Chapter 27 - Maxim

Pearl hasn't said a word since I put her into the car at the warehouse. She keeps her hands in front of her, looking down at the blood that's still on the back of them even as I sit her on the bed.

I don't say anything to her, instead going into the washroom and grabbing one of the white washcloths, soaking it through with warm water, and wringing it out before bringing it back to her. I kneel in front of her, taking her hands in my own and slowly wiping away the blood. Her face is completely devoid of emotion. As she looks down at me, it's like I'm staring at a ghost of a human. I keep wiping the blood, not wanting to be the one to break the silence if this is what she needs right now.

Then I can keep my thoughts to myself for as long as possible. It's better that I wasn't the one to kill the bastard. She needed it more. I could see it on her face.

Pearl pulls her hands from me, picking out a piece of dried blood trapped beneath one of her nails. "What am I supposed to do with my life now?"

"What do you mean?"

"I've spent the last seven years of my life looking for the man who killed my father, thinking about the day I would finally kill him. I used to picture how I would do it. Can't decide if it would be knives or guns. I didn't know if I'd hunt him through the fucking woods like an animal. And now that he's dead, I don't know what to do. Even that degree in computer science was to find him. I got good at hacking. Fuck, Maxim, if I had just thought about hacking Nicolo even once, I might have found out sooner. We could have avoided this whole fucking marriage."

I stand and grab her chin, forcing her to look at me. "If you ever say that you would have avoided this marriage again, I'm going to bend you over my knee and spank you until your ass is raw. You remember to whom the fuck you belong."

Interest shines in her eyes. "Is that a threat or a promise?" she asks, her voice taunting and teasing, some of the life coming back into her eyes.

"Now there's the little huntress I remember from Russia." I brush my thumb over her lips, sweeping away the speck of blood that's on them. "You spent seven years of your life trying to hunt him down, and he was right under your nose. But he's gone now. You're only twenty-two. You have the rest of your life to live."

Her bottom lip rolls in her mouth. She looks up at me. Her gaze darts around the room like she's looking for a potential exit.

"What's on your mind, Pearl? This is day one, remember?"

"I don't think every day can be day one. This is more like day four, maybe five. I don't know, they get a little hazy there in the middle."

"You don't seem to be complaining about the days passing when I was keeping you tied up in my bed last night. In fact, I'm quite sure you were begging for more." I smirk and sit on the bed beside her, pulling her into my arms and nestling my face against her neck. Her pulse skips a beat against my lips. "And I think you said you were never going to beg for me."

"Well, with the tongue like that, I don't know how I couldn't."

I nip her earlobe, enjoying the little gasp that comes from her. "Time to stop avoiding the subject, Pearl. What's on your mind? We agreed that if this marriage is going to work, you're going to have to talk to me and I'm going to have to talk to you."

"You make that sound about as fun as pulling teeth."

"Keep sassing me, Pearl. See what happens."

She runs her finger along the veins in the back of my hand. "Are you going to kill me?"

I stiffen, arms banding around her as I pull her closer to my chest. "Why the hell would you think that I'm going to kill you? After everything we've been through. After what I just helped you do? How could you possibly think that I'm capable of killing you?"

"I betrayed you. I knew who you were from the moment we met, and I'm wormed my way into your life. I made sure that I could get close to you. I sent information about Antonio to Nicolo and got your informant killed. Just about every crime I could have committed, I did. I know the Bratva must want my head."

"Not even close." I curl my fingers through the ends of her hair, letting the soft strands fall free like a flowing waterfall. She closes her eyes, leaning into the touch. "The only thing I'm capable of doing, it would seem, my little huntress, is loving you. Even when you piss me off and you drive me to the edge and you keep your secrets, and you play your games. It's all I've ever been capable of doing. You're safe with me. You don't ever have to worry about anybody coming after you ever again."

"You love me?" she asks, her voice breaking over the words. The tears start flowing down her cheeks again, and she looks up at me like she's seeing a new world for the first time.

"I love you, Pearl. It would be impossible not to."

"I think I love you too." She turns in my arms, draping her legs over mine. Her chest presses into my chest. "Actually. I knew I loved you weeks ago. I wanted to stop myself from falling for you. I thought you were the man who would ruin my life. Turns out you're the man who put it back together again."

Leaning in, I claim her mouth, lips slanting against each other, teeth clashing. I try to take every ounce of pain from her in the kiss and it only ends when we run out of breath. Pearl runs her hands up my chest as she looks at me, questions shining in her eyes.

I could spend a lifetime answering them.

"And do you think I did the right thing? Killing Nicolo after everything he's ruined? It seems like he didn't suffer enough for what he did to me over the last seven years."

"If you hadn't killed him today, what would you have done with him?"

"I don't know if I could have killed him any other day."

"I don't believe that for a second. You're a Bratva wife to the bone, even if you don't believe it. You're easygoing yet so determined. Intelligent and beautiful. You think like you're made for this life. And if we hadn't found him for another four days—another four years—you would have killed him, and it would have been the right thing to do. He signed his life away the moment he killed your father. He knew that and that's why he tried to push the blame onto me."

"I want you to tell me about my father. I knew him as Dad, but we never got to reach the point our lives where we were anything more to each other than just a dad and his kid."

"Well, Aaron might have been one of the best people I've ever known. You should have seen how excited he was when he found out he was going to have a daughter. He was on top of the world. You would have thought somebody offered him all the money in the world, the way he told me that his baby girl was arriving."

"Really?" she asks, her eyebrows climbing, her voice raising an octave. "Things were hard between us when I was a teen. There were times I thought he didn't love me anymore."

"He used to come to our meetings. He'd spend about an hour bitching about the stupid teenager things you had done. Whatever you thought that week would piss him off the most. And then after that, he'd spend the next two hours talking about everything you accomplished and all the places you were going in your life. He showed pictures of you time and time again. Every single year."

"If he showed you pictures, why didn't you know who I was when you saw me?"

"You don't look anything like the gangly fifteen-year-old I was expecting to find."

"Will you tell me more about him?" Pearl asks. She shifts up the bed, relaxing into the pillows. She stares up at the ceiling as I move to sit beside her.

"I'll spend the rest of my life telling you whatever you want to know."

"Good, because I don't think after all we've been through together that I could ever let you go."

"Aaron always thought the best thing he ever did was become a father to you."

"Do you want kids?" she asks, her tone soft like she's waiting for a while to ask the question, but she thinks I'm going to run.

There was a time in my life when thinking about children would have sent me running, but now it just leaves me excited.

"I never thought I did. I know it's my duty in the Bratva to have them continue our line, but it wasn't something actively wanted until I met you. Then you wormed your way into my life. You made it impossible to forget you. And then I started having dreams about what kids would look like."

She props herself on her elbow, laying on her side to look at me. "You did?"

"How could I not from the moment you walked into my life? I knew you were going to be mine. It was only a matter of time until I caught you."

"So confident," she says, light and teasing as she rolls over, straddling my hips. "And what if I told you no? Kept refusing your advances. Would you still come after me?"

"Pearl, I would chase you to the far fucking corners of this world if that's what it took to get you in my life. You could run, but there would be nowhere you would be able to hide to be safe from me."

Her hands are on my chest, slipping beneath my shirt, nails tracing over the muscles. "You really believe that don't you?"

"It's something I've known for months. I've never been surer of anything else in my life."

"That was almost romantic." She rolls off me, gets out of the bed, pulls her shirt over her head, and throws it to the floor. "I think I'm going to shower after everything we've been through today."

Smirking, I put my hands behind my head, watching her as she sways her hips shimmying out of her jeans. They hit the floor, her bra following.

She looks at me over her shoulder. "Are you coming or not?"

"Well, I suppose we should get some practice for making babies." I get out of bed, taking my time to walk to her. The moment I reach her, my hands trail along her curves.

Tears slip down her cheeks. "I don't know if I'm ever going to stop crying."

"If tears are the way you want to worship my cock. Go for it."

She laughs, delivering a light pat to my chest before hopping into the shower, and leaving the door open for me to follow her in.

If I'd known that this was what settling down was like, I would have married her the day I met her.