“What the hell did you just do?” Viktor demanded.
Blythe kept her back to the wall, covering the panic button that looked like an ordinary light switch. Her heart thundered in her ears. What had she done? Viktor looked invincible. More, he was, by his birth brothers’ own admission, extremely dangerous, more so even than all of them. He certainly had some dangerous-looking men he surrounded himself with. She was very thankful that they weren’t present. If they were, she might have started World War III.
“You’d better leave now while you can, Viktor,” she said, making every effort to sound reasonable. Just looking at him hurt.
“Tell me what you did, Blythe.”
His tone was so scary she felt the color leech from her face. He stepped close and caught at her wrist, tugging until she was propelled forward and into him. One arm locked around her back while he examined the switch. He swore, really filthy words, she was certain, in his native language.
“Tell me now.” His voice was low. “I’m not alone, Blythe. Reaper and Savage are out on the roof and the others are close. If my birth brothers are going to show up, someone’s going to get hurt. I don’t want anyone harmed, but the ones I brought with me play for keeps. They don’t know any other way.” He caught her upper arms and held her at arm’s length from him. “I have to know now.”
She knew immediately he was genuinely worried and that calmed her instantly. She had to protect her family, just as he did. She didn’t doubt for one minute that there would be bloodshed if things weren’t handled right.
“They’ll come. All of them. Lissa probably as well, although she might go with the others to Airiana’s to help protect the children there.” She wasn’t about to tell him how defensible Airiana’s home was. She might need to retreat there.
He whistled, a low, one-two note that sounded more like a hunting bird than a man. Immediately a man stuck his head through her open window. She recognized him from the streets earlier.
“We’re going to have company very soon, and they’ll be out for blood. Stand down and let me handle it. Keep Savage under control. These are my brothers as well, and I don’t want them hurt. The one to watch out for is Gavriil. He’s a bit like Savage, so we don’t want the two of them anywhere near each other.”
“What the fuck?”
“Don’t say fuck in front of my woman. Blythe panicked a little and called them in. She’ll talk to them with me and we’ll sort it out.”
“Not going to stand for anyone trying to search me or remove weapons,” Reaper warned. “And I’m calling in the others.”
“You make it clear these men are family. No one touches them.”
“As long as they don’t put a hand on you, Czar, we’ll get along.”
Blythe closed her eyes tiredly. She really had panicked. What had possessed her to let things get so out of hand? She couldn’t be around Viktor without feeling intense emotion. Already her anger was fading, replaced by more familiar hurt. “Can’t you just leave? I’m exhausted, Viktor, and I want to go to bed. Alone.” She had to make that very clear. “We’ve talked enough. You said what you had to say and I found out why you’re really here, which has nothing at all to do with me. Please go back to your friends – brothers – and your woman and let’s just leave it at that.”
Reaper’s eyebrow went up. He shook his head and ducked back outside.
“Let’s get downstairs, babe. We’ve got to present a united front. They’re going to try to get you off alone to make certain I haven’t threatened you. Reaper, Savage and the others will stop at nothing to protect me.”
“Then leave now.”
“No, damn it. Why are you being so fucking unreasonable?”
She decided she must have gone past the point of tired into sheer exhaustion because that made her want to smile. He could use foul language in front of her but his friend couldn’t. “Why do you persist in thinking I’m the unreasonable one? You left me for five years. That alone without all the things that happened…”
“Things outside my control, and I would have given anything to be with you. I would have come if I’d known.”
He pulled her down the hallway, and she went with him because it was clear he wasn’t leaving and she didn’t want anyone hurt, especially the men she’d called to her aid. She’d come to regard them as family. “But you didn’t know and they happened. Then there’s the fact that you have another woman regardless of whether or not you want to give me a bullshit story about her protecting you from other women. Like you’d go five years without sex. I know you, you were insatiable. I think we had sex three times a day at least.”
“Four, but who’s counting,” he said, snapping his teeth together as if he might take a bite out of her. “Four, and I wanted more. I remember every single minute of my time with you. At night, when I’m alone, I have my fist around my cock and think of you, the way you looked all sprawled out on the bed for me. In the shower. Your body over the back of the couch. Once on the lawn in the backyard because I couldn’t wait one more minute. The night in the car when you…”
“Stop. Just stop it,” she said desperately, locking her legs so he couldn’t drag her.
He wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her easily, taking her down the stairs fast. “I remember everything, Blythe. Do you think a man can’t be faithful to his woman? Or is it only me you have such a low opinion of?”
She began to struggle, and at the end of the stairs he set her on her feet and caught her face between his hands, bending down to put his face inches from her. “Look at me, Blythe. Look at me.”
At the urgency in his voice she stopped struggling and lifted her gaze to meet his.
“You think you’ve seen the worst by looking at my birth brothers, at Jackson and Jonas, especially Gavriil. You’ve seen the hell in their eyes, but, baby, they lived through a picnic in comparison to us. My brothers don’t know any other way but to kill. I don’t either. That’s who we are. It’s what we are. They can’t be threatened, especially not by my birth brothers, who are all capable as well. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? You have to stand with me here. You have to make my birth brothers believe you’re not afraid of me.” He smoothed back the hair from her face. “I would never under any circumstances harm you. If you pulled out a gun right now and threatened to pull the trigger, I’d let you.”
“And the others, your brothers, would come after me.”
He fell silent, and she had her answer. The anxiety in him was plain and it was very real. Blythe took a deep breath and forced calm. There was no expression on his face, but there was no way for him to keep emotions from her. Feeling poured out of him, filling the room until she felt anxious as well.
All fight was gone and a calm resolve came over her. She knew, deep down, Viktor wouldn’t hurt her; she was being ridiculous fighting him like a child. She also knew that every one of his birth brothers would protect her, and that would be a tragedy. Viktor knew it as well, and he feared for them. He had to know what they were capable of and yet he feared for them – what did that say about the men he traveled with? What did that say about him?
“Blythe? Are you with me?”
She nodded, because she knew the situation was dire and it could quickly get out of hand. He felt so troubled. Hurting. The pain of loss beat at him. He was upset that he couldn’t get her to understand. All that was right there in the room with them, yet he gave a sigh of relief and straightened.
“Thank you.”
That shamed her a little. She had every right to be angry with him, but she knew better than to put others in jeopardy. There was no excuse for it all. “I’m sorry. I did panic, and I don’t even know why.”
“I scared you, Blythe,” he stated. “You were with me every single day we were apart, so it didn’t occur to me that you wouldn’t be used to the way I move, or look.”
That bothered her, because sincerity not only rang in his voice, but filled the room along with the other emotions battering at her. The front door opened without preamble, no knocking, just the door opening, and Gavriil walked in. He filled the doorframe, tall and broad-shouldered, wearing his long black coat that swirled around his ankles. She knew that coat had weapons concealed in it. His face was grim, his eyes cold, taking in both of them.
Again, there was no expression on either man’s face, but she felt that sudden stillness as they looked at each other. Two brothers who had been ripped apart when they were children. Now at odds because of her. There was a slight hitch of breath, and such emotion quickly shut down, as if both men had to compartmentalize in order to survive.
“Blythe, come here.” Gavriil beckoned her with his hand. He stayed across the room from them, but he’d taken one step to the left so that the open door was no longer at his back.
“Gavriil,” Viktor greeted.
“Viktor.” Gavriil kept his gaze on his older brother’s face, but he beckoned to Blythe a second time.
She crossed the room to him. He took her wrist and very, very gently, guided her around him until she was behind him.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said immediately. “I’m so sorry I hit that panic button. Viktor just surprised me. He’s intimidating, and I wasn’t expecting it. Him. I hit it before I thought.”
“He didn’t hurt you.” It was a statement, but all of them knew it was a question.
“Of course not. He wouldn’t. Not ever.” She said that with conviction because they were talking about physical harm, and no way would Viktor ever put his hands on a woman in that way. Even this man she wasn’t certain of, the side of him he was showing her now, she knew would never hurt a woman unless it was self-defense or she was responsible for hurting others.
“I’m not alone,” Viktor said. “Gavriil, the others with me, they’re like me.”
She felt the tension rise immediately. “I’m all right, Gavriil. Please tell the others it’s safe to come in.”
Gavriil still didn’t look at her. “Five years. No word.”
“I left word for all of you. Hundreds of messages. I wanted Blythe looked after. No one ever answered me.”
This time fury shimmered in the room. Blythe realized that rage was a part of Viktor’s makeup. How he’d hidden it from her in the months they were together, she’d probably never know, but it was stamped into his bones and impressed on every cell. That fury was directed at Gavriil. He really had sent messages, and no one had answered him.
“There were no messages, Viktor. Not for the last five years. Not one.”
Blythe clutched the back of Gavriil’s coat and held her breath. It seemed as if something had crept into the room and then suddenly sucked all the air out so it was impossible to breathe.
“I can feel that both of you are telling the truth, so how would that happen?” If Viktor had tried to get to her and asked others to look after her, then at least she could feel as if he’d cared. Maybe it hadn’t all been a complete sham on his part.
“That’s the question,” Viktor said. “If you didn’t get my letter and you didn’t have the codes and no one else received my messages, then someone else has the codes and deliberately erased them. There’s no other explanation.”
“How many men you have out there?” Gavriil asked.
“How many did you spot?” Viktor countered.
“Six.”
“You missed two. One’s probably hanging back deliberately with a bead on whoever you have sitting up with a sniper rifle on me. The other is a woman, and she’s lethal. She’s already assessed the most vulnerable and marked him, one who might hesitate because she’s female. Every one of them has some sort of psychic gift, so you can’t depend on your gifts to even the odds. Call them in.”
“Blythe? You good?” Gavriil asked.
“Perfectly. I just feel a little silly for causing such a fuss.”
Gavriil stepped to the doorway and held up his hand, signaling his brothers. Again, Blythe felt shimmering emotion filling the room – this time it was coming solely from Viktor in anticipation of seeing his birth brothers. She couldn’t help herself; she went to him. He needed someone whether or not he knew he did.
He immediately circled her waist with his arm, locking her front to his side. She felt the small tremor move through his body as first Lev entered, and then Stefan. She looked up at Viktor’s face. He was utterly still. His features could have been carved from stone.
The emotion in the room was so strong it threatened to drive her to her knees. She had no choice but to cling to Viktor for strength. She recognized that they both were doing the same thing. Holding on to each other. She’d had no one. She’d thought he hadn’t either in those days, but now she realized he had an entire life she didn’t know about. Brothers and perhaps sisters. And birth brothers. Men she had grown to love. She wasn’t alone anymore. She had her sisters, the five women standing with her. She knew them well. They weren’t hiding in their homes, cowering; they were somewhere outside, waiting to see if they were needed. Viktor’s new family might be lethal killers and they clearly had psychic abilities – he’d said so – but she wasn’t helpless and neither were her sisters.
She started to pull away from Viktor and his other arm clamped around her, preventing movement. She glanced up at him again. He wasn’t looking at her; he was looking at the two other men entering the house. Maxim and Casimir. Another tremor ran through his body. The emotions in the room ratcheted up another notch. She curled her fingers into his shirt as Ilya Prakenskii walked into her house.
There was a stirring in her mind. A brush along the walls like a caress. Blythe. Her name was a whisper in her mind. A shared anguish.
Viktor couldn’t show his emotions, maybe he wasn’t even feeling them, but they were strong enough to nearly bring her to her knees. Her breath hitched in her throat. She hadn’t expected to see Ilya there. Evidently Viktor hadn’t either.
It was worth it. I didn’t know if it would be, but they’re all safe.
Her eyes burned, and then she couldn’t see anything because tears swam and spilled over. They were his tears, tears he couldn’t shed. It was too much for any one human being. The knowledge of how his daughter died and then seeing six brothers he hadn’t seen in thirty years other than from a distance when he’d tried to help them on some impossible assignment.
Blythe rubbed her wet cheek along his shirt. She couldn’t have moved even if she wanted to, he was holding her that tight. “Honey, you need to tell your other brothers everyone is safe and they can go home. I know that the women are out there, covering their men. Waiting to see if I’m all right. I’m going to step to the door and let them know everything is good.”
No one else had spoken. The seven men faced one another, birth brothers, men who had sacrificed so much for one another, yet didn’t know one another very well and Viktor not at all.
Viktor swallowed visibly and then he nodded and stepped with her, holding the lock he had on her. She knew why. He needed her. She was what was getting him through this moment. There was so much emotion, he couldn’t allow himself to actually feel it. He compartmentalized. Instinctively she knew it was the only way he could survive. Something in him was very, very broken. Very wrong.
Again, it was sheer instinct that had her gripping him hard and walking in perfect sync with him. His brothers parted to allow them through, although Lev trailed after them. She could feel the fierce protective vibe coming off of him in waves. The other brothers were nearly as fierce, although it was difficult to read Gavriil. He didn’t take his gaze from Viktor, not even when Maxim moved through the room, dimming the lights and moving furniture to get the chairs out of line with the windows.
Viktor gave another call, the distinctive call of an eagle owl, three hoots, signifying all was well. He lifted his hand and made a circle, indicating his brothers and sister could go home for the night. Blythe lifted her hand to her sisters. She could feel them out there. They could go home and know she was safe.
“They were a surprise,” Viktor said. “I don’t know why, but I thought my brothers would tuck them somewhere safe and come themselves.”
Amusement shifted through her, breaking up the terrible weight of his overwhelming emotions. “Of course you thought that.”
His eyebrows shot up and his entire focus was on her. His long fingers captured her chin and tilted her face up toward his. “Why would you think that, baby?” His voice was low, just between the two of them, and held a warning caress that slid down her spine like fingers. She shivered with reaction, her sex clenching.
“Because you belong in a cave half the time.”
“Only half?” Now brief amusement cut through all the terrible emotions, and he took a deep breath as he turned her back toward the inside of the house.
She had to nod. “Only half. Sometimes you can be reasonable.”
“I’ll have to work on that.”
She wasn’t certain what he was going to work on, being a caveman all the time, or trying not to be a caveman most of the time. She closed the door while he stood with one arm still locking her to his side. Blythe didn’t try to step away from him because she could feel his struggle. He wanted to walk out the door, not allow her to close it.
She was the one who took the first step back into the room filled with his brothers. She was very, very grateful that she had wanted a house built with wide open spaces. The Prakenskii brothers were all tall with broad shoulders and a presence that took up every available space.
“Blythe.” Ilya shocked her by putting a hand on her wrist as if he would take her physically from his brother. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Of course. I’m so sorry I got all of you out of your homes. I just panicked for a moment when I saw Viktor and I just pushed the button. As you can see, I’m fine,” she tried to reassure them all. Testosterone was heavy. None of them were going to relax or back down until they believed every single word she said. She felt just a little desperate. Any one of these men could erupt into violence at the slightest provocation, and she didn’t want any of them hurt.
“Let go of her.” Viktor all but snarled the order. “You don’t put your hands on my wife.”
“Viktor,” Blythe protested. “Ilya is only trying to make certain that I’m all right.”
“You don’t have to give him explanations, Blythe.” Ilya didn’t back down for a minute. “He hasn’t been here in thirty damned years, he can’t just walk in and decide you belong to him.”
“Thirty years?” Viktor echoed. “You want to tell me how difficult your life was, baby brother? In that easy, skate-through-life school straight into Interpol? Yeah, that was a rough fuckin’ life, wasn’t it? You know who earned you that life? That was me. Thirty years of the worst kind of shit you couldn’t even imagine. Did you bother to find out what it was like for me earning you that school and that easy life?”
“Viktor.” Gavriil indicated a chair. “No one had it easy. None of us, and we can all acknowledge that you were put in the worst of the worst. We know what you did for us. The point Ilya is making is about Blythe, not about us. She’s the innocent here, and yes, she’s your wife.”
“My mark is on her.” Viktor caught her wrist and held up her palm. His thumb slid over the center and the double rings burst to life, etched into her skin like a very permanent tattoo. “This mark says she’s mine and no one has the right to interfere with us.”
Gavriil waved his hand toward the chairs in Blythe’s great room. Reluctantly the other brothers sank into the wide armchairs. Viktor led Blythe right past Ilya to the love seat and pulled her down with him. She let him because she wasn’t about to be the match setting off the sticks of dynamite. Ilya sat across from them, straddling the arm of a chair.
No one looked comfortable. Blythe struggled for a way to break the ice. They all wanted to – although mostly she felt his brothers’ concern for her and for some reason that made her want to cry. She hadn’t realized they felt genuine affection for her, although now it came at her in a concentrated form.
“I could make tea or coffee,” she offered.
Viktor’s hand tightened involuntarily on her, but then he forced his fingers to let her go, one after another. “That might be a good idea, baby,” he said.
It was his most caressing voice, like black velvet rubbing over her skin, the tone that always had disarmed her. It was no different now. Every single cell in her body responded to him. She stood up quickly, looking around, grateful for the reprieve. “Tea? Coffee? Name your preference.”
“Coffee.” It was decisive. Without their women, their chosen drink would always be what it had been.
“Moscow prefers tea,” Viktor said. “Didn’t any of you spend time there? And you know how I like my coffee, Blythe.”
“I spent a little time in Moscow,” Ilya admitted. “But I never picked up the tea habit until I came here and married my wife. Tea is a ritual with the Drakes.”
“I understand your wife is pregnant. When is she due?” Viktor said it deliberately so his brothers knew he did his homework. More, that he kept up with them.
“She’s a week or so over five months. She’s actually with her sister Libby right now. I was visiting Lev when the call came in.”
“Why didn’t you contact any of us in these last years?” Maxim asked. “I understand deep cover, but no one could have penetrated our code.”
“Someone did.” Viktor dropped the bomb into the sudden silence that had followed Maxim’s blunt accusation. “There’s no other explanation. I left you hundreds of messages. I left Blythe messages. No one got them. Someone had to have picked up the messages and then erased them.” He looked around the room at his brothers, his gaze touching each of their faces.
“You’re not accusing one of us.” Stefan made it a statement.
“I don’t know any of you.” Viktor kept his voice strictly neutral. Someone had severed all of his ties with Blythe. He would have thought Sharon was capable of it, but he had sent messages after her death. By that time, his Torpedo Ink brothers could occasionally get to the States and they reported Sharon’s death and that Blythe was happy and living on the farm with five other women in Sea Haven.
“You know us,” Gavriil said. “We lived by the oath of our father, even Ilya, although a baby and without any real knowledge of our parents. We kept to the code. If someone destroyed your messages, it wasn’t one of us.”
The brothers exchanged uneasy looks. The silence was broken by the sounds of Blythe getting mugs down from the cupboard.
“You believe that someone actually read all of our private messages?” Lev asked.
“It’s that or I lost my mind and didn’t spend nearly every waking minute trying to get word on Blythe. I practically begged the six of you to get to her and make certain she was okay.”
Again, in spite of trying, Viktor couldn’t quite keep the bite of accusation out of his tone. He hadn’t realized until he saw them all together just how emotional he would be, or how angry at them. Blythe had been alone. He couldn’t get to her, but at least one of them should have been able to. At least Ilya. He was careful not to look at his youngest brother.
“You disappeared.”
Viktor wasn’t surprised that Ilya was the one to voice it. He decided the kid was a hothead. He was looking for an excuse to move against Viktor.
“You have a problem with me, kid?”
“I’m not a kid,” Ilya said. “And yeah, I’ve got a problem with you. Thirty years and you never once walked up and introduced yourself.”
“I saved your worthless ass on at least seven occasions.”
“So what? You didn’t so much as say hello.”
He hadn’t. That much was true. He’d managed to see Gavriil a time or two, and Stefan once, but Ilya he’d watched over as best he could, and he’d interfered when Sorbacov had put his baby brother in situations there was no coming back from. He’d had one of his Torpedo Ink brothers checking constantly. It had been one of them tipping the scales on all but two occasions. It wasn’t like he could drop what he was doing and get to Ilya fast enough. Not with hundreds of miles between them most of the time.
He shrugged. He wasn’t about to explain himself. Not to any of them. He couldn’t help but be conflicted. He’d suffered endless torture for these six men. They hadn’t asked him to do it – their father had. He’d kept that promise and they had grown up, served their country and now had families.
He glanced toward the kitchen. To Blythe. She’d saved him. Not only had she saved him, but she’d saved seventeen others as well. His angel. He hadn’t believed in angels, but then he’d marked one as prey and she’d turned his world upside down.
Baby, I don’t know how to do this. He reached out to her before he could stop himself. He realized he was stroking his thumb back and forth across the center of his palm. It was a bad habit he’d developed since he’d first met her.
“Who are these people you’re traveling with?” Ilya asked.
“I’m here on a job.” Viktor watched their faces closely. They didn’t give anything away, and he hadn’t expected them to. They were trained agents.
“Tell us,” Gavriil instructed.
“Viktor.” Blythe came to the arched entry that was the only break between the great room, dining room and kitchen. “I could use your help carrying all these mugs. Can I borrow you, just for a moment?”
He was on his feet immediately, striding across the room, his arm sweeping around her as he moved with her through the dining room to the kitchen. He noted the archways were wide enough to accommodate both of them. The moment they were inside the room, he stepped away from the open passageway and swept her into his arms, burying his face between her shoulder and neck. Inhaling her. Taking her deep.
She was his safe haven. The only safe haven he’d ever known. She didn’t understand that, didn’t know just what she was to him, but he made a silent vow that she would.
Tell me what to do.
She held herself away from him at first, a little stiff, but at the question he’d pushed into her mind she melted, her body going soft and pliant. His. All his. It had been far too long since he’d been with a woman, but especially his woman. His body recognized her immediately and made urgent demands of its own. He was a man with iron control and he remembered that feeling of complete and utter exultation, knowing there was a woman who could arouse him naturally.
Just talk to them. Ask them questions about their lives. Just like you started to do with Ilya. Tell them why you’re here. Talk to them about your other brothers and sisters and why they’re important to you.
He could do that. It didn’t seem that difficult. He could talk to anyone in any situation, he was trained and had skills, so it didn’t make sense that he was all over the place because they were his birth brothers. Not, he decided, that any of them were doing much better.
“Thanks, baby,” he said softly, meaning it.
He looped her ponytail in his fist and pulled back her head, bending to take her mouth. Her lips were soft and tasted of tangerine. Her tongue tangled with his. Danced. Teased. Was provocative. He loved that about her. She couldn’t resist him any more than he could resist her.
When he knew he should stop or he wouldn’t be able to, he lifted his head and rested his forehead against hers. “Give me a chance, Blythe. That’s all I’m asking. Just give me a chance.”
She moistened her lips and her long lashes veiled her eyes. Before she could deny him even that much, he turned away from her to pick up the tray with the coffee mugs. She caught up a plate of cookies and followed him out into the great room.
“You were going to tell us about this job of yours,” Gavriil encouraged.
Viktor nodded and caught at Blythe and pulled her down next to him before she could escape. “Yes. I’ve been riding with the Swords for the last five years, working my way up the ranks to enforcer for the New Orleans chapter president. That’s Evan Shackler-Gratsos’s original chapter. It was also Jackson Deveau’s father’s chapter. If there’s one man on earth Evan hates more than anyone else, it’s Jackson. He wants him dead. He might never have done anything about it but Jackson had the bad grace to marry Elle Drake and actually be happy.”
He kept his eye on Ilya. The man was reputed to be very close friends with Jackson Deveau, and Elle Drake was his sister-in-law. Viktor stretched one arm along the back of the love seat to curl it around Blythe. He liked her close to him. With his other hand he raised the coffee mug to his lips.
“And?” Maxim said.
“Shackler inherited billions from his brother, but also a huge international shipping company. As international president of the Swords, he had already built his own empire on human trafficking. It’s outdoing drugs and he caught on to that very early. With the ships, he can charge an outrageous amount of money to special clients with special needs. They like to kill their victims after or during the time they use them.”
Maxim nodded. “I ran into them a few weeks back. Four of the children are with me now. I couldn’t save their sister.” There was regret, even sorrow in his voice.
“Evan is extremely paranoid. He moves constantly and isn’t easily tracked. By the time I get to one hideout, he’s already gone. Deveau marrying Elle Drake changed all that. As a member of the Swords club I knew sooner or later I’d get a chance at him; now I’m certain of it. He sent me here, without wearing colors, to set up a camp for more Swords to come in. I’m supposed to find out everything there is to know about the security around Jackson and his wife. From the way it looks to me, he plans on killing Deveau and taking the wife.”
There was silence. Ilya pinned him with the same silvery eyes. Their father’s eyes. “What are your plans?”
“I’m going to talk to Deveau and Elle Drake. I have to do it carefully. We just arrived so I need to scout around and make certain Evan didn’t send any other scouts ahead. It’s like him to put something like that into play. My brothers are on that now.”
“What brothers?” Maxim asked. It was asked a little belligerently.
There it was. The question he knew would come. The only person he would ever tell his story to was Blythe. No one else. In the telling he would be revealing things to her about the others, things that were nobody else’s business. Still, it was important to him to integrate his two families. On the other hand, he wasn’t about to apologize to any of them, not after what he’d done for them.
“There were only eighteen survivors of my school. We formed a family of sorts.” A very lethal one. “We watch one another’s backs, and they watched yours. When I was given the assignment to go after Evan, they were already disappearing because Sorbacov would put a hit out on one of them after some trumped-up offense. We knew it was a matter of time before he went after all of us. We devised a plan to escape, but once I really looked into Evan, I knew he had to be taken down.” Viktor wasn’t about to tell them the real reason he took the assignment, not with Ilya in the room.
“One by one they came out of hiding and joined the Swords in order to back me up. When this is over, I plan to live here. It’s Blythe’s home and she needs to be here with her sisters and all of you. That means I make this my home. And they’ll be with us.”
He didn’t dare look at Blythe’s face. Fortunately, he’d chosen well, and she didn’t contradict him in front of the others. He would have to thank her for that later. He massaged the tension gathering in the back of her neck.
“You plan on settling here with seventeen other men?” Stefan asked.
“Two of them are women.”
Blythe moved, a subtle retreat, but he settled his fingers around the nape of her neck and kept her close.
“We plan to purchase some land and houses. Set up businesses. Go legit. Or as legit as we’re able to go. We have our own club with our own colors.”
“Bikers,” Ilya said. “Outlaws.”
“Of sorts.” More like assassins, and every single one of his brothers knew that. They weren’t all clean, with the exception – maybe – of his baby brother.