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When she didn’t immediately respond, panic had my heart stopping in my chest, my steps stuttering as I considered the worst possible scenarios.
“Ivan!” I heard her sweet voice call out and I nearly collapsed in relief, my eyes prickling slightly as my fears of losing her abated. My heartbeat slowly returned to normal as she came into view but only fully regulated when I pulled her into my arms. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to be able to let her out of them.
God, I fucking loved her. Her lean, graceful body pressed against mine gave me a peace I’d never known. I breathed in her floral citrus scent and my entire world felt back on track. It was unbelievable the power she had over me.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I murmured into her neck, breathing in her familiar, comforting scent as my arms tightened. “I’m embedding a GPS tracker on you, I fucking mean it, Emmy.”
I heard her sniff, her arms snaking around my waist just as tightly as my own grip. “Please do. I don’t ever want to go through anything like that again. I want you to always be able to find me.”
Find her? She’d be lucky if I let her out of the apartment in the next month. I was paranoid before, but it was nothing compared to the deranged possessive need that currently had me in a stranglehold. She was fucking essential to my wellbeing, my emotional stability.
“Are you okay?” I asked, pulling back to look at her face. “Armstrong didn’t hurt you, did he?” I looked her over, looking for signs of injury, damage, trauma—anything that could have hurt her. I swear, if Armstrong had done anything to her, I would go over and pump more bullets into his dead body.
“No, he didn’t hurt me.” She may not be physically injured, but the ghost of these horrible experiences sat in her beautiful blue-gold gaze. I could see the haunted, exhausted look in her eyes, but I also saw her strength. Her resilience and power.
“Your mom?”
Emmy looked behind her where her mom stood next to Anya. Anya was awkwardly patting Emmy’s mom on the shoulder, a look of great unease on her face. Emmy’s mom wrapped her arms around herself in a sort of self-hug, a dazed expression on her face.
“She’s…I don’t know. I think she’ll be okay, but, well, it’s a lot.”
I nodded and pulled her back into my arms, needing the press of her body against me.
“Holy shit,” Emmy exclaimed into my shoulder and pulled back and stared at her in confusion and alarm.
“What?”
She didn’t reply, but simply cast her eyes all around the hangar. I followed her gaze, trying to understand why she was upset.
“What is it?”
She paled and her hand came up to cover her mouth and I finally realized there were dead bodies all over the place. I had hardly noticed because a roomful of dead bodies barely registered with me.
Emmy looked like she was going to throw up.
“Oh, fuck, don’t look at them. Let’s get out of here. Come here,” I instructed, pulling her head into my chest so she wouldn’t see the carnage any longer.
“Anya, get Emmy’s mom out of here,” I said, nodding my head at the body count in the hangar.
“Oh! Right,” Anya said, also oblivious. Especially considering both of us had substantially contributed to that body count. “Come on, Jessica, let’s go.” Anya carefully took Jessica’s arm, as if she was afraid the woman would spontaneously self-destruct with the wrong movement.
“Ivan,” Mikhail hollered. I looked over and saw him standing with Drago in the middle of the hangar. “Join us.” He said it politely, but I knew it wasn’t a request.
I stopped, feeling torn. I had to join them, but I was highly resistant to releasing Emmy.
There were a lot of logical reasons I should let Emmy go with Anya and her mother. There were dozens of dead bodies everywhere, including Armstrong’s which was about ten feet away from where Drago and Mikhail were standing. We were probably going to talk about shit she shouldn’t hear, business and death and crime. She should probably be with her mother.
Those were all spectacular reasons, yet my arms stayed clamped around her. My brain was making solid arguments, but my body was not fucking having it. So, instead of doing what made fucking sense, I dragged Emmy with me, her face still pressed against my chest and my arm wrapped tightly against her waist.
“Are you serious, Ivan?” Drago asked, gesturing to Emmy.
I shot him a deadpan look, knowing he was just as irrational when it came to my sister. “You’d be different, given the circumstances?”
He took a deep breath and shut the fuck up.
I looked over at Mikhail, but his dark eyes were trained on Emmy, curiosity and resignation sitting heavily in his gaze.
“So, this is the girl?” he said in Russian.