Russian Killer's Baby (9 page)

“There’s no harm in having sex while I’m pregnant. I think it’s pretty much okay up until it gets uncomfortable because the woman is about to deliver.”

“That’s something I’ve never really considered before.”

“What? Sex with a pregnant woman, or delivering babies?”

His fingers idly traced circles against her back. She wondered if he realized how telling it was that he consistently sought out that contact. Maybe he didn’t realize. Maybe Feliks had no concept at all of what a relationship looked like. Hell. Maybe she didn’t either. It was almost too much to contemplate for now.

“I guess I hadn’t thought of any of it,” he admitted. “I never expected to have a family.”

“I don’t suppose I ever did either. Now that it’s happening, though, I’m not sorry.”

There was a long pause. Then he gave her a gentle squeeze. “I’m not either.”

“As long as I stop saying scary things like ‘love,’ right?” She could tell she’d thrown him once again. It was almost comical. “Big, bad mafia assassin squeals like a little girl when someone says the word ‘love.’ Wow. I’ll have to remember that if I’m ever confronted with another one of you.”

He grunted. “Let’s hope for all our sakes that never happens.”

Chapter Eleven

After dressing, Annika sat on the end of her bed with her legs crossed, eating the bowl of stroganoff Feliks had left on the dresser for her. The creamy sauce and tender beef tips were comfort food for her soul. In the dim light of her bedside lamp, she watched Feliks sleep and tried to decide what it was about him that fascinated her so much.

Even in sleep he looked like an impenetrable wall of strength. His jaw was like iron. There was something so incredibly certain about him. Annika could see herself depending on this man. And for a woman who had learned a long time ago never to depend on anyone but herself, this was both terrifying and exhilarating.

A loud crash shot through the stillness of the night. Annika stopped chewing, feeling her instincts wake abruptly. On the bed, Feliks’s eyes snapped open. He sat up. Now there were voices shouting down in the main part of the warehouse. Annika’s heart nearly stopped when she recognized her father’s among them.

“Get your shoes and grab a jacket or something,” Feliks ordered tersely.

She scrambled to comply, setting her bowl back on the dresser and fumbling for a jacket in the nearly empty closet. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know.” He pulled out his gun and popped the clip to check his ammunition. “But I do know we’re not waiting around to see if your father has other enemies.”

“Where will we go?” She figured they were running out of options. “Do we even have a plan?”

“Not exactly.” Feliks strode over to the window and shoved the curtains aside. “But we need an exit and there’s one available right here.”

“Oh. My. God!” The bottom dropped out of her stomach. “I can’t scale the fire escape.”

“You considered it the other day in your apartment when you were trying to get away from me.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t do it.”

He slid the window open. A gust of cool night air whooshed into the room. Annika shivered, but it was from nerves more than anything else. “I can’t do this, Feliks.”

“Yes. You can.”

He didn’t even give her a choice. Grabbing her around the waist, he practically stuffed her out the window onto the metal landing. She clung to the railing and froze. She stared down at the shadowy alley behind her father’s warehouse. The ground was barely discernible in the darkness. There weren’t many streetlights back there. Her father didn’t like the light for his illegal dealings.

“You’re fine,” Feliks murmured. He climbed out behind her and shut the window.

She trembled. The scent of trash was strong and underlying it all was the damp, rotting smell of the nearby Neponset River. She forced herself to move. Her heart pounded, and she was utterly aware of the fact that she wasn’t just responsible for herself. She had to worry about the tiny life growing inside her.

The thought strengthened her resolve. “What do I do?” she asked hoarsely.

“Climb over the railing and move to the ladder.” His hands were gentle as he helped her get hold of the rungs. “I’ll assist you.”

Annika forced herself to breath normally. She put one foot on the bottom rail. The metal felt cold and hard through the sole of her shoe. She swung her other leg over and shoved her foot up against a crosspiece in order to brace her weight. With Feliks’s help she managed to find the ladder.

She was just beginning to breathe easier when her full weight made the ladder creak and drop a foot into thin air. The sharp drop left her feeling dizzy and sick. She struggled to hang onto the rungs with sweaty hands gone numb.

“Feliks,” she whimpered.

“It’s okay. It’s supposed to drop like that. It’ll keep doing it the more you climb down so there’s not so much space between us and the ground. Keep going. I’ve got you.”

Biting her lip, Annika forced herself to begin climbing down. Steadily descending one rung at a time, she tried to be quick. Surely that fight in the warehouse was over by now. Right? Would they get to the ground only to go back in through the front and have a good laugh at this bizarre twist of circumstances?

A sudden crash in her bedroom sent that theory right to hell. Annika gasped as broken glass rained down around her. Urgency hastened her trip to the ground.

“You unbelievable bastard!” A man’s voice came from the general direction of her bedroom, as if he were inside.

“I’m sorry, Yuri.” Feliks’s tone was almost a taunt. “Did I interrupt your plans for murder?”

“I already got rid of that fool Vadir,” Yuri shouted. “Now I’m going to dispose of his bitch of a daughter and call it a night.”

Annika forced herself to keep going. She felt the ladder slide the rest of the way down. Letting go of the last rung, she hung above the ground. It was an awful feeling. She couldn’t actually see below, but she knew it was there. Dropping like a stone, she stumbled when her feet slammed onto the pavement.

“Annika?” Feliks called out.

“I’m good.”

“Not for long,” Yuri shouted.

The sound of the two men grappling was awful to hear. She had no way of knowing what was happening. The struggle was going on much too far above her head for that. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what Yuri had meant when he’d claimed to have “taken care of” her father. Was Vadir hurt? Or was it worse than that?

It took Annika only seconds to decide. She
had
to know if her father was safe or not. Slinking through the deep shadows next to the building, she headed back around to the front entrance.

The sight that greeted her brought a scream to her lips. Annika pressed her palm against her mouth to stifle the sound. There was no way to know if Yuri had been alone. The door had been ripped from its hinges as though someone had used a grenade or some kind of blast. The edges of the metal doorframe were blackened. It looked like a war zone.

She gingerly stepped through the wreckage. She knew she shouldn’t be there. That much was obvious. Only half a dozen emergency lights lit the warehouse. They were stationed at long intervals across the exterior walls and gave her very little to see by.

She picked her way around overturned crates and shattered pallets. Finally she saw a lumpy shape she realized was a body lying on the ground. Annika knelt beside her father’s still form and took his hand. His knuckles were bloody as though he’d given a good accounting of himself. But the bullet hole in the center of his forehead had taken all the fight from him.

“Papa,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

FELIKS FELT THE hard bite of the metal railing in his back as Yuri tried to push him right off the narrow fire escape landing. The move didn’t work, mostly because Feliks had more muscle and weight.

“Just die!” Yuri snarled.

Feliks shoved Yuri back, reached out and grabbed his foot with one hand, yanking his legs right out from under him. “I didn’t think you wanted me dead.”

“I want your place!” Yuri tangled his legs between Feliks’s, tripping him and sending him crashing into the landing’s metal grate. Yuri rolled, trying to trap Feliks. “You were always the favorite. Stupid Vasily never saw you for the coward you are.”

“As opposed to the sadistic bastard you are?” Feliks twisted, bending his knee and wrapping his leg around Yuri’s body to perform a very effective reversal. “You’re nothing but a bloodthirsty coward who would kill his own mother if it furthered his goals. You’re despicable and everyone knows it.”

Yuri snarled something unintelligible in Russian. Feliks caught just enough to shock him. The distraction gave Yuri the edge. He put his boot in Feliks’s gut then lurched to his feet. He bailed back through the window and was gone.

Feliks wanted to go after Yuri. He needed to know if the little bastard was telling the truth or lying to save his sorry hide. But Annika was more important right now.

Forcing himself to stand, Feliks groaned as he considered the bruises he’d be sporting in a few hours. He ignored the pain. It didn’t matter. Swinging over the railing to the ladder, he made short work of the trek to the ground. He dropped right into a crouch to save his knees. Looking around, he let his eyes adjust to the darkness and searched for a place where Annika might have hidden.

“Feliks?” Her whisper came out of the shadows not far from the corner of the building.

Feliks realized she must’ve gone back into the building. She was too close to the entrance. Yuri had gone back inside. He could be coming out at any second. Sprinting toward Annika, Feliks grabbed her around the waist and turned just as a shot rang out.

Pain sliced through his shoulder, and Feliks fell to the ground, taking Annika with him. He rolled to the side, pulling his weapon as he did. He held Annika down and aimed in the direction the shot had come from.

Feliks squeezed off two shots. He heard the first one hit the side of a brick building across the street. The second shattered the windshield of a car just as the tires squealed and it barreled off down the street.

“Feliks!” Annika’s tone was pure panic. “You’re shot! Oh my God, you’re shot!”

“I’m fine.” He could tell the bullet had gone right through his shoulder. “We need to stop the bleeding.”

“We have to get out of here before Yuri comes back.”

“He’s not coming back here,” he said, certain of that assessment. “He got what he wanted.”

“I know.” Her voice broke. “My father is dead.”

“I’m sorry.” He struggled to gain his feet. Every movement sent a bolt of agonizing pain through his arm.

She tucked herself beneath his good arm and began walking with him back toward the main entrance. Feliks tried not to hang too heavily on her, but it felt good to have her beside him.

“You’re pretty damn amazing, you know that?” he said softly. “I cannot imagine any other woman in the world who could hold it together the way you have. You’re amazing.”

“Wow, all the flowery compliments are going to go straight to my head.”

He could tell she was trying her best to make light of something that was killing her inside. As antagonistic as her relationship with her father had been, losing him was a blow.

“What did Yuri mean?” she asked as they were squeezing through the blown out entrance. “You know, when he was yelling something about your father.”

Feliks could see the shadowy shape of Vadir Polzin’s body crumpled on the floor to the right of the doorway. He deliberately moved to the left in search of something to staunch the flow of blood. He could feel the trail of sticky dampness down his arm. At this point the blood was dripping off his fingers onto the floor.

“Feliks?” Annika pressed. “He said that Vasily was your father.”

He locked his teeth together. He didn’t want to think about this now. “Let it go.”

“Is it true?”

“I don’t know.”

 “How can you not know?”

He found some rags and awkwardly pressed them to his shoulder. “I just don’t.”

She gazed at him. Even in the dim warehouse he could see the shrewd contemplation in her expression. “Do you want to know?”

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

Feliks snorted. “You’ve proven over and over again that you’re far braver than I am.”

Chapter Twelve

By the time Feliks strode through the front door of Pyotr’s house with Annika by his side, dawn was just beginning to kiss the horizon. The last twenty-four hours seemed like a bad dream he couldn’t wake up from.

“Feliks?” Pyotr’s bushy eyebrows rose in surprise.

It was difficult not to wonder whether Pyotr’s surprise came from thinking Yuri had already gotten rid of him.

Feliks put those thoughts to the side. He didn’t have time for that now. “We need to talk.”

Pyotr’s gaze slid to Annika. “If you’ll excuse us?”

“No.” Feliks didn’t wait for his friend. He was already heading off to Pyotr’s study. “Annika stays with me.”

“As you wish.” Pyotr’s face was tight with some suppressed emotion he tried unsuccessfully to hide.

Feliks entered the study but couldn’t sit down. His arm hurt like hell. He was pretty sure he was still sluggishly bleeding everywhere. On top of that, he was beginning to suspect the people closest to him had been lying through their teeth ever since he could remember.

“Now.” Pyotr shut the door. “Why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you?”

Annika had taken a seat on the couch where only a few hours earlier Feliks had sat discussing his suspicions about the council with Pyotr. Her expression was stoic. She looked worn out. Her hair was tangled and her clothes were rumpled, but there was a fire in her eyes that told him she was far from down.

Feliks cocked his head at Pyotr. “You’re not even going to comment on the fact that I’ve been shot?”

The older man didn’t answer right away. He meandered toward his desk and took a seat in the comfortable executive chair that gave him a command view of the room. “I figured that the story of how you’d come to be shot was part of the reason you wished to speak with me.”