced again at Becca’s sleeping form on the couch. “But she’s tired and overwhelmed. She’s been suffering from allergies, but maybe it’s a cold. I just need some help with the baby.”

“Hmm.”

I could picture her now. Trying to see me dealing with a baby had to be a comical image for her. And yes, she was on vacation this week, but she hadn’t actually gone anywhere. Mila insisted on her not working for at least five whole days because she feared the workaholic was burning out.

“Okay.” Her reply came quickly.

“I’ll arrange for transportation.” I smiled as Emily grinned at me. I’d kill a man who dared to witness this baby softening me up, but dammit, her charm was infectious.

“I have no doubt you already have someone coming to get me now,” she quipped.

“Maybe.”

We disconnected the call, but I bided my time walking with Emily. She wasn’t heavy. I didn’t have anything else to do until this evening, taking a call with Yusef to check in on any possible sightings of Murphy in the city.

As long as Becca napped and rested, I could do my best to preoccupy Emily, and it seemed that walking around was all she wanted. To be held. To see the house and gaze out the windows. But always in my arms.

“No wonder she’s so tired,” I muttered to myself, looking again to make sure Becca rested.

For the first three weeks, I did my best to avoid being near the redheaded woman who tricked me into wanting something that could never be. Out here at the vacation home, it almost seemed domestic. Like she was my woman, my mistress, my whatever I wanted to call her. Just mine .

I couldn’t allow that kind of easement. I had to keep my guard up around her. I couldn’t forget that she’d only come into my life as a hostage. If she were any other woman, I wouldn’t have personally cared to stick around. Any other Bratva soldier would have done just as fine in my place. I could have arranged for anyone in the family to stand guard over her and Emily and make sure they stayed put under my control.

But I didn’t. This need to be near her and see her was a stubborn urgency I couldn’t tamp down. Even when I had the wisdom to step away and have a breather from her, I was drawn to return and know that she was here.

All those days blurred into an awkward tension until she’d cut her hand. Until that moment, I’d maintained a distance but failed to forget about her. That incident let me show her that I would try to help with Emily.

I hadn’t missed her expression of surprise. I would never forget how stunned and interested she was to see me try to comfort Emily, as though she’d dismissed me as someone who could never appease a fussy baby.

I was no expert. But the kid did quiet down, often staring at me with blunt wonder to the point she stopped crying. Or she’d babble and hum, swat at my chest and shoulders.

Becca said she was teething and that she was impatient to walk, not crawl. In a quiet moment the day after she cut her hand, she admitted that she felt like she’d trained Emily to always want to be picked up. But she didn’t care. She liked feeling needed and loved being able to cuddle her.

I understood what she meant. I felt like a king to calm Emily down, to pass her test.

While I almost felt like an idiot to lower my guard and go soft with the awareness of how hard it had to be for Becca to survive as a single mother, I couldn’t help but want to reduce some of the burden off her shoulders.

She wasn’t working. Her job was probably already replaced. But being a mother of a fussy baby was a job. A full-time one, plus the immaculate orderliness she maintained of the vacation house out here. Cooking, laundry, and even general cleaning up and dusting around the house.

Margie would take over. She’d fuss over Emily. She’d insist that Becca relax. And I looked forward to the woman finally having a break and letting her body get over her slight illness, whether it was just allergies or a cold.

Walking with Emily made me sad, though, because I couldn’t help but wonder if my father or mother ever did this for me or my brothers. They’d doted on us. My father was a brave, generous man until Pavel killed him, but his duties were always priority over child-rearing. And my mother? She’d passed away so long ago, I hardly recalled her.

Who else do you have? I watched Emily as she rested against my chest, her eyes drooping as she grew sleepy.

My mother died too young and my father had been murdered too soon as well, but I never lacked for companionship. All four of my brothers were there for me, and they always would be. Under Alek’s leadership as Pakhan , the Bratva returned to a family-oriented and cohesive unit.

Mila had married Alek. Amy was with Nik. Both women were bringing in the next generation of children.

And here, I could have a ready-made family within my reach. Becca and Emily. A wife and daughter. It didn’t matter to me who donated sperm for Emily to be born. It mattered who showed up in her life. Who held her as she fussed. Who fought for her safety.

Who am I kidding?

Settling down wasn’t a feasible option. Not for me. Being here out of the city was an illusion. This mansion wasn’t a home, but a vacation spot that the Bratva owned. I wasn’t here to play happy family and pretend that I could be an active parent to this baby. Becca wasn’t a guest here for any reason other than baiting Murphy.

Settling down? With Becca?

I shook my head and rolled my eyes as I continued to walk and lull Emily to sleep.

She would never want me . Not really. Even though she’d shown me how readily and eagerly she could follow my lead sexually and come apart so beautifully in my arms, under my hand, and around my dick, I knew what happened there.

In the heat of the moment, she’d caved. At that precise opportunity, when she was vulnerable, shocked, and traumatized by all that had happened, she’d given in to me.

I’d manipulated her. I’d forced her so far, but in the end, she’d wanted it. She fought me, but not when I slammed my dick inside her. She’d been tied up, but she hadn’t struggled to escape my touch. The slickness of her pussy was evidence of how turned on she’d been when I took her roughly.

But for anything else? She’d be smarter to resist me. I was too hard of a man for someone as “normal” and nice as her.

I liked it hard, all the time. I preferred toys and bondage. Voyeurism and pain.

She’d struggled to last a handful of minutes at that club, and I wasn’t under any illusion that she could compromise to be more like me, to fit in with my depraved preferences and kinks.

Wanting her again but knowing how dumb it would be to act on it, I’d kept my distance. These three weeks had been a personal torture of knowing Becca was close but not for me.

And at this point, it gnawed at me when this tension and slowly building desire would snap.

So far, nothing was happening. Dmitri and Yusef helped most with tracking Murphy in the city, and he wasn’t biting at any of the news that Becca had been taken. Nothing came in from our spies with the Rossinis, either.

While the wait for a development could take time, I felt like I was running out of it where my restraint lay with Becca.

My phone rang, and I shifted the now-napping Emily in my arms to answer. The screen told me it was Maxim, and I wondered what he’d have to tell me.

“I think we might need you to drive to the city,” he said after we greeted each other.

“Now what?” I perked up, though I kept my voice low. “Something come in about Murphy?”

“No. The cops are heading to one of the clubs.” The emphasis he put on those words, the clubs , signaled which establishments he was speaking about. The sex clubs. The ones I supervised.

“Which one?”

“LeVant’s.”

Huh. That was a pricy place, secure and hard to get into. LeVant’s was easily the Bratva’s most secretive sex club, and few knew how to get through the doors. It was a selective, carefully monitored clientele there, and I doubted I wanted the cops poking around for long. The more secretive the club and the clientele there, the higher the profits.

“What’s going on there?” I asked, praying Margie would get here soon so I could leave to deal with business. It would have been nice for something to happen with this hostage situation and luring Murphy to reveal himself, but it wasn’t as though I could forgo or slack in my usual duties.

“It sounds like people are getting drugged.”

I furrowed my brow. That’s it? Drugs were commonplace in the Bratva, and at the clubs, too.

“And it sounds like it’s a complicated situation,” Maxim reported. “Alek wanted to check it out himself, but he and Nik are dealing with something else downtown. Dmitri’s chasing a lead, and since LeVant’s falls under your lead…”

“Yeah. Okay. I got it.” I didn’t need a lecture. “I appreciate having a heads up.”

I doubted it would be anything bad, but still, I had to check it out.

As carefully and quietly as I could, I lowered Emily to Becca. Her arms slid over the baby, almost as though her body recognized the press of hers even in sleep.

Mother and daughter slept on, peaceful and quiet, and I stalled for a moment. I committed the angelic image of them like this, safe and sound, to memory and wished that it was a picture I could come home to every day. Every night.

As the front door opened and Margie entered, calling out for me quietly, I sighed and scowled.

Becca was a hostage.

Every hostage had a purpose.

And Becca’s would not be to fill a gap I hadn’t ever realized before.

As my woman.