A wet cough mixed with ironic laughter made Buzz jerk in Bonnie’s lap. “Now, that’s a waste of healthcare if I ever heard one.” He closed his eyes, his breath huffing in and out of his mouth in short bursts. “Right thing to do. Finally.” His eyes opened and he stared up at his daughter, the color of them the same as Bonnie’s. “’Bout time I did right by her.”
He lifted one hand and touched her cheek. “So pretty. Just like your momma.” His hand fell back to his side and his head lolled toward Roman. “She told me she got her a good man.” Another few breaths, each one growing shorter and shorter. “Be better to her than I was.”
He closed his eyes.
Bonnie gripped him tighter and leaned closer. “Daddy!”
But he was gone. Roman knew the sound all too well. That final exhalation and the silence and stillness that followed. He rested one hand on hers where she gripped her father’s shoulder. “Bonnie.”
Kevin crumbled to his knees beside them, his eyes wide with disbelief.
“No!” Bonnie shook her father. “No, you gotta wake up. Daddy!”
Such pain. Raw and slicing deep.
And he could do nothing to stop it. Nothing save hold her while reality ripped through her very being and rearranged her world.
Seconds slipped into minutes, the coppery bite of blood and the now hushed voices behind them filling the long painful void. Footsteps clipped across the concrete, followed by the door at the opposite end of the warehouse opening and closing.
Kir moved into sight on his right and urged Kevin to his feet.
A hand pressed against Roman’s shoulder.
Sergei.
“We must move them,” he said in Russian.
No more words were necessary. Guns had been fired and the warehouse was an operational space. One that would have workers arriving in only a matter of hours when there was still considerable cleanup to handle.
But it was over.
Bonnie was safe.
Alive. Even if it had come at the cost of her father.
“And the kozel?” he asked without looking away from Bonnie.
“Contained,” Sergei said. “Rossi is yours to do with as you please.”
Roman studied Bonnie’s face. Noted every tear. The blood on her hands and clothes and the grief in her features as she wept. Rossi would pay for all of it. Would echo the same wails and pleas his koroleva had suffered this night before he was done.
But first, he had to get her home. He guided her hands away from her father’s still body and held them tight. “Let them take him, vozlyublennaya. Our men will take care of him.”
She sniffled, but nodded.
As soon as she did, two of the soldiers they’d had on standby moved in to lift her father’s body away.
Roman guided her to her feet, giving her time to adjust and get her bearings.
She looked up at him, the green in her eyes vivid and bright with the sheen of her tears and her cheeks splotched with red. “He told me he was sorry. When we were waiting for Rossi to set up the exchange with you—Dad told me he was sorry. That he was proud of me.”
Odd, how life worked. How even the most untenable circumstance could generate even the tiniest positive outcome. Or, in this case, something deeply felt.
Roman tucked her hair behind one ear and wiped one tear free from her cheek. “Of course he was proud of you. How could he not be? I told you. You are a queen.”
She laughed at that. A bittersweet one to be sure, but at least a sliver of her brightness shone through.
She wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned her forehead against his chest. “What the hell am I going to do now?”
Roman held her tight and kissed the top of her head. “You will do what he would have wanted for you to do. You will move on. Build your new family and live the way you want to.”
Slowly, she lifted her head and met his gaze. “With you.”
“Yes, moya koroleva. With me. Always.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
One last visit. One last reason to look upon the home she’d grown up in. Bonnie parked the new cherry red Camaro she’d bought about six months ago across the street from the dreary looking house, got out and took a moment to soak it all in. Per usual, the trash bins out front were overflowing. Though, this time they weren’t full of empty beer bottles or other party remnants, but the results of a thorough house cleaning. Two older model pickup trucks were centered right out front, one of them with a medium-sized U-Haul trailer hooked to the back of it.
Funny. She’d always thought if she made it to this point in her life, she’d look on the place and think nothing except good riddance. Instead, the only emotion she could drum up was peace. As if the house was nothing more than a symbol of the past she’d finally accepted and had chosen to release.
Two men she didn’t recognize filed out of the front door that’d been propped open, both of them hefting big boxes and headed for the U-Haul. Despite the January winds whipping around the place and making the mid-sixties late afternoon feel more like mid-fifties, they were both in T-shirts and long gym shorts and looked like they could lift pretty much anything they needed to.
Kevin showed a few seconds after them dressed nearly the same, a lamp in one hand and a good chunk of hanging clothes gripped in the other. He noted her watching as soon as he reached the U-Haul and jerked his chin up in greeting. “Hey, Bonnie. Thanks for coming.”
God, he sounded and acted so much different these days. Lighter. Less angry and urgent. As if the near year since their father had died had slowly lifted an ugly veil off him.
He handed off his burden to one of the two guys stacking stuff in the trailer and ambled across the street, an easy, contented smile on his face. “You finish up the paperwork?”
“Yeah, I got it.” She pulled the thick stack of legalese out of her hobo bag and handed it over. “You sure you want to do it this way? You could always list it and sell it to a family.”
He took the document signing over the property to a real estate company intent on revamping the whole area and shook his head. “Nah.” He turned and studied the house, a calm albeit sad certainty entering his voice. “It needs to be torn down. This whole damned place needs a fresh start.”
A fresh start.
Like the one she’d been given.
Like the one Kevin was working his way through.
They stood in silence, Kevin taking in every detail while Bonnie marveled at the difference in her brother. The torture he’d suffered from Rossi’s goons had done a lot to knock loose all the stubborn, stupid ideas he’d grown up with. The final blow had come when Roman had beaten out of Rossi that Jennette was, in fact, a loose end that had been permanently silenced.