Page 29 of Wicked Mafia Sinner

I can’t wait for this day to be over. I chew at an imaginary hangnail for a few seconds.

“Cora,” he starts again and this time his hand moves to my thigh. My stomach twists but not with fear like I expect having another Volkov man touch me.

But with something much darker. Desire. It has to be from the leftover remnants of adrenaline in my system that find his easing touch arousing.

I inhale slowly, filling my lungs with his alluring scent.

Staring at his hand, I speak calmly. “Your son murdered a man behind my flower shop yesterday. I was there. Wrong time and place. And he saw me." I swallow the sickening bile that suddenly rises in the back of my throat. "And he's been trying to kill me ever since."

Rowan's jaw tightens. No one likes to hear bad news about their kid, I get it.

“That’s why you thought I was there to finish the job.” He throws up air quotes when he states my own words back at me.

"I mean, in my place wouldn’t you wonder why you showed up at my apartment the same night your son tried to off me?" I tug at the towel that has worked its way up to revealing how I prefer to keep myself fully shaved. It’s a bit too much information for the kind of night we’ve both had so I tug at the cotton material. "In my shoes, that's a hell of a coincidence."

Callused fingers spread over my thigh and squeeze the flesh. We lock eyes for a fraction of a second doing eight down the highway. "I understand."

His scowl says he’s still irritated about something.

I swallow thickly and force myself to not think about those hands on other parts of me. I also realize his touch calms my racing heart.

He turns back to the road and I find my voice. "Yeah, like I said. I didn't know you were one of the good guys. But how did you get the wish?"

The Bratva man lifts a heavy shoulder in a shrug. "It literally landed in my lap. But tell me, malyshka, why didn't you go to the police for immediate protection? What if I had not read the wish? You would be dead."

He releases his grip on my thigh and slowly moves his hand back to the steering wheel. For all of five seconds I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from asking him to put his hand back.

I blow out a huff of frustration. "I did go to the police, but you can't get protection from a dirty cop." I pause a beat and then add, "Answer me something. My wish. You read it and you just came? Just like that? Some stranger scribbles 'help' on a piece of paper and you drive across Chicago at midnight to play hero? Do all you Red Letter men wear capes and full body spandex?"

The man actually laughs and the passing streetlights catch the humor in his gaze.

"I will pass that question on to my brothers. But I for one do not wear a cape and or…”

“Spandex,” I finish for him.

He pauses and I see the humor drop away.

“You're not a stranger, malyshka. Why are you surprised to get your wish granted? You do know how wishes work, da?" he turns the ring on his finger as he speaks.

"Nyet," I answer in his native tongue. "I just hoped." And that is the simple truth of how close I came to dying tonight.

Silence fills the space for several miles until my phone goes off again.

His eyes flick to the phone in my lap when I tap the screen and pull up Raine’s missed call. Her name comes on the screen and I try the number she called from but yet again, I get no answer. This time the call doesn’t even go through.

He doesn't ask who she is. He just looks, and then his eyes are back on the road.

I grip the locket at my throat and thank my guardian angels something went right tonight. Daddy Volkov isn’t the guardian angel I expected but he’s exactly who I needed and isn’t that ironic.

The city thins outside the window. Suburbs blur into trees. The road narrows, climbs, and the streetlights disappear and I'm being driven into the woods outside Chicago by a man whose last name is the reason I'm running.

He says he’s taking me to safety and I have to believe him. At this point I'm too exhausted to care.

My bodyguard slows the car and pulls onto a gravel road. After about a mile of thick trees and nothing else, the end of the road opens up to reveal a modest cabin. It has a cedar exterior weathered to silver-gray. Cozy and unassuming. I look at this massive man in his blood-speckled shirt and look at the cabin and nothing about the equation adds up.

“You don’t seem the country living type.”

The engine cuts and the silence rushes in. Wind fingers through tall pines and the bare branches of oaks. If I strain, I can hear the distant sound of water somewhere below us.