“All you need to focus on is that he’s considered high-profile.” Vasily paid no attention to Maks’s bullshit. “No one touches the attorney.”
“Anything on Sacha?” If Maks said an engagement had been announced, Alek would have no choice but to go against his uncle’s decree and do more than touch the attorney.
“Not yet. I’ll have her address when I get a report from OnStar detailing anywhere Sheppard’s Roadster has been—good taste in more than just women.”
That earned the moron a glare from both Alek and Vasily. Micha was chuckling as he melted away. Dmitri didn’t appear to be listening to them.
Vasily did up his coat and glanced at his phone when it started ringing. He silenced the call to give Alek his full attention in that way he’d done since Alek was a boy. “Tell me how you see this playing out.”
“Really, you don’t want to know.”
“Humor me.”
He was tempted to lie. Because if Vasily didn’t know what Alek had planned, he couldn’t prevent it from happening. “I’ll knock on her door tomorrow morning—” He looked at Maks. “Tell me you’ll have her location by then.”
“I’ll have her location by then.”
He nodded. “She’ll open for me; I’ll wreck Sheppard if he’s there, and take her. I’ll lock her up at your house in Old Westbury—because Eva and the girls would ruin everything if I did so at ours. I’ll make her regret allowing another man anywhere near her, then keep her all to myself for the rest of our lives. At some point, I’ll come up for air, and when I do, I’ll finish it by crushing Sheppard’s career and tearing down his old man’s firm.”
“Word.”
Like two juveniles, he and Maks both put out their fists at the same time and knocked them together. Vasily watched with a bemused look on his face before turning to Dmitri.
“Was I ever like this?”
“Not even when you were twenty,” came the dry response that evidenced how many years he’d been at the Pakhan’s back.
“Did any of that sound reasonable in your head before you voiced it?” his uncle asked him.
“Right now,” Alek stipulated, “absolutely. Is it? Of course not.”
Vasily checked and silenced his phone again. He sighed and looked at the restaurant where Gabriel and Vincente were holding things down but must be getting antsy. “You’re not going to want to hear what I’m about to say, but I feel I have to say it anyway.”
Alek nodded and listened to what he hoped wouldn’t be reason.
“You said you’d like Sacha to regret becoming involved with another man. She shouldn’t. You ended your relationship with her, and that’s on you. If she chose to move on, that’s something you’re going to have to accept. She and Justin Sheppard are two single people dating, and that has nothing to do with you. If you want to try to win her back, I’m behind you, but you will not punish her for living the life you left her to live.”
Reason it was.
“So basically,’ Maks said as he shoved his phone into his pocket. “You’re telling him he can show up in the morning and wave at her through the fucking window.” He came in closer and gave Vasily a questioning look. “Do you have any idea how he must be feel—? Hang on a second.” He straightened and looked at Alek. “How the fuck are you so calm right now?”
Alek rattled the change in his pockets and shrugged. He kept his shoulders up as the chill of the night began to register. How could he explain that the urgency had left him? The panic he’d been living with for over a year had fled the moment he’d looked into Sacha’s eyes. He’d been afraid he was going to have to live without her. That fear was gone. The only thing giving him trouble now was Sheppard and the revulsion Alek had seen in Sacha’s eyes when she’d looked at him.
“I’m going to see her tomorrow.” His lip pulled up at the corner, and he shrugged again, feeling a high that had nothing to do with the brandy he’d imbibed earlier. “If I learn she and Sheppard aren’t buddies, I’ll rage.” He brought a hand up when his uncle opened his mouth. “But I’ll try not to fight for her by killing the guy. Rather, I’ll fight for her by engaging in the dirtiest fucking battle any of you has ever seen. A legit battle. In the end, satisfaction will come when the attorney is forced to stand there and watch Sacha wrap that curvy body around me because I’ve proven she’s mine.” He slapped his hands on his uncle’s shoulders and felt optimism for the first time since learning his cousin’s family had been taken by the Baikovs, which was the moment Alek’s downslide had begun. “But with any luck, things will go my way and it won’t come to that.”