Her selfless warrior, p.2
Her Selfless Warrior, page 2
Kostya had been trying to ignore the sound of the crackling fire behind him, but he jumped when there was a loud pop. When he turned to look at the door he saw that flames were licking around the entire door frame. Kostya choked back a sob and pushed down his fear.
Turning back to the mattress on the floor he figured out what to do. He pulled back the flimsy bedframe and shoved it up against the wall so that he could climb onto its side. He lifted the valise then hefted it onto his shoulder and threw it through the open window. Kostya sucked in a deep breath of fresh air, then he shimmied out the window and dropped down into the melting snow. When he looked back at the house he saw where the fire was clawing toward the sky.
He turned back and saw the small footprints made by his brother and sister but he ignored them. He turned back to the house. Mama was dead, there was no hope for her. But maybe Papa?
He did everything he could to shut out the roar and heat of the fire as he crept around the side of his house, hoping against hope that his father might still be out front. When he got to the corner of the house, there was nothing.
No car.
No monsters.
Nothing.
In minutes that felt like a lifetime, he’d lost both his parents.
A searing pain jolted him as embers from the house hit his forearm. He hefted up the valise and ran to the church.
He still had his brother and sister to take care of. Now it was up to him to be strong and brave.
1
“Lexi, did you hear me?” Irina asked her daughter from across the dining room table. Kostya heard the frustration in his sister’s voice, and he couldn’t blame her. What had happened to his little Lexi? It was like a switch had been flipped. It had only been a year ago that his niece would come running to the door to give him a hug when he came to visit. Now when he came over for dinner, she wandered down to the table, usually late, with her nose stuck to her phone. Could turning thirteen really change a girl this much?
“Lexi,” Irina said louder. “Put down your phone and participate with the people who are at the table. Am I making myself clear?”
His niece immediately shoved her phone into her back pocket, recognizing the voice of doom when she heard it. Kostya turned to his sister and gave her a wink that neither of her two children could see.
“Irinushka, when is Tony coming back from Macau?” he asked.
His sister’s eyes softened at his use of her childhood nickname. “He should be home on Wednesday,” she answered. “He said the quality levels coming from the new manufacturing plant looked great.”
She shifted her eyes towards her daughter. “I have high hopes that Lexi will remember how to make conversation again by the time her father returns.”
“Mom,” Lexi whined. “You’re always picking at me.”
Lexi’s older brother snorted. “She’s picking on you because you deserve it,” Roman said. Kostya looked at his fifteen-year-old nephew and marveled at the difference between him and his namesake. The only thing they shared was their soulful gray eyes. He wondered if his own brother had survived their escape from Russia if he would have ever turned into such an outgoing and confident young man.
Kostya picked up his water glass and took a long sip. Thirty-four years later and he could still be knocked back by a flashback of that treacherous winter and all that he’d lost as they’d crossed over into Poland.
“Don’t be all sanctimonious, Roman. The only reason you’re not on your phone is that Haley’s just too busy with cheer and working at the ice cream shop to text you,” Lexi teased. “Otherwise you’d be worse than me.”
“I’m just smarter about how I play things. You need to watch and learn, little sister. Watch and learn.” Roman picked up the bowl of beef stroganoff and served himself then passed the bowl to Kostya.
And just like that, Kostya was back in the present. He loved the way his niece and nephew interacted—when Lexi was off her phone, that is. Irina and Tony had done a wonderful job raising their two kids. He’d been worried when they’d gotten married so young, but they’d pulled it off.
“How about you, Uncle Kostya? Have you been anyplace interesting that you’re allowed to talk about?” Roman asked him as he heaped green beans onto his plate.
“Does California count?” he asked. “I know it’s not as exotic as China.”
Roman snorted again. “So that means you can’t tell us. Okay, so I’ll bite; what was in California?” he asked.
Kostya thought about how to respond. “An Afghan friend of mine passed away not so long ago. I went back to California last month to check in on his widow and their two daughters to make sure they were settling in okay here in the States.”
“That’s so sad,” Lexi said as she put down her fork. “How are they?”
Now that was the girl he remembered. “They’re living with an Afghan American couple who are helping them navigate living here in the States. Right now their biggest hurdle is assimilating into school.”
“Do they speak English?” Roman asked. “You and Mom didn’t when you got here, and Mom said that was the toughest thing about coming to America.”
“They don’t,” Kostya answered.
Irina caught his eye and grimaced. Pain lanced through Kostya like a knife. It hadn’t been learning English that had been so damn hard. Hell, the schools and dealing with the foster care system were a comparative breeze, even losing Mama and Papa eventually faded, but losing Roman was an open wound to this very day.
“Are you going to see them again?” Lexi asked.
“Soon.”
“How old are they?” she asked again. Before he could answer, she turned to her mother. “Don’t I have some old clothes that I could give them? I know that some of them are really cute and we were saving them for when your friend Melanie’s daughter gets a little older, but can’t we give them to these girls instead?”
Looking at this beautiful girl that his sister had created helped take the pain away. “Taja is eight years old and Nazy is five. A friend of mine’s mother has probably bought out Nordstrom to kit them out, but if you can think of something special for either of them, I’ll tell them it came from you and they’ll treasure it.”
“Nordstrom?” Lexi asked.
“A friend?” Irina raised her eyebrow.
Kostya focused on his niece. “The lady has the big bucks,” Kostya laughed. “Lexi, besides shopping at Nordstrom for the clothes, she probably bought them both a pony.”
“I want to hear more about your friend, Konstantin,” Irina ordered.
Kostya winced and Roman snorted. It was always serious shit when his sister used his formal name.
“There’s nothing to tell,” he assured her.
“Is your friend a male or a female?” Irina persisted.
He grunted. “Female.”
“Ahhhhhh.” His sister smirked.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that you don’t have any female friends, so this is significant.”
“You’re right, Mom. Uncle Kostya has never mentioned a woman.” Lexi turned to look at him with too-old eyes. “Is she your girlfriend?”
“Yeah, is she?” Irina asked, her eyes twinkling.
I’m so screwed. How do I explain Lark Sorensen? Still, she isn’t a girlfriend…
Kostya opened his mouth, and Irina raised her eyebrow.
“This stroganoff is delicious,” he finally said before he took a big bite.
“Seriously, Uncle, you need to get with the program,” Roman told him. “Girlfriends rock. And I’m talking about girls as friends. You need to get some women in your posse.”
Kostya shook his head.
Really? I’m getting schooled by a fifteen-year-old?
“He’s kind of right, Uncle Kostya. Maybe in the olden days, people didn’t have friends of different sexes, but nowadays they do. It’s more…more…” Lexi turned to her brother. “You say it.”
“Healthy. Seriously, Uncle Kostya, you spend too much time with the guys from your team. They’re great guys and all, but you need to get out more. Mom is always saying you need a social life and all. Mom has guy-friends and dad has girl-friends. You met them last Christmas, remember? It’s all cool. It’s not like they’re having sex or anything. But you could probably use some sex.”
“Okay, enough!” Irina put up her hands. “Roman, really, you have seriously crossed a line, and I’ve raised you better than that, haven’t I? I need you to apologize to your uncle right now.”
Kostya snuck a peek over at Lexi and damned if she wasn’t nodding.
Holy fucking hell. What has this world come to?
His lips twitched.
“Uhm, kids, I really appreciate your concern, but I gotta tell you that my sex life, or lack thereof, wouldn’t be something I would clue you in on.”
“Thank God,” Irina muttered. “Roman?” she growled as she gave her son the stink-eye.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Kostya.” Then he turned to his sister. “But we worry about you.”
“Yeah,” Lexi nodded. “You’re the best. We just want you to be happy. Some woman would be lucky to have you.” Then her eyes sparkled. “I wouldn’t mind spoiling one of your babies.”
Kostya gave his sister an incredulous look. “I blame this on you,” he pointed his fork at his baby sister.
“This is not my fault. This is all Tony. We Russians are stoic, you know this. But the Italian side of the family just can’t help themselves.” She shrugged.
Kostya still had a hard time wrapping his head around his little sister marrying into the big Romano clan. He was always invited over to Tony’s parents’ house for the holidays, but more often than not he found excuses not to attend; it was just too overwhelming. Irina, God bless her, always let it slide.
“Okay, time to serve dessert,” Irina announced. The kids perked up.
“You made dessert?” Lexi asked.
“No, your uncle brought it.”
“Cool. Where’d you get it from?” Roman wanted to know. The boy had one hell of a sweet tooth.
“I got apple and berry strudel from Kolache.” He saw his sister’s eyes go soft. Their mother had always made it for them. Even though Irina had only been three years old when they had to flee, the strudel was one of the few things he knew that Irina remembered from their time in Russia.
“Sweet!” Roman crowed as he jumped up and headed to the kitchen.
Lexi followed. “You better not snag all the berry strudel before it gets to the table,” she admonished.
“You’re a good big brother,” Irina said in Russian.
“You make it easy,” Kostya replied in kind. “You’re raising good kids. They scare the hell out of me, but they’re good kids.”
Irina laughed. “You’d raise good kids too. I agree with Lexi, I wouldn’t mind spoiling some of your babies.”
Babies? I barely saved you, Irina, how could I ever have babies?
2
Pulling into the parking lot at Little Creek, Kostya rolled his neck, working out the kinks from the weekend. It was funny, but the weekends were always the stressor, never the time at work. He wondered if his nephew was right, maybe he did have a problem with his priorities.
Stop with the worthless thinking, Baronakov!
Kostya snorted. Shit, he had to be tired and stressed if he was referring to himself by his actual last name instead of the one that had been given to him when he arrived in the States. He stepped down from his forest-green Land Rover Defender and locked her up. He took a deep breath, forced himself to focus on something calming, and smiled at the shine on his baby’s chrome. It had taken him almost a year to get the 1981 vehicle restored to mint condition when he’d found her in that Tennessee barn.
That goddamned Drake Avery had conned him and some of his team members into going hunting down in the scenic Smoky Mountains. Turned out that he wanted free labor from them first—fixing up the local youth activity center that had been decimated by a tornado—then they were going bow-hunting.
Kostya’s lip quirked up. At least he’d conned members of the Night Storm and Black Dawn teams as well. It hadn’t been too bad; with the fourteen of them working they’d made short work of the construction. To tell the truth, Kostya wasn’t much into hunting, he’d just wanted a chance to spend time with the other teams, and it turned out that the other lieutenants had as well. Drake acted like it had been his plan all along. Truly, Kostya didn’t know how Lieutenant Mason Gault handled such an ego on the Midnight Delta team. But, there must be something to the guy, because the three of his team members who had gone to Jasper Creek still kept in touch with the man. However, he was pretty sure Jase was staying in touch with one of Drake’s sisters more than he was with Drake Avery.
Enough with the trip down memory lane, time to get shit done.
Kostya gave a chin lift to the Command Master Chief who was herding four newbies for the construction battalion maintenance unit. Ned had his hands full—one of the kids’ boots was untied, and another one looked like he was Roman’s age.
At least they’re not my problem.
His cell started ringing the exact moment he opened the door to his tiny office.
“Barona here,” he answered.
“I’ve got five of the six you wanted,” Gideon said.
Kostya frowned.
Not good.
“Let me guess, it’s Kelly who’s a no-show.”
Gideon sighed. “Yeah.”
Kostya shut his office door and put his phone on speaker so he could multitask. This was the third time in the last six months that some kind of bullshit had occurred that kept Landon Kelly away from base when he was supposed to be here.
“What is it this time?” Kostya asked as he shuffled through the files on his desk while waiting for his second-in-command’s answer. “And it better not be fucking Angelique.”
He pulled out the file he needed—of course, it was at the bottom. He opened it and shook his head. It was going to take at least an hour to fill out these forms. The Navy was supposed to be paperless, so why in the hell was there still so much paper?
Kostya looked down at his phone on his desk, which was eerily silent. “I take it by your non-answer, that the problem is Angelique.”
“Yeah,” Gideon bit out the answer. “I don’t know what it is about Landon, but this is the third crazy girlfriend he’s had in the three years he’s been on the team. We should have known better than to use him for this training exercise, but knowing you, that’s exactly why you’re using him. This was a test, wasn’t it?”
Kostya raised an eyebrow. “Go with your instincts, Gideon,” he purred.
“Shit, it was a test.”
“If Petty Officer Kelly can’t make it to a simple training assignment or meetings on time, who’s to say that he won’t let us down when it comes to an actual mission?”
“I hear you, boss.”
“You handle the others and explain they’ve been chosen to take part in the joint mission readiness exercise with Marine Capt. Julie Lockhart and her squadron. Grab Jase to take Landon’s place. He’ll be available.”
“What about Kelly?” Gideon asked.
“Don’t ask such a stupid question,” Kostya snorted. His lip tipped upwards; he could see Gideon wincing in his mind’s eye.
“I take it you’re going to be calling Landon?” Gideon surmised.
“Not necessarily calling him. Did he give you an ETA?”
“He said no later than ten hundred hours.”
Kostya looked at his phone. It was eight hundred hours now, and Landon lived twenty minutes away from base.
“Gideon, you handle the initial briefing with our selected men.”
“And our meeting after lunch with the Marine squadron?” Gideon asked.
“I’ll be there for that.” Kostya set down the file and picked up his keys.
Kostya had all of his men’s info on his phone, so it took just fifteen minutes to navigate to Landon’s small duplex. When he pulled up, it didn’t take a genius to figure out which side of the old house belonged to his man. It would be the one with the front window completely shattered, and clothes, furniture, and a mattress strewn across the front lawn.
Classy.
As soon as he opened the door to his SUV, he could hear shrieks coming out of the window.
“You don’t love me! You promised me forever! How could you go back on your word like this? I’ve given you everything. Everything! I’ve wasted the best four months of my life, and I’ll never, ever get them back.”
Kostya winced. He felt a headache coming on. He wasn’t sure if it was due to the high-pitched shrills that were surely aggravating every dog within a mile radius, or if it was due to the pointless idiocy that Angelique was spewing.
He was midway up the walkway when he heard some kind of God-awful noise coming toward him. It wasn’t artillery, it was a cacophony of music. It was like The Allman Brothers were having a live concert at the same time some Hip Hop group that one of the guys on Max’s team always listened to were on stage.
My head is going to explode!
Two trucks crested the ridge, coming in hot. One blue, one red.
“Aw, hell.” Kostya dug his fingers into the bridge of his nose. “Seriously?” Whoever these yay-hoos were, they were driving two of the largest personal trucks on the market.
The red truck swung out and shuddered to a stop. The driver jumped out, slammed his door, and hot-footed it up to Kostya. The other driver stayed in his truck and cranked up “Midnight Rider” then leaned on his horn.
“You Kelly?” The kid in front of Kostya demanded. He probably wasn’t even old enough to drink, but he was a big kid. He pushed his chest out so that it touched Kostya’s.
Yep, it’s a shit day.
“No, I’m not Landon Kelly. Who are you?”
“Angelique is my sister. Kelly’s screwed her over, and me and my brother are here to teach him a lesson.”
A crash had them both looking to the left, and they saw a rather small flatscreen TV break into pieces on top of a pile of books.
