Valeri comes back with several bottles of vodka and a handful of shot glasses.
“And so it begins,” I say with a laugh, watching him pour out a round. We all take one and down it with a toast. Nina gives me a huge grin when she doesn’t cough and then blushes at the wink I give her. We spend the afternoon laughing, eating, and drinking. I keep pushing more food at Nina, not wanting her to get sick again, while the others keep pounding back shots. Finally, I push her glass away when Valeri tries to refill it yet again.
“Stop trying to get my wife drunk.”
He laughs and fills my glass instead. Nina cups my face, her dark eyes slightly glassy from alcohol, but she’s not drunk, not yet anyway. “So protective,” she says with a big, loopy grin. “Like a big growly bear.”
They all laugh at that while I lift a brow at Nina. “Alcohol makes you bold, sweetheart.”
A giggle pops out before she can stop it. Her cheeks are flushed from all the drinking, and when she gets hot and rolls her long-sleeve tee up, Volodya sees the tattoo and leans closer.
“I see Nikolai hasn’t lost his touch,” he says, drawing everyone’s eyes to Nina’s inked forearm.
“Yeah, that did turn out nice,” Valeri agrees, leaning closer to inspect it. He taps on it and then points his finger at Nina. “That right there is stronger than your marriage certificate.” He turns to the guys and laughs. “Remember how Vasya always used to talk about how he’d never ink a woman.”
Nina looks at me in surprise. “You said that?”
“Like all the fucking time,” Valeri says, answering for me.
I shrug my shoulders, resting the flat of my hand against her stomach and pulling her tighter against me. “Before you I’d never met anyone I wanted to put my name on.”
The sweet smile that I love so much lights her face as she leans in to kiss me. I’ve always had a hard time believing in some sort of higher power, especially when so many men that I’ve killed have begged for God to save them, but, of course, he never did. The silence after their pleas for divine intervention is always so much more deafening than if an actual deity had responded with an audible no. I’m a firm believer that no one is looking down and in charge of this shit show we call life, but not even I can explain meeting Nina. The chances of it happening the way it did are so low that it would probably hit negative numbers if you tried to calculate it. It was like everything in our lives was leading us to that one moment where I would find her in that grimy hallway.
I may not be able to worship a god, but I can worship her, and I’ll happily spend the rest of my life doing it, because it wasn’t just her that was rescued that night. She’s saved me just as much as I’ve saved her.
Ruslan’s loud barks pull my attention back to the present. He’s chasing the others as they run to the beach with Valeri leading the way. Apparently he decided he needed to go for a swim. I’m not surprised to see that Volodya stayed behind. The man rarely relaxes. He’s taken over everything in Moscow and managed to keep it all running smoothly. I know he lives and breathes the Bratva, but the man needs to learn to relax. I tell him as much, earning me an angry scowl before he downs another shot and then reaches for more food.
“You’re one to talk,” he says, switching back to Russian. “Before Nina, you were just like me.”
It feels like a lifetime ago, but he’s not wrong. Before her, all I cared about was work, rarely taking even a moment for myself. Now, I just want to spend all my time with her, even though I know it’s not possible. I’ll never let my Bratva down, but she’s taught me how to find a balance between my work and personal life.
“I guess you just need to meet someone then,” I tease him.
“I meet lots of women, brother.”
“I mean one you want to keep.”
He gives a half-hearted laugh. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.” He eyes Nina on my lap. “You got damn lucky. She loves you, the real you. Not Vasya the Bratva boss that makes every woman wet her panties, but the real you, the man behind all that.”
I instinctively tighten my grip on Nina, knowing he’s right and fully aware of how fucking lucky I am. “You’ll find someone, too,” I tell him. “Probably when you least expect it, just like I did.”
“You know how I feel about it, Vasya. We all saw what it did to mom when dad died.”
“Yeah, but you can’t close yourself off because of that. Plus, you’re a lot harder to kill than he was. Dad got lazy. We both know it. He let his guard down.”
He thinks about what I’ve said, but I can tell he’s going to stubbornly refuse to believe me. After a few seconds, he turns his attention to other things. I watch the transformation as his eyes take on a darker look, and I know he’s focused on work again. “We’re going after that redheaded bitch tomorrow night?”
“We are. One way or another, we’re getting some fucking answers.”
“Good.”
Volodya hates sex traffickers as much as I do, and even though he doesn’t show it in an obvious way like Valeri does, I can tell he’s taking what happened to Nina personally. She’s family now, and family means everything to him.
We sit and drink and make plans for tomorrow while the others swim and I keep pushing food at Nina. I’m so focused on her that I don’t realize how long it’s been since I’ve eaten anything. The vodka starts to hit me hard, and when she looks back at me, she laughs and cups my face.
“I’ve never seen you drunk before.”
“You’re not seeing it now,zolotse. I’m fine.”
