Fractured

Chapter 26

Victor stopped by a few days after we moved in. He had been following up on the Russian goons that had come after me at the Gala, hoping they might lead back to whoever hired them, as well as the new lead I had passed on through Sean. Victor had managed to have a couple of Academy members 'accidentally' bump into the goons in all the chaos of the car flying toward them and plant tracking devices on them. Thankfully the ones he used were tiny prototypes that he and Corey had been developing and acted as a tracker, a transmitter, and a listening device, so they could listen in on their conversations.

He said a lot of what they overheard was in Russian for the first day or so, but they organized for someone to translate it for them. It had mostly been arranging travel and new identities, as well as how they were going to handle telling Vladamir. Victor told us, after doing some digging into who they were referring to, he discovered it was Russian Ring Master that lost his job when I gave up my career in professional contortion and circus arts, was now going by this name. He followed up on all of their new aliases and found one-way tickets back to Russia.

When he received the last of the translated information through, he found out that all of the men, including Vladamir, were genuinely concerned for not only their lives, but the lives of their families, when they realised that they had potentially broken up what they believed to be the very real marriage between Raven and I. Apparently, they were more afraid of the retribution that Raven would seek for causing him to lose his wife than they were of the authorities waiting for them back home. They preferred to take their chances in prison in another country, where Raven would have a harder time getting to them, than actually staying in this country to continue searching for me. It seemed they were compensated well for tracking me down, but not well enough to potentially face off with Raven.

This information alone assured me that whoever was paying these people was smart enough to hide what they were doing well, to find people from my past to do their bidding and to avoid being found out by some of the smartest computer technicians and hackers in the country, but was not paying them enough to keep them on task regardless of any challenges faced. It also appeared that they hadn't done much research on the people I was spending all of my free time with, otherwise they would have offered the Russians more money, not that I imagine it would have helped. I made a mental note to dig further into Raven's reputation back in Russia to find out what exactly had them so terrified.

The following weeks passed in a blur. They consisted mostly of working our way through the movie collection, making a start on the renovations to the house, swimming, training with Nathan and the subsequent homework he left with the guys to make sure I could put into practice the skills he had taught me regardless of who the attacker was. Marc quickly refused to help them when he caught me coming out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel and he was met with a well-placed blow to the family jewels. The others all found it amusing, but he was determined that they wouldn't understand until they met the same fate.

After the first few nights of spending time in the same room, we all decided that we couldn't keep sleeping on lounges or beanbags. It was starting to cause some aches and pains so we decided that we would start using our new beds upstairs. The guys all took turns sleeping in my room, claiming that not only did they not want to leave me alone, but that I had the comfiest mattress of them all. I saw straight through their excuses but secretly reveled in the fact they wanted to stay with me. The more often they stayed, the less often my nightmares haunted me.

There were a couple of nights where they had climbed into the bed after I had fallen asleep and I ended up putting Nathan's training to good use. One night, in particular, I had taken to Axel in such a way that he had actually yelled for someone to help him. Luckily, in my sleep induced haze, I didn't manage to land any hits on his face. There were some impressive, albeit small, fist-sized bruises scattered across his chest and abdomen. Needless to say, they made a conscious effort not to sneak into the bed after I was asleep.

The conversation was generally light and fluffy. We avoided all topics of conversation that might upset anyone. We talked about things like favorite color, favorite food, what animal we would like to have as a part of our families - they all agreed when I told them that to me, pets aren't a form of property, but rather a companion or an additional family member. We covered things like what job we wanted when we were kids and all-time favorite movies, favorite books, favorite childhood memories. There were no limits to the things we discussed, outside of keeping it light.

There were a few times the guys tried to talk me into telling them what I wanted to do on a date. Each time I replied with the same thing - anything they wanted to do. If they wanted to climb mountains, I would climb mountains with them. If they wanted to go paintballing I would, even though those little things always seemed to bruise me worse than they did an average person. If they wanted to go camping and face off with a real-life bear, well, I would have stood by and watched that one. I had no desire to be eaten by wildlife. If they wanted to introduce me to something that they enjoyed that others didn't necessarily like or agree with, I promised I would keep an open mind and not judge. I even offered to go with them to try something entirely new if that was what they wanted to do. I didn't mind what we did on the dates. As long as I got to experience it with them, I would do anything - except for kill.

They even tried to get me to tell them who would get the first date and what order they should all go in. I told them that they could work out what order we would be going out in and when. The only stipulation I put on any of it, was that we were to all be completely healthy, with no bruising at all, and all stitches removed, beforehand. They quickly agreed that was an excellent idea and I left them to work out how they would decide the order of the dates.