“Oleg?”
His eyes open, and he stares back at me.
“You’ve probably been feeling miserable this whole time. Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shakes his head.
“You have to start communicating with me.”
“I can help with that.” Dima reappears with the hydrogen peroxide and a washcloth. He also carries a tablet, which he hands to Oleg. “I have you all set up, my man.” He touches the screen, which reveals a keyboard with the Russian alphabet. “You type in here, it spits out the English for Story. It can even speak it aloud although I didn’t find a voice with a Russian accent.” Dima grins.
I pour the hydrogen peroxide liberally over Oleg’s wound, catching the drips with the washcloth. I suck in a breath when it bubbles and hisses over the open wound.
Oleg types something with his forefinger. He’s slow. I imagine his large finger makes it harder.
“Hit that to make it speak aloud.” Dima points at the screen.
An Australian-accented male voice says, “Don’t worry about me, swallow.”
I meet his eye. “What was swallow in Russian?” I ask.
Oleg looks down at the screen, like he’s not sure how to reverse the language, but Dima answers for him. “Lastochka. Is that what he calls you? I can set that word not to translate, if it’s your pet name.” He picks up the tablet and types something in.
Natasha reappears and doctors the wound with a poultice, and then she and Dima leave us alone.
Oleg falls back on the bed. I curl into his side, resting my head on his shoulder. He looks at me and points at my chest then at his own.
“I belong to you?”
A tiny smile appears. I didn’t get it right, but he likes my interpretation. He nods.
“Oleg, I—”
He stops my words with a finger on my lips then repeats the gesture, reversing it.
“You belong to me?” His lips tip up again. He nods.
I can’t stop staring at him. He looks so transformed with the small smile. Much younger. So warm.
He belongs to me. One part of me wants to reject that gift. Because believing it’s something I can count on is irrational. I know love doesn’t last. People don’t stick. We just do the best they can as we all muddle through life.
That’s what Oleg and I are doing right now. And it’s a precious moment, despite—no, because of the drama surrounding it.
I want to believe what he’s telling me. That this sturdy, steady man will always be there for me. Always and forever. Something I’ve never had with anyone in my life.
Maybe it could really be true.
Chapter 10
Oleg
I pass out for the rest of the afternoon, falling in and out of feverish dreams. The worst kind—the type that picks up right where real life left off, so I can’t be sure if they’re really happening or not. I know Natasha came back to check on my wound and change the poultice. Dima stood behind her like her bodyguard. Or maybe that was a dream, too.
In one dream, Story walks out of the Kremlin while I’m asleep, and the bearded asshole from Rue’s guns her down in cold blood.
In another, Skal’pel’ operates on her, removing her tongue, too, so she can never sing again.
Then he’s here in my bedroom with a gun on her. I jerk awake, a hoarse cry coming from my lips. I lunge for my gun in my nightstand.
“Hey.” Story’s voice cuts across the room. “Are you okay?” She’s curled up in a chair by the big windows, her guitar across her thighs.
I release my grip on the gun before she can see it, my pulse racing. Blyad’. What if I’d pointed it at her before I got my head on straight? The thought does nothing to calm my pounding heart.
Story puts the guitar down and comes to the bed. She has a way of moving that’s more childlike than sultry-woman. She skips steps. Leaps onto the bed with a bounce instead of crawling. It’s part of what makes her so fascinating to me. She yanks the covers back and tucks her legs into the bed to sit with me then shoves the iPad Dima brought me under my nose.
I stare at it for a moment, remembering what I’m supposed to be doing with it.
I had a bad dream, I type. The Australian mudak speaks the words to her.
“What about?” she asks.
I point at her. I dreamed he cut your tongue out, too.
Fuck. I feel so raw and exposed giving voice to my nightmare, but Story’s been demanding communication from me.
“Scalpel?” she asks.
I nod.
“What was he to you?” Her brown eyes search my face.
Damn. I haven’t told this story before, not that I ever talk about my past. But Story, of course, deserves to know. I frown over the letters, using both index fingers to hunt and peck.
When I was fourteen, my mother took a housekeeping job with a wealthy plastic surgeon named Andrusha Orlov. I sometimes helped my mother after school, and the doctor took a liking to me. He paid me to do odd jobs for him and took a fatherly role with me.
“Did you have a father?” Story asks, folding her slender legs underneath her to sit cross-legged.
I shake my head. I never knew him. He left when I was young.
“I’m sorry.”
I shrug. When I was seventeen, Dr. Orlov asked me if I wanted a job as his personal bodyguard. I was already almost this size. He had a security team, and the head of it was former military. He trained me to shoot a gun. To fight with my hands. He taught me seventy-two ways to kill a man.
I didn’t know why Orlov needed protection, but I didn’t care. I was getting paid more money than my mom made as his housekeeper and feeling like a man. As time continued, he took me to meetings he held with people in public restaurants or bars. I sat in on meetings where large sums of cash changed hands. Over the next five years, I witnessed more and more of Orlov’s identity-changing business.
Then things got too hot. The St. Petersburg bratva came after him when they got word he’d performed surgery on a man they wanted dead. I killed three men who showed up at his residence. It scared me.
I tried to quit. He persuaded me to stay just until he closed out his operation, changed his own identity and disappeared.
I stop typing. The rest of the story isn’t worth telling.
Story slips her hand in mine. “And he cut out your tongue to thank you.”
I rub my aching head and nod.
“Where’s your mom?” Story asks.
Pain stabs through my chest. My sweet, honest, hard-working mother. She lost her job and her son when Skal’pel’ left, I type.
“Does she know you’re alive?”
I rub my head again.
“Oleg?” Story leans her head forward to peek at my face.
I was too ashamed to see her again. I went straight from prison to Chicago. I needed a new start.
Story leans her head on my shoulder, curling her body against mine, her knees folding over the top of my thighs. “I hate what happened to you.” She sounds choked up.
I stroke her cheek, brushing her hair back over her ear. Dredging up my shitty past sucked, but now that it’s out—now that Story knows it and Ravil and Maxim know part of it—something that’s been blocked all these years has moved. I used my pain as a wall to keep everyone out. To keep myself out. I was half a man, barely living half a life.