Chapter 5

Viktor

CHAPTER FIVE

I’ve got her. She’s with me. I feel like I’m dreaming.

Lydia Ivanova is asleep in my arms.

“I’m going to beat the fucking shit out of you once I’ve got her safe,” I tell Lev. I can’t believe the asshole had the nerve to drug her against my wishes. I haven’t raised my hand to Lev since he was a dumbass teen who thought he was invincible, and I saved his ass from a rival gang he thought he could take. That was years ago.

Lev swallows. “I know.”

She’s mine.

Mine.

“Don’t kill him,” Aleks mutters, his eyes darting from the rearview mirror to mine. “If he didn’t do that, she’d have fought you and probably opened the door or something.”

I growl and look out the window, reluctant to admit he probably did the right thing. I could’ve handled her if she fought me. I might have even liked it.

“I told you I had her. It’s easy enough to restrain her, you fucking asshole.”

She stirs against me, and I lower my voice. “Now how will she trust me knowing we took her and drugged her?”

Lev shakes his head. “Don’t overestimate how important it is to get her safe first, Vik. Look, you’re not thinking straight. Once you?—”

“I know exactly what I’m doing,” I snap. I do. He doesn’t understand how many times I’ve thought about this, about her. How goddamn determined I am to make sure that she’s safe, secured, and well protected. “Let me make this clear. None of you so much as fucking breathes on her again.”

“Jesus, Viktor, don’t take your anger at Yudin out on us,” Aleks says.

Rage claws at my chest when I think of what could’ve happened tonight, but it isn’t misplaced. I breathe in to settle my fraught nerves the way Kolya taught me.

Aleksandr’s phone rings, coming through loudly on the speakers. Lydia stirs against me.

“Shut it off,” I snap. “For fuck’s sake.”

“It’s Mikhail,” Aleks argues. There’s an unspoken rule that we answer Mikhail’s calls immediately, without question, no matter the time of day.

“I don’t care.”

Lev and Aleks share a look before Lev takes the call. “Yeah. We’ve got her.” He shakes his head. “No, he got away, but we had a backup crew below the bridge, and we’re confident they’ll get him.”

They have strict instructions to find him and then deliver him promptly to me. No one gets to touch a hair on his head.

They speak in hushed tones until, finally, he ends the call.

“Mikhail wants an update.”

“Text him.”

“Viktor,” Aleks begins, looking at me in the rearview mirror again. “You have to be reasonable.”

I hold his gaze for a few seconds before he snaps back to looking at the road.

“Let’s pretend for a moment this were Harper,” I say in a low voice. “Let’s pretend you just fucking got her away from someone who not only planned on marrying her but fucking using her and then killing her.”

A muscle tenses in Aleks’s jaw. “I get it,” Aleks finally says. “I just want you to be rational.”

“I’ll be rational when Timur fucking Yudin’s no longer breathing and the Ledyanoye Bratstvo is destroyed. I’ll see reason when I put a ring on her finger and secure her safety to me. Until then, I’ll be the most unreasonable son of a bitch you’ve ever fucking met.”

We lapse into silence, only broken by occasional updates from Lev, texting the rest of our brothers. She stirs against my shoulder as I make my plans. Until I get further updates, I have one goal: keep her safe.

“There’s no word from our men,” Lev says, shaking his head. “Jesus. I expected better.”

It was more important to me to secure her than it was to get our enemy. I had to choose one or the other.

I chose her.

I will always choose her.

Yudin’s a fucking dead man walking. I’ll see to that.

She barely moves during the two-hour ride home. We pull into the drive to my home late into the night. I stay in the back with Lydia as my brothers run surveillance to make sure nothing’s happened while I was gone, but I’m not surprised we find nothing. Timur Yudin will plan his retaliation, but he isn’t a man who acts recklessly. He’ll bide his time.

“Coast is clear, Vik,” Lev says from my doorway, signaling for us to come. Lydia stirs but doesn’t wake when I lift her from the car and cradle her in my arms.

When she wakes, she’ll be ready to fight. I might be able to talk some sense into her when Vera gets involved, but it’s more likely she’ll fight even then. It’s alright, though. I love that she’s a fighter.

I love the way she feels in my arms.

So I take a moment to relish this. The warm, comforting feel of her in my arms, nestled up to my chest. The heat of her against me, her breath on my neck. The lingering scent of jasmine mixed with an earthy undertone, fiery but refined.

Her long, thick, wavy hair the color of tanned leather hangs down her back, an unruly strand across her face, some of it tickling my neck. Her dress, torn in the accident, barely clings to her. I turn her into me and hold her tighter so she doesn’t get cold. The reassuring sound of her soft breath gives me a small measure of solace.

When I get to the entrance to the house, Nikita approaches, quiet and subdued yet alert. She’s as concerned as I am. Her soulful eyes meet mine, and I give her a nod. “Yeah, baby. You’ll protect her, just like I will.” She gives a small, appreciative sniff of Lydia’s foot before she follows us into the house.

She’ll spend the night in my bedroom, where I can keep a close eye on her.

Vera’s deep in the trenches of field study she’s doing with one of her professors and likely won’t be able to join us anytime soon. Zofia is currently leaving to travel abroad and head-up a series of high-profile charity events she’s previously committed to. Our timing is absolute shit.

I am hoping the Ivanovs will be able to talk sense into her, but time will tell.

Behind me on the landing, Lev’s phone rings. “It’s Mikhail.”

He answers immediately. “Yeah.” Lev curses under his breath. This is not good. He shakes his head and hangs up the phone. “Yudin escaped.”