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“They are bossy,” he agreed, deciding it best to just admit he had bodyguards. He was surrounded by them. There was no denying it. “I’m sorry I don’t have a towel, but you can use my jacket. That might help.”
“I don’t want to get it wet.” A little shiver went through her in spite of the warmth of the car.
He slipped his jacket around her. “No worries.” That was it. The extent of what he had to say. He just fell silent and tried not to stare, feeling as silly as his killer leopard had become.
“I’m Ania,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you. May I call you Mitya?”
“Yes, yes, of course.” He was grateful Sevastyan wasn’t in the vehicle with them. She had a Russian name and pronounced it with the faintest of Russian accents. His cousin would be immediately suspicious she was an assassin come to kill him. He wouldn’t have minded so much. His cat was content, and at that moment, so was he. It would have been a good moment to go out.
“I really do know how to change a tire,” she said, “but it was miserable out there and I do love this outfit. It would have gotten ruined.” Her fingers made a neat crease in the material and then folded it through her fingers as if she might be nervous.
It was a small gesture, but Mitya was trained in noticing the smallest reaction in those he interrogated, so reading her was easy. She was nervous being alone in the car with him.
“Why did you trust me enough to get into this vehicle with me?” he asked, his hand settling gently over hers to still her restless fingers. The silk of her skin was there. In spite of the cold, her touch made him warm all over. She didn’t pull her hand out from under his.
“You were nice enough to stop for me,” she replied. “No one else did, not that there were many people driving by tonight.”
“Where are you heading?”
She turned her head to stare directly into his eyes. He had the feeling he was being studied. He didn’t look harmless. If anything, he looked like the very devil. He didn’t have a reassuring smile he could send her. If he tried to smile, she’d probably leap from the car in fear. The best he had was the truth.
“Please don’t think you have to answer that. It was thoughtless of me to even ask. I’m not used to talking to women.”
Her eyebrow went up, lending her the most adorable expression he’d ever seen on a woman. She turned in the seat toward him, continuing to study him feature by feature. Her gaze drifted over the angles and planes of his face, noting every scar. His eyes were darker than most of the Amur leopards. Many had lighter blue-green eyes. His were a darker blue-green, almost a dark cyan. When he shifted, his eyes blended with the darker rosettes in his long, thick fur.
“I would expect that women fawn over you.”
He didn’t deny what was true. He’d always had his choice of women. “Only because they believe I am someone exciting or that I have money.”
“Exciting? You mean as in dangerous?” She gestured toward the bodyguards. “Or famous. Should I know you? Your name sounds familiar.”
He sighed. He was tired. Too tired. His body hurt so fucking badly he wanted to stab himself through the heart and get it over with. He was a shifter, and he didn’t take pain pills. If he was out of it, his leopard could escape and kill someone. He leaned back on the seat, enjoying the fact that she sat close and his leopard was satisfied just with her near. He was as well.
“I’m no one special, Ania. These women, once they learn this, no longer fawn.” He kept his smile to himself. One small trace of his leopard and those women were running for their lives. None wanted him. They wanted what he had. Or what they perceived he had—which was nothing of real value. His cousin Fyodor had something valuable with his wife, Evangeline. Timur, another cousin, had it with his woman, Ashe. He could offer a woman danger. Bullets. Death. He could offer her . . . him. He was no prize. He never would be.
“Everyone is special in their own way, Mitya,” she said softly.
“Perhaps. How did you come by the name of Ania? This is Russian, not American.”
“It’s a family name. My grandmother was named Ania. She was an amazing woman. She came to the United States as a child with her family, although they only spoke their native language and it took her a while to speak English. She never seemed comfortable speaking it. She spoke only Russian at home, as did my grandfather and parents. I did as well, which explains my accent.”
“Did your grandmother know how to change a tire as well?”
She burst out laughing. The sound was melodious rather than jarring. It held that soft, husky pitch he’d come to associate with her, but now it was mixed with something else, some sweet note that wrapped around his heart, shaking him. Women didn’t laugh around him. He was used to them wanting him, but not this—not simply finding enjoyment in anything he said.
“I suppose a wagon wheel. I wouldn’t have been surprised at anything she could do.”
“But you lost her?”
She nodded. “Some years ago in a car accident. My mother, grandmother and grandfather were coming back from a theater production of The Phantom of the Opera. It was their absolute favorite. I was supposed to go that night as well, but I ended up sick. I’d grown up going to the theater and had seen it, but I was still disappointed. My father stayed home with me.”
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured. “I would never want to bring up anything to cause you sorrow.” He could hear lies. It was a shifter trait. Something wasn’t quite right with what she’d told him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
“As I said, it was three years ago. I have wonderful memories of my mother and grandparents. Do you like theater?”
A memory surfaced. The theater in Russia. It was a little chilly and very dark. The sound of music was loud. A woman’s voice singing, the sound impossibly beautiful, so much so that for a moment he was caught up in the sheer magic of it. Men and women dressed in their finest. The smell of fragrance and cologne. They were there to see the play. He was there to murder four people.
His targets were upstairs in one of the most expensive of boxes. They came often and laughed and cried with each subsequent scene. He had thought for a moment to delay the inevitable, so he could hear the star of the play singing once again, but he knew the longer he stayed, the more people had a chance to catch a glimpse of him. He had killed them fast and silently and walked out without ever hearing that beautiful voice again.
“I do,” he replied carefully. “Although I haven’t had much chance to go.” If he did go, he would forever be dividing his attention between watching the production and his back. The bodyguards of his targets had been too busy watching the play to adequately protect their bosses. He’d killed them first.
She tapped her finger beneath his palm, reminding him he had his hand over hers. He hated removing it, but he had no reason to keep covering her hand, so he immediately lifted his.
“I’m so sorry, Ania. I haven’t been around . . .” He forced himself to stop blurting out what a true loser he was with women. “I’m sorry,” he reiterated.
“I liked your hand over mine, Mitya. You’re unusual. Rare. I don’t get to meet men like you very often. I wish we had more time to talk, but I see my tire is back on and your men are standing around in the rain getting soaked. I should go.” She scooted across the seat and dropped her hand to the door handle.
He searched for something, anything, to hold her to him a moment longer. “If you are ever in San Antonio, my sister-in-law owns a bakery, The Small Sweet Shoppe. I’m often there.” If she said she knew it, he would be there every day just to hope to see her again.
“In the business district?”
“Right on the edge, although the businesses seem to be growing up around it.” He found himself holding his breath, his hand on the other door handle.
“I’ve actually been there once,” she admitted. “If I go, I’ll look for
you. Thank you again for stopping. It was so sweet of you.”
Before he could ask for her number, she pushed open the door. In all things he wanted, Mitya was extremely aggressive. He had no problem picking up women when he wanted some quick relief, but this was different. Very different. This woman mattered in some undefined way he didn’t fully understand. He wanted to stay in her company. His body wanted her with every breath he drew. His leopard wanted to stay close to her.
He lived in hell. It was that simple. What man subjected a good woman to hell? What kind of a man would he be if he even considered it? He took a deep breath and slowly let go of the door handle, forcing himself to turn away from the sight of her walking back to her car, under the umbrella Vikenti provided.
Sevastyan slid into the car and turned toward him, glaring. Mitya held up his hand. “I know what I did was insane, Sevastyan. I apologize for making your life so difficult. It wasn’t done on purpose.” It wasn’t. He loved his cousin and had placed him in a terrible position. Worse, he’d placed Ania in one. Sevastyan could easily have determined her a threat and shot her.
Sevastyan didn’t lay into him the way he should have. Instead, he waited until Vikenti and Zinoviy had gotten back into their cars and Miron was once more behind the wheel. “What made you stop for her?”
Mitya shrugged his broad shoulders. “It was a compulsion. My leopard went wild when we passed her. When we turned back, he acted strange.”
“In what way?” Sevastyan pushed.
“Just different. A behavior I’d never seen in him. Not like she was a threat, but more that he was content in her presence. My leopard had to guard me when I was a child. There were conspiracies. I don’t know if you remember or not, but Gorya’s father, Uncle Filipp, was alive then. He had two sons, Dima and Grisha, much older than Gorya. Lazar and Gorya’s older brothers wanted Gorya and his mother dead.”
Sevastyan frowned. “How do you know this? You aren’t any older than the rest of us.”
Mitya felt older, not that the others hadn’t gone through hell as well. No one lived in their lairs and had it easy, especially his cousins. Their fathers were cruel and expected their sons to follow in their footsteps. They were expected to torture and kill any who might oppose their fathers’ rule.
Mitya’s father insisted the toddler be kept with him at all times. He wanted his son to grow up familiar with torture. With seeing women and children killed if their fathers in any way stepped out of line. He wanted his son to be so conditioned to the violence that he would never so much as blink when he had to do the same things. He heard a lot of things as a toddler, things his father planned.
“Mitya? What really happened to Uncle Filipp? Did Uncle Lazar or my father have anything to do with his death?”
Mitya glanced toward the front seat where Miron drove. The man had proved his loyalty to them, and yet he was still reluctant to talk about family business in front of him. Why? Because his father had drilled it into him never to speak of their business in front of non–family members. He had insisted there was no such thing as loyalty. Anyone could betray them, and would for a price—including one’s own brothers.
There had been four brothers: Lazar, Rolan, Patva and Filipp. Each had become a vor in the bratya, the Russian mafia. Each ruled their own lair of shifters. All were very cruel, sadistic men. Talking about them aloud to his cousin was one thing; talking in front of an outsider was something else, but he needed to get over that. He wasn’t ruled by his father any longer. In any case, Miron had been raised in the lair. He knew quite a bit about the Amurov brothers.
“Uncle Filipp didn’t kill Gorya’s mother as everyone has been led to believe,” Mitya said. “After Uncle Filipp killed his first wife, he accidentally found the woman who was his true mate. At least my father believed that was what changed him. Filipp suddenly was protesting the bigger plan the family had and he was protecting his wife.”
“What plan was that?” Sevastyan asked, frowning. “My father never spoke to me of a bigger plan.”
“As a whole, the brothers wanted to take over more territory. I don’t think that would have been difficult, but by that time, the leopards were so bloodthirsty they would go into a territory not held by shifters and let their leopards loose on the families of the vors. They would kill everyone. Man, woman and child.”
Mitya’s head was beginning to pound. The moment Ania had slipped out of the car, his leopard had reacted, going crazy, flinging himself toward the surface, demanding to be free. Since then, he hadn’t been quiet, not for one second. Mitya’s body was already hurting. With his leopard clawing at his insides, as if he could rip his way out of his confines, his body wanted to just lay it all down.
“Mitya, did your father take you along when they invaded other territories?”
Mitya nodded, closing his eyes, but the images were there, stamped forever into his brain. When he tried to sleep at night, those memories looped through his mind, playing out like a horror movie, over and over.
“Every single time. So many nights he let his leopard loose to hunt some unsuspecting tourist who had come to the nearest town when the ships came in. Because we had the port right there, it was easy to get one of the women to lure a man away from the rest of his crowd. Lazar would let his leopard loose and hunt him. Sometimes it was a small group of men. He always insisted I accompany him. In order to keep me from being beaten, my leopard would come out and he would have to hunt with Lazar.”
There was shame in the telling. He’d been too young to protect his leopard. His father’s beatings were brutal. He would force the leopard to emerge in spite of Mitya fighting to keep him inside. Once the leopard had surfaced, Lazar would beat the cat until it complied and hunted with his leopard. Each time, the older, more experienced leopard would force the young cat to defend itself. Mitya knew his leopard was being taught to be vicious and given the experience of fighting until the animal was fast and deadly in a battle. It was one thing to teach a teen, but not a young boy.
He shoved his hand through his hair, angry with himself when he realized it was trembling. He turned away from Sevastyan’s too-close scrutiny. It was Sevastyan’s job to keep him safe. As head of security, he was the one who interviewed anyone seeking to come into their employ. Mitya had taken over a territory in the San Antonio area that had previously been run by Patrizio Amodeo, a crime lord who believed in human trafficking.
Like most crime lords in the States, Amodeo was not a shifter. The man had tried to kill their cousin Fyodor Amurov and his wife, Evangeline. Evangeline dove off a counter to cover Fyodor, and Mitya had inserted his body between the assassins and both Fyodor and Evangeline, taking the bullets meant for them.
At the time, he’d acted on sheer instinct, but he knew he had no sense of self-preservation because he was aware his time was up. He was so tired of the fight with his leopard. More than anything, he loved his leopard counterpart. Not one thing was the cat’s fault. The animal had been subjected to horrific beatings from Lazar and more from Lazar’s leopard. Both took delight in their cruelty. He didn’t blame the leopard, but he couldn’t allow him loose, and that was a constant fight, day and night. At no time could he ever let down his guard. Not when he was tired, sick, alone or in desperate need of a woman.
“Mitya.” Sevastyan said his name softly. “You were a boy.”
Mitya couldn’t remember being a boy. There was no childhood, not with a father like Lazar. He pushed his fingers into the corners of his eyes, wishing there was a way to lay it all down, just for a few minutes. He’d had them, he reminded himself. A few precious minutes. For a moment the need to go back and find the woman was strong, almost overwhelming. Ania. If he took her and kept her, she would give them both peace. God knew, he needed peace.
“I was three or four when he started taking me with him. If I cried, the beatings were worse. I think my first memories were of his fists. The first taste
in my mouth was of my own blood.”
“And Uncle Filipp?”
“I heard him talking to Lazar. He tried to tell him he had so many sins on his soul. He said it was different when the woman was the right one. His leopard was satisfied and not driving him mad. He saw things with much more clarity.”
“Lazar was furious. Really angry. After Uncle Filipp left, Lazar called Filipp’s two older sons for a meeting. Dima and Grisha came that evening. They spewed hatred for Gorya’s mother and him, although he was just a small baby. Lazar told them to hurt their father first, hurt him so he couldn’t move. To wait until he was with Gorya’s mother. Until he was lying on top of her, all spent and relaxed, not on guard. He wanted them to realize that their father had brought this on himself. He had been stupid enough to fall in love. The woman made him weak, vulnerable. She was really the one to kill him.”
“He convinced Dima and Grisha that Filipp deserved death because he was in love?” Sevastyan didn’t sound as astonished as he should have.
Mitya nodded. “Lazar said Filipp was no longer sharp. He could easily be overcome. To go into the bedroom, incapacitate him first, but not kill him until both had torn apart his woman and her leopard. He was very specific about needing to be alerted when they were making their move. He would come to oversee, but not participate. It had to be all them.”
“What was his purpose in going?”
“I think he was furious with Filipp, that he would ‘betray’ them by falling in love with Gorya’s mother. He wanted to see him punished. Filipp dared to find happiness, something Lazar, Rolan and Patva would never do.” Mitya looked down at his hands. “Something few of us will ever be able to do.”