130

Chelle
Oh God. My head.
My alarm goes off way too early, sending shock waves through my system that makes me sit up with a gasp.
I see a glass of water and ibuprofen on my bedside table, and it all comes rushing back.
The guy buying me too many drinks at the lounge.
Nikolai showing up to rescue me. Wait… how did that happen? It seems like far too much of a coincidence, doesn’t it?
“Oh God,” I mutter when I remember the glorious horrible remainder of the night. I reach back and grab my ass on the way to the shower.
It’s a little sore, but in a good way. What we did-well, what he did because I was more of a recipient than a participant-was off the charts hot. I’ve never done anything remotely kinky before in my life, and now that I’ve experienced it, I’m pretty sure it’s my thing.
But-oh my God-with Nikolai? What in the world was I thinking? He’s a thug and a player. I’m so embarrassed. My brain rewinds, trying to remember all the things I said last night. How much I revealed. I remember I called him a player. Did I really beg him to spank me? Cringe, cringe, cringe!
He’s worse than a perfect stranger plucked from a bar. He’s Russian mafiya. A gangster my brother owes thirty grand to. What if last night was him showing me-and Zane-just how much he’s in charge?
But no, that didn’t fit. He was respectful. He refused to have sex with me, even though I was begging for it. And he left the glass of water and ibuprofen.
I try to ignore the warm flutters in my chest the memories produce. I’m not going to become enamored with this guy. A bigger mistake couldn’t be made.
I shower and quickly get dressed for work. In the kitchen, I tell my Echo to play a morning acoustical mix and pull a yogurt out of the refrigerator. I eat it at the same time I make myself a mug of hot tea, then sit and check emails from work on my phone as I sip it.
Singing along to the song playing, I get up to wash my spoon and mug. That’s when I see the note. My stomach flip flops.
Printed in crisp boxy letters, a message is centered in the middle of the paper.
Chelle Goldberg, you are adorable. Think of me when you sit today. -NUnderneath it is a neatly-printed phone number.
My face flushes as I snatch the note up. I crumple it, needing to destroy any evidence of my out-of-character behavior last night. But when I cock my hand to toss it in the trash, something stops it.
No.
I shouldn’t keep his number.
But what if I need it? Like, for Zane, not for me. I wouldn’t keep it for me. I definitely would never call him for a repeat of what we did last night.
I smooth the note and take a picture of it with my phone. There. Now I can throw it away. I toss it in the trash and finish getting ready for work.
And then because I’m crazy, I go back and snatch the damn note out of the trash again and shove it in my purse.
Nikolai
I sit back in my chair, fold my arms over my chest, and smirk.
Dima hacked the feed through Chelle’s Echo device, so I can watch her in her kitchen. It’s a total violation of her privacy, but I don’t give a shit. Dima’s complete cyberstalker package told me Chelle keeps a pretty structured and predictable schedule. Work. Workouts at a spin gym four days a week, the Wednesday hump day happy hour, and little else. Now that I’ve determined there isn’t a man she meets at the Red Room, I can decide what to do with my newfound interest.
And no, I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty over spying on her. My twin brother spies on anyone and everyone he pleases, so to me it feels more like a right than a crime. Besides, it was so worth it to watch her reaction to my note.
As I expected, she’s embarrassed. I saw the flush of her face when she read it and how quick she was to crumple it up. But she saved it.
I don’t know whether she’ll call.
I’m not even sure I want her to. I’m looking for something real, and she’s not someone who could ever accept who and what I am into her life. I’m sure most of my appeal is the dangerous bad boy thing.
Then again, I wouldn’t have said Ravil had a chance in hell of convincing Lucy, the city’s top defense attorney, into staying with him, but she has. Of course, he didn’t give her much of a choice. The idea of bending Chelle to my will that same way has an appeal. She’d do anything to save her brother, I know that.
But I’ve spent my entire adult life using pressure points or violence to bend people to my will. I don’t want that in the bedroom too.
My phone buzzes with a text from Ravil, so I shut down my laptop and get my ass upstairs to heed his summons.
All the inner circle is in his office-Oleg, Maxim, Adrian, me. Dima’s on video-conference.
Ravil sits back and laces his hands behind his head. “Lucy just turned down representing a member of a motorcycle club called Devil Dawgs. He was brought in on drug charges, but the police were investigating him for suspected human trafficking as well.”
Adrian’s body jerks, and his upper lip curls.
I know Ravil’s only making this his business because otherwise Adrian will involve himself on his own, and get himself in trouble again. He nearly went to trial last year for arson when he burned Leon Poval’s factory to the ground in retaliation for what was done to his sister.
“They’re led by someone who goes by the name of Viper. There’s no clear connection to Poval, but I think we should find out for sure, no?”
“Did Lucy give you the name of her would-be client? I can research that way,” Dima offers.
“I’ll get it for you. But I want you guys to get out there and ask around.”
“They will think we want in on it,” Maxim warns.
“Let them,” Ravil says. “I don’t mind an excuse to step on cockroaches.”
Maxim nods. “All right. We go in pairs. Nikolai with Oleg. I’ll go with Adrian. Ask to make a small score to get your foot in the door.”
“Good,” Ravil nods. “Report back with anything you find.”
Oleg and I file out and pick up weapons and cash before we take the elevator to the parking lot.
I don’t mind the assignment. It’s dangerous but Oleg and I can hold our own. When Dima and I first joined the bratva, if our pakhan gave an order, we scrambled to comply just to keep our own throats from being slit.
After being placed under Ravil, we functioned more out of an urge to please our boss. Whatever he asked, we delivered with the intention of impressing him. I turned being the bratva’s bookie into a life purpose. Running the poker games is a pleasure for me. I like my role as host. I don’t mind the blood and violence of calling in my markers.
I love handling the money. In addition to the poker games, I run sports bets and general loan shark shit.
Ravil also gives microloans to Russian tenants in his building. Start-up loans for their businesses, shit like that. If they default, I don’t bust noses and break fingers. Maxim, Ravil and I go in to look at their businesses and make changes to bring them to profit. Do they have a choice in those changes? Fuck, no. We still own them. But we don’t use violence.
Does anyone try to screw Ravil over?
No. No one has yet, anyway. Everyone is usually so fucking grateful they would name their first born children after him.
This shit on the street isn’t my favorite thing. In the past, the danger and need to please Ravil would be enough to keep me from complaining, but the farther removed from the street we get, the less appeal it holds. Today, going out to score drugs and get info on sex-trafficking feels like a kick in the nuts. It has something to do with Chelle Goldberg although I’m not sure what. I already knew she wouldn’t hang with a guy like me, even if she only knew my very best parts.
I guess this work feels like a confirmation of what she already believes about me, even though we’re only doing it as detective work to find Leon Poval. She thinks I’m a thug who has badly influenced her brother. Buying drugs on the street wouldn’t look good to her. It would confirm her belief that I’m not anyone whose life should dissect hers.
Oleg and I make a few visits before I get the name of a dealer who goes by Rattlesnake. I figure one snake name probably follows another. We meet him behind a gas station convenience store. He’s dressed in a leather vest and has a long, untrimmed beard. I’m guessing his organization is a motorcycle club. It’s obviously a very classy operation.
“I heard you work for Viper,” I drop casually as I hand over fifteen hundred dollars for twenty kilos of coke. It’s a waste of money because I will flush the shit. Ravil doesn’t allow any drugs into the Kremlin, not that I ever had a taste for it.
The guy has snake tattoos crawling up his neck onto the side of his face. He stares at me for a minute with a completely blank face then casually reaches for his pistol. I force myself not to flinch. I’ve never had a death wish. Not like Dima in his reckless years when he wanted to die. But I don’t waste energy on fear either.
After getting shot this past summer though, it’s hard not to remember the fragility of this body. But I also learned its resilience. I know there’s no way Oleg will let me get shot again because he blamed himself for what went down last time. He’s close enough to this mudak that he could disarm and shoot him in the head before the guy could blink.
“You a cop?” the guy asks, pointing the gun at my head. His question significantly lowers my opinion of him. If that’s all he’s worried about, he has no idea how dangerous I really am to him and his organization.
“Not a cop,” I say smoothly. “I’m interested in some of your boss’ business dealings. I’d like to buy his other product.”
Rattlesnake looks at me unblinkingly for another minute, and I wonder if that’s where he gets his nickname. His stare is very snakelike. “Who are you?” he says at last.”Nikolai Novikov.”
“You Russian?”
“Obviously.”
“Russian mafiya?”
I incline my head.
He splits a look between Oleg and me then puts his pistol away. “You want pussy?”
“We want to purchase. Not rent.” I keep the disgust from showing on my face.
“How many?”
I shrug my shoulders. “As many as you’re willing to part with.”
“You got a number?”
I pull out a card and hand it to him. It’s a simple one with just my name and a VPN number Dima set up that can’t be traced. My last name isn’t real either. I picked it when we joined the bratva and had to create new identities. I liked the ring of Novikov with my first name.
Dima thinks it’s utterly ridiculous to have business cards in this day and age with cell phones and digital data, but there’s a part of my job that involves schmoozing. I have to get people to bet with me and to come back again and again. Having a card to hand out comes in handy sometimes.
Rattlesnake takes my card and pockets it. “I’ll give it to the boss. I don’t know if he’s selling, but he might be.”
“Is he the… original owner?”
Rattlesnake pushes his lower lip out and shakes his head. “Nah. Some guy offloaded them a few months back. He dumped them real cheap, but they’re a pain in the ass.”
“American?”
Rattlesnake narrows his eyes. “Why do you ask?”
My skin prickles. If he was American, seems like Rattlesnake would’ve just said. Poval is Ukrainian. The slave owner could’ve been one of his men who stayed behind after Adrian torched the sofa factory and Poval disappeared.
“Just curious. I appreciate the connection. And the blow.” I hold up the bag of cocaine.
He gives me that weird unblinking stare again and then nods. “Do svidaniya.” He lifts his hand in a wave as he walks away.
A chill runs through me. Maybe he knows Russian because that’s where the sex slaves are from. Maybe this really is a link to Leon Poval and his flesh trade of Russian girls like Nadia, Adrian’s sister.
I don’t know if Ravil will tell Adrian what we’ve found out or not. He has the tendency to fly solo, and while he’s learned a lot from us in the year he’s been with the cell, he’s still young. He got himself caught when he torched Leon’s sofa factory after finding and rescuing his sister from its depths. Oleg waits until Rattlesnake has walked away before he makes a ferocious-sounding growl in his throat.
“Agreed,” I mutter. “I think we may have found the trail to Poval. Hold off telling Adrian until the pakhan gives us instruction.”
Oleg frowns and signs, I don’t talk.
“Well, you talk more than you used to.” I slap him on the back.
Nikolai
A day later, Oleg, Adrian and I catch Zane outside one of his classes. Yes, I have his complete class schedule because obtaining it was easy work for Dima.
The minute he sees us he starts to run in the opposite direction.
“Don’t make me chase you.” I don’t even raise my voice.
Zane slows and then stops, keeping his back to me. We flank him, Oleg dropping a meaty hand on his shoulder.
“Take him to the parking garage,” I say in Russian to keep Zane in the dark.
Oleg maneuvers Zane to a corner in the high-rise concrete garage where he turns him around to face me.
“You know why I’m here?”
Zane pales, his skin turning green around his mouth like he’s going to puke. His shoulders sag. “The ring.”
“Da. The ring.”
“I’ll get you another payment.”
“I know you will,” I say smoothly. “This visit isn’t about what you owe.” I punch him in the nose, hearing the snap as it folds to the side.
He doubles over, clutching it.
“That was for sending your sister to my place.” Blood starts to pour onto his shoes. Oleg lifts his torso with a single hand on his shoulder. I punch him in the gut. “And that was for making her cry.”
He staggers backward into Oleg. I nod to Oleg to straighten him again, and when he does, I step up close. He flinches when I reach for his face and place my thumbs on either side of his nose. With another snap, I straighten the break.
“Do better, mudak. Your sister doesn’t deserve to carry your shit.”
Zane splutters and opens his mouth like he’s going to backtalk, but when I raise my brows, he closes it again.
I tip my head, which Oleg correctly deciphers to mean, release him.
“See you Friday,” I say as we walk away.
I think I hear Zane mutter fuck you as we leave, but I let it slide.