Page 27 of Kidnapped By the Boss
I could still hear Katya in the distance anxiously screaming in Russian after her mother. My heart was starting to pound faster and faster as I considered the possibility that someone may have gotten into my home and somehow harmed my mother-in-law and son.
“Annik—”
“Vince?” The side door that led out to the gardens opened and Annika came walking in holding a sleeping Sascha in her arms. I let out a deep sigh of relief. “What’s going on?”
“Katya!” I called out. “She’s down here!” Katya’s footsteps were pounding across the floor above as I reached out and took Sascha from Annika’s arms. “Are you okay?”
Sascha was beginning to stir, likely in response to my yelling. I bounced him up and down and tried to get him to stay asleep.
“Of course we’re okay. He was having trouble getting to sleep with all the commotion, so I took him out to the garden to get him down for his morning nap,” she explained. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It just freaked us out when we couldn’t find you.”
“Oh my god,” Katya whined, running over. She looked at her mother and started to bark a flurry of things in Russian way too fast for me to use my limited knowledge of the language to translate.
Annika started to yelp back at her in hurried Russian as well before finally saying, “But see? We’re fine!”
Katya looked over at Sascha and I handed him over because I knew that she needed the comfort of him in her arms right now. She took him and started to cradle him, looking down at him and taking deep breaths to calm herself down.
“Vincent, what’s going on?” Annika asked. “Why all the panic?”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” I told her. “I think we’re just a little on edge after not working for a whole day. If you’re okay, that’s all that matters.”
“Yeah, we’re fine.” She leaned over Katya to rub Sascha’s head. “We had a great time together, didn’t we, sweet one?”
I could tell from the look on Katya’s face that, though our alarm over Annika and Sascha was ultimately false, her anxiety hadn’t gone down in the slightest, and in all honesty, neither had mine. We were parents now. Sure, we wanted to protect one another, or the rest of our crew before he came along, but they were all adults who could take care of themselves. Sascha was so helpless, so innocent, and it was our job to protect them. If there was someone out there who was hellbent on threatening everything we’d built together, then that person needed to be taken care of immediately. This was no longer about a honeymoon, this was about making sure that my family felt safe.
“Katya, we have to go,” I said.
She looked up at me, and it must have been clear in the sudden shift in my tone of voice that I meant business, because she gave Sascha a kiss and handed him back to her mother. “If you leave the main house for any reason, will you please make sure to text or call me so that I know?”
Annika frowned at Katya and me. “You do both realize that I was married to the most dangerous man in all of Russia for three decades, correct? I’m not some innocent person that you need to protect. If you believe that me or Sascha are in any danger, I’d like to know that.”
Katya and I exchanged a look at her mother’s exclamation. Ever since she’d moved to New York, she hadn’t been “Vladimir Petrov’s Wife,” she’d been “Katya’s mom.” She’d been the woman who lived in her own little mother-in-law suite on my property and played Scrabble and relaxed by the pool. I’d nearly forgotten that shewasthe matriarch of Russia’s most feared name.
“There’s a new threat,” I told her. “You’re safe in the main house, but we’re a little on edge, to say the least. Most of this new crew seem like jokes, but there’s one who gives us some concern. I’ll be dealing with him posthaste, so you don’t need to worry.”
“Good, I won’t,” Annika said, and there was the slightest bit of spice in her voice. Up until now, I’d been wondering how a woman as sweet and innocent as her could even be married to someone like Vladimir, but I was starting to see the faintest hints that were proving she wasn’t as soft as she made it seem. “But if anyone comes for Sascha or me, you don’t need to be concerned. I won’t let anything happen to my grandson.”
She didn’t hang around for additional comments after that, just took Sascha and walked off, murmuring down at him like the sweet grandmother she was.
“I haven’t seen her like that before,” I said to Katya.
Katya shook her head. “I haven’t either. Sascha and I always used to talk about how we didn’t understand how the two of them came together. We knew that our parents weren’tin love, but my mom always seemed to really hold her own with my dad and it never made much sense to us. I guess she’s a Petrova through and through.”
“Looks like it.” I turned around. “Anyway, let’s go. We need to deal with this problem.”
Feeling much more confident that things would be okay with Annika in charge, Katya and I left our main house and walked out onto the remainder of our property. Out here, there was a smattering of additional buildings that we utilized as office spaces and security stations to buffer between the front of our lot and the main home where only our family and closest friends were allowed. We made our way out to my office where Devrick, Mario, Taylor, and Annie were all standing in the lobby waiting for Katya and me.
As soon as I walked in, Devrick clocked the time on his watch and then looked up at me and said, “That was seven minutes.”
I glared at him, but he was unmoved, so I simply ignored him and let everyone into my office. They each took different seats around the room, with me sitting in my desk chair and Katya posting herself in the windowsill behind me as she normally did.
“I was trying to be a little more patient with these knuckleheads, but they’ve exhausted my patience,” I began. “Katya had an unfortunate interaction with the leader of this group, and after this most recent attack, it seems they may have a little more in their arsenal than it seemed at first.”
“You met the leader?” Mario asked. “Who is he?”
Katya looked at Annie with a frown on her face and Annie sighed. “The dry cleaning guy?”