Page 59 of Lord of the Underworld

The smile drops from her face. "I don't like baths."

Ah. Of course. A shower isn't like a bath, where her head could be dunked underwater.

Kissing her, I slide out of bed, procuring an ice pack for her cheek and her hair brush, before wrapping my wife in my robe and settling her between my legs.

"I can brush it," she says, shifting uncomfortably and not helping the erection I've been ordering to go down. "I'm sure my hair looks like an abandoned opossum den right now."

Her wet hair makes me recall ten-year-old Oksana, with her tangled locks hanging in strings around her pale face and my gut twists.

"Let me." I start slowly, separating her tangled strands. "Who hit you tonight?"

"Rossi." She spits his name out like it's poison.

"Would you like to be the one to shoot him?" I ask.

She turns her head, her startled gaze meeting mine. "Not yet," she says, far more steadily than I would expect. "They know something. The mercenaries who extracted Luciana and the girls with me betrayed us to Rossi. His brother, though, said that there were others who needed to be part of a group punishment. We should find out who first."

I can't help the slow curl of a smile inching up the left side of my mouth. I lean close, my lips barely touching her skin. "Clever girl."

Shaking her head as if trying to clear it, she asks, "I know I was… not really present there for a moment. Are Luciana and the girls safe?"

"Ivan brought Yvette to me after she extracted the boy and his nanny," I say. "She's taken them to the next person in the chain. I had Ivan follow her with a team in case there were complications, I followed you. She took the Rossi family and handed them off to the next link in your chain."

"How…?" Oksana tries to gather her thoughts. "How did you know?"

"You're my wife. Your safety is my first concern, even above your privacy." She pulls away from me, wincing as the hairbrush tugs on a snarl.

"That camera in my bedroom in Moscow was not for my safety," she says haughtily. A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth, it's an expression that feels rusty, rarely used, though with Oksana as my wife, that's changing rapidly.

"This is true," I allow gravely. "It was for my prurient interests."

She's trying valiantly not to smile, but the blush says it all. "Okay," she says, clearing her throat. "Will you tell me how you found me?"

"There's a tracker in your wedding ring," I say.

She holds up her hand, examining the ring. "What- really? They make one small enough to fit under a diamond? Of course, this is a very large one."

"Tell me something," I ask. "How long have you been doing this work?"

Oksana looks up, the ice pack still held to her face. "Two years," she says quietly. "I started with the original charity. I found out what Yvette was really doing when I came back to the office late one night. I'd been creating some promotional fundraising materials and needed some paperwork to finish it all. I saw Yvette speaking with a woman. She didn't see me, but I knew her. It was Melina Duvarova."

Placing the name, I say, "The Duvarov Mob. Her husband killed her."

"That's what that prick told everyone. These weak little men have to save face,” she snaps. “It looks so much better if you've murdered your own wife, doesn't it?" She winces, adjusting her ice pack.

"Yvette was horrified and tried to deny what I saw, and who I saw. It was no secret that I was a Vasiliev. But she knew my feelings about domestic violence and child abuse. Not that any sane person isn't wildly against it, but…" Oksana pauses, pulling the brushed portion of her hair over her shoulder. "It's a given in our world, you know? Women and children, the men just own them. Like property." The last word comes out in a hiss. "I told Yvette I could help."

"How many?" I ask.

"Twenty-one families," she says, smiling happily. "I remember them all." Her expression fades a little. "Not nearly as many as we wanted to. Yvette had a little bit of a network going. I found some more people. It was hard, since we couldn't reveal our identities. The women aren’t all refugees from the crime world. There are plenty of rich scumbags who think their money entitles them to do anything they want, no matter how sick."

"You're very brave," I say, taking another section of her hair and brushing it.

"And apparently stupid," she sighs. "Yvette vouched for those women for the extraction. I had my doubts, there was something wrong, and I didn't... I didn't trust myself. We were in a rush. I should have known better -"

"Stop," I say, cutting off the flow of self-recrimination. "There are many things we have to tolerate from other families in this world," I say, setting aside the brush and wrapping my arms around her, enjoying the feeling of her relaxing against me. "Brutalizing women and children? It's contemptible, cowardly. Turgenev allies who know our stance hide it around us, of course, but... You've done more than we have."

Oksana leans into me. "I blew it all tonight," she says sadly. "I know Luciana won't ever say a word, but her daughters are young. Then, there's the Rossi guards, maybe they got the word out to somebody before you killed them."