The Enforcer (Chicago Bratva #3) - Renee Rose Page 0,44

role with me.

“Did you have a father?” Story asks, folding her slender legs underneath her to sit cross-legged.

I shake my head. I never knew him. He left when I was young.

“I’m sorry.”

I shrug. When I was seventeen, Dr. Orlov asked me if I wanted a job as his personal bodyguard. I was already almost this size. He had a security team, and the head of it was former military. He trained me to shoot a gun. To fight with my hands. He taught me seventy-two ways to kill a man.

I didn’t know why Orlov needed protection, but I didn’t care. I was getting paid more money than my mom made as his housekeeper and feeling like a man. As time continued, he took me to meetings he held with people in public restaurants or bars. I sat in on meetings where large sums of cash changed hands. Over the next five years, I witnessed more and more of Orlov’s identity-changing business.

Then things got too hot. The St. Petersburg bratva came after him when they got word he’d performed surgery on a man they wanted dead. I killed three men who showed up at his residence. It scared me.

I tried to quit. He persuaded me to stay just until he closed out his operation, changed his own identity and disappeared.

I stop typing. The rest of the story isn’t worth telling.

Story slips her hand in mine. “And he cut out your tongue to thank you.”

I rub my aching head and nod.

“Where’s your mom?” Story asks.

Pain stabs through my chest. My sweet, honest, hard-working mother. She lost her job and her son when Skal’pel’ left, I type.

“Does she know you’re alive?”

I rub my head again.

“Oleg?” Story leans her head forward to peek at my face.

I was too ashamed to see her again. I went straight from prison to Chicago. I needed a new start.

Story leans her head on my shoulder, curling her body against mine, her knees folding over the top of my thighs. “I hate what happened to you.” She sounds choked up.

I stroke her cheek, brushing her hair back over her ear. Dredging up my shitty past sucked, but now that it’s out—now that Story knows it and Ravil and Maxim know part of it—something that’s been blocked all these years has moved. I used my pain as a wall to keep everyone out. To keep myself out. I was half a man, barely living half a life.

I was missing far more than my tongue.

But now that wall is down. The path isn’t clear—far from it. There’s fucking rubble everywhere. But I’m willing to pick through it.

“You should contact your mom,” Story says, threading her fingers through mine. “I’ll bet she’s dying not knowing about you.”

My chest constricts, and I fight a lump in my throat. I nod my agreement.

“Speaking of moms, I need to call mine. She’s kind of a mess.” Story slips off the bed and retrieves her retro flip-phone.

I type on the iPad, What happened? It’s strange to have a real conversation with anyone, but Story makes it seem possible.

Story comes back to the bed and sits cross-legged again. “My mom suffers from depression. She’s amazing, but totally unreliable as a parent. I’m more the parent in the relationship. I mean, when things are good, she’s there for us—for me and Flynn and Dahlia, our baby sister. But her life is a rollercoaster of falling in love and then falling apart. And last time I talked to her, it seemed like things were going south with her boyfriend, Sam. I’m just going to check in with her.” Story dials a number on the phone while I type on the iPad.

“Hey, Mom. Just checking in. Give me a call when you get this.” Story closes the phone. “Voicemail.”

It was hard for you. I pass the iPad to Story. I’m sick of the Australian asshole speaking for me. I’d rather she just read it.

“It was okay. I felt loved. I just couldn’t rely on anyone.”

You can rely on me, I want to tell her, but I hold back. She’s skittish when it comes to commitment, and I’m in no position to push. Not when I can’t even keep her safe.

“My dad’s life was also pretty crazy with sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. Now I worry that Flynn’s going down that path, you know?” Her eyes shine with tears, which she blinks back. “But music is really the one thing we have. It’s what holds our family together, even though