I snarled wordlessly, even though I knew I shouldn’t let my temper get the best of me, not in front of my family. If Evgeni thought I was too hot-headed, he would send me straight back to Russia, where I couldn’t mess up any of the family’s business. That threat about learning my place was still heavy in my mind.
But I couldn’t believe what he had just said.
“We can’t just leave her with Audaz!” I said, slamming my fist down on the table, making everyone’s drinks rattle.
“Calm down,” Evgeni rebuked, giving me a look. “You’re acting like a spoiled child who’s been told that he can’t play with a toy.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to remember if I had ever felt this livid in my life. It wasn’t enough for Audaz to confront me in our territory and kick my ass in an unfair fight. It wasn’t enough for them to take Emily hostage and demand that we come to a new agreement with them. But Evgeni’s plan was apparently to ignore the situation. He thought that eventually, Audaz would realize that they weren’t getting anywhere and would just let Emily go free.
I was afraid that wouldn’t be the case. Even if they did let her go free, I wasn’t sure what kind of condition they would leave her in.
The thought of any of them violating her sickened me. But even beyond that, I couldn’t stop thinking of how scared she had looked on the beach. She must be terrified; she had been kidnapped. She’d want nothing more to do with me ever again, and I couldn’t blame her.
But I wanted to protect her.
“You have to understand, Nikolai, there’s nothing that we can do,” Evgeni said, shaking his head.
“What do you mean, there’s nothing we can do?” I yelled. “We have men. We know where Audaz is holding her. We could easily-“
“There would be nothing easy about it,” Diego interrupted, grimacing at me. I knew he thought that given our friendship, he might be able to reason with me, but instead, I just turned my narrowed eyes on him.
“If this was your wife in danger, you would be yelling for action too,” I pointed out venomously.
“Of course I would,” Diego agreed easily. “And I would hope that one of you would hold me back and reason with me.” He sighed. “We all agree that it was wrong for Audaz to take Emily hostage; no one’s fighting that point. But if the Garda caught wind of gang violence between us and Audaz, they’d have us out of the city faster than you can say ‘Russian mob’. And there would be violence. We don’t have as many men as Audaz. And we would need to storm right into one of their strongholds. It’s a suicide mission.”
“I’ll go after Emily myself if I have to,” I warned. “It’s my fault that she’s caught up in this, and it’s a matter of honor to get her back. I would have thought the rest of you would understand that.” I looked around, making eye contact with everyone in the room. I knew I shouldn’t go against what Evgeni had said, not so openly, but I couldn’t just let Audaz have Emily.
“Well?” I asked the men in the room. “Are we really just going to roll over and let Audaz take whatever they want? Let them get away with kidnapping on our territory? Because if so, I guess there’s no reason to negotiate new terms of our coexistence in Barcelona. They’ve already won.”
A murmur went up around the room, and I could see a couple people shift uneasily, looking between Evgeni and I. But my uncle didn’t say anything, letting me continue.
“I’m not saying that we storm their building. What I’m suggesting is that we dispatch a few men and see if we can sneak in and get Emily back. Maybe do a little damage along the way. Let Audaz know that they don’t have the upper hand.”
There was silence for a long moment. Finally, Uncle Evgeni nodded. “You may be right, we may have a duty to get her out,” he finally allowed. “The day the Volkov family is without honor is the day that this whole thing falls apart.”
“Thank you,” I said, trying to hide how surprised I was that he wasn’t immediately booking me a flight back to Russia. I glanced over at Dima and Andrei; they were both pointedly not looking at me, probably trying not to implicate themselves in whatever consequences I might face. I had to suppress a smile at that.
“I will think this over and make a plan,” Evgeni said, standing up and clearly signaling that the discussions were over. “We will make our move tomorrow. It’s Sunday, so most of Audaz will be with their families or at their churches or otherwise enjoying their day of rest.” He grinned. “If they want to continue to play dirty, I’ll match them at it.”
He turned towards me. “Nikolai, you and I will discuss in private. Come to dinner tonight.”
I nodded at him, hardly trusting my voice. But it seemed that a verbal answer wasn’t necessary; no sooner had I nodded than Evgeni was strolling out of the room.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew that there would be words that evening, when it was just the two of us alone, but if he were planning on making an example of me, he would have given me a dressing down already, in front of everyone else. I didn’t think things were going to be too bad; despite my anger, I had managed to present a valid argument.
Diego caught my arm and pulled me off to the side. “You’re right that there are some similarities between your situation with Emily and how I would feel if it was my wife that Audaz had kidnapped,” he said in a hushed voice. “But there is one key difference.”
“And that is?” I asked, trying not to feel waspish at his patronizing tone.
Diego gave me a serious look, though. “I’m married to my Julia,” he reminded me.
“Why should that matter?” I asked. “It’s still my fault that Emily is in this situation.”
“It is,” Diego agreed. He paused. “But part of why I got married so quickly is exactly this reason. Evgeni understands that he can’t send me on missions like this anymore. There’s a reason I haven’t been doing as many deliveries. There’s a reason I wasn’t the one sent to Madrid. You know he never would have given you a mission like that before, not if he could help it. It’s an inconvenience and one that you, his right-hand man, should never have to put up with.”
I frowned. “And what, Julia wouldn’t let you disappear to Madrid for the day with no word?”
Diego gave me a look. “Now you’re just being petty,” he said. “Of course it’s nothing like that. Julia doesn’t get to say where I go or when. If it was something to do with work, I would do it, no questions asked.”
“But Evgeni doesn’t ask you to do things like this anymore,” I said slowly, turning that information over in my mind. I remembered what I’d been thinking about on the train to Madrid, about how a relationship with Emily could compromise me. How it could draw my focus away from the things I needed to focus on.
“It’s about more than just a lack of focus,” Diego said, as though reading my mind. He shook his head. “It’s the fact that I might no longer be rational. There is something that I value more than I value the Volkov family, our reputation, or even my own life. If someone came after Julia, I would have no choice but to go after her, whatever the cost. And you made it very clear, today, that you feel the same way about Emily.”
I snorted. “So what, you’re suggesting that I marry her?” I asked. “Is that all marriage is about, finding someone who needs your protection and putting a ring on their finger.”
Diego gave me a mild look. “Of course not,” he said. “But Kolya, you took an unnecessary risk by agreeing to deliver that package, if you had these feelings for Emily. You realize that if we get into a fight with Audaz, it’s because you couldn’t let this lie—because you let them set the perfect trap?”
“That’s not fair,” I complained. “I told Evgeni that we shouldn’t deliver the package in Madrid, that we were risking a fight.”
Diego sighed. “That package that you delivered, though, went to Boris Nikolaevich,” he said.
I stared at Diego. “Boris Nikolaevich, the head of the Moscow mob?” I asked.
Diego nodded. He looked around to make sure that there was no one there to overhear us, but most of the others had already left headquarters, no doubt disliking the current tension in the air. “I don’t know what it was that you delivered, but I have my own sources, Spanish sources,” he said in an undertone.
I shook my head. “I don’t want to know anything more about it,” I said, even though I was more curious now than ever. But I was in enough hot water as it was.
Diego clapped a hand on my shoulder. “You probably think it’s a little early to be considering marriage,” he said. “You know I felt the same way about Julia. But you owe it to the family to make it clear if you’re truly compromised.”
I nodded, even though there was no way in hell that I was proposing to Emily. I had yet to sort out this tangled mess of feelings that had been stirring inside me ever since she had been kidnapped. Since before, that, really.
She’d said that she was surprised when I invited her out again. I had been surprised as well, when I found myself dialing her number. It wasn’t just that the sex had been exceptional, though; wasn’t just that she had reacted so beautifully to my fingers against her skin. There was something more to her that I liked. The ease of conversation between us, her nervousness and those adorable blushes of hers, and the way she sometimes tripped over her words as she was talking to me. She was smart, I could tell. And just…sexy, in ways that I couldn’t even begin to describe.
And now, it was my fault that she was currently being held in Audaz’s headquarters, having who knew what done to her. I swallowed hard. I would be lucky if she ever deigned to talk to me again. Marriage was definitely out of the question.
Not that I was really considering it.
Was I?