He was crying harder than I’d ever heard him cry, and he was likely scared and hungry, so he needed his mom to be rational.
Wiping my face with the back of my hand, I croaked, “I don’t know how we’ll ever be able to thank you, but we’ll find a way.”
“Just raise your sons to be the bear their mother is. The world is a dark place, and bears are always needed to bring light back into it.”
Bear—that’s what he’d called me earlier. Before I could call him out on calling me a bear in Russian only minutes ago—something Dmitri called me often, using it instead of mama bear—my name was bellowed underneath us.
“We’re up here,” I called back, closing my eyes with relief, as Sacha’s suddenly tense body at the new voice relaxed under me.
“Fuck, is that Donna?” Dad asked as the footsteps pounded across the wooden floor.
“What’s left of Makar is over here, too,” Bogdan told him.
It was Dmitri who reached us first, his face so like his brother’s, creased with worry. “Are you okay, krasavitsa?”
Shooting him a smile, I glanced at Sacha over my shoulder. “He just called me beautiful, but he calls me a mama bear like you did, too, so don’t let him fool you.”
One side of his lips lifted in a half-smile. “Noted, mama bear. Now perhaps we should get up so you can feed your little lion before they hear him in Siberia. He’s missing his brother, so they should be together.”
Leaning down, Dmitri took my hand and helped me to my feet, then looked at Sacha. “Spasibo, drug.”
Nothing else was said as they shook hands, but the weight of the moment wasn’t lost on me as Bogdan and Dad joined us.
I don’t think I’d ever get over what happened today. And the mental image of how close Hendrix came to losing his life would likely give me nightmares for the rest of my life. But both of my boys and family were safe, and that’s all I needed to know.
Until Bogdan said something that changed that.
“Taras is at the cabin at the back of the grounds. That’s where your family hid Ribeiro, Sacha.”
I wanted to go and help him, but I didn’t have the strength after what’d happened here. I also needed to feed Hendrix before my little boy screamed himself sick. This was a different type of helplessness than I’d felt as I drove here only an hour ago.
This time, I knew Taras could take care of himself and the situation. There was no way he’d leave us. Not ever.
Chapter Thirty-One
Taras
“Well, now that Donna has your desgraçado, Fedorov, your mouth must have a—como você diz—a bitter taste in it, não? A bit like all of those gifts I left for you, to let you know I was thinking of you.”
For all of the thought and planning behind the tunnel to my house and the operation they carried out, the cabin itself was anticlimactic. Then again, he had to know his operation and the plan he’d spent so long coming up with had failed.
Positioned about three miles away from the main house, it was a small, almost quaint setup, but it was also rotting and needed maintenance.
At a glance, it would likely be the last place anyone would pay attention to, assuming the derelict building would be too dangerous to live in. But judging by the mess inside it, he’d been here a while.
Ben, Raig, and Nick were standing outside, finishing off detaining the men who’d been positioned around it, and keeping a lookout for any others who were in the trees surrounding us.
That left me with Ribeiro’s undivided attention.
“My children aren’t bastards, Ribeiro. You know that by now.”
“Perhaps it’s best you get used to saying child—singular—Fedorov. Senhorita Azarov was very set in her own plans to make sure of that.”
I kept my face impassive as I watched him. It would be easy to shoot him, easy to end this now, but I wanted answers.
“So, your plan was to use my son against me all along?” I asked sarcastically. “Não, you may be a babaca, but even your mind would have come up with something more solid and concrete than that.”
I leaned my hip against the wall next to me and did my best to look as if all my muscles were relaxed. Using keywords in Portuguese had more of an impact on him, and I was going to use it to my advantage.
“I think you planned to extend from São Tome and Principe to the rest of Africa, with your goal being the DRC—”
“The Congo is every man’s dream,” he interrupted, his eyes flashing. “But Egypt will get me what I need.”
“Ah,” I murmured. “The position is definitely advantageous, as is the Nile and their GDP.” I whistled. “Muito esperto.”
“Sim, it is genius,” he agreed. “But when you add the power of everything Egypt holds with that of the Congo, Angola, Tunisia, Ghana… It’ll make me the most powerful man in the world.”