“I had no family growing up. I was delivered to an orphanage as a newborn and lived there until I was twelve.”
Fuck.
And she’d thought living with her drunk-ass family was bad. “Someone adopted you?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He turned onto her father’s street, drove to the cul-de-sac and turned the truck around before parking. “Sergei saw me walking home one day. Watched three other boys bullying me and how I eventually dissuaded them from bothering me any longer.” He paused and his mouth crooked upward a little on one side. “He followed me home that day. Befriended me and eventually pulled strings to have me mentored by his vor.”
Hoooly shit. The badass Russian really was a knight in tarnished armor. “So, you’re paying it back. Finding people like you and giving them a leg up.”
As soon as she said it, the pieces clicked. It all made sense. Sooo much more sense than the idea that he might be attracted to her. “You’re helping me. That’s why you were there Saturday night. You think I need help like you did.”
Without the engine’s rumble in the background, the cab’s quiet was deafening. Even more concerning was the piercing stare he aimed her direction. “My brother reminded me tonight that assumptions are our greatest enemy. Do not make the mistake of assuming my intentions. Particularly where you are concerned.”
With that, he opened the door and slid out, the thud as the door slammed shut like a giant exclamation point on his words. Which might have meant something if she had the vaguest clue what the hell he meant.
His intentions? Where she was concerned?
What did that mean?
Her door jerked open, and he held out his hand. “Come. It is late and I do not want you exposed longer than necessary.”
She hopped out with his help and doubled her strides to match his longer ones, not the least bit inclined to argue with his abrupt change in mood.
“A word of warning,” he murmured. “Whoever visited your apartment went through your father’s house as well.”
“You telling me it’s a wreck?”
He nodded, slipped the key in the lock and pushed the door wide. He slid the lock into place as soon as the door was closed and motioned for her not to move. “Stay here.”
He flipped on a light in the living room.
“Whoa,” she said backing against the door.
Shit was everywhere—and not in the usual messy sense her dad and brother were known for either. If something had once been on a shelf or a table, it was on the floor now, and not a single cushion for the chairs looked like it was salvageable. Roman flipped on the lights in the kitchen then checked the three bedrooms before returning to the living room. “Where does your father keep important documents?”
“Got a particular kind in mind?”
“Bank accounts. Mortgages. Investments.”
At the mention of the last one, Bonnie couldn’t help but snicker. She shook her head and strolled down the hallway toward her father’s room. “I don’t think my dad knows how to spell investment. Let alone buy stock.”
Just inside the door to his room, Bonnie paused and scratched the back of her head. Like the living room and every other room she’d passed, it looked like a tornado had hit. In fact, the only thing that looked somewhat normal were the dresser and nightstand her parents had bought before she was born. The finish was a weird white-wash style that had a pinkish tint behind it. The deep turquoise chair her mom had kept wedged in the corner had a slash deep in the center of it and the ugly as sin Southwest patterned bedspread was mostly pooled on the floor. Clothes were all over the place and drawers to the dresser in varied states of open.
“Okay...” She twisted to the nightstand. “I’ll look in here and in the dresser. I can’t imagine he’s gonna have anything worthwhile, but it’s worth a shot.” She crouched next to the bed and opened the first drawer. “It’s a long shot, but you might want to check under the mattress. It’s as cliché as they come, but dad trusted his bed more than he trusted banks.”
For the next thirty minutes they methodically went through everything. Every drawer. Every nook. Every cranny. She even checked the gun closet for any extra compartments he might have hidden something in, but every effort came back with a big fat zero.
“This is hopeless.” With a heavy sigh, she closed the gun closet door and