34. Ranger

[ 34 ]

RANGER

Viktor bought a house built into the cliffs near my nanna’s care home. It was small and cute, but the grounds held a concealed helipad that scared the shit out of me. “If you land wrong, you’ll fall in the fucking sea.”

“I will not land wrong.”

Viktor kissed my neck and went inside.

I stayed out in the wild wind, scanning the horizon—the ocean, the sky, the beach. Jean’s bedroom window. If I squinted real hard, I could just about make out the Rebel Kings compound in the distance. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the orange groves Vik had given up to be here.

Didn’t miss Lida, though. Didn’t have to. She was right here at my feet, sniffing the air like she had been since Viktor had brought her home last night, signalling an end to the first time he’d left me since the port raid three months ago. Two nights without him and I’d nearly died from missing him so much. Wasn’t sure when I’d shed my lone-wolf skin and become a co-dependant sloth, but that’s who I was right now.

Viktor came back with the keys to the Rebel Kings vehicle Cam had loaned us while I couldn’t ride.

I feigned surprise. “We’re not taking the wankbird and landing it on the clubhouse roof?”

“Not today.”

Viktor moved to the car and slid behind the wheel while I secured Lida in the back and took the passenger seat. I hadn’t driven or ridden in months. I probably could now my eyeballs were reliably pointing in the same direction, but Vik seemed to like taking care of me, and I hadn’t got round to flipping that dynamic on its head yet.

Unless I was fucking him.

Which happened as often as he fucked me.

“What are you thinking about?” Viktor reversed down a road that wasn’t much different to the one that led to his house on the island. “Are you worried about taking Jean out of the home?”

“Nah, I was thinking about sex. But thanks for adding my nanna into the mix.”

“You are welcome.”

Viktor was quiet until we reached civilisation, paying the steep roads more attention than he had the cliffs when he’d landed his chopper last night. At least it seemed that way to me. I still wasn’t over the fact that he flew those fuckers. Or that living through him being in the air without me had damn near given me a heart attack.

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Hmm?”

Viktor rubbed my thigh, one hand on the wheel while he navigated through Whitness. “What you were thinking about. It did not look like you had sex on your mind.”

Maybe I hadn’t. But I still had trouble filing my thoughts properly, my short-term memory not recovered from that shitty concussion. Whatever I’d been thinking about to put that concern in Vik’s bright eyes, it was long gone.

Viktor drove us to Jean’s home. He waited outside, keeping a necessary low profile, like Alexei, but that ended as soon as Jean was in the car, in the front seat, me relegated to lounging in the back while they chatted up a storm.

Jean thought Viktor had a pretty voice. I’d told her until she was sick of hearing it that he was pretty everywhere.

We drove on to the Kings compound and the inaugural record fair they were hosting. Couldn’t say I gave much of a shit about vintage vinyl, but my nanna loved these people, and so did I.

Viktor parked round the back with the lorries, out of sight, so we could slip into the throng unnoticed.

The place was packed, full of enough outsiders to set my teeth on edge, but the boys had security covered, and I trusted them as much as they trusted me.

Nash whisked Jean away. Out of all my club brothers, she’d chosen him to be besties with, and I was okay with it. Besides him being a stand-up dude who treated my nanna like a queen, it made the fact that Viktor naturally gravitated to Locke mighty convenient.

Pretty sure Orla was sick of my face, though. Or maybe my mouth. The Rebel Queen was hugely pregnant. Like, beach-ball sized—a comparison she didn’t appreciate, but Lida’s arrival caused enough of a stir to save me from serious harm.

“LIDA!” Ivy and Liliana burst from the clubhouse, tearing across the yard to where we had barely made it through the side gate. Flashbacks to when these kids had last rushed me invaded my mind, but the Doherty clan were long gone. Didn’t know where. Didn’t care.

The kids drew closer. Then stopped a few feet back, like Folk had taught them when Lida had first come to the compound so long ago, to wait for the dog to come to them on her own terms.

Viktor let her go. The reunion was sweet, but Lilliana broke away and came to us, stopping in front of Viktor.

She said something Spanish.

He grinned and returned it.

She laughed and ran away, and I didn’t think much of it until Mateo and Juana caught up with us in the bar, where Rubi burned through his disco playlist, dancing by himself to Womack & Womack. Probably not a scene Vik had pictured himself a part of, like ever, but here we were.

Mateo ducked behind the bar and grabbed the vodka from the back shelf. He thunked it down in front of Viktor, eyes flaring with something more than his usual brand of aggression as I glanced between them, wary as Viktor rotated on his stool. Locke, Nash, and Orla treated him like long-lost family, but that was at home—theirs while we had been holed up in that flat. Ours when they’d visited the house in the cliffs. We didn’t come to the compound much, so Mateo’s opinion on welcoming another Russian mobster into the fold hadn’t been on my radar.

“Did you know?”

Viktor unscrewed the vodka and swigged from the bottle like a boss before he answered Mateo’s growled question. “Know what?”

“Don’t fuck around. She’s my kid.”

“And you want to know if I knew that before anyone else in your life?”

Mateo’s silence confirmed that he did.

Viktor drank more vodka and set the bottle down. “All I knew about your daughter was that she was a prisoner. And that the flights her grandfather brought her on were to punish her mother who was left on the ground. The connection between the Esteban family and Rebel Kings wasn’t apparent until they escaped.”

Mateo drummed his fingers on the bar, his scarred face twisted in contemplation. “She said you were nice to her.”

“Why would I not be nice?” Viktor made eye contact with the toddler on Juana’s hip, a soft smile on his lush lips. “We are the same monster, Mateo. That does not mean it is all we are.”

Mateo accepted that and moodied his way out of the bar as grouchily as he’d arrived. Juana stayed. “Your brother was kind to me while he was my dad’s bodyguard. I’d never have known he was Russian, though.”

“My brother is kind. And your lover was our friend.”

Viktor dropped that fact like a casual hot potato, but Juana was a tough bird. I’d never seen this chick fazed. She gave Vik a warm smile, then turned to me and plunked the toddler on my lap before I could protest. “See? Told you Uncle Ranger was coming back.”

Uncle Ranger. Fuck’s sake. I held the squirming kid away from me, daring her to cry. She didn’t. Which meant I had to keep her while Vik laughed at me. Heaven and hell rolled into one until the little shit reached for him instead.

Viktor was cool with kids. Cooler than me, anyway. He took her and nodded to Juana as Liliana came to the bar door and called for her. “Take your time.”

Juana slipped away. Viktor eyed the kid. “She is like Polina, no?”

Like the niece he hadn’t seen in the flesh for months until yesterday because he’d refused to leave me. I hooked one of the baby’s dark curls around my little finger and tucked it behind her ear. “Tyrant in training? Probably.”

Viktor just smiled, and it was the best thing I’d ever seen.

The record fair dragged on. Banned from booze for at least another week, I endured it while Vik found himself the subject of Ivy’s attention. She spotted the bracelet on his wrist a mile off and bombarded him with a thousand questions that Folk was too amused by to stop.

He joined me at the bar, pinching my water bottle. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“Why?”

“You hate people and you hate records.”

I shot a longing look at the beer Rubi was tipping down his throat on the dance floor, before giving Folk my full attention. “I don’t hate you.”

Folk studied me with the same sage bullshit he had when he’d come to the recovery flat the day after I’d fucked Vik on the couch and ripped me a new one for being reckless with my wellbeing. And I stared right back, years of friendship spooling between us, remembering, like I always did every moment I had alone with him, the long-ago conversation I’d had with Cam.

“The last few months have taken it out of him.”

Still wasn’t sure what Cam had meant by that, but with Folk, it was hard to tell. He seemed all right to me. So did Decoy. Leaving me to wonder if it was a me thing. If I wasn’t seeing something that everyone else could.

“How’s Viktor doing?”

I returned to earth to find Folk had swapped out for Embry. “Ask him yourself.”

Embry hopped onto the bar, as agile as Viktor. “If you tell me, I won’t have to.”

“You don’t have to do anything.”

Honestly, I didn’t think Vik would mind if Embry got in his face about addiction. Where he came from, telling the truth was a privilege he didn’t take for granted. And that was the point I was clumsily trying to make—it was his truth, not mine. I knew from Folk and River that being happy sometimes made this shit harder, but all I could say for certain was that Vik was clean and he laughed a lot.

Viktor came back and gave Embry the sleeping toddler. He leaned into me, not shy with his affection, grinning as I breathed him in.

“You smell like Jelly Tots.”

He opened his hand, revealing a palmful of sweets. “Ivy does not like the green ones.”

I did. I stole two, but halfway to my mouth, something clicked in my brain. Loud and profound, as if it had been missing my whole life and only now occurred to me. “That’s what colour your eyes are—Jelly Tot green. Shitting hell.” I laughed, pleased with my own joke that wasn’t a fucking joke. I held the sweet up to Vik’s face and got Rubi over to back me up.

“It’s true, Vicky.” Rubi draped a brotherly arm around him. “You’re made by Rowntree.”

Viktor said something Russian. Made himself laugh enough that I decided him and Rubi weren’t a good mix and hustled him outside. Billy Ocean blared from the outdoor speakers and I didn’t have to look far to find my nanna dancing with Willow while Locke kept watch from a deckchair.

It was her favourite song. She’d played it on repeat for ten years straight, and I was pretty sure I’d had my first wank to it blaring through my bedroom walls.

She’d have played it at dad’s funeral if my mum had let her come.

“Asher.” Viktor nudged me. “You would like to dance with your grandmother?”

“Me? No. I only dance with you cos you’re fit, luv.”

“You are lying.”

I was. Mostly. I did dance with him cos he was fit as fuck. Naked music nights were my favourite thing. We had fuck-all furniture in the house, but somehow, we’d banged in every room, and I liked sleeping on the floor with Vik. Nothing around us but a mattress and a shared pillow. I’d never needed things to be happy. I needed cigarettes, my tiny bag of crap, and the few people I cared about to be safe and well.

And I needed Viktor. I loved him. And as I kissed him in the middle of the record fair before wheeling away to boogie with my nanna, I didn’t give a fuck who knew it.