The Enforcer (Chicago Bratva #3) - Renee Rose Page 0,59
protect.
How could I have done this?
I sign sorry, but she looks away, blinking back tears.
I cup her face and bring my forehead to hers. She doesn’t move. I try the sign again.
She swallows. “I’m glad you’re alive.” Her voice is choked.
Sorry, I sign again. It’s all I really know how to say. I see Dima left my iPad on the driver’s seat for me, but I don’t pick it up. Even if I could speak, I wouldn’t have the words. I don’t even know how to navigate when Story’s clammed up, herself.
I guess I’m getting a taste of my own medicine, and it’s a fucking bitter one.
Story pulls her legs into the vehicle and pushes me away. “You’re getting wet,” she says.
Fuck.
I shut the door, walk around to the driver’s side, and get in, picking up the iPad to at least try. Dima called me an asshole for what I did. I’m sorry I caused so much grief.
Story shakes her head. “You weren’t an asshole.” Her voice sounds so fucking heavy. Exhausted. She reaches out and squeezes my forearm. “You were being you. Trying to protect me and do it all by yourself without reaching out for help from anyone else.”
Her words strike home.
I nod. Da. She’s right. I could have played it so differently. I could have gone to Ravil, and he and Maxim would’ve come up with a better option. But instead I played straight into Skal’pel’s fucking plan for me. Forsaking Story and my brothers in my effort to protect them.
“Oleg… did you go to him to die?”
I suck in a breath and nod.
She sags and looks away from me, out the window.
Fuck, I’m losing her. Frantic, I type on the iPad. I went to die, but as soon I arrived, I realized I’d made the wrong choice. It wasn’t right to sacrifice myself and surrender, it was time to fight.
For you.
She gives me a searching look then looks straight ahead at the jet on the tarmac. “I have to play at Rue’s tonight.”
Gospodi. I forgot. It’s Saturday night.
I start the Denali up and put it in gear, turning it around. I don’t know where the fuck we are, so I turn on the map function on my phone to get us back, checking the clock. Enough time to get home and get Story’s guitar from the Kremlin before we head over.
I point at Story and give the sign for hungry, raising my brows, the way we learned.
“Am I hungry? Yeah, actually I could eat. You?”
I nod. We hit the first drive-thru we see—a Wendy’s. I use the iPad to order, which makes Story laugh, lightening the mood a little.
We eat as I drive, and then she drops the bomb on me.
“Oleg, I can’t move in with you.”
Somehow I keep the Denali from crashing into the guy in front of me.
She doesn’t go on, which makes it a million times worse.
I make the sign for why? by pulsing my middle finger by my forehead, brows down.
“I thought I could do this. I care about you. I really do. But I have so much drama in my life already. And your life is really intense. I mean, you’re in the Russian mafiya, and you’re getting shot at, and I’m getting shot at, and then I thought you were going to die, and it’s just too much.”
I want to argue with her. I reach for the iPad, but realize I can’t type and drive at the same time.
Fuck.
I pick up her hand instead and shake my head.
She pulls away, gutting me. “I can’t. I need you to accept this. Please don’t make this harder than it already is.”
Blyad'. I grip the steering wheel. Part of me refuses to believe it. I want to fight for her. But she just asked me not to, and I’m also not the guy who doesn’t understand no means no.
Story wants me out of her life.
The irony is too thick to swallow. I chose to live and fight because of her, and I lost her anyway.
I’d almost rather be dead.
Chapter 15
Story
I asked Oleg to drop me at Rue’s. I told him not to come in.
He honored my request.
I was half-afraid he wouldn’t. I mean, I know the guy’s stubborn. Dogmatic in his devotion to me.
Somehow I made it through the night. I actually don’t think anyone even noticed anything was off with me, which made it all the worse.
Because that anxiety that was brewing, the sense of everything being wrong—it didn’t go away when