RED REAPER - Soldiers Of Fortune [book one]

Chapter THIRTY TWO

Konstantin Ivanov

...a few hours later...

After Katya had left my apartment, I had walked her wobbly legs downstairs and helped her into a taxi, before retuning upstairs to find a drunkenly adorable Lucky with a belly full of giggles, laying flat on her back..

Now, sprawled comfortably like a lounging kitten at my feet on the Persian rug that lines the living room floor, she entertains herself by lifting her delicate hand to swat playfully at the beams of light that fracture into prisms of primary colours as they pass through the dimpled glass of the staircase bannister..

"I can totally catch--hiccp--that rainbow!" With a chirpy coo and a happy hiccup, she paws and swipes at the air..

"Da, ov' courze you can, little Lucky leprekon.." From my place on the sofa I sit up to set my drink on the side table before I lean over her from above.. Reaching down to brush away the messy tangle of golden curls that surround her like a halo.. my knuckles graze over her ruddy flushed cheeks and a tightness constricts my chest, coiling around my body to snake through my veins..

"I'm not a leprechaun!" She giggles uncontrollably, smiling sunbeams of sweetness up at me.. "But I do have a pot of gold--hiccp--in my panties!"

"Iz that so?" I chuckle at her endearing silliness..

She is the most uplifting presence, with a bright spirit that gives me more lightheartedness than I am accustomed to feeling.. It is strangely soothing.. When I am around Lucky, I no longer feel like a harbinger of death and destruction.. Instead I feel alive..

There is nothing more vivid than the viridian light in her eyes or the vibrant glow of her smile.. Each second I spend with her breaks down any defence I had built to keep my feelings for her at bay..

I don't care what anybody thinks of the distance in years between us.. I can dismiss our differences.. I don't even give a fuck about her brother in law and his justified warnings..

Lucky is the only person who has meant anything to me since I came to live in this god forsaken hell hole and I can't give her up.. She is my first thought each morning and my last at night..

She is my hopefulness.. My what if.. My maybe..She is pure luck and in her I place my blind faith..

I was always supposed to find her..
Because she is my Avos'..

An American might call it destiny or fate.. The manifestation of what was always meant to be..

I had cared for my departed wife, it's true.. But our marriage was one of circumstances and expectations.. I had been a naive teenager when I'd gotten Arina pregnant, an accidental miracle I had never anticipated to be blessed with.. I was unprepared for the responsibility and afraid of all the mistakes to be made.. I knew nothing of family, life or love.. I knew only in my heart the fundamental teachings of right and wrong that were instilled in me by the Monks who'd taken me in from a poor street orphan and given me a place to sleep..

It had been my duty to marry Arina.. It was my job to provide for her and my son, to protect them and give them a life I never had.. And in that duty, I had failed..

Yes, I loved Arina deeply, from a part of my heart that has since been as abandoned as a Chernobyl exclusion zone.. But there was never a day when I was in love with her..

I have never felt for another the way that I love Lucky.. From the second I first saw her, to this very moment, I am devoted to her in ways that are inexplicable to me.. I love her madly, endlessly, helplessly, recklessly, against all better judgement, despite any and all risk of my own destruction..