Naomi’s eyes widened, and she stepped out of my touch. “What? No, he didn’t touch me. Roman was, well, this is all a big misunderstanding.”
I didn’t ignore the fact that she had called him Roman again, every muscle in my body tense as to how he could be so familiar with my wife. It didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, but the way that Naomi was looking at me, I knew that she believed he had been nothing but cordial to her, and for right now, that was enough.
Naomi was fine. She was standing before me. “The baby,” I pressed, my eyes flickering to her stomach.
“Is fine,” she answered softly, her hand going to rest there. “We both are.”
A breath I hadn’t realized I was holding finally released itself, and I wasn’t so sure I liked the way I felt.
Hell, I felt like I needed to sit down suddenly. I had expected the worst, but Naomi looked happy and cared for.
Damn, I was going to owe Marchetti a favor, and I hated owing anyone anything.
“Why don’t we go into the study?” Marchetti said, breaking up the reunion. I reached for Naomi’s hand and pulled her to my side instinctively, enjoying when she wrapped her arm around my waist and held it there.
She wanted to touch me just as badly as I wanted to touch her. I would be lying if my cock didn’t rise to life at that moment. After everything I had done to her, everything I had said, she was still standing at my fucking side when she could easily have appealed to Marchetti for help. After all, it seemed that there was history between them.
If it was that kind of history, well, I wasn’t sure how I would handle that news. Marchetti might not have his head attached to his body, and that would be unfortunate.
The Mafia don arched a brow, waiting patiently for us to follow him, so I started to move, keeping Naomi at my side as I did so. What I really wanted to do was find somewhere where we could be alone for a few minutes and let me just drink in the sight of her, but we also had business to take care of, so the reunion would have to wait.
“Are you all right, Gavril?” she asked softly as we followed Marchetti down a hallway.
All right? Fuck, no, I wasn’t all right. I had just gone through the worst part of my lifetime and somehow managed to get through it without losing my shit. I had nearly lost Naomi. I didn’t think she realized what that had done to me, but I was going to tell her.
I was going to tell her how I felt. “I’m fine,” I growled, my eyes trained on the back of Marchetti’s head. “Though I’m curious to know how you know him.”
She sighed, her arm tightening around my waist. “Not like you would think. It’s, um, complicated.”
As long as it wasn’t sexual, I could deal with it.
Maybe.
We entered the study, and Marchetti waved at the chairs before the desk. “Sit,” he stated, taking up the chair behind the desk. “Can I get you anything?”
I shook my head, rubbing my damp palms on my pants. I wanted to selfishly pull Naomi into my lap so that I could feel her closeness and know that I wasn’t fucking dreaming this shit up but decided that having her in the chair next to me was enough for now.
Marchetti looked as if he was holding court over us, likely knowing that it was killing me to sit here. “Your wife and mine are best friends,” he started out, surprising me. “I believe they met in college?”
“We did,” Naomi answered, glancing in my direction. “She was the one that saved me.”
I clenched my hand into a tight fist as I realized she was talking about the moments that had led to a lifetime of pain and fear from Hampton. Right now, Marchetti’s wife deserved a fucking medal in my book.
“Ilsa is a police officer,” Marchetti supplied, drawing my attention back to him. “She and Naomi both ended up at Paradise one night.”
“It was supposed to be a fun night,” Naomi grumbled.
“One of those nights,” Marchetti emphasized.
I knew what he was talking about. One of the auction nights. I had attended one or two myself as a vendor, but never as a buyer.
“Ilsa took my place,” Naomi said after a moment, twisting her hands together in her lap. “And she was purchased by Roman.”
“Only because she was identified as a police officer,” he added, his expression dark. “Plus, Dmitri Orlov was all over her.”
I remembered Orlov’s son and couldn’t blame Roman for getting Ilsa out of his clutches. He was a slimy bastard that thought the fucking world revolved around him. When he died, no one shed a fucking tear.
“To cut a long story short,” Roman continued on. “After some twists and turns, Naomi came into the picture when we needed to get his daughter back to her family. Naomi, as you have realized, looks a lot like Sveta.” He clenched his fist on the desk. “I wanted to kill Stanislav for bringing that young girl into this, and there was no way I was going to subject her to this life, to what he probably had planned.”