There was no way I was walking away from him now. “What sort of information?”
His jaw ticked, and he turned his attention back to the road. “Hampton hasn’t called in his re-enforcements. He’s doing all this on his own right now. Konstantin also gave me the location of his apartment. Apparently there’s shit in there that will implicate me if I don’t get rid of it.”
I thought back to the wall I had seen when Jon had taken me, the pictures he had and the information I had no idea how he had gotten. “He’s right,” I murmured. “There are things in there that he could use against us.” Now that I was choosing a side, I was in as much danger and trouble as Gavril was. They could haul me in to pit me against my husband now, even use me as bait to get him to save me. It made me sick to my stomach that that was a possibility.
“I have to get to it before he starts calling in favors,” Gavril stated tightly. “That war decimated my forces, Naomi. I don’t have the manpower right now to take on the FBI. If Hampton pulls them in, we are done for.”
It wasn’t a good feeling to know that everything Gavril had worked so hard for was now gone. He had lost men he had trusted, men that had willingly gone into this war with him because of me and the secret that Gavril had tried to keep from them. “I’m sorry.”
Gavril turned down another road, and I recognized the signs of the city up ahead. “What do you have to apologize for?” he asked, slowing his speed.
“This is all my fault,” I told him, pulling my hand away from his leg so that I could twist both hands in my lap. “If I had told you the truth from the very beginning, then you wouldn’t have presented me as Sveta, and the Krasnaya Bratva wouldn’t have wanted to get revenge on you. Jon would never have come after you if I wasn’t here.” I knew I was rambling, but it was all the truth. I had dragged the Belaya Bratva into this, not the other way around.
Gavril abruptly pulled the truck to the side of the road and put it in park before his angry gaze rounded on me. “Is that what you think?” he asked in a deadly calm voice. “That you caused this war for me?”
I swallowed hard, shame and regret pouring out of me. “Without me in this, you wouldn’t be here and your men would be alive.” It was going to be the guilt I lived with for the rest of my life. I had been a direct cause of Anatoly and Yuri’s deaths. They would still be alive if they hadn’t been trying to protect me, and regardless of how Gavril saw it, I would believe that until my dying breath.
Gavril let out a hollow laugh, rubbing a hand over his face. “Naomi, this was going to happen regardless. Even if I’d somehow managed to secure a treaty with the Krasnaya and had gotten them to come over without your assistance, they would have turned on me one day. They would have tried to take over my Bratva. I believe that 100 percent. You just accelerated the timeline.”
I didn’t believe him. How could I? He’d had this grand plan to take over the Krasnaya, and I had messed it up by not being the woman he needed at the time, plus waiting until it was too late to tell him the truth about my identity. If I had fought harder for him to believe me, then perhaps I would have been killed, and he would have eventually gotten what he wanted. “Don’t lie to me.”
Gavril’s eyes widened just a fraction. “I’m telling you the fucking truth, Naomi. Don’t insult me by thinking I’m trying to sugarcoat anything when it comes to this war.”
I stared back at him. “And don’t try to tell me that all of this shit with Jon would have happened regardless. I brought him into your life. I brought him to your doorstep, and now you have to wage another war against the FBI!”
Gavril reacted so quickly that I barely got the last word out before he was pressing me up against the truck door, his jaw clenched. “Do you really think I give a shit about him, Naomi? I can squish him like the little ant that he is. He’s a fucking coward for not coming out today. He claims that he loves you, but I’m telling you, if I’d received the pictures that we sent? I would have been leading the fucking charge in to rescue you.”
My heart wrenched in my chest, my hands trembling as I brought them up to frame his face. “That is why I love you and not him,” I said softly, realizing that our discussion had gotten way out of control. Jon thought he loved me in his own sick little way, but he wasn’t willing to risk his life for me. Gavril would though. Months ago I wouldn’t have believed it, but now, looking into his eyes, I saw that he would fight the devil if that was what it took to keep our child and me safe.
But with all that heroism, I could lose him, and that was unacceptable to me. I didn’t want to live my life without him. I would much rather us be on the run for the rest of our lives if it meant that he was still alive and breathing. Gavril didn’t understand that bit. He could give me everything, but if he wasn’t there to share it with me, it meant nothing. “And if something happens to you, I will die, Gavril Kirilenko. You understand me? This life is not worth living if you aren’t at my side. I need for you to stop running headlong into bullets and danger, my love. I need for you to live, for me, for us, for our child.” I needed for him to see that there was a bigger picture to all this.
We had a family to protect, a lifetime to protect.
Some of the anger left his face before he pressed his forehead to mine. “I’m sorry. Fuck. I just, this isn’t your fault, Naomi. It’s mine for thinking I could steal away a woman and command a Bratva with her. I got bold, cocky, and now I’m stuck with the results.”
“So you are stuck with me now?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood between us. We didn’t need to be fighting now. We needed each other if we were going to have the future that both of us deserved.
Gavril lifted his head, and I was taken aback by the tenderness in his gaze. “Stuck is a strong word, moye serdtse. More like…what is it that you call it? Ball and chain?”
I pushed at his chest, and he went back to the driver’s side with a laugh. Even after everything that had happened today, I needed for him to feel like this was worth it in the end. That his family, this family we had created, was going to be worth the pain and hurt that had come with attempting to defend it. Gavril lived in the darkness.
I wanted him to see the light, to feel the light that he was creating with me.
Gavril pulled the truck back out onto the road. “Where are we going?” I asked after a moment, putting aside our discussion for now.
He sighed as he took the on-ramp to the interstate. “Back to the mansion.”
I was confused. “But I thought you didn’t want the fight to come to our home?”
“I don’t have a fucking choice,” he answered a moment later. “I barely have enough men that are able to stand, Naomi. The mansion is the only place I can ensure that you will be safe, and it’s easily defendable now with what I have left.”
I didn’t like his answer at all. He was planning to do something that he wasn’t sharing with me, and it bothered me.
Oh, it bothered me a great deal.
Still, I kept my thoughts to myself as he drove us home, knowing that whatever he had planned, I was going to demand that he not shut me out. Gavril had come a long way in trusting me, and I in trusting him. We couldn’t lose ourselves to this war. I wouldn’t let it take us and this thing we had found between us recently.