Gilded Cage: A Russian Mafia Romance (Kovalyov Bratva Book 1) by Nicole Fox (free novel 24 .txt) 📗

feet away from the vehicle. She’s still got her arms wrapped around her body, as though she’s trying to keep herself from falling apart.

I watch her from a distance. Unsure of my place. Unsure of what she needs from me.

I decide to give her some space.

I turn to the vehicle and open up the trunk so that I can fold in the back seat. To my amazement, I find a thin air mattress under the seat, along with a pump.

I get to work blowing it up. It takes me ten minutes to get everything set up, but once I’m finished, the trunk of the car actually looks pretty cozy. I dress it up with a blanket we bought from the mall.

Only then do I allow myself to look back at Esme.

She’s still standing by the same tree, but she’s looking up towards the sky. Her dark hair pours around her face, flowing over her slight shoulders.

She looks like a fucking dream, a wild girl out amongst all this wilderness.

The desire to touch her, smell her, taste her drives me over there.

I whisper her name. She pirouettes slowly, like a dancer, and wraps her arms around me, burying her face in my chest. I hold her tight and kiss the top of her head.

We stand like that for several minutes, until finally Esme takes a deep, shuddering breath and pulls her head off my chest so she can look up at me.

“I don’t know what to do with this feeling,” she tells me desperately. “I killed a man, Artem.”

Only then does it hit me just how much she’s been carrying around with her this whole time.

You never forget your first kill.

I’m a fool not to have seen it earlier.

“Come,” I say, pulling her towards the vehicle.

I lead her to the open trunk and we sit down on the air mattress opposite one another so that our legs meet in the middle. Her eyes trail over the stark landscape, haunted and searching.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I should have realized this sooner.”

“I killed a man,” Esme says again, looking at me. But not really at me—more like past me, through me, beyond me.

I nod. “You did what you had to do.”

“Did I?” she asks. “I could have injured him without killing him. That’s what I should have done.”

“Esme—”

“I stabbed him until I killed him,” she continues. “And even after he was dead, I kept stabbing.”

“You were in shock.”

“I knew what I was doing. I could have stopped.”

“You were protecting me,” I say, leaning forward and taking her hand. “You were protecting our baby.”

Her sob escapes through her teeth and she shakes her head. “I keep seeing his eyes. The way they looked just before he died…”

“Is that what you were dreaming about?”

She nods. “You knew him?” she asks in a shuddering voice.

I get the feeling why she’s asking. “A little,” I acknowledge.

“Did he have a family?”

I squeeze her hand. “Will it help you to know that?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Probably not,” she admits. “But I want to know all the same.”

She waits for my answer.

But I know that the truth will only hurt her. It will double her guilt and invite in more nightmares that she doesn’t need.

I think about my child growing inside her and all the stress my world has already put on her and the pregnancy.

This baby has to be okay.

I can’t do this again.

“Yes,” I say. “Mischa has a wife. And two children.”

She sucks in her breath, her eyes flooding with regret already.

“And you did them a favor by killing him,” I finish, before she can spiral out.

“What?” she asks, her eyes going wide.

“He was a brutal man at work and at home,” I lie smoothly. “His family won’t miss him.”

She takes that in for a moment and nods slowly. “But I still feel guilty,” she says.

“That’s because you’re a good person,” I tell her. “You have a conscience, which is a quality that precious few people have in my world.”

I feel her fingers twitch beneath mine. “Doesn’t that include you?”

“I have a conscience,” I tell her. “I’ve just learned to ignore it. It’s the only way to survive this life.”

“Do you remember the first time you killed a man?”

I nod. “It was on my first cartel raid,” I say. “We had a spy in our ranks who was playing informant to a rival cartel. We stormed their meeting, killed their men, and caught the spy who had turned against us. Stanislav had him strung up by the wrists and he put a knife in my hand.”

Esme listens silently. For a moment, I think she’s about to draw away from me, but she only moves closer.

“Everyone was watching. My father, my uncle, all the men,” I continue. “That knife felt so fucking heavy in my hand. It might as well have been a sword.”

“I tried to be confident. I tried not to feel anything. But when I looked up into his face, all my reasons for killing him seemed… inconsequential. It didn’t matter that he deserved it. It didn’t matter that he had betrayed us and caused the deaths of so many of our men. I saw his eyes, wide and fearful, and I hesitated.”

I pause, taking a breath. It’s been a very long time since I’ve re-lived this memory.

“He looked at me and begged me for his life. I knew better than to think I had any power to grant it to him. I stabbed him in the chest first, but he didn’t die on the spot like I’d intended.”

The night is cool and still. Nothing moves or makes a sound in the desert.

“He struggled and screamed and prayed, and I panicked. The more he screamed, the more I stabbed him. I didn’t stop until he wasn’t screaming anymore.”

When I look at her, Esme has tears sparkling in her eyes. She leans in even closer and rests her cheek against my arm.

“I was fourteen,” I finish.

She sucks in a sharp breath. “Fourteen,” she murmurs in shock.

I