The Final Hour (Volkov Bratva #3)(4)

On the ride up, Mishca drew Lauren to him, tilting her face up so he could better see the bruise on her face. Seeing it, he could almost feel the echoing pain in his own face.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Lauren said softly, her hands covering his.

It went from him trying to comfort her, to her wanting to calm the raging storm inside him. “I shouldn’t have let this happen.”

“There was nothing you could do, Mishca. If not me, then someone else.”

The bell dinged as they arrived at the top floor, the doors sliding open. Withdrawing his keys, Mishca unlocked the door, going in first to take a sweep of the room before letting Lauren come in.

Heading into the kitchen, he grabbed a small plastic bag, filling it with ice, and a hand towel to wrap it in. She was sitting in his favorite chair when he returned, her face in her hands as she whispered softly beneath her breath. She looked up when he walked over to her, smiling though it didn’t reach her eyes.

He held out the ice, shaking his head when she reached for it, pressing it gently to her face before she could protest. They sat in silence for a while, their eyes on each other.

“You know, they’re going to probably think you’re beating me now.” She laughed at her own joke, but it didn’t make Mishca feel any better. “Mish, I’m fine. I promise.”

“This is my fault. I should have done better, should have warned you what to expect from them.”

Lauren shook her head. “There was nothing you could have done differently, Mish. I should have listened to you when you told me to stay at the safe house until you had things sorted. Bottom line, it’s happened. Let’s move on from it.”

She gently pushed his hand away, climbing to her feet. “I’m going to take a shower, then we can talk. Okay?”



By the time Lauren got out of the shower, she felt a lot better, and was ready to get into this conversation with Mishca with a clear head. She really had needed that time to herself, just to get her thoughts together, and to figure out what questions were the most important.

Majority of them centered around the brother she hadn’t known about.

“You never mentioned you had a brother,” Lauren commented quietly, pulling on a shirt and a pair of shorts, throwing her wet hair up into a ponytail.

She couldn’t say how long she had been in that building with Mishca’s twin, but she knew that everything she had believed before that short period of time was only part of the story.

Mishca’s face was transparent at that moment. It was clear that Klaus was the last person Mishca wanted to talk about. “Only three people in the world actually knows about him.”

Now four. “But how? You’re identical twins.”

“To be honest, I don’t know. I hadn’t met Klaus until I was twenty-one, and we didn’t meet under the best of circumstances. Before he walked into my life, I assumed I’d been my mother’s only child.”

“But somebody would have known, right? At the hospital?”

“My mother didn’t give birth in a hospital. It was a home birth in the middle of nowhere in Russia. Since my mother never spoke of him, I can only assume what she had done to get him out of the country before Mikhail found him.”

“But if you didn’t grow up together, why does he hate you so much?”

“When I said we didn’t meet under the greatest of circumstances, I wasn’t exaggerating.” He shoved a hand through his hair, looking just over her shoulder. “The first time I met Klaus was the day I met the Albanians.”

That was an understatement. Klaus was the reason why the Russians and the Albanians had a long standing feud, not because he had done anything in particular, but because on that one lonesome night, the Albanians had mistaken him for Mishca, and wanted to torture information out of him, but that was the least of what they had done to Klaus that night.

“What happened to him?” She asked once he had stopped speaking.

“I don’t know.”

And he truly didn’t…but he could guess. What Mishca had found in that industrial building…he had no words for. Klaus had been barely recognizable by the time they got to him, and days after Mishca had taken him from that place, Klaus still refused to talk about it, the bitterness in his heart only growing.

Especially the last day.

“Tell me what you do know.”

“Honestly? I don’t know much about Klaus, only what I was able to garner from the short amount of time I spent with him, and from the people he has crossed paths with over the years, but even they didn’t realize who they were dealing with. Still don’t. Mercenaries make a living out of staying in the shadows,” he explained. “I can’t even find who he works for.”

“Mish, he was ready to kill you. I mean at least the Albanians had their own reason, but this time I would like to know what I’m up against.”

He was already shaking his head before she finished. “He wouldn’t target you.”

“Mish…”

“I’ll tell you…just not today.”

She crawled onto his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck as she held onto him. “I’m glad you’re not hurt.”

He pulled at the tie in her hair, running his fingers through it before he rested at the nape of her neck, massaging the tension away. “I should be saying that to you.”