Page 54

54

OLEG

It’s funny how tragedy and comedy can exist side by side. How lust and love are two sides of the same coin.

Because I’m staring down at Sutton’s sleeping, naked body, wriggled and wrangled up in my bedsheets, and the thought I love her is flowing through my head right alongside thoughts of just how badly I want to be inside of her.

She’s beautiful.

Soft, glowing skin. Sun-kissed, smooth. Hair draped like a curtain separating me from everything I thought I never deserved.

And she’s sexy.

The peak of her nipple where it’s bared just above the edge of the duvet. The tempting crease of her thigh.

It’ll never fail to make me laugh and shake my head, how one woman can stir up so much in me.

How it’s possible to fuck the mother of my child and the love of my life like a slut in one minute and then cuddle her to my chest as if she’s the most precious thing that’s ever graced the face of the earth just a few seconds later.

It’s funny, too, how she can breathe and sigh in her sleep like a gentle lamb…

… then snort and snore like one of Snow White’s dwarves.

Despite my better judgement, I lean in and cup a hand to her ass as I run my lips along her exposed spine. She stirs but doesn’t wake.

Warmth radiates from her.

But despite that, all I have to do is close my eyes and see the way she shivered the day the rescue team plucked us from the ocean. She was so cold that her lips cracked and her skin turned blue.

That was nearly a week ago now. And still, I have only barely begun to shake the horror of that day.

We flirted so closely to disaster that I can still taste the blood and smoke of a previous explosion.

Only one thing will give me peace: finding the men who did this and throttling them into the grave myself.

From the bedside table, my phone flashes silently. I kiss the nape of Sutton’s neck and drag myself from the bed. My body protests.

Blood thunders through my veins, straight to my cock.

“Oleg,” she murmurs, stretching towards my side of the bed. She squints at me, her eyes still thick with sleep. “Where are you going?”

“I have some business to take care of, baby,” I murmur. “I’ll be with you in the morning.”

“No.” Her fingers clutch a fistful of my shirt. “No, stay in bed with me.”

My cock is desperate to comply. The rest of me? Not so much.

But out of the corner of my eye, I notice another flash from my phone.

“Soon, I will take you someplace far away,” I promise her. “Some where we can stay in bed all day and fuck all night.”

Her eyes flutter closed but she smiles. “Hm, that sounds wonderful.”

“But in order to do that, you need to let me go now.”

She pouts. “I don’t want to.”

I kiss her lips softly, but when she tries to deepen the kiss, I pull back. There’s no fucking way I’ll be able to stop this if it goes too far.

Another minute and I’m in serious danger of coming in my pants like a horny teenager.

“Tomorrow’s going to be all about you. But right now, I have to go.”

“Tomorrow’s all about me?”

“And the day after that. And the day after that one, too. Every day will be about you for the rest of our lives. But today… today is about making that possible.”

I steal one more kiss from her soft lips before I grab my phone and slip out of our bedroom. I follow the corridor lights downstairs to my office.

I’ve got several messages from my team. But the only one I open is Artem’s, delivered a minute ago.

ARTEM: I’m here.

My office is teeming with people when I stride in. Artem is standing over the largest computer, staring at ocean coordinates that I can’t make head or tail of.

“Took you long enough,” I remark.

He whirls around, a lopsided smile brightening his face. “It’s been a minute.”

“You were supposed to be here yesterday.” I punch him in the arm.

“Missed me?” He just chuckles louder at the death stare I give him. “I had to postpone it by a day because we got some interesting intel I had to corroborate.”

“It better be good.”

“Consider it an early wedding present from me,” Artem teases. “Before I get into that, though…” He points to the footage on one of the smaller screens. One of my IT guys has an image frozen on screen. “—Luca told me you’re preparing a gift for Vladimir Martinek.”

“Prepared,” I correct. “The footage of his goons planting that bomb on my boat has already been sent to his personal residence in California. He should receive it in a matter of hours.”

“The takedown is officially underway then?”

“I have a sniper sitting outside Matvey Martinek’s house as we speak. He’s just waiting for me to give him the signal.”

Artem runs a hand through his hair. “It’s really happening then.”

“It’s time the fucking Martineks realized that you don’t mess with Oleg Pavlov and get away with it. I’m gonna send a message to the world: Fuck with my family, and you die.”

“The thing is Matvey Martinek has two younger brothers,” Artem reminds me.

“I’ll get to them in good time,” I vow. “But right now, I don’t know where either one is.”

“Funny you should say that.” Artem smirks. “Because I do.”

I raise my eyebrows. “What do you mean? You know where Igor and Misha are?”

He points to the large screen, at the coordinates I dismissed earlier. “Igor and Misha Martinek are playing weekend warrior on a yacht in Exuma with their buddies. I was able to pinpoint their exact location.”

I gawk at the screen, already drooling like a wolf with a deer in its sights. “How long have we got?”

“My sources say they will be sailing away from Exuma in a day or two. Their plans aren’t clear.”

“No, but mine are.” I turn to Ilya. “Ilya, ready The Bullet. It’s the fastest boat we’ve got. We move out in fifteen.”

“Fuck,” Artem curses, although he’s smiling excitedly. “We’re really doing this.”

“You know what’s better than taking out each Martinek heir one by one?” I ask rhetorically. “Taking them all out together. That’s a message that Vladimir Martinek won’t soon forget.”