20. Yuri

Of course there’s a catch.

Of course, I have an idea and a plan to make this all come together.

I’m liking the idea less and less, but I’m not going to let her, or anyone know, especially my Vors, Anton and Maxim.

They’d think I was getting soft.

Which I’m not.

Part of it is that Katya is starting to get secretive again. I have an uncomfortable feeling she’s planning to leave me again, despite Petya and the dangers. Nothing definite, just a feeling. A disappointing feeling. I had hoped she was over those rebellions – not all rebellions, some I enjoy immensely – just the ones involving escape attempts.

Besides, an escape, whether successful or unsuccessful, would spoil my plans and I can’t have that. Not at this late stage.

The other part of it is that I like spending time with her. I really like fucking her but even when we’re not fucking, I feel calmer somehow around her.

I walked down the hall to my office to meet Maxim and Anton. They were already sitting across from the desk, Anton stood up immediately, and I motioned him to sit. Maxim didn’t stir.

“What do we know about who’s responsible for the Tasha mess?” I ask them immediately.

“There’s a mole for Petya. There must be,” answers Anton.

“Do we have any suspects?” I ask.

Neither will answer me, neither will make eye contact. “I didn’t think so. What can we do to flush them out?”

“Get Petya and beat it out of him,” Maxim offers with a smile.

“That’s one idea. Give me another one.”

“What’s wrong with that one?” Maxim pushes back.

“The first idea is rarely the best one. Let’s keep going. Anton?”

“Plant someone trustworthy back with Viktor and start a list of suspects, get close to them, and cross them off until only the mole is left?”

“Not bad. It’ll take some time. You should start back asap, when we’re done here,” I tell him.

Maxim smiles widely.

“You want me to go?” Anton says more than he asks. “I thought Nikita maybe, he’s already installed in Viktor’s house to keep tabs and report on anything unusual.”

Nikita was a hitman we had used from time to time that I placed near Viktor to be another set of eyes for me. He was a good man, the only trouble was he was Anton’s man, not mine. He had been his own man for too long to be completely trusted. He worked for himself as a hitman. And even more concerning, his father had also been a hitman, fiercely loyal to Viktor. That was the problem with Nikita, and I wished Anton could see that.

But he was clouded by their relationship. Nikita was like a son to Anton, had filled the void when Anton’s own wife and daughter were killed. He helped Nik do his first job, helped him take his father’s place as hitman for hire.

“I don’t know and trust him the way I know and trust you, Anton.” I tell him honestly. “I need someone I don’t need to worry about.”

“He’s an extension of me. If you have doubts about my loyalty, then doubt him. But if you don’t question mine, don’t question his.”

“Okay,” I had to trust him. Anton deserved it, had earned it. “So then, the other plan. How can we lure Petya out to take him out once and for all and uncover who he’s been working with in Viktor’s Kolesova Bratva?”

“Viktor’s Bratva? As opposed to yours?”

“Yes,” I rasped. “Focus on the task at hand.”

“Torture him,” Anton offered.

“We don’t always get the best information that way. Besides, I can’t promise to keep him alive.” Especially if Katya tries to escape and Petya comes within an inch of her out in the wild instead of exactly how and where I want. But they don’t need to know that. This is partly a test, there’s an obvious answer here, I’m just seeing if either Anton or Maxim can get there.

“Any thoughts, Anton?”

“Disinformation to out the mole.”

“Exactly.What shape?”

“Hmm,” he thinks hard, brow furrows.

Not ready to lead yet. Anton wasn’t the planner and strategist I was, and that was okay. Some lead, some follow. But I wanted him to be able to think like me in case anything happened to me. Maxim was years away from leadership but that’s not why he was useful. Tough as they came and fiercely loyal to me were Maxim’s strengths.

“Don’t think about what you would do in my position. Think ‘what would Yuri do in this situation’, okay?” I grumbled then gave them my thoughts, my plan. “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll put Katya in a safehouse and spread the word. BUT we spread three different locations for her to our three different suspects of the mole. We watch all three places, whichever place Petya shows up, we trace back to that mole, eventually anyway. If Petya is alive, we ask him before we kill him, too. But this way, we’ll get both of them. The men watching each place will call us and we’ll go get him.”

When they left, I slumped back into my chair and looked over my desk. Still messy, even Tasha’s financial documents spread over it, her forensic accounting of Viktor’s spending over the last several years, all the way back to Dmitry’s death and before.

Just as I was thinking I needed a distraction, a distraction that looked, smelled, and tasted exactly like Katya, there she was, standing in front of me, behind my desk with me. I stood up to face her, but words failed me.

She looked uncertain, her lips parting as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t think of what it should be.

My control began to fray, thread by thread, in that charged silence.

“Questions about your own place? Your nest?” I ask her, attempting a playfulness I just didn’t feel. I felt hunger, desire, and yearning. “It’s not what you want is it?”

“Not really.”

“You’d rather stay here with me?”

Her face broke into a sly smile.

“Is school really that important to you?”

“It’s just the alternative to getting married I think, so yes. But another alternative would be just as good I think,” again, smiling.

Disarmingly honest about it, it’s starting to fray my nerves, and make me want her all the more.

“What do you want?” She asks me, so sincere and earnestly I feel can’t lie, not even deflect.

“An end to my troubles. Be done with this part and on to the next,” I answer.

“Become Don? But that won’t be an end to your troubles, it’ll be the start of bigger and more troubles, right?”

“Yes,” I smile and exhale. She could really get to the heart of the matter sometimes. I’d like to fuck her right here on the desk again, and maybe that was what she wanted too. What she came in here for.

But I can’t take my eyes off the prize now, the plan to use her as bait to lure Petya to where I can destroy him once and for all.

I study her closely. Her big chocolatey cow eyes swim with dreams, mostly broken. They beg me for those things she never says out loud, the things her pride stops her from saying. She wants more than I’m willing to give her.

This is no time to lead her on.

“Things will be simpler when I’m Don,” I reassure her.

“How so?”

“My duty and loyalty will be to the Bratva first and last.”

“How’s that different from now?”

“I get distracted sometimes.” I tell her and she gets my meaning. She blushes, thinking that’s a compliment.

She’s looking for compliments and affection in the wrong place from the wrong person and I have to make her understand that.

Today.

“Katya, do you remember the night Yuri died, what you did after the fight?”

The smile and blush vanish. She’d much rather avoid revisiting her trauma, especially now, when I’m not cradling her in my arms.

She shakes her head and studies her shoes.

“You ran to your bedroom and cried,” I tell her. “I was right behind you. I wanted to check on you. I waited and listened outside your door for an hour or so while you cried yourself out and eventually fell asleep.”

She looks up and meets my eyes, there’s a wide-eyed eagerness, a hope in them, as if I’m about to confess my love for her.

She couldn’t be more wrong.

“That’s why Yuri died that night. Because of me. Because I was concerned about you, because I cared about you. Those feelings are the death of duty, understand? Those feelings, that weakness is why I wasn’t with Dmitry, either fighting him for his car keys or following his car on my own. If I had done either, he would be alive.”

Her big chocolate eyes begin to understand, the hope in them has left.

“That’s why I’ll never care for you like you want, like you need. That part of me died that night along with Dmitry.”

“I’ll call Dr. Zemlin and have him see you today,” I say to change the subject.

“Don’t bother,” she snaps. “I’m fine.”

“It’s not a request kiska,” I say firmly and start to clean my desk, ignoring her.

“I’m not one of your men,” she hisses. “I don’t have to follow your orders like they do.”

I’m on my feet instantly, grabbing her hands over her head and pulling her body against mine.

Her eyes go wide for a second, then she starts struggling against me.

“Get off me!”

I back her up against my bookshelf, pressing my body against her, pinning her. “If I must call the Doctor for you, I might as well get my money’s worth. Have you broken or bleeding for him to fix.”

“You won’t scar up your bride,” she says with venom on her tongue. “What would your men think of you?”

“They’d think you don’t listen,” I tell her. “That you’re only good for one thing,” I say, sliding my hand down between us until I reach her legs, spreading them as she struggles some more.

Two fingers go down her panties and trace her lips, feeling the wetness there already for me.

“Let me go, now,” she says but her voice trembles as my thumb grazes her clit.

“What was that? You trailed off there,” I tease her and push one finger inside her, fucking her slowly with it.

“Get off,” she croaks, biting down on her bottom lip to hold back a moan.

“Get you off, or get off?”

She can’t answer because she’s still biting back that moan trying to escape her lips. She turns her head away from me and starts rocking her hips into my finger.

“I guess I’ll get you off, then,” I say as I pull my finger out and hand away. Her head swivels and eyes open wide to look at me, wondering what will happen next. I drew my hand up to my mouth and place the finger that was just inside her in my mouth.

My cock wants her badly, but I can control myself.

Somehow.

It’s not easy but I need her to see my self-control.

I grab her hips and push her against my desk, then lift her onto it as I rip off her panties and crouch down between her legs.

That moan she was biting back escapes her now as I slide my tongue up her slit.

Her fingers tangle in my hair, pulling my tongue deeper as she arches her back and opens her legs to give me complete access.

The fight is completely out of her, she’s surrendering to her body, to her desire, to me.

I lap her up greedily as she moans and lies back and pulls my head closer to her.

Predictably, she’s on the edge of orgasm. Fighting is foreplay to her, and it always gets her hot. It’s so easy to fight then fuck. I must admit, I like it too.

Her legs and core muscles tighten as I go faster, her hands grip the edge of my desk, white knuckles showing and her breathing is fast and short.

She’s on the edge, just waiting to release and I think about stopping, to teach her another lesson about who’s in control but I push the thought away.

She comes, hard and I keep going with my tongue until she collapses back on the desk, hands streaking through my hair lazily.