Page 71 of Deviant Need

I bite the inside of my cheek until it stings and stare down at the floor. It hurts watching him pull away, knowing he doesn’t want to come home with me, that whatever we had is already over.

“Whatever. Just leave before the press shows up. We don’t need this plastered everywhere. We need to find out who this was,” Lev says, already walking away, barking orders at the guards.

Mikhail mutters something and walks off toward where the guards are gathering, not even glancing back at me. My heart shatters watching him go, each step he takes away from me breaking off another piece until there’s nothing left.

Chapter 16

Mikhail

My fingers press into my temple while I force myself to look at the event plans covering my desk. This is the biggest laundering operation we’ve ever run through Ozero, months of careful planning all riding on one night, and I can’t focus on any of it. Every time I look at the numbers, they blur together. The schedules make zero sense no matter how many times I read them.

It doesn’t have to mean anything. Those words won’t stop echoing in my head, and fuck, it hurts. It meant everything to me.

I wanted to go home and work through it with him, figure out what happens next, but he pulled away like he always does. I’m done chasing after him when he won’t chase me back. I’m mad and hurt, and I wanted him to choose me for once, but he didn’t. So I didn’t go home with him yesterday after the shooting because I couldn’t handle being near him. We got confirmation it was Nozares’s men who tried to shoot me. Fucking cowards.

Sighing, I grab a pen off the desk and hurl it across the room. It nails Alexei directly in the head and clatters to the floor. He shoots to his feet immediately, snatches the pen up, and whips it back at my head with enough force to crack my skull open. I duck just in time, and it bounces off the wall behind me with a sharp crack.

“What is your fucking problem, suka?” he snaps.

“Relax. I wasn’t trying to hit you. Your giant head just got in the way.”

“You are the most annoying person on earth,” he says flatly. Then storms out and slams the door so hard that a picture falls off the wall and crashes to the floor.

Dramatic much?

Standing up, I walk to the window and stare down at Manhattan glowing below me. I press my face against the glass and close my eyes. The cold feels good, grounding me when everything else is spinning out of control.

I’m not gay. And yeah, I know that sounds like denial, classic textbook denial, but I’m really not. I’m just not into men. Except him. Which doesn’t make sense, but here we are, and I’ve stopped trying to logic my way out of it because it’s not getting me anywhere.

The door opens and yanks me out of my thoughts.

Someone gets kicked inside first and lands on the floor with a thump, then Alexei walks in with Calder trailing behind him. Tank’s tucked under Calder’s arm, and I make sure to keep my distance from that four-toothed nightmare because he bites purely for his own amusement. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way. I love Calder though.

Yulian told me his story once. When Calder was eight years old, his dad was a big gambler who owed the wrong people a lot of money. One night they broke into his childhood home, tied him and his parents to chairs, and beat his mom and dad to death in front of him. They left him there alone, covered in their blood. It took three days until someone found him still tied up. That kind of thing messes you up permanently.

He joined the Navy the second he turned eighteen, became a SEAL, saw heavy combat. Then an explosion during one of his deployments gave him a traumatic brain injury and severe PTSD that never went away.

He got medically retired and ended up on the streets, a total mess, until Yulian found him and decided he could be useful.

Now he’s thirty-two, covered in tattoos from his shaved head down to his feet, and works for our family, mostly with Alexei handling interrogations and torture, whatever needs doing to keep people quiet or make problems disappear permanently.

He’s been obsessed with my mother for as long as I can remember. Does everything she tells him to and then goes above and beyond, just waiting for her to notice. Any attention she gives him, and he’s like a starving man getting fed.

Calder makes everyone uncomfortable, but I don’t care. He’s creative when he works, I’ll give him that much.

I’ll never understand Yulian’s ability to collect damaged people like they’re stray cats. People like him for some reason. Don’t ask me why, but they do.

“Really? We’re doing this in the office?” I gesture around the space. Third floor above Ozero with windows to the side, a desk, two chairs, and some cabinets. Nice enough, but not somewhere I want blood splatter.

The guy groans and tries to stand. Alexei walks over, stomps him back down with his boot, and holds him there, then gestures toward Calder. “We brought you a present.”

“What?”

“The Nozares rat that shot at you,” Alexei says.

“You did? Best fucking gift ever,” I say and grin.

Calder puts Tank down, then grabs the guy by the hair and drags him toward one of the chairs. He and Alexei force him into it and strap him down with zip ties, pulling them tight enough that the plastic digs into his wrists. I walk around the desk and hop up to sit on it in front of the guy, letting my legs swing while I look him over.