32. Yuri

I clocked Maxim’s dead body as I ran to Katya, pushing the muzzle of her rifle down as she grabbed me, and I opened fire on Petya and the guy with him. The doors splintered under my fire and despite Katya shaking me, burying her head into my shoulder, I emptied my gun into them both. I pushed Katya gently aside as I took her rifle and emptied the rest of it into Petya and his man, then reloaded my weapon and, holding Katya’s face up to look at me, “Are there any more? Just these two?”

She nodded her head and buried it in my shoulder again. I dropped my gun and held her tightly until her chest stopped racking into mine and her breathing and sobs settled down.

“You’re sure? Just two?” I ask again, still wary it would be that easy.

She nodded silently into my chest.

“Good, it’s done, then.”

“Please,” she said through crying tears and shaking. “Please. Take that away. Maxim. Please.”

“Okay,” I tell her, and she collapses into sobs as Anton and his men sweep the house, arriving on the scene to tell me it was all clear. I tell Anton to clear the bodies with my eyes, lingering on Maxim’s to let him know.

Anton and Maxim were constantly at each other’s throats, vying for my attention but they loved each other the way I loved them. Anton was all solemnity, not allowing anyone to help him as he gathered Maxim’s remains into a black bag and hauled it off the property.

The cleanup crew did the rest as I took Katya into her bedroom and let her cry it all out. All I could do was hold her tightly on her bed as she cried. I normally can’t stand a woman’s tears, but it felt good she was letting it all out and she chose to let me see it. No, it felt like I was an integral part of the crying, like it wouldn’t have happened without me here holding her.

It felt very intimate.

“I think that’s all of it,” she said finally into my chest then peeked her face out. “Petya said he killed Dmitry.”

“You believe him?” I asked.

“I don’t know but I think it’s a choice. I choose to believe him. You can never know anyone completely, fully. All you can do is react to them. Petya was a liar, but that part felt true and that’s my reaction. He drugged Dmitry then showed up to suffocate him. Whatever I did—or you did— wouldn’t have changed anything. Didn’t change anything. He was dead no matter what either of us did. I believe that now. You should too. This guilt for surviving while he didn’t is useless. It serves no purpose.”

It felt like she stabbed me. How could she get to me like this so easily? I fumbled for words, to stop that feeling, “I might have driven the car or been able to fight Petya off, stop him from suffocating Dmitry, I—”

“Could have died too in the crash or been drugged and killed by Petya. You weren’t responsible and there’s nothing you could have done to change things. If not that night, Petya would have got him another night.”

“That’s a lot to lay on me at once,” I told her, honestly.

“It’s unfair, I know. I’m learning from you,” she said, I could hear the smile in her voice.

She held onto my belt, a comforting, lovely feeling. I was going to miss this, how she clung to me whenever possible, reaching out for me unconsciously. She had come a long way from the child crying in the dark, but she still had these tender child-like tendencies that awoke something very tender in me.

Out of nowhere, the tears came again, she burst into sobs, her shoulders shaking.

It was raw and violent, racking her body to come out. Why couldn’t she cry gently? Little sniffles that I could comfort with a hug and soft words? Instead she was naked and vulnerable and sobbing violently into me so that I held her against me until they passed. With everything she’d been through, there was nothing I could do but hold her head to my chest and whisper to her that everything was going to be all right.

“No, it won’t!” She cried. Angry now.

I looked down at her, at the clenched fist coming up to my chest and my nose. She was beautiful, magnificent even. Her hair a wild tangle around her neck and shoulders, her face red with anger. Weak. Strong. Vulnerable. Courageous. Completely maddening and so damned desirable I could barely restrain myself.

I held her to me so tightly that she gasped, as she struggled against me, beating her fist at my back, crying now to let her go.

“No,” I whispered and turned her face up to my lips as I ground my mouth down on hers. I could feel her breasts flatten against my chest, reminding me how good it was when we weren’t fighting. I kissed her again, roughly, and cupped her breast in my palm, rubbing my thumb over the pebbled nipple.

Katya softened against me and began to kiss me back, her arms sliding around my neck as I grabbed her ass with my free hand, lifting her hips into alignment with mine. I carried her to the bathroom and set her down as I turned on the shower and undressed her slowly. We both needed to clean all that happened off us, all the bullshit we had been putting each other through as well as the bullshit the outside world had put on us.

Our wet, naked bodies created a lovely friction against each other, warming us, tightening that string of desire between us that never broke, not for a moment.

I picked her up and kissed her breasts, sucking her nipples until they were hard and red, tasting the clean freshness of just washed skin and the lovely scent of her that I could taste under the soap scents. Her scent.

Katya writhed against me, her legs twisting around me as I entered that spot between her thighs and forgot about everything except this feeling, her around my cock. Clean, reborn, survivors, on the other side of all the bullshit even if only for a moment.

The bed was too far away, I pinned her to the wall and thrust deep into her aching, burning body.

I wrapped my fingers in her wet hair, drawing her lips against mine under the pouring water droplets, and kissed her wild and rough.

Thrusting into her again and again as she clung to me, whimpering, begging me not to stop. And then shattering on me, coming and curling up her body, holding me tight as pleasure crashed over her and as I poured myself into her.

After, we moved to bed and dried off and just lay with each other.

Her cheek rested on my chest, and she was smiling, I wanted to ask her about what but I just enjoyed it. I didn’t think I’d see it again for a long time after today, so I was lucky.

“I have a serious question for you,” she said, the smile fading.

“Ask, but you might not get an answer.”

“Believe me, I know,” she said. “Would you ever leave the Bratva? Like right now, just go with me and leave it all behind?”

She’s asking dangerous questions that she doesn’t want to know the answer to. I can’t lie to her. “No,” I say softly.

“Never?”

“Never.”

“What about if you had a child, like me? One who doesn’t fit into the Bratva, who doesn’t belong in that world?”

“You belong, by my side, you belong,” I’ve told her this before, but she chooses not to believe.

“No, that doesn’t feel right, I’ve told you—”

“And I’ve told you this before, but you choose not to believe. About the child, that’s not possible. If the child is mine, it will belong. If, like you, it felt it didn’t belong I would convince them. But leave? Never. This isn’t a choice. We are Bratva, that is the fact. There is no other life for us.”

“I thought so,” she said dreamily.

I’ve done everything I could to make her believe she belongs here, with me, at my side but she won’t listen to me or to her own heart. I must let her leave, let her find out she doesn’t belong anywhere else except right here. Next to me.

“Where can you go that you will belong?” I ask. “You tried school, but that didn’t work. What else do you need to try before you believe me?”

“I don’t know. I’m going back home to Viktor’s for a while. Maybe convince him to retire— some place tropical. There’s no danger there now, right?”

“Only that he might sell you again to someone else.”

“I don’t think he’ll try that again. And if he does, well, I think I can change his mind this time,” she smiled with a mischievous glint in her eye.

I don’t have a choice. I must let her go to see if she comes back.