Ryan Renewed: New York Ruthless: Book 5

A large hand reaches for me, clawing at my skin, his fingertips grazing my arm as I shrink back from him, pressing myself back against the damp wall as far as I can. Breathing in as though it will me make me smaller somehow. I want to scream but I’m too afraid. I want my mom. I want my papa.

The giant man curses in Russian as he pushes his arm deeper into the crack of the door and I shrink back further, my eyes wide and my mouth tightly closed as I peer at him through the gap in the cupboard door that he’s reaching through. His teeth are bared like a dog, his eyes wild with fury. He turns his head to the side as he grunts his annoyance, changing his angle so he might reach me.

There is a tattoo on the base of his neck. A bird. With black eyes and orange wings. It wears a symbol on its chest. Zhar-ptitsa – a firebird. My papa tells me stories of the firebird and the princess. Of difficult quests and true love.

The man’s hand grasps for me again, curling over the fabric of my pajamas and I let out an ear-splitting scream.

Then he is gone.

My eyes snap open in the dark room as my heart beats wildly in my chest, just like my eight-year-old self in my dream. Except that was no dream. It was a memory. A long-buried one that had been lost in the jumbled collection of fairytales and nightmares of my childhood. But that was real. It happened. That tattoo was real. And it is the same one I saw yesterday.

There is a hand gripping my waist and I turn to see Conor curled up beside me, a protective arm wrapped around me.

On the other side of me, Mikey and Liam snore softly. Shane isn’t here though. I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist working even after forbidding me to. I wriggle from Conor’s grip, trying to shift from under him without disturbing him.

I fail.

“Where are you going?” he grumbles sleepily.

“I need my computer.”

“No. Sleep!” he commands as he pulls me tighter, resting his chin on my shoulder.

“I recognize the tattoo. I’ve seen it before,” I whisper.

He opens his eyes and narrows them at me. “When?”

“When I was little. Some men tried to kidnap me and they had the same tattoo.”

Conor sits up and takes my hand and indicates his head toward the door and together we both climb out of the bed without disturbing the twins. He hands me a t-shirt and I pull it over my head while he puts on a pair of sweatpants and then we leave the room and head to Shane’s office.

Conor keeps his hand grasped firmly in mine as we walk as though someone might steal me away in the night. I smile up at him. Well, someone might try, but him and his brothers would never let them take me and I have never felt as safe and protected as I do as a part of their family.

“You okay, Angel?” he asks, his brow furrowed in concern.

“Yeah,” I whisper as I squeeze his hand.

Shane has his head bent, looking through some paperwork when we walk into his office. He looks up when he hears us. “What are you two doing up?” he asks with a frown.

“What are you doing up when you promised we were all taking the night off?” I ask with a flash of my eyebrows as I pull up a chair beside him and switch on my computer. When I became a permanent resident here, Shane bought a much bigger desk. It’s big enough that the two of us can work comfortably at it all day on two separate computers. Its huge size also comes in handy for the various other things we like to do on it. Even the thought makes my insides warm and tingly and I remind myself I came here to work.

Shane leans over and kisses my cheek and my skin warms at his touch. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“I knew you wouldn’t,” Conor says with a knowing smile as he sits on the edge of the desk beside me.

“I can’t stop my brain from ticking over.” He scowls at the paperwork in front of him. “I was wondering if this deal we struck up with Chicago had anything to do with it?” He rubs his temples and frowns at the papers on his desk.

“I think I know who’s behind this. Well, kind of,” I say and he turns back to me.

“Who?”

I start to pull up some of the records from my hard drive. I have stored everything I have ever found out about my past and my family on here.

“Tell us about the dream, Angel,” Conor says.

“Dream?” Shane’s frown deepens.

“A memory really,” I say as I start to trawl through the files. “I knew I’d seen that tattoo before.” I pull up the image of the guy’s neck from the ice cream parlor and although it’s obscured by his blood and a gaping bullet hole, the image is still recognizable. “It’s a firebird. See?” I point to the orangey red feathers on the screen.

“A firebird?” Conor asks as he peers closely at the screen.

“Yeah, like a phoenix, you know?”

Both he and Shane mumble their agreement.

“When I was little, the firebird and the princess was one of my favorite fairytales. My father used to tell me it all the time.”

I look between both Shane and Conor as they stare at me in confusion and I realize I’m not making much sense.

“There are lots of variations of the firebird folklore, but the one my father told me was of an archer who finds a firebird feather and presents it to the king in the hopes of reward, Instead the greedy king forces the archer to steal a princess. But the princess didn’t want to be stolen and she refuses to marry the king. In traditional variations, the archer marries the princess himself, but in my father’s unique spin on it, the princess steals the firebird for herself and escapes to a faraway land.” I blink away a tear as I think about my papa and his soft, calming voice.

Conor reaches for my hand and squeezes and I smile at him.

“Anyway, because of that story, I think I forgot about the men who came to take me. The men with the firebird tattoos, or at least I jumbled the memory and the fairytales until I didn’t realize that part of it was real.”

“So you think these are the same men who tried to take you yesterday?” Shane asks.

“Not the exact same men, because as far as I recall, my father killed all of the men who came for me when I was a child.” More memories now of gunfire and shouting fill my head and I shake it to clear my thoughts. “But part of the same brotherhood.”

“Brotherhood?” Conor frowns at me.

“Hmm. I saw something about this years ago but because I was so focused on the Wolf I didn’t do a lot of research into them specifically.” I open a document that contains the information I gathered. “Roughly translated as the brotherhood of the firebird.”

“And they are?” Shane asks.

“Well, they used to be the Bratva’s most skilled assassins.”

“Used to be?” Shane frowns again.

“They haven’t been active for over a decade. At least not according to any of the research I did, which is why I never focused on them. They had no connection to the Wolf. In fact, the Wolf kind of put them out of business.”

“So why the fuck are they active now and why do they want you?” Conor snarls.

“Who even knows that I exist?” I shake my head as I stare at the screen.

“Vlad,” Conor growls and I close my eyes. Vlad and his sons are the only people who know who and where I am. I don’t want to believe it of him, but all the signs point straight to him. Still, I can’t wrap my head around it. Vlad had plenty of opportunity to kill me

“I’ll arrange a meeting with him tomorrow,” I whisper.

“The fuck you will,” Conor snaps.

“He might not be behind this,” I place my hand on Conor’s thigh. “And if he’s not, he’ll be our best chance at finding out who is. If you and your brothers go in there and shoot him in the head first then we may never get to the bottom of this.”

“You are not putting yourself or our babies in danger, Jessie,” he goes on.

“We won’t be in danger. You and Shane and Mikey and Liam will be right beside me. We’ll have the meeting here at the club and have our men here. I won’t be at risk at all.” I look to Shane who has his brow furrowed. “What do you think?”

He rubs a hand over his jaw and sighs. “I think you’re right…”

“Shane!” Conor snaps.

“We can’t keep Jessie out of this, Con, as much as we’d like to. And I don’t know, this doesn’t seem like Vlad’s style,” he says with a shake of his head.

“The Bratva’s elite kill squad try and kidnap our wife and you don’t think the head of the fucking Bratva had anything to do with it?”

“But they haven’t worked for the Bratva for years, right?” Shane asks me.

“As far as I can tell.” I say with a nod of my head. “But I’ll admit I haven’t looked into them for a long time.”

“So, maybe this is some kind of takeover?” Shane offers.

“Then why aren’t they going after Vlad? Why do they need Jessie?” Conor asks.

“Maybe they are going after him? And Jessie is the only surviving Ivanov – well except for Hayden now, but it is Jessie who Alexei recognized as his heir. Maybe this brotherhood wants back in power, and what better way to make a power grab than with the true heir?”

“So you think they want Jessie alive?”

I shake my head. “I doubt that,” I say with a sigh. “But if they kill me then they will have a genuine claim to the top.”

Shane wraps an arm around me and plants a kiss on the top of my head. “They won’t get close enough to touch you, sweetheart,” he whispers. “Promise.”

“I know,” I smile at him.

“Hmm.” Conor grunts beside us and I squeeze his hand.

“At least we have a starting point now,” I say. “In a few hours we’ll have some answers, and knowledge is power.”

He brushes the hair from my face. “Power is power.”

“Well, we have plenty of that too,” I remind him.

He rolls his eyes but I know that we’ve won him over. “You’ll make the call on loudspeaker and Shane and I will be in the room with you.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” I say with a smile.

“How do you get me to agree to anything you want?” he says before he kisses me softly.

“She’s got the keys to the cookie jar, that’s why,” Shane says with a soft laugh as he goes back to his paperwork.

“Shane!” I admonish him but he winks at me and I can’t help laugh too.

“He kinda has a point, Angel,” Conor agrees.

“So when are you calling Vlad?” Shane asks as he checks his watch. He’s still wearing the Breitling I bought him for his birthday and it makes me smile.

“Maybe we should wait until the sun comes up?” I suggest. “I’m not sure he’ll appreciate a call at five a.m.?”

“Then how about we wake Mikey up and get him to make some banana waffles instead?” Conor suggests.

“We can’t,” I giggle.

“You can, sweetheart,” Shane flashes his eyebrows at me. “Tell him you’ve got a craving.”

Conor laughs loudly as I feign my indignation. “Are you suggesting I use our unborn children to manipulate Mikey into getting up at the ass crack of dawn to make us food we could probably make ourselves if we tried?”

“Yeah,” Conor and Shane reply in unison.

“Okay,” I say with a nod as I push myself up from my chair. “I just wanted to make sure we’re all on the same page.”

“Good girl,” Shane says, slapping my ass as I walk past him and I smile as I walk out of his office to wake Mikey and Liam. I hear him and Conor talking and know they will be discussing the details of our meeting with Vlad. I hope he agrees to a meeting today, because if he doesn’t, then I suspect my husbands will just hunt him down and meet with him whether he likes it or not.

I push open the bedroom door and smile at the sleeping forms of Mikey and Liam. I feel a twinge of guilt that I’m about to wake them from a peaceful sleep, but this isn’t just about Mikey’s amazing banana waffles, it’s also because we need to brief them both on the latest development and they will want to know as soon as possible. I crawl onto the bed, into the middle of my two sleeping giants.

“Hey, baby,” Liam mumbles.

“Hey, handsome.” I lie between him and his brother and smile as they both snuggle closer to me.

“You need something, Red?” Mikey growls.

“Yes. Your banana waffles,” I giggle.

“Right now?” he groans.

“Uh-huh. The babies are hungry too.”

“That’s a low blow,” he says as he plants a kiss on my shoulder blade and pushes himself up.

“I also have an update about who tried to take me in the ice cream shop yesterday,” I add and that makes Liam sit up too.

“You know who it was?” he snaps.

“Kind of. Let’s go have some breakfast and I’ll tell you all about it.”