I laughed, and the sound came so ugly. “What do I want to know? Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “Okay. Cool. How about you start with what I keep asking. Who the fuck are you?”
This man looked at me straight-faced and said, “Your husband.”
I threw both hands up. “See? This is what I mean. Stop playing with me, Targen. Tell me the truth.”
I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, willing myself not to spiral. Not now.Anxiety be still.When I opened them, Targen was still watching me. I scowled at him. He sighed.
“Let’s go sit down,” he said quietly.
I looked around at the ditch, the broken truck, the blood, the bodies. “Sit where, Targen? On what? Somebody’s corpse?”
That made Juvie glance over.
“Damn,” he muttered. “She mad, mad.”
“Shut up, Juvie,” I snapped.
He lifted both hands. “A’ight.”
Somehow, Targen got the backend of the Yukon open. He pulled out a blanket. Walking, he shook it out before spreading it over a patch of grass a little way off the road. It was thankfully away from the bodies, but unfortunately, not so far that I couldn’t still see what had happened.
“I’m not sitting on no blanket like this some romantic picnic,” I spat.
“It ain’t romantic. Sit down anyway.”
He had the nerve to sound tired. I should’ve refused on principle. Instead, I walked over there and sat because I didn’t know how long my legs could stay standing. The minute I sat down, I realized how hard my whole body had been working to hold itself together. I felt exhausted.
Targen crouched in front of me first, then seemed to think better of that and sat on the grass a few feet away, forearms resting on his knees. He kept his body turned toward me, like he was waiting for me to ask what I wanted to know. For the first time since I’d met him, I looked at him and let myself fully process that I did not know this man.
Not really.
I didn’t know much beyond the fact that he was beautiful and charismatic and could make my body forget everything my mind told it. I didn’t know much beyond the fact that he could be gentle with me one second and terrifying the next. I didn’t know much beyond the fact that I had married him and right now that felt crazy as hell.
“Well? Talk,” I said.
He exhaled slowly.
“My father was apakhan. Bratva boss.”
I stared at him, and for a second, all I could hear was the blood rushing in my ears. “Bratva? Like the Russian mafia that be in my romance novels?”
A small smile curved his lips. “Probably not exactly like that, but yeah.”
I laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “Wow.”
“Theory—”
“Nah, let me have my wow. I deserve this wow,” I snapped.
He shut up.
I looked away from him and out toward the road. Mikhail was speaking low into a phone in Russian. Juvie had dragged the guns into a pile. And the late afternoon sun still looked warm and bright. That made me want to scream. It should not be possible for the day to stay beautiful after what had just happened.
“So, you’re in the mafia,” I repeated, staring down at my legs. “Your father is—was—the boss. Your brother is what? Now the boss?”
