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Samara~
It was the next morning, and while I felt better, my thigh still throbbed a bit, but that was the least of my concerns right now. As long as it didn’t start to get infected, then I could deal with it. I also realized that I needed to start taking only half of whatever Lochlan Murphy had given me if I didn’t want to sleep for days on end.
Luckily for me, the bandages that Lochlan had put on my ankle and carving were waterproof, so I’d been able to take a decent shower now that I didn’t need Avgust to hold me up any longer. After that, I had brushed my teeth, combed my hair, and then had helped myself to another one of Avgust’s shirts. If he’d gone and had my stuff delivered like he’d said that he was going to, I had no idea where it all was. So, another one of his clean shirts it was.
At any rate, just as I was about to head downstairs for breakfast, Avgust was opening the bedroom door, and even in casual wear, he looked incredible. I was used to him in suits-or naked-so this was something different.
“How did you sleep?” he asked as his eyes slid over my body.
“Better,” I admitted. “I still feel a bit lethargic, but that could be from the pain medication.”
He gave me a terse nod before saying, “The bratva are downstairs, and I need you to join us.”
That had my head rearing back in surprise. “What? Why?”
“They need to hear what happened from you,” he informed me. “I don’t want to leave out any details that may be pertinent.”
“Avgust-”
“We need all the information that we can get in order to find Nikel Ovchinnikov, Samara,” he said, cutting off my protest.
Trying another tactic, I said, “I am not joining a meeting of the bratva wearing only your shirt, Avgust.”
That got a smirk out of him. “I had some of your clothes delivered last night. I figured that jeans would be too constricting with your wound, so I had Masha pack a couple of dresses for you.” He jerked his head towards a bag that I hadn’t noticed earlier. It was sitting on the floor next to the nightstand on my side of the bed, and I really must have been in my own little world not to have noticed it.
I still let out an exhausted sigh, because that’s what Avgust was; he was exhausting.
“I’ll be down in a few minutes,” I replied, giving in. “I just need to change.”
“If you are hungry, the men can wait until after you have eaten breakfast, vozlyublennaya,” he said, and I knew that he’d make them all wait for me if I asked.
“As long as it doesn’t take too long, breakfast can wait,” I told him.
Avgust shot me a look. “I will make you some toast while you get dressed. It should hold you over until the meeting is finished.”
“Thank you,” I muttered, knowing that there was no use in arguing with the man.
Ten minutes later, I was dressed in my own clothes-bra and underwear included-had eaten my toast, and was now sitting in Avgust’s office with Maksim, Akim, Bogdan Kotov, and Melor Kotov. The feeling was a nostalgic one, both bitter and sweet. These men had once been my friends, and Avgust’s lies had taken them away from me, too.
Once everyone was comfortable, Avgust said, “Go ahead, vozlyublennaya. Tell them everything that you told me.”
I took a deep breath before I began reciting everything from when Louie had escorted me into the building on Westchester. I didn’t leave anything out, doing my best to retell the events as accurately as I could. I didn’t know what more they could actually learn from me repeating the story, but I humored Avgust because it was obvious that Nikel Ovchinnikov was going to stop at nothing to get his revenge, and I had no idea how much Louie had told him about me. If he’d told him about me, then Louie could have also told him about Masha.
When I was done, Melor muttered, “Well, fuck.”
“And the phone numbers turned up nothing?” Bogdan asked.
“Nothing,” Avgust confirmed. “They were burners as well.”
“So, we know the why and who now, we just don’t know where he is,” Akim surmised. “And now that he knows that we know who he is, he’s probably going to be harder to find.”
“And all of this because his fucking feelings are hurt?” Maksim bit out. “Jesus Christ.”
“Seriously,” Akim remarked. “The sonofabitch doesn’t know how lucky he was to have been raised without Demitri as his father.”
“We also don’t know if he’s recruited more men,” Melor chimed in. “By my count, his entire entourage has been wiped out with Louie being the last of them. Can he really keep this up on his own?”
“Unless his mother left him a fortune, where is he getting money to even live?” Bogdan posed. “I seriously doubt that he’s working at Taco Bell to get by.”
