CHAPTER 18
Gavril
“And the other shipments are on time. I think that by the end of the week, we should be fully stocked and ready for delivery.”
I drummed my fingers on my desk as Anatoly droned on in his report, filling me in on every shipment that had come in over the last week.
Right now it felt like the last fucking year for as long as he had been talking.
“Tell me,” I answered once he stopped to take a breath. “Don’t you ever think about just typing that shit in an email and sending it to me?”
Anatoly glowered at me over the paper pad in his hands. “You know that emails can be traced and used against you if they are found in a court of law.”
Fair enough. Still, I arched a brow. “Have you been watching CSI again?”
“Respectfully, Pakhan.” He sighed, placing the pad in his lap. “Fuck you.”
I chuckled, glad to have a moment of just fucking around. The last few days had been extremely tense, so much so I felt like I had spent more time on the phone than sleeping. We’d had a couple of ships stopped by customs, and that had created a shitstorm from there, forcing me to open up my wallet to pay my way out of the mess before the FBI could get wind.
Probably the reason I was testier than normal was that the issues had pulled me away from Naomi’s bed, and I hadn’t been properly fucked in at least five days.
It sucked. “So,” I said instead, stopping my fingers momentarily. “Where does that leave us?”
Anatoly squinted at the paper. Normally, I would have given him shit about not wearing his prescription glasses, but I just didn’t have it in me right now. Besides, the fucker deserved a month-long vacation for what he had been able to move around for the Bratva over the past week.
Without him, I would have been fucked.
“We should be okay,” he finally said, clearing his throat. “I’ve had the ships map out another route for now, one that hasn’t been hit in some time. I think we need to continually shift the routes for the next month or two until the heat dies down.” He rubbed his forehead, suddenly looking exhausted. “I think it’s all the shit that has happened over the last few months that has everyone up in arms. And those fucking fools in Moscow certainly haven’t made things easier.”
I couldn’t agree more. Between Orlov’s death and the shit that had gone down with Marchetti, the Bratva was in a state of mess. Me taking the helm with my wedding to “Sveta” wasn’t going to straighten it out overnight.
To say nothing about that dwarf in the Kremlin beating the drums of war.
“I have more,” I said, holding the best for last.
“Oh?” Anatoly asked, arching his brow.
“Vladimir Surov called me,” I started out, thinking about the phone call I had gotten earlier. “We are needed at home.”
Anatoly looked surprised. “Now? You think now is a good time to be heading there?”
I blew out a breath, turning to stare out over the city. “I don’t have a fucking choice. The shipments are coming in, and before I can allow it to roll out, I need to inspect it.”
Surov was my man in St. Petersburg, Russia, my birth home and where the Belaya Bratva had started out. Normally I handled everything over the phone or through various video conferences, but these shipments were coming through Ukraine and the Caucasus. And they were too important not to lay eyes on them first.
“And your wife?” Anatoly asked softly, pushing out of his chair. “What of her?”
Another thought I had been thinking about all fucking day. I could leave her behind, knowing that she would be well taken care of by my closest guards and Vera. I could even leave Anatoly, even though I needed him to be at my side when I returned to Russia in case shit went down.
He had an ulterior position in the Bratva. In the event that something happened to me, he had been instructed to shut everything down and destroy any thought that I had been walking on this earth.
And now he was also charged with getting not only Vera but also Naomi somewhere safe.
I couldn’t afford to leave him here.
“I’m going to take her with me,” I finally decided. Maybe it was selfish of me to want to have her at my side, but she was my fucking wife. It was time that she met the rest of my family, though I had to admit I was nervous about that particular part.
“Well, you are the boss,” Anatoly finally said. “That should be a happy reunion then. Before you just show up with a woman on your arm whose wedding they weren’t invited to, I hope you prep them. Especially Maria Afanasyevna, charming woman that she is.”
I ignored Anatoly’s barb at my mother. “They know about her,” I answered darkly.
I had sent word that I had wed Sveta Orlov to cement our family’s name and fortune, but the woman that lounged in my mansion right now wasn’t Sveta. I doubted that my mother or my sisters had ever met the real one, but I had no real desire to explain things to them.
“I will make the arrangements then,” Anatoly finally said. “It will be good to see home.”
I didn’t answer, and when he left, I turned toward the desk, where paper littered the surface, begging for my attention. I was fucking exhausted, and the only thought I had was heading to the mansion. Going home was going to be draining; I was well aware of that particular bit of information, but it was necessary.
I couldn’t ignore this.
So, I left the office and winced as I walked out into the sweltering heat of the LA afternoon, climbing into my own personal Porsche instead of letting a driver take me home. Occasionally I liked to forgo the formalities of having guards and drivers for the sake of my own sanity and the peace and quiet that I needed.
Hell, I needed to do a lot more thinking than I cared to admit, and all signs right now pointed to the woman who had occupied my thoughts greatly.
On the nights I made it home late, I eased into her bedroom, thinking about climbing into the bed next to her and losing myself in her warm, willing body. It wouldn’t be hard to be a selfish bastard, and I knew that Naomi would open her legs for me. She couldn’t get enough of me, and the feeling was mutual.
But I couldn’t bring myself to wake her, instead making sure the covers were over her body before throwing myself into my bed and leaving before the sun was up. Even Vera had given me a once-over on the rare occasion she had seen me leave, likely thinking poorly of me for abandoning “Sveta” like some heartless monster.
My jaw tightened as I zoomed through traffic, heading toward the mansion. This was the cost of my dreams, of a future that would put me on top of the fucking world. I knew the sacrifices. I knew what I had to do, and before Naomi came into my life, it hadn’t been an issue.
And now? Now, she filled my thoughts more than I cared for her to do. She made me feel, made me want to spend time with her outside of our arrangement.
I wanted to put a smile on her face. I wanted to hear her laugh.
My hands clenched the steering wheel, the bite of leather into my palms. I didn’t like the way my thoughts went, not at all.
That hadn’t been the plan, yet Naomi was slowly working her way into my life, and I felt, well, I felt helpless. This wasn’t some fucker who was screwing me over. That was an easy fix that would take very little effort to make go away.
Naomi was my wife, well, at least in the eyes of everyone that had been at our wedding or had seen the splash of tabloids. There were pictures, pictures that were grainy but not hard to tell that I’d had the same blonde at my side on two occasions now: once at the restaurant and once at the airfield.