Maybe my father was right. Perhaps he should send a jet and pick us up tomorrow. ThePakhanwill probably be offended, but maybe that’s what needs to happen anyway. I mean, how safe are Lucky and I here? Frankie might be fine, but the two of us? Who the hell knows?
“Call the doctor and ask him what’s taking so long,” I say, anxiety starting to creep in.
“Always so eager,” he says, the Kirill I know slipping through for a moment. It loosens the knot in my chest, though I refuse to let him notice.
He picks up his phone and starts speaking in Russian, and I have never wanted to learn another language more than I do now.
God, the man is sexy. Russian shouldn’t sound this sexy. It’s a language designed for threats and arguments. But on his tongue… it becomes something rich and molten, deep and controlled and sinfully masculine. It does all kinds of unfortunate things to me.
“You’ll be happy to hear that Dr. Sokolov is on his way,” he says once he hangs up. “Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes now.”
“Well, thank God for small miracles.”
Kirill’s black eyes soften as they settle on me, and I can’t help returning a small smile of my own. The tender moment shatters when Dr. Sokolov finally appears, sweaty and out of breath, as if he’d just sprinted up a million stairs. I wouldn’t put it past Kirill to have threatened the poor man into getting here sooner rather than later.
It’s… kind of sweet.
No, Stella. NOT sweet.
Ugh.
A man threatening another man’s life should not be misconstrued as a romantic gesture.
Jesus, woman!
And yet, for me, this is the closest thing to a romantic gesture I’ve ever gotten.
“There. Happy now?” Kirill asks an hour later, after the good doctor confirmed I no longer needed any bed rest.
“Ecstatic,” I say, unable to stop smiling, my arm hooked through his as we walk through the vast grounds of his estate.
My parents’ home is large, but it’s quaint compared to the old Salvatore mansion where we hold most of our family’s obligatory parties and dinners. But the Petrov mansion? It needs its own zip code, with how massive it is.
“TheBratvamust be doing very well for themselves if this is home.”
“It’s not my home. It’s my brother’s.”
“Mikhail, you mean?” He nods. “So, where is your home? In Moscow?”
Kirill’s brows lift. “My home is in Chicago.”
The way he looks at me when he says it—with those piercing eyes digging into my soul—nearly knocks the breath out of me.
“What a coincidence. So is mine,” I joke, or at least try to.
Kirill lets out a small chuckle as he keeps leading me along the path, and I take in the beautiful garden as we go.
“Let me guess, aside from your brother beingPakhan, he has a green thumb too?”
“Far from it.” Kirill laughs. “This is all Elena’s doing. She likes spending time here in the summer and planting whatever seeds she can convince Misha to buy for her.”
“Amazon doesn’t deliver out here?”
Another laugh. God, how the sound seeps under my skin.
“Even if they did,” Kirill replies, completely unaware of his effect on me, “Misha would never allow anyone to know where we live.”
“I get it. My dad is the same way.” I shrug.
