4
Manya
Ididn’t want to wake up.
I wanted to drift back down into that heavy, weighted dream of nothingness. That welcoming blackness that once might have concerned me was now a kind of pseudo-escape that I could only manage while unconscious.
What I wanted seemed to matter very little these days though.
When my eyes did open, there was none of the haziness that might have clouded them upon first waking. Not with how long I had laid there, squeezing them shut, trying to pretend that I could force the day back into the abyss of nothingness. Instead, I saw a clear image of the night before lain out like a crime scene before me.
The papers and books that had lined the desk so neatly were now strewn across the wooden floor like confetti, thrown without heed to what they had been or what importance they might have served. A statue of a Grecian bust was inches away from my head, and the hand carved clock originally positioned beside it was now digging into my shoulder.
I lay where Dmitry had eventually left me, naked and bruised across so many separate stretches of my skin that it almost looked like a roadmap.
It had been the only respite I had been able to think of, the only comfort or promise that I could make him. We were under the gum again, as it seemed we had been since the moment we said ‘I do’, if not before that even. Fighting for our survival, fighting for any chance at happiness…
The night before had been us fighting for dominance, over and over again. From the blow job I’d started giving him to him fucking me against the bathroom sink . . . in the middle of the bathroom floor . . . in the shower. We’d left the bathroom for the office, screwing against the bookcases and over his father’s old desk. It didn’t seem to matter what surface was utilized, it was an exchange of physicality and emotion so intense that I had barely been able to keep my eyes from crossing by the second hour.
His absence now left me feeling almost bereft.
His comforting heat no longer warmed my back, with his words low, dark, and dirty in my ear. He’d snuck out half an hour after we had finally collapsed, spent, in the middle of the office floor. I’d woken only long enough to see him slipping out, the sound of the keypad on the other side confirming the room was secure once more.
And now I was alone.
That was a state that I really, really didn’t want to be in.
Alone meant alone with my thoughts. It meant being forced to face things I wasn’t sure I was ready, or ever would be ready, to face. I forced myself into a seated position with a grimace, pushing my hand into the small of my back, and looking around at the evidence of the night before.
He’d never answered my question about who would be watching his back. I’d never been given a chance to persuade him to take Shura.
Which only served to make me worry even more.
Dmitry had put it so plainly the night before. He was my husband, and I his wife. Like nothing else, surrounding or separate from that, mattered. But it did to me.
Dmitry and I had ascertained nothing other than the fact that the two of us were solid. I knew that his father hadn’t ordered the hit, I didn’t need to hear that from him. Shura had put that into enough perspective for me. It was only that no one had the answers to the new questions that had arisen. No one but the man who had killed my mother. And he now lay in the ground himself.
The dress I had been wearing the previous night was now a crumpled pile in the bathroom doorway, tossed out from when it had been ripped over my head. Even as I crawled over to it, I could see the tear in the seam of the shoulder, further evidence of how need-fueled the night had been. I wiggled into it, stretching my sore, bruised muscles as much, and as painlessly, as possible before slowly pushing myself to my feet.
The room was a wreck.
An overwhelming anxiety brimmed within me at the thought of having to stay here until Dmitry showed up, whenever that would be.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered, pushing my hair back from my face and wishing that I’d had a hairband on my wrist when we arrived. That, at least, might have been left on me. There was no way I was going to crawl around on my hands and knees to find the bobby pins that had been shaken from my hair the night before.
I sighed, casting a weary eye around the room and deciding I would have to clean the place.
I grabbed a pendulum off the floor and replaced it carefully on the corner of the desk nearest me. The big items weren’t so bad, displaced across the room like scattered artifacts. The real hassle was the paperwork.
“Because a mob boss, Manya, is more than just a hired gun. I doworktoo—you think I don’t? I put food on this table with all the work I do. The work of two accountants, a boxer, a soldier, and a sheriff.” I snorted at the thought of my father’s words. He always used to shout that after me whenever I teased him about his profession.
He wasn’t wrong though. The papers I picked up were littered with contracts and invoices containing payable accounts and how much was yet to be paid. It was Papa Koalistia’s work laid out on paper. Which was probably why there was a whole half wall of wooden filing cabinets off to one side of his desk.
This room would be a fucking treasure trove of a find for the DEA, CIA, or any kind of office even half aligned with the law.
I snorted, placing the pile I had already collected on the desk and going to get more. It was only when I reached halfway across the room that I stopped. I could blame it on the coffee, on the situation, on about any other surrounding factor . . . but the lightbulb in my head took that long to go off.
It took me just that long to realize what I had been thinking about, my body turning on the spot and my eyes narrowing at the file cabinets.Would Papa Koalistia really keep all of his files even from before he was Pakhan?Something told me he would.