It looked like Arkady had mustered an entire army. I even saw Yury bounding toward us, gun raised and ready. The Bratva’s forces pounced, killing Italians with such deadly accuracy bodies dropped all around.
During the cataclysmic battle, Kirill held me secure. He wouldn’t let me move, and I felt my heart beating against the forearm he caged around my chest. He kept me close and out of harm’s way while bullets streaked past like white-red sparks in the air that smoldered with firepower.
While the fighting continued, Arkady darted back and forth at the front of the fray. Raising his gun, he shot repeatedly, blasting the Italians full of bullet holes as if he wanted to take them all on singlehandedly.
I still couldn’t believe he was here.
He’d found me.
He had come for me!
Relief wrestled with worry that Arkady might get hurt, but he was ruthless, not reckless.
As if sensing my fears, he roamed so close I could smell the rage pounding through his body.
The very vision of black death, he leaped away without so much as sparing me a look.
Along with Maksim, he tore through the guards huddled around Sabato. The pair mowed them all down before Maksim spun to take on another battle.
Then the world seemed to stop as Arkady towered over the much older, much smaller man. This don who’d degraded me, debased me, and had sought to enslave me.
An eerily evil grin slashed across my Russian lover’s face.
He gave Sabato no chance to beg, barely even a moment to breathe, before hauling the man off his feet and plunging a wicked-looking blade into the base of his skull.
Arkady dropped Don Sabato with no ceremony, spending more time to clean his gruesomely spattered knife than the entire murder had taken.
I gasped, almost wilting within the solid ring of Kirill’s arms.
He whispered gruffly, “You don’t need to be concerned about Arkady.”
In all this commotion, though, I suddenly realized I’d lost sight of Valeria. I knew she’d traveled to the airport in one of the other vehicles, but I couldn’t spot her now.
I didn’t see Roberto either.
But Arkady once again drew my attention when he spun toward me from across a distance of a few yards. He looked directly at me for the first time with laser-like focus, his chest heaving up and down.
Then came the utter clarity of silence. Within the space of several tumultuous minutes, the Sicilian threat had been entirely disposed of. All that remained were dead bodies and wisps of smoke from spent bullets.
Arkady approached, stalking closer and closer, and the stark expression on his face was absolutely terrifying.
Kirill pushed me toward him, and Arkady captured me within the circle of his strong arms where I very nearly collapsed. He took one moment to hold me before thrusting me an arm’s length away.
Then he began patting me down from top to bottom.
“I’m not armed,” I whispered in a quivery voice.
“I am checking for injuries.”
“You could just ask.” I struggled to contain every wild emotion pulsing through me.
This cold stranger was not the Arkady I’d come to know. Confusion battled inside my chest.
This wasn’t exactly a happy reunion, not that I’d envisioned any reunion whatsoever, but . . .
I was about to fall to pieces, thank him for finding me, tell him he meant something to me—a maelstrom of feelings bleeding out all over the place.
But then he flicked at the bottom of my dress, derision curling his lips. “What is this tat you are wearing.”
I shuddered in the hideously shiny dress that was barely long enough to cover the cheeks of my ass. Then I drew my shoulders back and met the icy intensity of his eyes.
“I didn’t choose it.” I glared at him, nearly undone by his frosty attitude. “I don’t like it either.”
At that precise moment, a woman’s shriek came from the direction of the stairwell. Rising up on my tiptoes, I finally spied Valeria. Roberto, the coward, sought to slink away, and it appeared he was taking her with him.
He smacked her heavily on the side of her head before jerking her in front of him.
I pointed, shouting, “You have to stop him!”
“Why?” Arkady’s clenched jaw bulging, he seemed even less pleased than just seconds before.
“She’s innocent.” I tugged at his arm. “Please, Arkady. You know what Roberto’s capable of. He’s vile! Besides, she’s Russian too!”
His eyes narrowed on me, glacially blue. “That does not mean I owe her anything.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Kirill muttered, having come to see what the commotion was about. “Either you kill the pizda or I will.”
“Fine. I want him dead too.” New fierceness warped Arkady’s features, and I just knew he was remembering all the taunts Roberto had flung at him, and me, yesterday.
Shifting his wrathful focus to the bastard dragging Valeria away, he unsheathed the huge knife he’d used to kill Sabato. From clear across the garage, he let it fly. The blade whirled end over end before plunging straight into Roberto’s back.
Releasing the girl, he howled in pain, reaching around to try to dislodge the knife. His cry of pain got cut short when Valeria slid behind him and, eyes scrunched tight, she jammed the blade in even deeper. Roberto stumbled to his knees then slumped face first to the ground.
Valeria hurried to me, tears streaking down her face. I hugged her tightly even though I didn’t know what Arkady’s cold demeanor meant for me, much less her.
“Give her to me.” Yury’s deep baritone voice boomed from behind me.
I knew I’d asked all I could of these mafia men, so I turned her over to another’s care. At least I hoped she would be looked after properly.
“Come.” All but barking his command, Arkady yanked on my wrist.
It was only then that I heard the shrillness of police sirens approaching.
With airport security descending on the scene soon too, I understood his haste, yet he hadn’t once touched me with anything but brusqueness.
He boosted me into his SUV, and I watched as the others in the Bratva followed suit. Within moments, we sped from the garage, just like yesterday but with a much different outcome.
Driving away from all those dead bodies and the man who would’ve made my life a living hell, I remained shaken.
It had happened so fast . . . I could hardly control the chattering of my teeth, and Arkady only made the shock worse. He wouldn’t look at me. He didn’t talk to me.
He flipped on the heat with a slight sideways glance, but I needed his touch more than anything else.
Miraculously, we got away from Logan without being apprehended.
We were miles down the road when I heard a muffled noise and a thump from the back of the vehicle.
“What is that?” I turned in my seat.
“Hmmph,” was all Arkady said.
I knew not to press him. Clearly he was pissed off about something. Perhaps the fact he’d put his entire Bratva and his brothers in jeopardy to rescue me.
He turned into the back part of the compound at The Cat and the Sickle when I would’ve expected him to take me straight home.
To his house.
Maybe he was going to cut ties with me now?
I was still so bewildered when he parked inside one of the loading bays, I sat ensconced inside the SUV, listening to another stifled groan from the back.