MIKHAIL
It’s morning,and I groan, unpleased by the early hour. The sun hasn’t risen yet, or if it has, it’s buried under the thicket of clouds outside.
Is it still bitter and the roads icy?
I stalk out of bed, shower, and dress for the day.
Yesterday was interesting, with Madisyn. She’s a girl whom I can’t get out of my head, but I should. I don’t need a sexy little distraction getting in the way of my work.
Besides, I’m not a man to form attachments to anyone, let alone engage in relationships.
Sex is something that I can handle and do rather well, but I don’t need intimacy or the strings attached to it. And kids, lord help me if I have to ever see another one under my roof.
Before I was imprisoned, my sister had lived under my roof with her two children, fraternal twins, Sophia and Liam. Little obnoxious brats, getting into whatever trouble they could find. She and her twins ran off with the Italians, probably married the guy by now.
I’m not close with her.
How could I expect to be with her betrayal bleeding me from the inside out? She testified against me and tried to get me locked behind bars.
Well, she did technically get me locked up until I was released when it came back as a hung jury.
Yeah, I fucking did that, making sure my ass wasn’t going to sit behind bars in a tiny cell for the rest of my life. Money and power have a way of getting me what I want.
I yank the curtains open, catching a glimpse outside. The sun is up, but it’s buried behind the smoky gray clouds.
There’s ice coating the trees, and the branches are heavy. We still have electricity, which is always a concern with winter storms when the power could go out. The compound is updated, modernized, but not new.
This place was first built in the late eighteen hundreds. It was expanded, remodeled, and kept up. But the power lines still come in from outside. They’re not buried underground in this neighborhood.
We have a generator around the back if we need it, which helps our surveillance systems, handles the refrigerator, additional freezer, and other systems in the compound. It, however, is not a flawless structure.
There’s a brief knock at the door. “Yes?” I call out, waiting for a response.
Nikita opens the door and steps into my bedroom. “Sir, you requested information on the girl, Madisyn Taylor.”
“See, you were able to find her last name.” I grin, pleased with Nikita’s determination to gather my information as requested. “What have you found out?”
“Not much. She’s a new hire, but her background checks out. She worked at a hospital for the past seven years in Ohio. I called the facility to make sure her work history is legit.”
“Anything else?” I don’t need to know the nitty-gritty details until there’s something amiss. She mentioned over dinner that she recently moved to the city, but I hadn’t pulled out of her where she was from.
“She’s a nurse, but you already knew that. I don’t think it’s such a bad idea to keep her around,” Nikita says, offering his opinion. “We could use a local on-call nurse when things get difficult.”
The idea has certainly crossed my mind, but she’s not a doctor, and her level of skill set, usefulness, and loyalty hasn’t been proven to me.
“We have the concierge for that,” I say, reminding him of our hefty investment in the organization. We don’t just pay a monthly fee. We’re also shareholders to ensure our privacy and who gets accepted as clientele. We don’t want the Italian Mafia or the Colombian Cartel showing up on the doorstep. They can seek out help elsewhere, like the local hospital or clinic.
“Dr. Gracie Steele?” Nikita asks, raising an eyebrow. “That woman is a straight arrow. If she gets any inkling of trouble, she’ll go straight to the cops.”
“She won’t.”
While Dr. Steele is a renowned surgeon and medical doctor, she’s busy with her concierge medical practice, seeing patients, handling administrative functions, and downright swamped with day-to-day tasks. The woman wouldn’t notice if we shared an elevator and one of our men had a gunshot wound.
She’s preoccupied but not dumb. I’ll give Nikita that much, but Dr. Steele isn’t a physician we can use for a house call.
I trust her secrecy and privacy at the concierge facility, not inside my home.
“Fine, we’ll get Madisyn’s number and keep our options open, but only if it’s an emergency. I don’t like bringing in strays and feeding them,” I say.
“Isn’t that what you did last night?”
“Shut your mouth,” I snarl at Nikita. He ought to watch his tone if he doesn’t want to be reprimanded and given the toilets to clean or some other grunt work tasks that an errand boy could handle. “You’re dismissed.” I’m done dealing with him and want him out of my room.
“There is one other matter. Ms. Madisyn needs a ride to work this morning.”
I exhale a heavy breath and reach for my phone on the bedside table. There are two missed text messages from Andrei, the associate who owns the chop shop downtown. He’s the gentleman I attempted to get Madisyn to call last night, but he was busy with other vehicles that took priority.
“I’ll handle it. Tell her I’ll be down in five,” I say, dismissing Nikita.
He wordlessly leaves the room, shutting the door on his way out.