Page 67 of Obsessed Bratva Daddy
"You walked into the restaurant where I was having dinner with my cousin. He had just flown in from Singapore. You did not know who he was. You did not ask. You hit him in the back booth before he could say his own name. I went out to the sidewalk after you and the rain had started and I told you that you had hurt my family. I told you that I had asked you to take the man off me and you had not done it. You grabbed my arm in front of the whole restaurant and I said the words I had never said to you before. I told you that you were scaring me. I told you not to follow me. I told you that if your man walked me to my door I would call the police. And then we did not speak for three days. The morning of the fourth day was the day you got into the car."
I had told it cleanly. I had not cried through it. I was proud of that.
"I used to think you being obsessed with me was a problem. After I lost you? I figured out pretty fast that I'd take you clingy over a ghost any day of the week."
He did not laugh. He did something better. He drew a breath in and let it out slow, and his hand at my nape tightened like he was anchoring himself to the words.
Then he smiled. Small. Sweet at the corner of his mouth that was not split.
"You like me?"
I nodded against his collarbone. I felt his next breath move through his chest, against my cheek.
"Me too."
It was so small. It almost broke me.
"How can you be sure? You don't even remember me."
He turned his face into the top of my hair. His voice came down through the bone of his chest into my ear.
"My head might not remember you. My heart did."
I lifted my face. The scar at his temple caught the lamplight. I kissed him carefully, mindful of the split, slow and tender, and he kissed me back the same way. Neither of us was in a state for more. Neither of us needed more.
"Rest your body," I said into the corner of his jaw.
He made a sound that was almost a laugh and not quite, and his hand slid down my back and stayed. I watched him fall asleep. I kept my palm flat over his heart so I would feel it if it stopped. It did not. It went on, slow and certain, under my hand.
I slept eventually. I did not remember closing my eyes.
I woke before the sky did. Daniil's breathing was deep and even, his bruised cheek turned away from the pillow so the closure would not lift. I eased out from under his arm an inch at a time, then tucked the blanket back where I had been. He did not stir.
I pulled on jeans and a sweater and my coat and went out.
The grounds at that hour were a different country. Grass white at the tips with frost, bare trees standing black against a sky that had not made up its mind yet about being morning. My breath was a soft cloud in front of me. I walked because my body wanted to walk, past the kitchen garden, past the line of yew, toward the long low outbuilding where the cars were kept.
I came around the back corner of it and stopped.
Pyotr was there, his broad back to me, phone to his ear. He had not heard me coming. The gravel had given me away to no one because I had stepped onto the strip of grass without thinking.
I held very still.
His voice was lower than the one he used at the gate. Harder, too. Stripped.
"Tomasz. They got back near midnight. Both walking, both carrying marks." A pause. "No. The brothers do not suspect me. Not a glance, not a question. Mikhail is blaming a leak from the office side."
Another pause. He shifted his weight.
"The recon last night went the way you wanted. Bruised, not buried. We can move on the rest whenever you say."
My fingertips went cold. My breath had stopped without my permission. I made it start again, slow and quiet, through my nose.
He listened to whatever came back down the line. He grunted once.
"Understood."
He took the phone from his ear and slid it into the right pocket of his coat. He rolled his neck. He started to turn.
