Chapter 25

twenty-five

Kane

The house is average lower middle class with a big front room window overlooking the street, peeking from pink, sun-stained stucco. As we pull up in front of her parent’s house, that window fills with not just the two people I expect to meet this morning, but at least six others.

Nevaeh smiles at me like she expected as much, pushes her sunglasses up her nose and slips from my truck without waiting for me to come around to her side to open her door.

Fucking. Woman.

I follow, jogging to catch her as she walks up the cracked sidewalk, up three concrete steps, and right inside without knocking. Again, I follow.

Loudness hits us as fawning women scurry to meet Nevaeh at the door, someone taking the bakery box and passing it to a man who stands not far back without even a glance, as though the woman knows that man will simply take it to the kitchen. And he does.

The woman grabs Nevaeh by her arms and tugs her close, kissing her face once, twice—she leans back to smile down at Nevaeh before leaning in to kiss her a third time. “Nevaeh, you look wonderful.”

“Glowing,” another woman ads, eyebrows bouncing suggestively.

“This must be the new man,” yet another says as she shoves her way through the little crowd in the tiny entrance to grab one of my arms. “Nice and strong.” A wink for Nevaeh. “You chose good, Mija.”

I can’t see her face, but I hear her smile when she says, “Thank you, Mama.”

A few of the women descend into Spanish, a couple wayward words in English making surprise appearances as we’re pulled from the front door into the house. It’s small and closed concept. The hallway from the entrance to the kitchen is snug, and there’s currently a lot of bodies in it, but as we pass the living room, I see a tidy space with floral printed couches that probably have permanent grooves in the carpet. There are photos on the walls of class pictures, and more are proudly displayed on a console table of Nevaeh’s life growing up.

The eat-in kitchen comes quickly, and is more open than the living space with a large patio door that opens into a well utilized square yard with a small kiddie pool where children splash with toy dinosaurs and—is that a mermaid? There’s another child, definitely younger than five, crying crocodile tears about a dino that ate the arm of her doll, a little boy, possibly around five, standing sheepishly close by holding the dino in suspect. A Spinosaurus, if memory serves. I glance at the doll and see two intact arms. Poor hungry Spinosaurus probably took a little nibble, nothing to cause true harm. I wink at the boy. His face lights up and he shoots me a wide grin as the woman hovering over the crying girl says, “Mateo, we’ve talked about this.”

“He’s hungry!” Mateo holds his ground.

“There are fish in the pool for him if he’s hungry.” A quick glance in that direction shows there are fish in the pool. Bet they don’t taste quite as delicious as dolls, though.

“Fine,” Mateo huffs a little boy, end of the world, huff.

As though to push her point clear as crystal, the woman, clearly the boy’s mother, continues, “Your sister’s dolls are not chew toys for your dinosaurs.”

“Okay.” Mateo is getting annoyed, and Nevaeh clearly hears it because she turns from the older woman chatting to her about—I’m not sure—to the boy.

“Where’s my hug?”

The boy splits another grin as he darts from his mother and the still sniffling girl to Nevaeh. She spreads her arms wide as he connects, kissing his cheek and hair as she whispers, “Are you bugging Gabby again?”

“I was only trying to play.”

Her hands stroke the sides of his hair. “I bet Carlo would play dinos with you if you asked.”

“Carlo likes video games, and he says I suck.”

I do a quick scan of the small yard, spotting a stubby Ankylosaurus tossed next to the pool. Not my first choice, but I say, “If you got a T. Rex or an Ankylosaurus, I’ll play with you.”

“Really? You?”

“I’m the dino battle master. I’ll take your Spinosaurus down.”

“You know the dinos?”

I crouch, reminding, “Dino master, remember.”

The boy laughs a hilariously maniac laugh as he races, on the hunt for a dino I can play with. I stand, catching sight of pure emotion on Nevaeh’s face as I lean in and press a kiss to her cheek that has a small intake of air sounding sharply between her lips and a hot blush stinging her cheeks.

“I’m off to battle.”

She flashes me a cheeky smile. “Win for me.”

I vow, “I’ll take him down.”

“He’s only five,” she tells me. “Just so you’re aware.”

“They’re vicious at that age,” I deadpan. “Tiny psychopaths in the making.”

She laughs, loudly. I can’t help myself. I lean in to kiss her lips, stealing just the smallest taste of her before I force myself to turn with a battle roar fitting of the biggest, baddest T. Rex. I’m met with an equally intense roar from the small boy. See? Tiny psychopath in the making.

Should be a fun battle.

Belly full of a homecooked breakfast, I lean back in my chair next to Nevaeh’s father. The man has been silently appraising since our snap marriage was ousted over breakfast when Nevaeh’s aunt spotted the two rings on her finger, gasping something in quick Spanish that had the entirety of her family shouting in tithers.

There was anger, a lot of it.

There was offense, a lot of that, too.

There were questions about pregnancy and demands about the rush, and Nevaeh protested loudly when her mother muttered something before pulling out her phone and calling someone, a threat in her eyes that had Nevaeh shrinking into herself as she protested quietly.

It was after that call that I stood up and said firmly, “I love this woman with everything I am and everything I have. I’ll love her until I take my last breath. I’ll serve and protect her every day that I live. The rush to marry her had nothing to do with a big day, pictures, or slighting our families. It had everything to do with the fact that we wanted to begin our lives together as soon as possible. We will still have that big day, if Nevaeh wants it. I know my mother is going to want it and will probably do her best to convince Nevaeh to give her that, so I hope for her sake Nevaeh does want it. But we did this for us. And we’re happy.”

Tempers cooled some with my speech, but not much. Her father said nothing as he sat back in his chair, appraising me with a cool kind of distance.

Nevaeh is in the house, helping to clean after brunch and surely getting an earful about the disrespect of marrying without her family present. Still, I can’t bring myself to regret making that play. I can’t bring myself to regret making her mine.

I can say if this continues much longer, I will remove my wife from this situation until tempers cool enough that people see this was never about them.

The back door opens and a big man steps into the yard. His face is scarred and he’s wearing biker leathers. Brown hair is speckled with gray, and his flesh is liberally inked, probably why no one here batted an eye at my ink. They’re already used to seeing it.

His eyes lock on me fast, and I rise from my chair as Nevaeh slips from the back door around the man to come stand at my side. I realize she’s afraid for me. She’s afraid that this man will hurt me.

Charming, really. Not only do I have a couple inches and about fifty pounds on this guy, but I’ve got my father’s training. If I’ve got a mind to, I can snap a neck in a few seconds flat. Beating someone to a pulp? Not my favorite thing, but also not an issue. Torture? Been there.

So, restraining a member of my new wife’s family? Well, that’ll be an uncomfortable breeze, but a breeze all the same.

“Are you the man who married my niece without permission?”

That’s what this is about? Archaic, but if my father had a daughter and a man took the liberties I have with her, he’d be seeing red, too.

“Kane Volkov.” I hold out my hand, noting the flicker of recognition in his eyes at my name. Many share the Volkov name, but my family has a reputation here in America that most of the underground know. My brother is in and out of the States, popping in on the goons who oversee his casinos, hotels, and more unsavory business here. He’s a ghost story the underworld knows well.

He doesn’t take my hand and I let it fall around Nevaeh’s waist, tucking her close.

A flicker of fear sparks in his eyes, but he kills it quick as his eyes sweep my face, looking for similarities with my older brother. I know he finds them when he asks, “Any relation to Ilya Volkov?”

I remain composed. Cool. Unaffected. “You know him?”

“Of him.” He lifts his chin. “Relation?”

“Brothers.”

“Fuck,” the man hisses. Nevaeh looks between us, a frown knitting her brow. Her innocence is arousing.

“What’s happening? How do you know Kane’s brother, Uncle Miguel?”

Ah, so this is the famous Uncle Miguel. I should have known.

“Small world, Princess.” His soft voice turns hard when he demands to me, “Garage. We need to have a little chat.”

My eyes move to Nevaeh’s father. “Join us.”

Miguel looks to Nevaeh’s father, who has no fucking ties to our world of darkness what-so-ever, with his blue collar, nine-to-five, cubicle life. The man follows anyway.

Once inside, door closed, I turn to the men who love my wife and state frankly, “I met Nevaeh a few months ago.” It’s a stretch on the timeline, but whatever. “She was being harassed by her ex-fiancé at the time.”

“Antonio?” Nevaeh’s father, Patrick, asks with a frown of disbelief.

I nod.

Miguel curses. “Never liked that guy.”

Patrick’s frown deepens, but I continue, “I intervened. Things got ugly. His pride was hurt, and I saw her to her car safely. I thought about her after that a lot. I wished I hadn’t let her leave alone that night.” Miguel’s fists curl at his sides as he listens, preparing for bad and having no fucking clue. “I was visiting a friend of mine who works in the ER when I saw her again. She’d been beaten. Badly.”

More curses. A breathy, “What?” from a pale, clueless Patrick.

“Antonio beat her?” I think Miguel might be capable of murder, if I’m not misjudging the look in his black eyes. That makes two of us, but I must say I’m better at hiding it.

“Not him personally, but she was beaten. Badly.” I paint the picture that has my guts twisting with sick and anger sparking fire in my veins. “Antonio hired the man who broke into her home and assaulted her.”

Miguel’s body vibrates around his wrath. “Did he⁠—”

Patrick’s eyes close, a soft, “No,” whispering from the shell of him.

“No.” I say firmly. “He didn’t rape her. But he hurt her badly, as I said. It took weeks before the bruising had disappeared.”

“Why didn’t she call me?” The desperation in Miguel’s voice echoes the pain I see in Patrick’s eyes for the woman they both love, and view still, as a girl. Their girl. But she’s my woman.

“It’s my understanding that you’re tied in with some shady characters. Antonio is a political sweetheart,” I sneer the word. “Or so she claims. She didn’t want you to know. Didn’t want him turning his vengeance on you, if you ended up confronting him.”

“So, she turned to you?” Patrick muses, eyeing me with that studious gaze.

“I vowed to protect her. To give her a place to heal with no demand for more. She’d been afraid. Terrified. My house is equipped with an alarm system not even the government could hack, and she spent her days inside while I worked. I tried, mostly, to give her space.”

“How did this marriage happen?” Miguel demands through gritted teeth.

I tell them about Antonio’s message through the man he hired to ‘teach her a lesson’ and how he wants her back. How he continued to tell the people in his life, and the public, that they were still together, the engagement still on. I tell them about Nevaeh’s best friend, and her betrayal. I lay every fucking thing bare, because I’d opened a message from Ian an hour ago when I’d left to take a piss. My blood has been simmering since.

Because the fucker sent another video message today, thankfully it was one Nevaeh would never see as Ian had everything rerouted to his personal account for inspection before he let it pass to hers. Was that an invasion of her privacy? Maybe. Probably. Most definitely. Did I care? Nope. Not when seeing that fucker broke her down, shattered her, dropped her into a spiral of fear like it did.

I’d tell her. But not now.

I pull in a breath, leaning back against a spotless worktable as I cross my arms over my chest. “Nevaeh believed the only way to stop Antonio from forcing her to marry him was if she was married to another. I offered.”

“Why?” Miguel demands, lip curling. “Marriage is no simple thing. It’s for life.”

“It is,” I agree.

Patrick’s eyes widen. “Are you saying…”

“I’m saying I fell in love with Nevaeh. Quickly.” I dare them to question my feelings for her with a silent pulse. “I have no intention of ever walking away from her.”

Miguel raises a single brow. “Does Nevaeh know that?”

“She’s a little slow, but she’ll get there.”

Both men release tense chuckles. Miguel speaks, “Are you not worried about Antonio and his political smear campaign painting you and your criminal ties in black?”

“Not at all.”

“What criminal ties?” Patrick asks.

I shake my head and Miguel ignores him outright.

I say, “The public knows me as Kane from Devils Heartbreak. If someone feels the need to dig, they’ll see I’m the last son of Alexei Volkov, Russian Oligarch and founder of Volk Vault Bank, which is currently run by my eldest brother, Kirill. I’m in possession of a very generous trust fund supplemented by the very generous money I make through the band. I’ve resided in America since college and have dual citizenship, thanks to my American mother.” I pause, holding Miguel’s gaze. “If they dig deeper into my family, they will see that my older brother Ilya Volkov also has dual citizenship and owns countless lucrative businesses in the United States, many but not all founded by my father. These businesses include but are not limited to casinos, hotels, and shipping yards. They will find me to be the black sheep, a rockstar amidst a family of business moguls. But what they will not find anywhere, no matter how hard they search is ties to the Russian Bratva.”

In part, my family can thank Ian and his family business for that. It’s that business, Ian’s connections with security, and his talent for hacking, that had me coming to America to begin with. In my families line of work, connections such as the one I share with Ian, are invaluable.

Patrick goes ghost white at my last two words, the hand on the shelf nearest him anchoring him in place.

Miguel looks—pleased.

Interesting.

“And Nevaeh?”

I pin his eyes with my own. “I will protect her with my life. With everything I have. With the power of my family.”

I pull my phone from my pocket to show him the message Ian sent me. A screen recording of a video that he’s informed me dissolved as soon as it had been watched.

The masked man appears, his calm voice sounding in the otherwise quiet garage. “I hear congratulations are in order, and you’re a married woman. I think I might have been wrong about you, after all. You are a kinky little thing. I should have pushed my hand between your legs to destroy your cunt while your blood dripped onto the sheets, my red necklace beaming bright on your skin. I would have if I’d known how rough you like it, my little slut.” The masked man tisks in disapproval. “But you should know better than to taunt me. You think you can hide from me?” He laughs. “No one can hide from me. I’ve already found you, you stupid slut. But fermented fear tastes better, so you can wait for me just a little longer. And when I come for you, I’ll make you watch as I gut the man you lie beside at night, spreading your whore legs for. I’ll gut him and fuck you in his blood, and then we can talk about what happens when you disobey my orders and ignore my lessons.” He leans closer to the camera and Patrick leans back, looking green. Miguel just looks red. “I don’t like to be disobeyed.”

The screen cuts to black. The only thing I see is Ian’s message.

He knows his way around the dark web. I’m not having much luck even with my tech. Need more time, don’t think we have it. Time to call in Ilya.

Miguel inhales sharply through his nose. “Who the fuck is this guy?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But I’ll find out.”

“And when you do?”

“He’ll never hurt Nevaeh or anyone else again.”

Miguel offers me his hand as Patrick sweats between us. I take it and he grunts low, “Welcome to the family.”