Page 28 of Prince of Control (Bratva Heirs #1)

Chapter Nineteen

Lara

I wake at one in the afternoon. I’m hungry, and the bed is cold. I climb out and look for Baron. I hear his phone buzzing with a text and see it’s still on the nightstand. He must still be up here.

A cool breeze wafts through the room, and I realize the window is half open. When I walk over to shut it, I see Baron sitting outside on the roof in his tank top and a pair of jeans, his arms loosely draped over his drawn-up knees.

I push the window open, and he turns. “Lara.” His gaze appears haunted.

I climb out onto the gently-pitched tile roof, and he instantly reaches his hand out to steady me. “Are you okay?” he asks when I sink down beside him.

“Yeah. Are you?”

For once, he doesn’t give me his slick, in-control, closed-off act. He draws a long breath and sighs it out. Then he nods. “I’m okay.” His words sound heavy, though.

“What are you doing out here?” I instantly regret the dumb question. He obviously wanted to be alone, and I’m interrupting.

He gives me a faint smile. “Working on my tan.”

“Your shirt’s on,” I point out.

“I can remedy that.” He reaches between his shoulder blades and smoothly pulls his shirt off over his head in a move so sexy I swear my ovaries drop three eggs.

“Are you worried?”

The strong leader returns, and I kick myself for asking the wrong question. I want him to open up and be vulnerable, not reassure me.

He shakes his head. “No. I’m going to find the fuckers who did this and fix it.” He speaks with total confidence, and I have zero doubt he will do it.

I look out at the view. I can see why Baron likes to come out here. We’re on the third floor–the height of treetops. Our window faces away from campus toward the neighborhood houses.

“Is this where you come to think?” I try again.

He interlaces his fingers with mine and brings my knuckles to his lips. “Yeah.”

“Am I interrupting?” I try to tell myself not to be hurt if he says yes, but my heart feels ripe and vulnerable. Like it would pop with a single pin-prick.

“Fuck, no.” He looks over at me. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me.”

My chest squeezes like he just tied a tight ribbon around the center. I want to believe him. It freaks me out how much I care. I find it hard to breathe.

“When they let me out of jail this morning and told me my wife was waiting for me, I–” Baron breaks off, his gaze roving over my face. “I can’t tell you what it meant to me. I couldn’t believe you came for me.”

“Of course, I came for you.” I don’t know why my eyes are getting hot. My throat feels clogged. “You’re my husband.”

Baron drops his head between his knees for a moment then leans his shoulder against mine. “I’m humbled,” he mumbles. “I want–” He breaks off again.

He’s usually so slick and confident. As pakhan of his bratva cell, he’s strong, dominant, the leader, but right now, he’s all mine.

I didn’t realize how much I needed this.

Not that I wanted him humbled–well, maybe I did–but that I craved prying him open like an oyster.

Seeing the softer parts under the hard shell.

I wanted to find out what makes him tick.

What makes him sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of everyone around him? What makes him so fierce a protector?

I touch his face. “What do you want?” I murmur.

He lets out a humorless chuff of laughter. “I want you to care.” His voice breaks.

My heart follows suit.

I throw my leg over his waist to straddle his lap. “I care, Baron,” I whisper.

He holds my waist and leans his forehead against mine. “I’m crazy about you, Lara. I agreed to marry you out of duty, but the moment I met you, that changed. You felt like…someone I’d been waiting for my entire life.”

Tears prick my eyes.

“I didn’t want this. I still don’t. But…you got past my defenses. I want to know you, Baron. The real you.”

He stares back at me, his brown eyes dark. I see a faint alarm in them. Like he knows I’m storming the castle, coming for his deepest, darkest secret.

“Tell me,” I murmur.

Genuine alarm flares, but he covers it. “Tell you what?”

“What happened that made you this way. Who did you lose?”

He sucks in a startled breath and holds it.

I cradle his stubbled jaw in my hands and stroke my thumbs back toward his ears, tracing the soft hairs that make up his sideburns.

“Our housekeeper. Valentina. And…Lili could have died.”

I stay very still, hardly breathing. Waiting for him to go on.

“It was my fault. We never left our building without protection. My dad drove us to school in an armored car. Our building was a fortress–no one could breach it.” Baron’s breath comes in short, shallow pants.

The trauma of whatever he’s about to tell me still rules his nervous system. He still relives it like it’s happening in the present.

“I wanted ice cream.” His voice is rusty.

“There was this ice cream cart out on the beach–I could see it from our living room window. I was ten–old enough to go buy it myself, but we weren’t allowed out alone, which I hated.

I hassled Valentina to let me go, and when she wouldn’t, I asked her to take us down there.

I got Lili in on it, and she begged and pleaded and whined until Valentina agreed to take us.

I keep my mouth shut and continue to brush my thumbs over his temples, around his ears, trying to soothe the agitated state from his body while he tells the story.

“We got the ice cream, and we were walking back–almost in front of our building–when this white van drove up on the sidewalk, and three guys jump out. Valentina screams and picks Lili up. She tells me to run to the building, but I–” he shakes his head, looking confused.

Like he’s still that ten-year-old boy in shock on the sidewalk.

“I just stood there. I froze.”

“That’s a normal human response,” I murmur softly, not wanting to interrupt his flow but also not wanting him to go on with some belief that he did the wrong thing.

He swallowed. “One of them shot Valentina in the head. She went down on the sidewalk with half her head blown off. He grabbed Lili’s arm and pulled it out of the socket, yanking her out of Valentina’s death grip.

“Two guys grabbed me. I finally woke up and tried to get away, but it was too late. They wrestled me to the van. Maykl––Alexei and Feliks’ dad–rushed out of the building with guns drawn, but he didn’t fire.”

Baron’s brows furrow. “I screamed at him to shoot. At the time, I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t, but, of course, he was afraid of accidentally hitting me or Lili.”

Baron stops and doesn’t go on. His gaze is unfocused, like he’s still reliving the moment.

“Then what happened?” I whisper.

“They threw us both in the back of the van and took off. Maykl shot out one of the tires as they took off, but they kept driving, speeding away. There was a chase. The van flipped–a bunch of times. I got knocked out for a while.”

“ Bozhe moi, ” I breathe.

For a moment, Baron’s eyes focus on my face like I just reminded him I’m still here. That we’re in the present. A future where he’s all grown up. Where he escaped from that event with his life.

He swallows. “I heard gunfire in the front. The back of the van is blocked off from the driver’s compartment, so I don’t know what’s happening. We’re in the dark–upside down. There’s a guy on top of me. Lili is screaming and crying because she’s in pain. My head and neck hurt.

“One of the guys throws open the back doors. He has Lili in a chokehold, a gun to her head, and he’s shouting for everyone to get back.

My dad and his men are there, but they drop their weapons, and I can’t figure that out, either. I realize the guy on top of me is knocked out, so I get his gun. I knew how to fire it. My dad had been taking me hunting for a few years as an excuse to teach me how to handle weapons.

“Lili’s crying, and the guy is shaking her, telling her to shut up, or she dies. I walk up behind him. My dad is saying don’t shoot . It doesn’t occur to me that he means me. I point the gun at the back of the guy’s head and pull the trigger.

I remember the look of terror on my dad’s face as he rushed forward to catch Lili. The other man groaned behind me and started to get up, so I turned around and shot him, too.”

I try to hide the shock ricocheting through my soul. Baron’s voice has taken on a deadened quality now. Like he went numb in the moment, and he’s numb telling me about it, too.

“I missed, so I got closer and kept shooting. I emptied the chamber into the guy and still kept firing until Maykl took the gun out of my hand and pulled me into a hug.”

Tears form in the corners of my eyes.

Gospodi , he was just a kid. He watched his housekeeper die and still believes it was his fault. He had to kill two men to save his sister’s life. No wonder he tries to control every aspect of his life now to keep everyone he loves safe.

I wrap my arms around him and press my face into his neck. “I’m so sorry, Ben. That shouldn’t have happened to you.”

He pulls me tight, nearly squeezing the breath out of me.

“It wasn’t your fault.” I pull my face away to catch his eye. “If you’re thinking you got Valentina killed, you didn’t.”

A muscle jumps in Baron’s cheek. “I’m the one–”

“ Nyet .” I interrupt. “You didn’t tell those men to come and shoot her.

You had nothing to do with that. If your father wasn’t a bratva boss, then going to the beach to get ice cream would’ve been a normal activity.

You were denied that normalcy by his actions, not yours. None of it was your fault.”

“I could’ve killed Lili.” Baron’s voice sounds tight.

“What? How?”

“When I shot the guy holding her, the gun could’ve gone off and killed her. That’s why my dad was saying don’t shoot .”

Anger flushes through me. “Fuck your dad! Did he tell you that you could’ve killed Lili? You saved Lili. You saved Lili, Ben.” I use his real name, trying to make sure his younger self hears me. “It was your dad’s fault, not yours.”