Page 39 of The Brutal Arrangement (The Ivanov Syndicate #2)

LUCY

D amon didn’t ease up on his grip. He held me in his arms all the way until he could bring me to the kitchen. Under the bright lights turned on in here, he set me near the island so I could lean up against the counter. He tipped my chin up, inspecting me and so fearful as he inventoried me.

“It’s okay,” I told him, just so damn happy that he’d come. That he was in time to rescue me before his father could’ve told someone to hurt me.

“This is so not fucking okay, Lucy.” He shook his head, rubbing his hands over my arms as if he would never stop checking whether I was hurt.

“No. It’s… It’s okay,” I told him, stern and patient. “That wasn’t him. Your father wasn’t…” I shook my head now, hating that I had to explain to him what had once been so hard for me to accept about my mother. “Your father wasn’t your father. He wasn’t aware.”

Resting his forehead against mine, he exhaled a long breath. “I know. I saw. I saw it in his eyes when I came home and—” Again, he let out a deep breath. “I know that, but it doesn’t make this okay.”

“But it’s nothing you can change or control. Until he has more therapy or recovers or… whatever can be altered in his care plan, it’s something beyond what you can control.”

“What the fuck is going on here?” Maxim demanded as he entered the kitchen, Sloane walking in behind him, holding his hand. Saul was right behind them.

“No, Lucy,” Damon said, pointing at his brothers.

“That is the control. We know that our father isn’t mentally able to lead.

That’s why he’s not in charge. No one should have ever followed the orders to take you down there.

None. If he was told about that voicemail Anton left on your old phone, the man in charge of that intel is wrong too. ”

I cupped his face and kissed him, sweet and soft. “I know. I’ve seen how you have all tried to manage your father. I understand.”

He held my hands between us and let out another ragged sigh.

“Someone had better explain what the fuck is going on right now.” Maxim crossed his arms. “John called me to come home as soon as possible.”

I cleared my throat. “Your father burst into the apartment and accused me of being a spy. He ordered me to be taken down to the dungeon.”

Sloane gasped, staring at me with shock. Then she smacked Maxim’s arm. “What the fuck ?”

“He wasn’t himself,” I added. “He was crazed, not with it at all.”

“That’s no excuse,” Maxim growled, sounding so much like Damon. “No one here should follow a single fucking thing he says.”

“Owen said he put the two guards who took her down in a cell,” Damon said, referring to the kind man who’d seemed so freaked out and skeptical when I was taken down to the basement.

“I’ll leave them to you,” Maxim said, walking closer. “Why the fuck would…” He shook his head. “What triggered this?”

“Security called me and said they’d discovered a voicemail that Anton left on Lucy’s old phone.”

“What?” I squeezed Damon’s fingers. “No. That can’t be true. I don’t use that phone. I don’t even know where it is. I don’t have any?—”

He kissed me softly, silencing my instant ramble of panic. Calmer with just his lips against mine, I let myself lean on his presence and slow my breaths.

“He had to have come home and realized that Katerina tricked him, that she didn’t marry anyone,” Damon told Maxim. “Anton has to be stirring up nonsense.”

He nodded, and Saul narrowed his eyes. “Just like when Beatrice caused so many rumors and sowed doubt.”

“Exactly,” Maxim growled. He raked his hand through his hair, looking at me and frowning. “You’re okay? No one hurt you?”

I shook my head, ready to be open about the experience to help these brothers know what to do next. “Grigory almost hit me, but your grandmother stopped him.”

Damon huffed a bitter laugh and scowled at someone behind me. As I turned, I gasped at the sight of Anastasia sporting the start of a nasty contusion on her face.

“So you’d stop him from hitting her,” Damon growled, “but you can’t try to stop him from ordering her to be killed?”

Sloane shook her head, crossing her arms and looking like a badass punk off the streets. “What the actual fuck, Ana?”

“Don’t take that bratty tone with me,” she warned.

Sloane doubled down, jamming her finger at her face. “No. This isn’t the time for you to school me about manners and any other irrelevant bullshit. How could you? How the fuck could you not stop crazy-ass Grigory from ordering Lucy to be taken anywhere?”

“Sloane.” Anastasia tilted her head to the side, as if she had to remain proper and regal to be a figure of authority over her. “Watch your?—”

“No,” Sloane sassed, unafraid and fired up.

“You watch it.” She pointed and jutted one hip out.

“You watch it, Ana. Lucy and I aren’t going anywhere because we love these men.

And unlike you, we will always stand with them and support them.

Not question them and nag. How the fuck could you not stand up for Lucy?

” She flung her arms out. “Come on ! She’s not calling anyone.

She’s not spying on anyone. She’s na?ve. Innocent. Sweet.”

“Enough,” Maxim told her, tugging her out of his grandmother’s face.

I smiled, fearing I wouldn’t be able to hold back my tears of joy that this woman was my friend. One hundred percent, absolutely, positively, my friend. She didn’t just have my back. She was shouting out in my defense.

“No. I’ve had enough of her acting like some uppity woman. Screw getting your approval, Ana. Shame on you for not believing Lucy isn’t a spy.”

“I wasn’t…” Anastasia shook her head and glanced at me, trite and dismayed. “I wasn’t going to let anything happen. I was going to call you and?—”

“No, Grandmother.” Maxim shook his head. “There’s no going to about it. The second Grigory acted like that, you should’ve had help on the way. Lucy is Damon’s wife. She’s pregnant with his child. She is part of this family, just like Sloane will be, regardless of your opinions about it.”

Ana blinked, jerking back to look at me. “Pregnant?”

I huffed a weak laugh at her surprise. Of all the things that went down today, that was what she’d react the most to?

I nodded, catching Sloane’s attention in time to see her rolling her eyes.

“And after today, when you let guards take her down to the dungeon, I bet she’ll be smart enough to never let you see their child,” Sloane muttered darkly.

“No. Stop.” I shook my head, glad that everyone was in agreement that Grigory was a liability that we all needed to watch closer.

“No more fighting. Grigory wasn’t himself when that happened.

And I’m not surprised that Anton would call and leave lies on a message the way he did.

He’s the sort of person to want to cause trouble.

To spite others. I wasn’t near him for long, but I saw how cruel he was.

Unlike you.” I looked at each of them, all these people who’d rushed to protect me.

My family.

I’d found them in the unlikeliest way, but I never wanted to be anywhere else.

“Unlike you, who care about your own.”

Damon hugged me, cradling me against him until I could rest my cheek against his chest. He kissed the top of my head, sighing. “Including you, Lucy. You will always be included in this family as one of us.”

I closed my eyes and took his vow to heart.