BAD APPLE: The Complete Series (Parts 1-5) Read online

  “I-I have money in the r-register.”

  He laughs and I can almost feel his malice when he leans closer and gives me a shake that rattles my brain.

  “Don’t want your money, little lady.”

  That’s all he says before searing pain pierces my gut. I’m frozen, my breath gone.

  “No.”

  The knife pulls out and I can feel his hand coming back for another plunge, certain that I am about to die when the sound of shattering glass and rage-filled yells pierce the silence.

  I’m released, falling to the ground, and then the sound of the back door infiltrates a second before light streams into my eyes, making me blink against the glare.

  I feel weightless and so grateful for the shock coursing through my system, because there’s no pain. Gone is the burning ache as my head lolls and the hot, coppery tang of blood fills my nose.

  Someone rams through the door and Feliks is falling to his knees beside me, his green-blue eyes snapping down at me in horror.

  “Jesus Christ! Call an ambulance. Rini, sweetheart, look at me. Don’t close your eyes, baby!” he yells, his hands pushing into my belly frantically as I feel my lids get heavy and lower, my vision going fuzzy. “Rini! Open your eyes and look at me, sweetheart. For fuck’s sake, Luka, she’s bleeding out.”

  I can feel the life leaving my body with every heated slide of blood pumping from my gut. Breathing is getting harder. Hell, I can’t breathe and it’s only been a matter of minutes since that man stabbed me.

  I’m gonna die. I can feel it.

  “Never…meant to hurt…mamen’ka. Only wanted to know,” I manage to gasp as Luka falls to his knees on my other side and I see his face lose all color.

  Feliks’s hands shake and I see tears fill his eyes when he looks down at me, his bloody hand cradling my cheek so gently, I feel my own tears gather and fall.

  “I know, baby. I’m so sorry we were assholes. I—”

  “Irina!”

  I want to giggle at the sound of that imperious voice, my heart squeezing painfully at the thought of Misha coming for me, only to see me dying on the cold floor as the sweet smell of cake and the sound of the oven timer going off intrude.

  Chapter Ten

  Misha

  The waiting room has turned into a war zone as Novacs and Irina’s family all sit facing each other, our gazes accusatory and filled with anger the longer we wait for word on her condition.

  I have no time or patience for the filth being flung around the room, not when I still have the scent of her blood in my nostrils and the dried evidence of her wounds still clinging to my hands.

  Till the day I die I will never forget the sight that greeted my eyes when I ran into that kitchen. So much blood everywhere as her brothers frantically tried to stem the flow.

  Irina…cold, almost lifeless.

  I’d left her not even an hour before, my heart light and filled with optimism when she teased me about my dislike of sweets, blushing crimson when I retorted that I have a taste for only one sweet treat.

  I’d been riding high and confident, planning a romantic evening of dinner and dancing with my wife when Nik had called Vadi and all hell had broken loose.

  My heart beat violently when my brother grabbed me and started running, yelling about someone in the bakery, Irina being in danger, her friends going hysterical on the other end of the line as the sounds of their screams and struggles echoed over the speaker of Vadi’s phone.

  I’ve never run that hard or fast in my life, the urgency to get to her so thick that I felt my legendary control slipping, falling away to reveal the animal I have fought to lock away for years.

  The monster is out now, and the minute I know she’ll be okay I will tear this motherfucking city apart to find the fucker who hurt my woman.

  For now, though, I have to stop a war from breaking out between the families because even now I see the tensions rising, though Mama and Katya, Irina’s mother, are trying to calm the storm.

  “This would never have happened if she was still in her store, you piece of shit!” Ollie Velnicova hisses at me, his lined face so furious that I can feel his hatred even through the space separating us.

  I rein my temper in with a will that’s hard won and give him my coldest smile, the one reserved for enemies only.

  “Nyet, old man, this would never have happened if you had just told her about her birth mother and warned her not to go digging! We all know that only one family kills by gut-stabbing their enemies, and we all know this would never have happened if you’d pulled your head out of your ass and told her the truth,” I hiss, battling with the need to hit the man.

  Ollie, the mighty head of one of the oldest Russian families in the US, had once been a friend to my family, long ago, before the hormones and raging lusts of Feliks and my sister drove a spike between us.

  For years I warned Lena that Feliks was not to be played with, and for years I tried and failed to keep her away from a man who loved her too much, too obsessively to truly hold her.

  I failed, and now here we are, enemies, filled with animosity, linked now only through a small boy who needs his father and my woman who, even now, could be giving her last breath.

  The hours continue to stretch on, the silence dragging after my hissed accusation, the sound of quiet weeping from the women around us the only thing sound.

  I spend the time praying to a God I haven’t spoken to in years and plotting retaliation against one of the biggest families in the country, my rage tempered only by the fear coursing through me.

  I know who did this. I have absolutely no doubt that Svetlana Chenko and her family had a hit ordered on my wife when she started digging and got too close to the truth.

  I know because I spent half of yesterday talking to a police contact handling the mugging and murder of the government worker who was set to meet Irina next week about the identity of her mother.

  It was no coincidence. Neither is the fact that the offices the woman worked from were torched, all evidence destroyed.

  Nyet, those animals put a hit on their own blood, my wife, and for that I will make them pay in ways they never would have anticipated.

  Gone is my need to distance myself from the family business, and gone is the moral code I have clung to for years. With this one act they have brought to life a man I have been trying to escape for a decade—a man who was muscle, killer, judge and executioner when Papa needed a message delivered.

  “Mr. Novac.”

  I’m brought out of my plots and vows of vengeance when the middle-aged doctor walks in, his scrubs creased and bloodstained, his face weary as he moves closer and stops in front of me.

  “I can’t tell you how or why that young lady is still breathing after the injury she sustained, but she’s okay. For now. The blade nicked her liver and a small portion of her bowel, but we managed to repair them. She’s lost a lot of blood and her vitals are still unstable at this point, so we’re keeping her in ICU until she stabilizes.”

  “But she is going to live?” Feliks demands when all I can do is nod and thank the man.

  “We’re optimistic at this point, but unable to make a call as yet. Like I said, Mrs. Novac suffered excessive blood loss and her system was already weakened by recent illness. She’s damned lucky you got her here so fast or I can say with certainty she wouldn’t have made it. Now, as far as visitation, I will allow visitors, two at a time for five minutes and no longer.”

  It would have surprised me if the bastards hadn’t immediately started vying to take over, but I stopped that shit right in its tracks by planting Feliks on his ass with my fist and glaring down at him savagely.

  “I go first. You can all come in one at a time, I don’t give a shit who thinks what or doesn’t agree. I’m not leaving her again. Now shut your asses up and start getting along or the lot of you can go to hell and stay there. Irina needs family now, not everyone tearing at each other’s throats.”

  They don’t like it. I see
Feilks stiffen with the need to hit back as Leo and Vadi come up behind me, their bodies vibrating with steely anger.

  Surprisingly, it’s Luka who steps in and starts calming them all, his eyes heavy with guilt and emotion when he looks back to me.

  “We’ll respect your wishes. For now. But we need to talk about this.”

  “We will. As soon as she’s well enough to be transported home with a private physician and nurse.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Misha

  The sight of her small body in the bed is enough to have my heart thrumming with fear again. It takes an inhuman effort on my part not to lose my shit and go searching for the culprit immediately.

  She’s tiny, pale, and covered in tubes and bandages. I can barely see Irina beneath it all. The only thing that keeps me steady and on my feet is the sound of the heart-rate monitor beeping steadily.

  “She was always too stubborn—my little girl,” her mother says tearfully, her face crumpling in agony when even her hands are so full of lines, we can’t touch her.

  “Not stubborn, Katya, curious. Curious and too softhearted to believe that her mother would throw her away without reason,” I answer, my hands curling over the very tips of her fingers as I shudder with relief at the small contact.

  Irina and I spoke about anything and everything in the last few days. How she didn’t want her mother back or in her life, just answers and the closure of knowing that she was loved.

  I should have told her that those bastards are too cold to be worth her caring or curiosity but I hesitated, thinking that I had time to derail this before she got too close.

  Hell, her brothers should have seen to this long ago, not left her to get hurt while they sulked like mewling women.

  “That bitch was always the most vile excuse for a human being,” she spits, her tears drying as ire fills her eyes. “She dumped my baby on those steps so easily, I almost throttled her myself when Rini started crying. She deserves no love from my baby, and if I discover that she is behind this attack on my daughter I will kill her myself.”

  “You can have at it. Hell, I’ll hold her down for you myself, Katya,” I murmur quietly, my eyes never leaving Irina.

  “Mama, boy. Call me Mama. We are family now, yes? As my daughter’s husband you call me Mama and I will call you son, just as that hardheaded husband of mine will be called Papa. Tell me, Misha. How is my grandson?” she asks softly, her eyes moist when I allow myself to look back at her.

  “A terror.” I chuckle, shaking my head ruefully. “Mama spoils him shamelessly and Lena is just as terrible. When she is at home.”

  “Ah, it is a woman’s prerogative, yes, to spoil the little ones while you men pretend to be harsh. I miss him. Mama Novac can bring him to the park only when your father is at the doctor and that sister of yours is unaware. Feliks,” she sighs. “The boy is going crazy with the need for his family, Misha. You need to hurry up and arrange things quickly now before our stubborn men figure out that they no longer hold all the cards and Lena decides to marry that fool she’s been seeing.”

  “I told you once, Katya. I will have things arranged in their own time. Lena will never forgive Feliks as long as he remains part of that club he frequents, and my father will never accept a marriage between those fools unless he is assured that Lena will care for her son.”

  “I fear Lena and Feliks will never come back together because he no longer loves her, my son. Too much has happened for my son to forgive her betrayals,” she says sadly. “They are stubborn fools, the lot of them. The only sense in this Godforsaken family is your mama and you boys. Even my own sons are pushing the limits of my patience.”

  Not a surprise. The Velnicova boys are good men, but a more foolish lot I have yet to meet. They’re as stubborn as their father and my own, their sense of family honor too strict to allow for compromise.

  Once, a long time ago, I would have understood Feliks and that damn lifestyle he leads. He and I played it together and enjoyed every forbidden pleasure it had to offer.

  Sex, pleasure, and the darkness of that life were the only things that kept me going after what Mina did. But I woke up. I stepped back and considered the repercussions of what I had become. I let it go, choosing my family while Feliks seemed to spiral deeper into it, pushing the strained relationship with Lena so far that the woman walked out and hasn’t stopped trying to hurt him since.

  And now here’s my angel. The only good thing I have out of this devil’s bargain I made with two old women who are desperate to repair the damage that has been done.

  All while trying to cement my relationship and keeping my sister from marrying a rich Swiss businessman and taking my nephew out of the country.

  Fuck!

  I don’t need this shit right now. As it is, my father and in-laws look ready to kill each other and Irina’s girls are starting to vibrate with impatience. What is happening between Tatiana and Luka, Vadim and Nik…it’s all pressing down on me as I stand here, struggling not to tear at my hair.

  “You need to talk to your son and get him to play ball, Katya. Lena was a bear last week after seeing Feliks at the Rothman Ball with one of his birds. If you want anything to change, you need him to let his shit go and stop antagonizing her. She’s still hurting and hitting back at him any way she can. She loved him once, they loved once…”

  “And never again,” I hear from the door as the dark bastard strides in and stops beside his mother, his face impassive as he stares down at Irina’s pale face. “Does she know that you are plotting so? Is she part of your little game, Novac?”

  “Fuck you, Feliks. She’s no pawn. She never was.”

  “You’d better hope not or I swear to God I will hurt you in ways that will make you unrecognizable to your own mother. I will not have my sister hurt.”

  “As you hurt her these past few weeks? As your family shut her out and refused so much as a phone call?” I ask, my own anger pushing to the forefront. “I was there when she cried in her sleep and cried after another voice-mail message she knew you wouldn’t bother listening to. Tell me, brat, who has hurt her as much as you have?” I ask, not bothering to wait for an answer because I know he has none. “You and your father, my own and Lena are taking things to a place they do not need to go to. Either step up to the plate and sort your shit out with Lena, or petition the courts for custody.”

  “You know I cannot do this!”

  “Because you fear the enemies you have made. Or you fear the enemies Lena has made,” I mock again. “You hide behind your excuses while your son is without a father and his mother is ravaged by heartache. I hope those excuses keep you warm at night when she marries that Swiss prick and takes our boy.”

  It’s been the same shit since day one. Feliks wants his son and yet he’s unwilling to hurt Lena by taking him from her, continually making excuses for his inaction while a little boy has to keep silent about the secret meetings he has with his father and grandmother.

  “Get out of here and let Mama come in, please. She must be near hysterical to see Irina by now.”

  Feliks nods once, kisses Irina’s wrist, and pulls his mother along behind him, leaving me alone once again to sort out his mess while trying not to break down at the sight of my wife clinging to life.

  Chapter Twelve

  Vadim

  The darkness of the living room suits my mood perfectly as I recline back in the chair I turned to face the window. I sit staring out, my mind in turmoil as the sound of Nikita’s weeping reaches my ears.

  Leaving her has always been a struggle after enduring the bone-deep bliss I always find in her arms and the welcoming recesses of her heated body, but I always do it. I pull myself from her and walk away as I need to, or risk falling further beneath her spell.

  She’s a fierce woman, the perfect lover.

  She’s mine. I have ensured that her every breath is laced with me, her every waking thought influenced by my wants and needs, because it’s only fair since I am ruled by
thoughts of her.

  And yet here I sit, silently, drinking in the dark while she weeps, thinking I left her again when all I want to do is hold her and assure her that it will all be okay.

  This attack on Ri has shaken us all to the core, and if not for that tiny woman’s determination to live, I know we would all be broken and floundering.

  Misha is on the knife’s edge still, his need for vengeance so keen that I can still feel his fury even after two days of sitting beside that hospital bed, demanding she wake.

  If not for the somberness of the situation, I would laugh at his pure arrogance and pity poor Ri for being married to that asshole. He’s a chump if he thinks he doesn’t love that woman. I heard it in every syllable of his agonized howls when he gathered her broken body to his and cried like a man tormented. I saw it in every hard line of his face as we waited hours to hear of her fate.

  He loves her. He just doesn’t know it yet, and I fear he will never admit it unless he is forced to. If that’s even possible.

  A man is usually shaken and open when his woman is at death’s door. All I saw of Misha’s rage when he realized what that gut wound meant, and now I have to not only stop him from going after an entire family, but also ensure that the rest of our little crew is safe too.

  Hence my position right now as I fight not to go to Nikita and give her the comfort she needs. I can’t give her all of me because I don’t possess it all to give freely, and I fear when she finds out why, she’ll hate me more than the love I see shining in her eyes.

  I can’t blame her for that, either. I hate myself for taking her when I know it can never be more than our bodies meeting, even as I demand her heart. It’s selfish that I’ve pushed her that far, immersed her so deeply in me that she will never be free to love another.

  I have no excuse for what I’ve done, nothing to soften the disgust I feel for myself, and yet I need her love so desperately that I can’t stop myself from taking it without giving back.

  I am a thief, a bigger liar than I have accused Misha of being. A fraud who has made Nikita into something she hates more than anything in this world.