Page 34 of Marked By the Devil

I felt more like a roommate than anything else. And that was what tripped me up even more.

The longer I stayed here and observed how the Volkovs worked as a family and organization, the more I noticed subtle signs of the internal discipline that ruled them all.

Their behavior wasn’t consistent with what any of the files Smithson or any other agent had ever made about them. Predisposed to see them as the enemy, as the criminals who did bad things, I couldn’t shift into thinking they were suddenly “okay”.

Yet, I saw the differences.

They weren’t lawless brutes with whores and hookers and strung-out junkies around them. They had house staff and professional guards who acted like a small army.

They didn’t lash out and shoot people upon sight for the hell of it like they were uncontrollable, uncivilized monsters. They argued rationally and respected each other’s opinions.

Of course, they didn’t discuss anything confidential or related to business around me—clearly still thinking I would be a spy and keep this intel to use against them should I ever be out of their grasp.

All I could summarize in my mind was that the narrative Smithson and the agency had for me was distorted through a lens of lies.

The Volkovs were powerful, wealthy, and resourceful. But at the heart of it all, they were just another family.

Don’t go weak.

I shook my head as I rinsed off.

Just because he made me come, he couldn’t trick me into thinking they weren’t bad people. I knew that they were.

At the same time, though, I was able to consider opening my eyes a little more. Each day, I recognized Viktor’s intelligence and restraint. Sure, he was sarcastic—always sarcastic—but he wasn’t a monster like what everyone made him out to be. According to the reports I’d skimmed on my way to Vegas, I should’ve been expecting a week of living with a murderous, volatile, beast-like asshole who couldn’t control his impulses to destroy the world around him.

But he’s not.

Like what he said last night, he only wanted to do what he could to keep his family safe. A commitment to care for those he loved unsettled me. It complicated my ready-made moral compass.

I wouldn’t judge someone for wanting to protect their family… yet they needed the protection because their legacy and name were founded in such violence.

I couldn’t be self-righteous in that regard either, because I couldn’t ever say the same about my “family” at my workplace. Not the new one here in Vegas or my former office coworkers at the financial department back in Oregon.

Further back than that, I couldn’t claim an inherent sense of family and being protected like when I was in training, or further back, when I was in college.

Being the product of a single mom who was a cop and an absent father who was a detective, I’d gotten it into my head that my family would always be a work family. A group of law enforcement professionals.

When did that ever happen, though?

I’d never felt connected with another, never had an actual partner.

Hating the possibility that I could’ve duped myself all these years with my hope to fit in on a team, I hung my head as I got out of the shower to dry off and get dressed.

With a hurting heart and a crestfallen mood, I succumbed to the fact that I’d never had anyone in my corner. No support team. No one I could trust.

Because despite how Viktor made me feel last night, I still couldn’t convince myself to ever trust him.

11

VIKTOR

Iwas approaching this all wrong.

Keeping Wren as a “prisoner” but refusing to treat her like one. If she was a captive who posed a threat to the Bratva, she’d be in that holding cell or I would let Markus and Rueben torture answers out of her.

Living with Wren and seeing her as an “enemy” but counting on having her wrapped around my dick wasn’t going so well, either. The more she acclimated to seeing my brothers and cousins and didn’t harden with an angry glare suggested that this gray area of her supposed imprisonment was confusing her, too.

What really opened my eyes was how she had come for me.