Chapter 19: Sunday: Sonia is mine

Waking in the early hours of the morning, I had mixed emotions. I was happier than I had been in years, and yet I felt a worrying sense of doom that I couldn’t shake off.

I looked down at the body nestled against me and sighed. I loved having Sonia in my arms. I wanted this to be how we woke up every morning—together. Yet I was still not sure how to make that possible, and I needed to. Soon. If I had thought hiding my feelings was hard before, it was going to be so much harder now—for both of us.

Now that I knew Sonia’s feelings for me were true and that I’d had a taste of her, I could never let her go. I needed to make her mine. What if I couldn’t? That thought terrified me. No, I’d find a way, I told myself, shutting down all the negative thoughts that had started racing through my mind. Sonia was mine!

Somehow, I would find a way to make her family agree to us being together. The only alternative was running away together, and I wouldn’t even entertain that idea yet. That would be a very last resort.

I lay there toying with the idea of calling our uncle Maxim in Russia and asking for his advice. He had always had a soft spot for both of us. I was hoping I could broach the subject of our relationship with him in confidence and see how he reacted. If I could get him onside, that would go a long way to swinging things in my favour.

That was if I could get him onside. I really wasn’t sure about that. Would he be angry or disappointed in me? As our pakhan in Russia, Miki and the others would think highly of his opinion, as would the rest of the Brotherhood. If he objected to us being together, it wouldn’t bode well for the rest of the family’s willingness to accept us. In fact, it was all the more likely they wouldn’t, and we would have two choices, accept that we could never be together or run.

It really could go either way. It’s possible that he could be easily persuaded because of his affection for us. Would he understand—as I had started to realise, and I suspected that Sonia had for some time—that the changing dynamics of my relationship with Sonia were a natural progression to how close we’ve always been? It dawned on me as we became intimate last night, just how right it was. It was as if our whole lives had been leading us to this point. As if we had been made for each other. Would he see that?

I frowned as a thought occurred to me.

Maybe he already had. Maybe that was why he seemed to have a special bond with us. Perhaps he had always known we would end up together. I mulled that thought over. Uncle Maxim was the smartest, most astute man I knew. I wouldn’t put it past him to notice this thing building between us long before either of us had even been aware of it. Whenever I talked with him, he always asked me how Sonia was, not her brothers, but me. I remember she mentioned him asking after me when she spoke with him, too.

Now that I thought about it, it was as if he expected us each to know how the other was more than anyone else. I smirked and chuckled quietly. The man was a wily coyote. Very little ever escaped him; even with the distance between us, he always seemed to know exactly what was happening here. A slow grin spread across my face. Maybe getting him onside wouldn’t be an issue after all.

Yeah, calling Uncle Maxim was what I would do.

Settling back down behind Sonia and letting myself drift off again as she snuggled into me, I just prayed I was right, and he would help. If I was wrong about him and couldn’t get him onside, then I wouldn’t be able to get anyone onside. That was a concern, but I refused to give it any more thought. I had to believe I was right and that talking to Uncle Maxim was the right thing to do.

Uncle Maxim was Plan A. I hoped there would be no need for any others.

A few hours later, my phone rang, jolting me awake.

Shit. It was Miki.

“Yeah?”

“Where are you?” he asked.

“At my flat!” I told him, worrying for a second, that he knew Sonia wasn’t home.

“Get back here; we need to head to Glowacki’s, then there’ll be stuff I need you and Vlad to do. Expect to be busy over the next few days!” he barked, and I sighed with relief.

“Be there in an hour,” I replied before he hung up.

Sonia stirred next to me, and I knew she’d heard.

“Hey!” I smiled at her sleepy face.

“Hey yourself!” she said, smiling back before leaning in and kissing me.

Allowing myself a few more seconds of indulgence, I deepened the kiss. I really wanted to continue from where we’d left off last night and add some more new skills to her repertoire, but unfortunately, I needed to go. We needed to go. I groaned and pulled away while I still could.

“I would love to continue this, but you heard the boss, gotta go!” I said, wishing it weren’t the case.

“I’ll grab a quick shower, and then you can get in. When we leave, you can follow me home; we need to sneak you back in,” I told her before heading for the bathroom.

After quickly showering, I returned to the bedroom to get dressed. I tried not to look at her directly as she lounged in my bed; otherwise, my desire for her would likely loosen my resolve to leave in the next half hour. I didn’t want Miki to get suspicious as to why I was late getting back. We were not ready to deal with anyone finding out about us yet.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Sonia staring at my semi-naked body, wrapped in only a towel. It took all of my strength not to preen before her like a peacock trying to impress his mate. I loved her eyes on me, and so did my cock, and I bit back a groan as I willed him to behave.

Her eyes roamed my body with unveiled desire as I pulled on my jeans. Her head tilted for a better look, and her gaze landed on the blank scroll tattoo on my hip.

I’d gotten it last year. Nobody knew why it was blank, as I refused to tell them, but anyone who saw it would find out eventually. One day. For now, it was my secret. Nobody knew this about me, but I longed for a wife and family, and the blank scroll was there waiting to be filled with their names. I’d first got it after seeing Sonia as more than my little cousin, and even though I had always denied it to myself, I knew when I got it that hers was the name I wanted at the top linked with mine. I quickly pulled on a T-shirt, covering it up.

She looked like she was about to say something, but we were in a hurry to get back to the Estate, so I urged her to move. I would tell her all about it one day soon, but today wasn’t the day.

“Up, lazy! I’m going to make us some breakfast while you shower!” I said, kissing her before hurrying out of the room.

Sonia didn’t take long, and the breakfast was made by the time she came downstairs.

“You can cook?” she asked in awe.

“I’ve been learning,” I chuckled.

Nonna had been helping me learn, and while there were only a few things I currently knew how to do, I enjoyed cooking. That was another thing few people knew about me.

“There’s not much in my repertoire yet, though, but I do a mean breakfast, for now at least!”

“It looks great!” she said, grinning at me before tucking in.

She ate everything. I loved that about her. I took care of myself, but I liked my food, loved eating, and was glad that food was something we could enjoy together.

We finished quickly, then tidied up and loaded the dishwasher together before leaving. The small slice of domesticity felt good. I couldn’t wait for it to become a daily occurrence.

As we headed for the door, I pulled her close.

“We need to talk at some point, Sonia,” I said, and as she raised her eyebrows and smirked, the irony of my statement wasn’t lost on me.

Sonia didn’t rub it in my face, though. I knew she wouldn’t. That wasn’t Sonia’s way. She wasn’t a person who said I told you so.

Instead, she simply nodded and smiled, coming up onto her tiptoes and tilting her chin, begging for a kiss. Naturally, I obliged but forced myself to make it short and sweet.

“And you need to promise me not to go sneaking out alone again,” I said.

Watching her roll her eyes in her usual fashion when faced with what she deemed the overprotectiveness of her family, I hid my smirk. She was so cute when she did that, but I needed her to heed my warning, so I wasn’t about to let her know how her sassiness affected me.

“I mean it, Sonia, if you do something that puts your safety into jeopardy like that again, I’ll put you over my knee and spank that luscious bottom of yours until you learn your lesson,” I said firmly, turning her face up to look at me as I spoke.

Her eyes were wide as she stared at me, but by the way she was biting back an excited grin, I had a feeling that my words hadn’t quite the effect as was intended. Instead of making her trepidatious, if I didn’t know better, I would say she liked the idea of a spanking. Again, I hid my smirk behind my firm expression, not wanting her to know that I had clocked her interest. Not when I was trying to impress upon her that she needed to be more careful with her safety.

But it was enticing to know just how curious Sonia was about sex. After her response to me last night and her interest in spanking today, I knew without a doubt that Sonia was my perfect match in all ways. I wondered just how curious she was and just what her boundaries were because I planned on pushing all of my Little Miss Trouble’s boundaries as far and as often as I could from now on. She was inexperienced, so I would start slow, but soon, I would know every little fantasy she had, and I would ensure to fulfil them all.

Right now, though, I needed her to take her safety seriously.

“Promise me, Sonia. You’re mine now, and I can’t bear for anything to happen to you,” I said, pulling her close and pressing my forehead to hers.

“Okay,” she promised solemnly.

“Things won’t be easy, but we’ll figure out what to do next once I am back from whatever Miki has me doing,” I tried to reassure her, kissing her deeply one last time before we had to part.

We slipped out of my flat, and I quickly walked her to her car before I retrieved my own. Once we reached the Estate, I distracted the guards at the gate so she could drive through without notice. Then, I followed her inside and helped her sneak back into the house before any of the family became aware she was gone.

Sonia hurried upstairs, turning briefly at the top to wave. I winked and grinned in delight as she blew me a kiss before heading to her room as I went in search of the boss.

Miki was in the office with Vlad, and as soon as I entered, he stood up.

“I’ve got to talk with Glowacki. I need you with me,” he told me in a rush.

“There have been another couple of incidents,” he said as we headed out, filling me in on the details as Vlad drove us to the Polish boss’s home.

Another of our drug dealers had been murdered, and his stash of drugs and cash stolen. But worse, they killed his wife, too. Bastards!

On top of that, one of our legitimate restaurants had been broken into during the night and trashed. There was no cash there to take, so it was a deliberate case of destroying the place to cause us inconvenience rather than to steal anything.

This was now spilling over into our legal business, too. We needed to nip it in the bud quickly before the police noticed too many coincidences, put two and two together, realised we were being targeted, and decided to look into why that might be.

We had a few of the local constabulary in our pockets, and so did Glowacki, but we didn’t have them all. We couldn’t afford some law officer somewhere getting suspicious of exactly where all of our cash came from and investigating. In our line of business, we needed to fly under the radar as much as possible, and that meant not exposing ourselves to any unnecessary problems, like overzealous police officers looking to make a name for themselves.

Vlad and I waited in the car while Miki went in to talk to Glowacki alone. We both found that strange, but he was the Pakhan, so when he insisted we stay outside and wait for him instead of coming inside as was usual, we did what he said. While he was gone, I used the time to mull over the best way to approach my Plan A. I needed to have my thoughts together in case I needed to work harder at persuading Uncle Maxim than I thought before I made that all-important call.