Page 17 of Wayward

I reached for his hand, and he took mine, holding tight, smiling at me.

The tears were a surprise. “Thank you.”

“You showed me your heart when you took care of my family, Maks, when my brother was ill and I had to return to Vladivostok those many years ago.”

I had. He was right. My father wanted to stop paying Sava’s salary while he was gone, but I didn’t even consider that. Sava was one of my guys, and that wasn’t going to change just because he had a family emergency. I’d made sure that his wife, Alisa, was paid, that her refrigerator and cupboards were full, and that whatever her girls needed, from school uniforms to dental checkups, were covered. I would have done no less for any of my people.

“So it’s a debt you’re paying off,” I replied sadly.

His eyes went cold for a moment, and I recognized the killer that he was. “No. As I said, you showed me who you were when you stood by my family.”

“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay.”

“Good,” he said, smiling again.

But then it hit me. “Sava,” I gasped, jolting, sitting up straight, the motion sucking the air from my body and making me instantly light-headed.

“What are you doing?” he yelled, standing up and shoving me back against the pillows.

My vision swam, and there were lights everywhere, flashing in my face while he yelled at me, and then there was nothing because I passed out.

When I came to a few minutes later, my eyes fluttering open, Sava was on his phone, texting with someone.

“Over my dead body,” he muttered.

“Who are you mad at now?”

He turned to me. “Don’t do that again. You have stitches that don’t need to be ripped, yes?”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Scaring me is bad. I don’t like it.”

“Understood.”

“Drink some water while I tell my daughter that the Italian boy she wants to date is out of the question.”

“I thought there was a nice…what was his name, the Jewish one, really smart, going to MIT or something?”

“That is Noah, and he’s Elena’s boyfriend. Maria, you know, she’s married to the nice plumber, Jacek. This is Anya who’s going to be the death of me.”

I had to smile.

“And you know, I don’t care that he’s Italian. I care that he’s twenty-one and she’s sixteen. I’ll kill him first.”

And yes, Sava could kill anyone—and had—but his wildly skewed moral compass would never allow him to hurt an innocent.

“They think they are smarter than me, sneaking around.”

The young man was playing with fire, and clearly, he wasn’t very bright to try and go behind Sava’s back. Even if you didn’t know what the man did for a living, just from seeing him and talking to him, you knew he wasn’t someone you crossed. Fuck-around-and-find-out took on a whole new level of scary when you screwed with Sava Chaban’s daughters.

He finished his texting as I had some water, then said, “What the hell was that earlier?”

“I realized—and I got so scared just thinking about—are you in danger? Your family? Does my father—”

“Stop, stop,” he soothed me, taking my hand and squeezing it gently. “You know I’m a freelance contractor, have been for years. After your funeral, I had a job in London to take care of, and as far as anyone knows, that’s where I was and where I’ve been.”

“But you’ve been here and—”