25. Viktor

[ 25 ]

VIKTOR

Two nights later, I flew us to France. It was the first night flight we had taken together, but Ranger had lost his fear.

Leaving Lida unsettled him more, but I could not think about that. If we didn’t come back, she was safe with Katya. That was it; I could not contemplate anything else.

Ranger didn’t seem to contemplate much at all. He’d left everything behind—passport, his precious battered Beats headphones. The amethyst he’d kept with him since his father had died. Maybe a piece of his heart too.

The helicopter stayed in France.

We boarded a boat that would slip us, undetected, to the Norfolk coast. Above us, the moon waned, and its fading light glittered off the fragment of rock at Ranger’s wrist. It called me to him, in my heart, but I stayed where I was. The time for sentiment was fading with every tense minute that passed.

Tell him you love him.

I did not need to. If I was certain of nothing else, I was certain of that.

Hours later, we recovered a vehicle and drove north to the safe house Jake had secured fifty miles from our target.

I had not been there before. It was nicer than I expected. At the kitchen table, I discovered why.

Alexei Ivanov regarded me over the rim of a coffee mug. “You took your time.”

He spoke Russian.

Behind me, Ranger made an irritated sound and stomped back the way he’d come to smoke.

I lowered the gun I had swept the ground floor of the house with. “Do I need to check upstairs?”

“No.” Alexei eyed the door Ranger had slammed in his wake. “The nomad prefers the sun.”

“He’s okay.”

“That is not what I meant.”

I didn’t care to find out what Alexei meant. Our relationship was strange. We weren’t friends. But he’d said something a few days ago that had shifted my perspective, and now something else, something deeper, lay unspoken between us.

Relaxing, I tucked my weapon away, leaning against the doorway. “I did not expect to see you again. Why are you here?”

Alexei stood, rinsing his mug in the sink for longer than anyone else would consider necessary. Then he faced me with an expression more open than I was used to from him. One that matched the realistic apprehension building in my gut. “You will have to be very lucky to succeed with this plan, and luck has not been your friend of late.”

Through the window, I saw Ranger move to the gate, smoking, his favourite scowl firmly in place. “That is a subjective point of view.”

A shadow of humour warmed Ivanov’s steel gaze. But it was brief. “That is why you cannot fail. It is more than just you who cannot lose the nomad.”

“Then why did you make me bring him?”

“Make?”

“I could have left him guarding my sister.”

“Like our queen, yours can look after herself.” Alexei followed my gaze through the window before he faced me again. “My point is that if you did not come back from this operation, the nomad would seek to find you, and I cannot count the men—the brothers—who would not let him do that alone.”

My heart iced over, violence flooding my corroded veins. “So . . . you want him to die with me now so he does not inconvenience you later?”

“You misunderstand me.” Alexei’s tone sharpened. “I would prefer it if Ranger did not die at all.”

“Why?”

He did not answer, for Ranger came back inside, smelling of smoke and impatience, sparing Ivanov a curt nod. “Long time no see. You better have packed the good food.”

“What makes you think I brought food at all?”

Ranger opened the fridge. Scrutinised the contents and turned back to Alexei with an expression I could not read. “You’re having a fucking laugh.”

“Am I?”

“Who did you bring?”

Alexei just stared. And Ranger, tired and hungry from a mammoth journey, lacked the patience to wait. He shut the fridge with a cross sigh and shouldered past me to leave the room again. “I’m going for a kip.”

His neck was so close to my mouth. Desire—love—threatened the iron curtain my heart needed to survive this. “Now you sleep?”

“Fuck off.”

He did not look at me, but his hand brushed mine. Rough fingers caressing my palm, brief sensation rocking my equilibrium.

I faced Alexei again. He had missed nothing, but his vigilance was expected. And I did not care that he saw my fragility for what it was. He had vulnerabilities of his own—vulnerabilities he’d apparently brought with him. “You are not here alone?”

As I spoke, the back door opened and Saint Malone appeared, windswept and wild.

Alexei tilted his head.

Saint returned the gesture with a soft smile, one that made him disarmingly beautiful, before he followed the path Ranger had taken.

He disappeared into the belly of the isolated house. I did not hear his tread on the stairs, but with a man like Malone, that meant nothing.

Ranger, though. I would have heard him. His moods travelled through his feet, and I was fairly certain he had only stomped as far as the sofa in the next room.

I refocussed on Ivanov, noting that he was having the same trouble I was staying in the room.

Metaphorically.

Literally.

“Where is your other lover?”

Alexei’s gaze snapped to me. “Where is your brother? That is a more important question right now.”

Because Cam O’Brian was here. I heard him now, moving around. His growly Irish voice as he descended the stairs and greeted Ranger with the warmth he deserved.

“Just them?”

Alexei’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because this story must end where it started.”

Knowing what I did about the history of the Rebel Kings MC, Alexei’s cryptic answer tallied with what I’d told Ranger. That he’d only brought the people he cared for most made less sense. Until I considered it properly, and by that time, Jake had arrived, putting me in a situation too similar for me to think about too hard.

Alexei disappeared.

The bikers huddled in the living room, Cam and Ranger on the couch, Malone loitering by the window.

In the kitchen, Jake embraced me, his skin cold from wherever he’d come from, the English summer doing nothing to heat his Spanish-Russian blood.

“You feel . . . more.” He pulled back to look at me, a rare language fail tripping him up as emotion got to him. “I thought you would die.”

I let him consume me with his familiar stare. “So I hear. Was there anyone you did not tell?”

“I told Cam because I needed his help. I told Ranger because he cared. No one else.”

Truly, I didn’t mind that much. But making fun of Jake was my favourite occupation when Ranger was not in the room, so I kept the scowl on my face and elbowed him. “Discretion, brother. I know you learned it as a child.”

Jake allowed the dig to his ribs. Then he ran a muddy hand through his hair, fatigue lining his face. “Is there food?”

“I do not know.”

“Why not?”

“I have been here an hour.”

“What kept you?”

“The wind. Traffic. The tides. Where have you been?”

Jake opened the fridge and braced his arm on the door, peering inside, ignoring the question I asked in Spanish. Buying time until Cam O’Brian saved him.

Cam tossed Jake a bag, then embraced him in much the same way I had.

I could not lie, the friendly affection between them surprised me. The last time I had been around enough to notice, they had barely met.

“Weird, ain’t it.” Ranger appeared beside me and lounged against the counter like he had lived in this strange house his whole life. “Like watching chimps make friends at the zoo.”

I laughed into a cough.

“Shut your face.” Cam shot Ranger a tough glare, but it lacked heat. He didn’t mind Ranger making fun of him any more than Jake did. “Mine,” he said of the clean and dry clothes Jake unearthed from the bag. “You’re closer to Saint in size, but he doesn’t have anything he’s not fucking wearing.”

Jake nodded his thanks and made way for Cam to take his place at the fridge.

Another strange sight—for me, at least. My brother was a good leader, but a reluctant one. Cam O’Brian had been born to do it. He pulled all of three items from the fridge and produced enough hot food to feed six men.

Five, actually. Alexei did not eat. But he was present enough that the meal felt like a last supper, and I found myself tuning into Ranger more than the inevitable talk of what was to come.

He was quiet as he disregarded the vegetables Cam dryly offered him, eating only the chicken and potatoes, overtly gravitating towards Saint more than me. But he was beside me at the table, his thigh pressed to mine, and we were surrounded by too many observant men to believe no one noticed. Cam, Saint, and Alexei were more subtle. An hour or so passed before something seemed to give in Ivanov and he moved closer to his lovers, standing between them, leaning against Saint while Cam reached an absent, instinctive hand for him.

Only Jake was alone, and he was too preoccupied with technology to notice, two laptops open in front of him, both provided by Alexei, leading me to wonder how hard he’d had to lean on the Kings while I’d been gone. How toxic our organisation had become if there had been no one else he could trust.

I thought of the men who’d served under me when I’d operated in the Kings’ backyard. Out of a dozen, I could only name a few I was certain of. The rest had been Sambinis. Hired killers and double agents. No one I called brother.

Ranger nudged me.

I blinked to find the whole room waiting on me for something. I did not know what.

Cam rose and put more food on my plate. “Get that down you, then get some sleep.”

I did not take orders from him—from anyone—but it did not feel like one. Even as I ate what he’d given me, left the room, and sensed him follow me out.

He seemed bigger than when I’d last seen him. Muscles more cut, face harder. Or maybe I was comparing him to Ranger, the object of my every thought. Regardless, Cam O’Brian was a presence who might’ve intimidated me if I had been born a different man.

As it was, it proved difficult to be intimidated by someone who directed me to a bedroom on the third floor of the house and donated another bag of clean clothes for no reason other than his unflinching kindness.

“Couple of Ranger’s bits in there. I pinched some of Embry’s for you, but make sure you’re wearing your own stuff when we go and burn the rest.”

I peered in the bag, spotting a shirt of Ranger’s folded at the top. “I thought he had brought everything he owned with him.”

Cam had stopped in the doorway to the small room. He watched me struggle not to bring the shirt to my face and sniff it with a neutral expression. “If he wasn’t so gobby, he’d be just like Saint.”

“Just like Saint?” I set the bag down, still holding the shirt. “You do not believe a man’s words define him, surely?”

“I didn’t mean in every sense.”

“What did you mean?”

Cam regarded me with eyes two shades lighter than Ranger’s. Dark to anyone who hadn’t met the gaze of Asher Moore. “Just that he doesn’t need or want much. It’s why nomad life suited him for a while.”

“It does not suit him now?”

Cam glanced behind him, then back at me. “Nothing suited him while you were gone. Looking back, it’s fucking obvious he was as messed up as Nash and Orla when Locke got took.”

Nash. Orla. Locke. In different circumstances, I might have smiled, remembering how often Locke had denied being in love with Cam’s vice president and his sister. But my brain grew too heavy to bother. “Why are you telling me this?”

“In case you don’t know.”

“I know Ranger loves me. I can only hope he knows I love him too.”

Empathy flared in Cam’s gaze. “Tell him. More than once, before this shit gets going. It hurts worse if you don’t.”

I did not believe this was the conversation Cam had come upstairs to have, but it was the one fate gave us, and I preferred it to the alternative. The one where Cam reminded me of the last time we’d spoken. When I had been trapped on a bunk that smelled of Ranger, all the while believing I would never see him again. Choosing to believe that, as if I had not known that my heart could not live without him.

Jake knew.

And now Cam did too.

He left me alone. I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. It was the early hours of the morning. We would strike tonight and there was so much to do before then. So many things to pack into my head, but it felt full already. In this moment, I did not know how this had been my life for so many years. How it would be again. I did not know anything, except that a bed without Ranger was a desolate place to be.

And, that I was tired enough to lose the fight against my heavy eyelids.

I drifted for a while, fighting it. Then the bed dipped and smoky arms wrapped around me from behind.

Ranger.

“Shh.” He kissed my neck. “Sleep.”

I did.

Hard.

And sometime later, I woke alone, leading me to wonder if I’d dreamed him. If I was still dreaming as I took in the unfamiliar room. I was out of practice at being anywhere that wasn’t my home. Soft, perhaps. And I could not be. Not until this was done, or none of us would survive it.

Fear eroded any lingering wisps of fatigue. The room had an en-suite bathroom. I used the shower and dressed in borrowed clothes. Then I descended the stairs to find Jake still at the table.

“You need to rest, brother.”

He nodded, distracted. “When Alexei is up.”

The idea of Alexei Ivanov sleeping was perhaps more jarring than anything we would face today, but as I glanced around the silent house, his absence was the last thing on my mind.

“He went out.” Ranger. Jake read me without breaking contact with his screens. “With Saint.”

“To scout?”

“To breathe. They are like trapped lions here.”

“What about you?”

Jake finally looked up. “I believe that tonight will bring us everything we’ve ever wanted, or we will die. I see no in-between.”

Neither did I.

I moved past him to the kettle and the coffee machine. The mugs from when I’d last been awake had been washed and dried. “This is the most civilised safe house I have ever experienced.”

Jake leaned back on his seat, just for a moment. “The Kings are well trained. Ivanov does not care for mess.”

He said it like a warning. As if I had never lived with him. I made a derisive noise and brewed him more coffee. There was no tea. Mourning its absence and missing Ranger, I made myself focus on Jake’s work, tracking the dots and dashes on his screens. “How many vehicles?”

“Three.” He pointed them out. “We will have to judge on the way in if it is safe to disable them. If it is, Saint will do it.”

I mapped that into the plan expanding in my mind, sharper now I’d rested. “With who? Cam?”

“Ranger. You and Ivanov will take point. I will take the rear with Cam.”

Meaning all lovers had been separated. “You have discussed this with them?”

“He has.” Alexei’s voice came from behind me. “It is time, don’t you think, Viktor? For Pavel’s vision to come to fruition?”

His tone was so dry the walls seemed to crack.

I poured coffee into mugs and handed him one. “All of it?”

“Do not pull on that ridiculous thread.”

With Ranger, I would have tugged so hard the ceiling caved in. Died in the rubble to hear his laugh.

Alexei did not laugh. But he did not stick a knife in my liver either. “Your father thought I was lonely,” he explained to Jake. “Viktor was intended to be my . . . apprentice of sorts, but it was not to be.”

Because he’d left—because Pavel had set him free, and now here we were, years later, planning the assassination of the men who had killed him.

Humour faded, in all of us.

Alexei claimed the seat beside Jake and studied the screens with equal concentration, seeing far more than I ever could.

The Russian conversations continued. With the bikers absent, our vernacular hardened.

“You will lead—fit or not, you are the sharpest soldier on the ground.” Alexei unrolled a fresh set of blueprints and tapped his finger to an exit. “But if you do not come out here, you will die in the stairwell.”

I agreed and pointed to an alternative exit. “You will die here if you fall more than a step behind me.”

“Hmm.” Alexei frowned at the blueprints and selected another way out. One that freed us from the building, but only if we’d left no one alive in our wake. If Jake’s hack to the sophisticated security system held.

“It won’t,” Jake confirmed my fear. “The connection is too weak. It will take seconds to patch another, but that is all someone will need to call for help.”

And in our world, that help would come in the form of more men and more guns. A flood of force that barrelled into us from behind, hitting Jake and Cam, Saint and Ranger, while Alexei and I were trapped facing the threat up ahead. I could only hope I died before I lost Ranger or Jake.

Before I lost them both.

“They are back.”

Jake pointed to the door.

A moment later, it opened, revealing Ranger and Saint, both damp from the rain, eyes vibrant with life. They moved into the house, Saint drawn to Alexei.

Ranger to me.

He pressed a box of tea into my hands. “Nicked it from a caravan.”

Grief and love fought a bloody battle in my heart. “That was kind of you.”

“Was it?”

Jake rose before I could respond. To take his turn to rest. It was a moment that in the past I would not have let him spend alone, even if I just lay next to him as he slept, but he did not look at me as he left the room. He did not need me, and perhaps he never had.

It was you—you needed him.

He disappeared, leaving me with Ranger, Saint, and Alexei. I had slept through the morning and into the afternoon. But by now, it was summer, even in rainy northern England. Nightfall was a long way off, and we had hours to kill before we could move out.

Alexei took over Jake’s master spy operation. Ranger reclaimed the box of tea and messed around with the kettle.

I returned to the blueprints, studying the routes Jake had marked and remarked when planning for this operation had started weeks ago, when he could not have been sure he’d have the manpower to execute it. That he ever would, unless his faith in Ranger’s ability to save me had been as bulletproof as this mission needed to be if we were not all to die in a hail of bullets.

Symbols on the plans represented the men on the ground. I did not know who had chosen them, but that Ranger was a spiked star amused me more than it should have as I stared at an operation I was beginning to realise had little chance of sparing all six of us.

“What are you fucking laughing at?”

Ranger’s rough voice lifted my gaze. He held a tea mug out like a dare.

Under the weight of Alexei’s dry observation, I took it—the mug. The challenge, not so much.

I missed being alone with him. His arms around me. His laugh echoing in my head. To touch him now . . . I could not. To think clearly, I needed distance—loving him would not save him.

You need to be stronger than this.

I turned back to the plans, fixating on the gap between the first pair in and the second—Ranger and Saint.

Two minutes.

It was not enough, and as time ticked by, draining the life out of me, I made sure Ivanov knew it.