I lifted my hand over my chest and rasped, “To me, you are not a Tolstaia.”
Her eyes softened, and stepping closer, she replied, “To me, you are not a Kostava.” She lifted higher on her toes, and said, “You are my Zaal, the man whose soul has stolen mine.”
Then she kissed me. Her cold lips met mine; soft, tender, caring. She pulled away and stroked my arm. “Let’s go inside. I need to care for you and hold you while you sleep.”
Warmth spread in my chest. I let this female, my female, guide me into the house. As we entered the door, Luka rose from the long seat. He watched me with wary eyes. Squeezing Talia’s hand, I let go, and walked toward her brother. The guards all stood around him, more guards than there were before. All holding their guns.
But Luka’s eyes did not leave mine.
Standing before him, I said, “You have my gratitude for freeing me from Master.”
Luka’s face hardened. “He isn’t your master anymore. He’s nothing but a fucking dead man walking.”
I nodded at Luka. I went to walk back to Talia, when he announced, “Anri would be proud of the man you’ve become. You’re like him in every way. Your looks, your strength, your loyalty.”
I closed my eyes for the briefest of moments, before taking a deep breath and making my way back to Talia.
We entered the bedroom and Talia took me into the shower. She cleaned me slowly with a washcloth, then patched up my cuts and bruises, before brushing out my hair. All the time she touched me, I touched her back. As she cleansed and cared for me, she peppered my face with kisses, told me, without words, that she was mine, and I was hers.
As we climbed into bed, I faced Talia on my pillow. Memories now were a trickle, a gentle stream in my mind.
Talia watched me. I shuffled closer, wrapping her in my arms. I closed my eyes, relaxed my heart with the female I should never have wanted, and confessed, “Ya khochu byt’s toboy vsegda.”
Talia stilled in my arms, then with a press of her lips on my chest, whispered, “I, too, want to be with you forever.”
Chapter Sixteen
LukaBrooklyn, New York
One week later
“You’re really doing this?”
I turned to face my father as I stood in the center of my living room.
“I’m going,” I replied coldly. My father slowly sat down on the sofa.
I hadn’t seen him since that day in the gym when he’d seen me training. When I’d arrived back here from the Hamptons last week, he was away on business. This evening I found him waiting at my door. He was here to discuss tonight’s plan to take out Levan Jakhua. We’d finally got a tip-off for where the Georgian bastard was hiding from our insider. I’d been given permission for this sting from the Pakhan in my father’s absence.
It seemed he was now here to hear about it in person.
Refocusing on the here and now, I watched my father cross his legs, reflecting the calm demeanor he always wore, as his eyes fell upon me. “And you’re going to kill him? You?”
My jaw clenched as I anticipated the argument that was going to come. I walked to my papa and sat down on the seat before him. “My byki will go in to where he’s hiding. I promised you I wouldn’t fight, and I won’t. They’ll bring Jakhua out to me.” I looked up at my father. “Then I’ll slit his fucking throat.”
My father’s hand rubbed over his short graying beard, and he nodded. “And Kisa knows you’re doing this?”
“She understands what I have to do to avenge Anri,” I replied vaguely. He nodded again.
We sat in silence until I asked, “Papa? Why don’t you want me to fight?”
My father’s hand stopped on his face, his brown eyes looked into mine. “Luka, you will never understand this until you have children, but the day you were taken from me”—he patted his chest—“something within me died.”
A hollow pit formed in my stomach. My father rarely showed emotion. Since I’d gotten back to Brooklyn after being freed from the gulag, he hadn’t really known how to treat me. I supposed that was because he no longer knew me. I’d left him a boy, and I’d returned a damaged man. Fourteen years of raising me had been lost. I’d never really thought about it that way before. Maybe he was just as lost as I was.
He sat forward. “When Kisa told me you were back, when she stood in our private box in the Dungeon and told me my son, my lost son, was the man killing Alik Durov in the cage, I couldn’t believe it.” His eyes lost focus. “You were savage, wild, but highly effective. You slaughtered Alik Durov. You slaughtered anyone that came into your path. You were unstoppable, the most effective killer I’d seen, well, since Alik.”