13. Nikolai

13

NIKOLAI

I ran out of my wing and locked the doors, hurrying to catch up with Ivan, who'd pounded on my door and told me that the strip club was on fire.

"Hey!" I called out to one of the housekeepers passing down the hall. This place was huge, and we employed a significant staff. "Keep these doors locked. No one goes in and no one comes out."

She nodded, not even alarmed with my shouted orders before I took off.

"Of all fucking times," I muttered to myself as I ran. Wiping the back of my hand over my mouth, I regretted being pulled from Amy. Her sweet taste lingered on my tongue and I wished for more. I wanted to suck and lick until I was drowning in her cream, making her pant and beg to come.

"Fuck!"

My dick had been so hard, but with duty calling, with the threat of danger being near, it had gone soft again. Violence turned me on, but this news wasn't going to make any of us happy .

"What the fuck happened?" I didn't catch up with Ivan outside, but I ran into Dmitri, about to drive away.

"Get in." He opened the driver's door, clearly informed of this need to rush, and I listened, getting in the passenger side.

"Harrow's is on fire?" I wiped my face again, making sure it wasn't too obvious what I'd been pulled from.

"Yes." He gripped the steering wheel tightly as he sped through the city. "The Cartel did it."

I pounded my fist on the door and gritted my teeth. "Those fuckers."

"Alek was anticipating retaliation, but not like this."

I ground my molars, glaring out the window. This was the nature of our lives. Hit and get hit back. It never ended, and I wasn't upset about that. What angered me was how it'd pulled me from Amy. Again. My duty would always be there, and it reiterated the fact that I had no right, no business, to want a woman who wouldn't fit.

I'd moved her to the mansion so she could be closer. I didn't care if it meant I was caving. I wanted her close. I'd yearned for her all those weeks, and if she was going to be under the Bratva's protection and possession for the temporary length of time until we relocated her, I may as well get my fix.

Alek was still trying to make arrangements that wouldn't release the captured women and have them back in the Cartel's clutches. Maxim had also raised a good point that if we let the women go, the Cartel might hunt them down and kill them so they couldn't tell the cops or anyone else about anything they'd seen.

I didn't know what would happen to Amy. She couldn't stay. She didn't fit in with the Bratva lifestyle no matter how perfectly she meshed with me .

I saw how she'd shrunken into herself when I told her that she couldn't go home. It sounded like she had no home, and that made her a perfect woman to snatch off the streets. She was orphaned and had no family who'd come looking for her. I didn't know if the Cartel had looked into or stalked the women they'd taken, but Amy, unfortunately, wouldn't have been missed by anyone other than the few she knew at work.

She was saddened, even dismayed, about the news that she couldn't rewind and return to her life as she'd once known it. I bet she would grieve her normalcy of getting up and going into work at a place where she didn't feel valued. And the freedom to hang out with that friend who'd been at the club with her.

It wasn't my fault. I hadn't taken her off the streets. I didn't put her in the position of being in the Cartel's warehouse to be sold elsewhere. I'd saved her, but I couldn't be her savior forever. She couldn't look to me or my life and home as her permanent refuge.

We pulled up to the club, parking sloppily and quickly among all the other cars and trucks. First responders milled about, and firefighters continued to extinguish the flames claiming the building.

"Stand back," a fireman shouted when Dmitri and I ran up to the crowd.

Nosy pedestrians stood around gawking. Dancers, mostly naked, were covered up with blankets from the ambulances and fire trucks, and a huge crowd of guests and clients were grouped up away from the line of fire.

Smoke hung heavily in the air, and I coughed alongside my brother as we tried to push through the throngs of people in our way.

"That's my business," Dmitri replied, taking a claim as a representative of the Bratva. Harrow's, like all of our businesses, was ours , but this simplified it.

"He said it was his property," the man said with a smirk, pointing at Ivan .

He'd gotten through, currently speaking with a few men. One looked like a uniformed cop, but it wasn't Steven Murphy. Maybe the fire marshal.

"It's our property," I told the guy holding us back from getting closer. Details like the property deed had to come later. "Ivan!"

He beckoned us closer, striding toward us as we approached despite the fireman's orders to stay back.

"The fucking Cartel," Ivan said. He gave me a hard look, furious. "As soon as the soldiers called in, Maxim watched the footage. Several of the Cartel members came in and set the fires."

Dmitri rubbed a hand over his face. "How the fuck did they get in?" They were on our radar.

"I don't know." Ivan looked back at the cops. "But we're losing time to look."

We spread out, slipping back through the crowds to seek out the assholes who had to have started the fires claiming the whole building. They wouldn't have gone far. They'd be standing around to watch the disaster unfold.

It wasn't until we'd slipped away from the mass of first responders and crowds out front on the street that we found them.

Dmitri and I ran down the side alley, the very one I'd followed Amy down recently. Two Cartel members we recognized sprinted that way, and we gave chase.

As soon as we caught them, I realized why.

They'd slowed down, on purpose.

They'd stopped at the corner, where a perpendicular alley cut across. And waiting there were more of the fuckers. They outnumbered us, lying in wait. They attacked, hitting us with the element of surprise .

Dmitri fought back harder, but I was hit too quickly. I defended myself the best I could. Violence ran in my blood. It was how I thrived in this cruel world. With the vision of Amy waiting for me back at home, I gave it my all to ward off all the assholes as they teamed up on us.

Before long, with blood dripping from my wounds and contusions littering my body, I was knocked down with a sickening hit to my abdomen. Sucking in air as I dropped to my hands and knees, I heard Dmitri's groan.

I lifted my face to my brother, watching as they shoved a bag over his head.

They want us alive.

Torture awaited. I was sure of it. I spat out a mouthful of blood just before they jammed a coarse covering over my head too.

We expected them to be mad about how we'd broken in and stolen their women. It was a huge blow to their business. And that was the risk we'd taken. We'd hit hard knowing it would make an impact.

They hadn't waited long to strike back. It was bad enough that they wanted to burn one of our businesses down. If anyone died in there, it would be another black mark against the Bratva, guilty for getting any civilians killed.

Taking us, though, that was a whole other strategy. If they wanted us dead, an eye for an eye for killing their men when we stormed in and took the women, they would've just shot us here in the alley. They wouldn't have bothered fighting us to capture us.

They were up to something else. I was sure of it, and torturing us was the first thing that came to mind. It wouldn't be a new experience for me or my brother, and I doubted it would be the last.

These fuckers would not see to the end of me, though. There was no way in hell. I had too much to live for, too much work to do in making the Bratva strong again, in helping Alek start a new future for our family.

I had to live for Amy, for the little time I could have with her before she had to be removed from my life.

In the darkness, I seethed, pissed that I would be delayed even more from returning to Amy with the status I'd left her in, her pussy glistening for me, her ass thrusting back so I could spear my tongue in her cunt. A growl of frustration nearly choked me, but now wasn't the time for it.

Duty first.

It always fucking was, and for the first time in my life, I hated it.

Amy was back home, waiting for me.

She needed me.

I knew she did.

While I couldn't ever give her all that she needed and deserved, I grew furious that my commitment to see to my Bratva's needs would always stand between us.

They dragged me to a car, and I knew I was shoved back there with my brother. He cursed and threatened the Cartel the whole time as we were driven away, captured.

Not for long. Wherever they took us, there would be hell to pay.