4

- Tell me about him.

I bit my upper lip and thoughtfully ran the washcloth over Grisha's tattoo. What could I say about my son except that he was the best in the world and in general the whole world?

Leaning against the shower stall, I squeezed the washcloth, dropping the foam down.

- Nikita... He is very thoughtful and... capricious, - I answered after thinking. - Not capricious, but he just knows exactly what he wants and how to achieve it.

I smiled, remembering how Nikita could sometimes expressively look at me with his cosmos. Just like an adult. Just like his father.

“He looks a lot like you,” I added, looking into Grisha’s eyes.

“I noticed that right away,” he chuckled, grabbing my chest. He grabbed you so well...

I slapped him reproachfully on the arm. How could such a touching moment be so vulgarized?

- He ate, Grisha! I dryly explained. - These are adult men grabbing, and children eat like that! Clear?

“Understood,” Grisha answered immediately and, continuing to paw me, reached for his lips.

Apparently, talking about his son inspired him to conceive, while fear and anxiety seized me again.

- Grisha ... - I began.

“We would have known by now,” he said, as if reading my mind.

- Where? I pushed him a little away from me, not imbued with his confidence at all.

I had only to remember that night in the cottage, when I heard my son crying, and how I ran to him, to remember that terrible box with the doll and the words of Mikhail, and that old man ...

- Kira, - as if reading my thoughts again, the wolfhound took my hands and looked expressively into my eyes, - Nikita is here. He is in the city. If it had been found, we would have known about it immediately.

- What? I sighed, tightening like a spring.

Here? In the town? I couldn't believe my ears!

I imagined the city as an arena with the most dangerous predators, and Grisha said so easily that our son was here.

- Mikhail ... - In the beginning panic attack, I began to shake. - He then thought that Nikita was in the house ...

- The house is not a city, Kira, - Grisha objected absolutely calmly. He has the best security...

What the hell is security? I snapped, chattering my teeth. I felt cold despite the hot water pouring from the shower. - Didn't you hear what your best ally Ibragimov said? Some creature, - I spat, - knew that ...

- Listen to me, Kira! Grisha grabbed my burning face. - Listen to me! He squeezed harder so I could look at him. "You shouldn't have left town at all, left me!" They would definitely not be looking for you here, and in which case I would quickly decide everything, without wasting time on endless rides back and forth, but there is as it is. This can no longer be changed. Ibragimov... He wants something from you - that's a fact, but he's not your enemy, and that old man you killed was an enemy! It was his nephew I put to bed in your cottage. Ibragimov is now figuring out to whom he leaked information.

- Ibragimov said that they don't know him... - I mumbled.

- Ibragimov said what needed to be said, and if you had not provoked that old man and killed him, then the night would have been waiting for him very long. Nobody likes snitches and traitors. If I only knew that you knew Ibragimov, I would have done everything differently, - Grisha added with feeling, pressing his forehead against me.

- Well, what would you do differently? - I asked mockingly, borrowing the speed of mood switching from the wolfhound. - What influences my acquaintance with him? He is still silent, like a partisan, and does not say what he wants.

Grisha looked at me strangely and grinned even more strangely.

“You are very unusual, Kira,” he whispered.

- What is unusual about me? - I asked sadly. - I'm dirty. I am a thief. Killer. Many of my actions are not logical and contradictory. I think a lot ... Sometimes even too much, but at the right moment I get lost, because in fact I pretend to be someone I am not. I don't know who I am except as a weak hysteric.

"You're not weak or hysterical," objected Grisha. "At least not always," he added with a smile, earning a frown for it. - And did you get confused when we were attacked on the road? No, you did not run away, but returned and took the fight, although I am very unhappy with your act. And with that old man... You quickly showed what you're worth.

- I killed an old man, someone's father and grandfather, husband, brother, just for what he said...

Do you think he would have treated you differently if he could? Not! It's bad that they know about Nikita, because this is your ... our weakness, but Ibragimov correctly noted that it gives you strength.

- Does it give you strength? - I asked, peering into the eyes of the wolfhound.

“You probably want to hit me,” he answered cautiously, holding my gaze, “but I can’t boast of that. Maybe a little, but I didn’t even hold my son in my arms. I don't know what... What is this...

I lowered my eyes, not at all wanting to hit him. Alas, Grisha was right, and I was grateful to him for his honesty.

“But you give me strength,” he added. - I love you.

I returned his gaze, but there was no answer to another confession.

Once I thought that in spite of everything I fell in love with Grisha, and after his act with Nikita, I didn’t think that there would be something else between us, even though he clung to me, and worried, and methodically made his way to me with the help of his crazy antics and unexpected revelations.

However, today, on that damn district, I got scared. I was afraid that they would kill him, that I would no longer see him and hear his hoarse voice, that I would be left alone without his support, the presence of which I stubbornly did not admit, but what was the root of all my feelings and fears? Love?

Once I thought that I loved another man, my ex Yegor, but then I realized that I just saw in him a kind of stability and what no way out of a difficult situation with my brother.

Once upon a time, I thought that I was imbued with something about Boris. He took care of me, and if I had given him the wolfhound then after the attack on the restaurant, he would have thrown the world at my feet, and I would definitely have stayed with him, despite the fact that after what he did to me, it was , to put it mildly, not normal.

So... What is love then? How to distinguish it? How to understand it? How did Grisha understand that he loved me? Shooting at me? Giving me water in the hospital?

I loved my brother no matter what, I loved my mother, I undoubtedly loved Nikita more than life, but Grisha ...

Yes, I came back for him and, as he put it, took the fight, but... If only I knew!

- You are hungry?

I pulled myself out of my thoughts and kneaded the washcloth in my hand.

"A little," I admitted, feeling devastated.

Words couldn't express how tired I was, how mentally exhausted I was. Although I was a thief and a murderer, all these shootouts, chases ... It was Grisha's world, not mine. I just wanted to be with my son. That's all.

- Then go to bed, - Grisha took my washcloth from me, - and I'll bring something. I think, - he smiled, - Rosa will not beat me up for being a little boss in her kitchen.

I did as he said, but even after eating and hot tea, miraculously not asked back, I could not fall asleep.

The time was nearing midnight. Grisha slept peacefully, putting one pistol under his pillow, and placing the other on the bedside table.

I looked at him for a long time in the hope of finding an answer to the question of my feelings for him, but I came to the conclusion that if I continue to torture myself like this, then I will definitely vomit.

Maybe I promised the walls of my room a lot of thoughts, but not such diarrhea in the best traditions of impossibly banal women's novels, the essence of which was reduced to languid sighs and glances, sex and an endless series of mega-dramatic dialogues.

Excuse me, but there was already enough of this for me, and it was time to change the genre to an action movie, which, in fact, was my current life.

Thoughts about Nikita with difficulty, but I also pushed it away. Of course, I could be reproached for trusting the wolfhound again, they say, he said that his son has the best protection, which means that it is so, but after thinking, I nevertheless agreed with him that if my .. Our baby was found, we would already know about it. Bastards like the one who sent me the doll in the ground from the graveyard wouldn't wait, they'd brag right away.

In general, the fact that Nikita was in the city even warmed me, and looking at the sleeping Grisha, I imagined how somewhere, perhaps very close, my ... our baby was sleeping.

In spite of my efforts, a sharp pain flared up in my chest, but I reminded myself that my desperate snot did not contribute to solving problems and, carefully so as not to wake Grisha, otherwise I could catch a bullet from him waking up, I got out from under the sheet and got up from beds.

Putting on a dressing gown and slippers, I already headed for the door, but my eyes caught on Grisha's phone. Picking it up from the floor, I left the room and went downstairs.

The lights were on brightly in the living room. Rosa, Marta, and Katya provided medical assistance to several motorcyclists who miraculously managed to survive the shootout, but judging by the expression on the face of Gray, who was propping up the window sill, most of those who rode with us still did not survive.

Gray intercepted my glance and shrugged, saying that everyone knew what they were getting into, but who was it easier for that?! Even I was jarred, although I knew almost none of Grisha's comrades.

I lowered my gaze and, wrapping my robe more tightly, walked on. Gray caught up with me already in the garage, where, probably, he also drove my car, which was standing among the same skewed motorcycles.

Wow... While Grisha and I were having fun, he managed to clear the track and remove all our motorcycles and the bodies of their pilots from it.

“Grishka will be upset if he wakes up alone,” Gray remarked casually.

- He's not alone, - I muttered, looking for a folder in the car, which Ibragimov gave me, - but with pistols.

“That will comfort him,” Gray chuckled. - There are a lot of things in the house that you can shoot at, and Grishka loves to shoot.

“That's right,” I agreed.

The door on the driver's side was, as they say, soft-boiled, and I went to the passenger side.

Gray got ahead of me and, taking out a folder, handed it to me, glancing with his creepy gaze at Grisha's phone, which I held in my hand.

It is not that there was disapproval in it ... Rather, a cheerful curiosity: how will all this end?

Under Boris, I never forgot that my every word, my every inhalation and exhalation would be heard not only by him, but also by the others who surrounded me then.

Now I often forgot about it, giving vent not only to language, but also to emotions, which did not pass by the ears of Gray, or by the ears of Rose and Marta, or by any one of the wolfhound gang, which Alyosha, without hesitation, called scumbags.

- How long have you known Grisha? I asked, leaning against the hood of the Porsche. I didn't know anything about Grisha.

I assumed that he was the same age as Boris, but now it seemed to me that he was a little younger. Grisha knew my father and Ibragimov, but I didn’t know who he was then, in the sense of being a hired killer or just starting out. Was Grisha an orphan or did he have a family besides the gang? When was his birthday?

Funny little things, right? So ordinary and so insignificant...

As if knowing Grisha's date of birth would reveal something to me that I didn't know.

Strange, but I only now realized that I knew nothing about him , but nevertheless I knew him: impudent and impulsive; rough, passionate and jealous; a bit crazy and manic; sometimes deadly even for no reason, and also dangerously loving... me for no reason.

- We grew up together, - Gray answered briefly, looking either at me or at the car. "Grishka is like a brother to me," he added with a special expression.

"Let me guess, your job is to see what he can't see?" I suggested.

- There is no such thing, - Gray answered quickly and, most importantly, confidently, still looking at me, and not at the car.

Here I agreed with him: Grisha could, like anyone else, interpret something incorrectly, but there was nothing in the world that could escape him. Although ... Grisha still did not notice that he was being followed, while he was following me.

Well... Nobody's perfect.

However, I felt a "but" in Gray's phrase and something from the same area that Katya expressed to me on the eve of the trip to the estate.

- But? I challenged. - Say what's on your mind. Bolder.

Gray took out a cigarette from his pocket and ran an appraising glance over me. It seemed to me that neither in it nor in the smell was still what Katya reproached me for, in the sense that Grisha would be killed because of me. And no, Seryy did not at all act like a clever man, whose behavior could be regarded as an attempt to push Grisha, as I thought when he agreed outside the gate, but there was something, and he hesitated to answer, listening to the sounds in the house.

Gray lit a cigarette and went to the motorcycles, from behind which he pulled out a machine gun.

- This - he slammed it on the hood of the car - M4 (carbine, a shortened version of the American M16 - author's note). Cross-country bikes had them (meaning cross-country motorcycles - author's note). The same ones were here in the vault. And the same ones were hidden at the factory.

"That's not news," I replied, although I was a little surprised that our weapons were being used.

Grisha said that he heard about serious guys who came to the city, but it turned out that the tough guys, in the absence of their own toys, were given strangers. Somehow it was not cool, in my opinion.

On the other hand, my mercenaries also received weapons for free.

Gray shook his head strangely in response to my neglect of his opening and took something out of his pocket.

- 5, 45 (meaning the caliber - author's note), - he said, demonstrating bloody bullets on his open palm: the very ones that I pulled out of Grisha. - Cop beauties.

“You can’t know that,” I objected, not very confidently.

Gray put the bullets back in his pocket and listened.

“I know,” he said in a barely audible voice. - When you pressed the SUV, I saw how they fired at Grishka. It was "Ksenia" (folding shortened Kalashnikov assault rifle - author's note). Such toys are loved in the landing and in our dear Ministry of Internal Affairs.

I frowned as I considered his words. Cop weapons, "leftist" motorcyclists with our, or rather my, weapons ... An interesting picture was emerging.

I couldn't remember what the license plates were on the SUV that was chasing Grisha, and I didn't even see them. Somehow it wasn’t before, but if there were cops in them ...

Although the presence of cop weapons did not at all indicate that the cops themselves fired from it, but on the other hand, why not? The mayor could put pressure on the law enforcement agencies, but why was there such a complicated scheme?

I shifted my gaze to my car: the rear window was cracked, but all the shots were made from the passenger side, but the side of the car, under the traces of a collision with an SUV, was directly elegantly scratched.

I walked over to the motorcycles, most of which had been damaged in the crashes, but they also had bullet holes, and mercilessly chaotic at that. They were simply shot, knocked down like skittles. All. Except for one - Grisha's motorcycle. He, like my car, was scratched, the mirrors were knocked down.

I mentally returned to the wounds of the wolfhound: one bullet went out on the left just above the pelvic bone, the second pierced the arm above the left elbow, the third scratched the right shoulder, and the rest entered the back almost along the contour.

They didn't want to kill Grisha. They just wanted to cut his wings to... To...

I sucked in a breath. Unlike Alyosha, Grisha did not put a password on the phone, and I quickly opened a gallery with photos. I had already seen the photo of the wolf he killed, but there was another photo taken at the door to the children's room.

Then I was too excited and did not smell the blood in the nursery, but Mikhail turned out to be right after all: they wanted to kidnap Nikita, and when they did not get to him, they decided to take ... Grisha. And preferably alive. That's why I managed to get off the road so easily: I was just allowed to do it, as I expected back then on the track.

I was startled by the sudden vibration of my phone. An unknown number was displayed on the screen.

- Yes? I answered in a voice that was not my own, feeling the cold engulf me.

- Kira? Michael's excited voice rang out. - It's good that it's you! He sighed with some relief.

I shifted my gaze to Grisha, who gloomily entered the garage in just jeans and with a gun.

- Kira, listen to me carefully... Are you at home at all?

I heard a train whistle in the receiver: Mikhail was on the road.

“I’m at home,” I answered automatically.

- Good! I'm on my way to you right now! Ten minutes have not passed after your departure, as we were attacked, - Mikhail continued to speak. - We fought back, but maybe you...

- The cops are coming! - said a motorcyclist who flew into the garage.

Grisha and Sery tensed up and exchanged frowns, listening. Even the phone in my hand seemed to listen.

My hearing was not so sharp, but even I heard the sirens gradually approaching.

- Kira! the phone screamed. - Can you hear me?

- I hear, - I answered, catching Grisha's heavy glance.

- Do not say anything! I will now! And, Kira... - Mikhail sniffled into the phone. - Your wolfhound is wanted. Get rid of him.