Two thoughts occur to me at once.
One: I can and will exact revenge on these assholes too.
But two: I'm in great danger here. Because if they somehow find out I have Poval's daughter, then my game is up, and I'm a dead man.
I consider telling them it's a different boss. Ravil or the Moscow pakhan Kuznets. But instead, I just grunt the affirmative and let them think it's Poval. Hopefully they're scared enough of him that they won't touch Kat. Now I just have to be very, very certain she doesn't get the chance to talk to any of them.
Kat
* * *
I tried to get free of the zip tie while Adrian was gone. Tried to reach his laptop where he apparently was able to text my father, to no avail.
He returns with two bowls of some kind of meat stew or chili and cuts me free. We sit in our window seat to eat.
The food is nasty, but we both finish. Adrian stacks my bowl on top of his and sets it beside him.
“Please tell me they have chocolate Häagan Dazs here.”
A hint of a smile appears around Adrian’s lips. “I wish,” he says. “I doubt it. But I’ll tell you what they do have.”
“What?”
“Vodka. Lots of it. They were already half in the tank when I got our food.”
“Tell me again why we’re on a ship? And you now know we’re going the wrong direction if you want to get to my father, right?”
Adrian’s expression turns grumpy, and I think he’s not going to answer, but after a moment, he says, “I thought it was a mistake at first, too, but now I think fate led me to this ship.”
“Why?”
He shakes his head. “Your father will come to me when I give him a meeting location.”
“You want him on your own turf.”
He studies me. “You’re more worried for me than you are for your father, aren’t you?”
I nod. “Yes. Not that you don’t seem totally competent at killing someone.” My gaze travels to the four green X’s on his knuckles. “Were those kills?”
He doesn’t answer, which I know means they are. “You think your father is invincible. That’s normal for a daughter to believe.”
“No, it’s logical considering you’re one guy with a very kind soul despite your villainous behavior, and my father has armies of assholes who have no souls whatsoever.”
Adrian’s expression turns sour, his upper lip curling. Now it’s his turn to look out the porthole instead of at me.
“I’m sorry about your sister. About Nadia.”
He shifts his gaze back to me, and I see a world of pain in his eyes. “I’m sorry about this. About using you this way. It was wrong.”
“But you’re still going ahead with it.” I say it as a statement, rather than a question.
Adrian nods. “I can’t turn back now.”
“You can,” I plead. “I won’t tell. I won’t tell my father who you are. I’ll make up another story. I’ll tell him I sent the pictures to shock him. You have the ones with me smiling, right?”
Adrian tunnels his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry, dietka. I have to finish this.”
I reach for his hand and interlace my fingers over the tops of his. He stares at them, like he’s confused by the gesture. “I don’t want you to die.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t plan on it, Kat. But I’m willing. And that’s probably what makes me bulletproof.”
My eyes fill with tears. “Don’t believe that.”
He reaches for me and pulls me to his side of the window seat, settling me between his legs, leaning back against his wide chest. His arms wrap around me.
I breathe in his pine and leather scent. “Adrian?” I ask after a stretch of silence.
“Da?”
“If you did succeed…”
He goes still, listening. His breath feathers across my right ear.
“You offered to take care of me out of a sense of responsibility.”
His lips find the shell of my ear, and he toys with it but doesn’t answer. “Of course, I am responsible,” he says after a stretch, and I want to crawl in a hole and die.
Of course, Adrian Turgenev doesn’t want to keep me. It’s absurd I would even hope such a thing.
“But…”
I hold my breath.
He kills me by not going on.
“But what?”
“But…if we’d just met….if we were both just strangers at that rave, and I took you home?”
My heart hammers in my chest so fast I think I’m going to pass out. “Yes?” I choke.
“I would never let you go.”
My breath comes in on a sharp sob.
“Never,” he repeats.
And then I’m crying. Real tears. I have no explanation for why they’re falling, but Adrian doesn’t get upset about them.
He bends his knees up around me, so I’m cradled not just by his arms, but by his whole body, and he kisses the top of my head, gently rocking me like a baby.