She put a hand on her hip and smirked. “I think Lori’s on the money. The twist is that Rafael spreads the rumors himself.”
Thank fuck, Tanya was in a better mood today than yesterday. She’d had me clean the men’s room three times in an hour because she caught me with my phone out.
Her light expression dissolved a moment later, and her hardened work-bitch face returned.
“Okay, enough chitchat, you three. It’s go time.”
* * *
All the way home,I felt a crawling sensation across my back, like someone was watching. I cursed my cheapness at not taking the bus and hurried home. It was sleeting when I arrived, and the icy rain settled on my head, making me feel frozen and shivery. My numb fingers fumbled at the lock as I tried to insert the key. It wasn’t late, but it was already getting dark.
There! A movement behind that car – was it a person?
I blinked into the gray twilight light and tried to spy a crouching figure. After a few minutes of nothing, I unlocked the door and went inside. Great. I was jumping at shadows. I wasn’t a stranger to feeling watched or under threat. Henry and our years of running had ingrained a permanent anxiety in me that never slept. New York was a dangerous city. I couldn’t let my paranoia paralyze me. I had to get on with life.
I jogged up the stairs to my apartment, trying to get blood into my limbs. The weather sucked. I would lose what I saved on bus fare from pay and tips if I got sick—not that I’d call in. I never called in. I was the asshole who dragged herself through her shifts, coughing and sneezing because I didn’t get sick pay and couldn’t afford to take time off.
I opened the door and entered, shrugging off my coat. I liked to walk around in socks, and I hated the sudden surprise of walking through an icy puddle. I toed off my boots and hung my jacket by the door. Snapping the overhead light on, I started forward and then stopped.
There was an odd sensation in the cramped one-bed as though someone had been there.
“Henry? Are you home?” I called, searching the shadows for signs of my father.
There was no answer, and my skin prickled. Henry wasn’t the hide-carefully-type and wasn’t clean and tidy. My eyes fell over the surfaces. A cup sat the wrong way up on the draining board as if someone had washed it and left it to dry—someone who wasn’t me. Unease crawled through my veins. Something felt off, and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
I wandered through the apartment, checking on things. I had shit-all to steal of value, but local junkies were known to take the most random things when they were looking to make a quick buck. Still, there was very little you could get for anything in my apartment. If I locked the door tomorrow and never came back, I’d miss nothing except my diaries.
I went into my room, and the feeling of wrongness grew stronger. Walking over to my bedsheets, I inspected the pattern of creases. I hadn’t made the bed this morning, so it wasn’t easy to tell if someone had touched anything. Fuck, I was so messy and disorganized at the best of times. Letting out a breath, I sat down and flopped back. I was being paranoid. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, suddenly noticing a sweet spiciness in the air, like black cherries and dark chocolate. I raised my sleeve to my arm and inhaled. I must have picked it up at the club.
The sleet outside had turned to hard rain. I burrowed under my thin bedcovers—work clothes be damned—and closed my eyes. I should eat dinner or do something vaguely productive, but the part of me that was scared wanted to hide under her bedclothes. For that evening, I decided to let myself wallow. Life was so fucking exhausting.
5
KIRILL
My penthouse was better secured than the tower of London back in its heyday, yet, I had to make further provisions for its future guest. Mallory, my lifelong obsession, would soon be a permanent fixture here, and I needed to keep her safe. More than that, I needed to keep her inside.
I flicked through the camera feed from the small units I’d placed in her bed. She’d dragged herself home and passed out without the help of crushed-up sleeping tablets in her water. Would she sleep through it if I went over there now and touched her again? The whisper of my name on her lips was on repeat in my memory, tempting me to do just that. Instead, I forced myself to focus on work.
At any given moment in my city, there were numerous fires to put out. The Romanians weren’t happy about Nikolai poking his nose into the trafficking business. I wasn’t too fucking happy about it, either, but what the hell was I supposed to do? Unfortunately, he was a U.S. citizen, so a well-placed tip to a hotline wouldn’t bring immigration down on his back, either. I needed a coldly impersonal way to get rid of him that was untraceable. Viktor would accept nothing less, and the fucker always suspected me when something went down with Nikolai. He probably shouldn’t make his bias so clear since we were supposed to be competing fairly for the same title—well, our version of fair in our twisted world.
My phone vibrated in my pocket as I watched the feeds. The black and white image of Mallory, sweetly sleeping, with no idea of being watched, was oddly soothing.
“What is it?”
“It’s your brother. He’s shown up at Pravda,” Ivan said over the reverberating bass of the club in the background.
I swallowed a deep sigh. I didn’t want to leave Mallory, but I knew Nikolai. He’d only act out more if he thought I was ignoring him. I didn’t want him wondering what was so important that I wasn’t going to meet him. I didn’t want him to find out about Mallory.
“On my way.”
* * *
Pravda wasa nightclub deep in the heart of Manhattan. It was the latest hotspot, and it was mine. The most unfortunate side of running clubs was having to make appearances at them. They were excellent fronts for the kind of dark dealings that were routine business in my world. Want to buy weapons for your private war? Come have a drink at the bar. Want to flood a new city with an experimental drug? Pull up a chair.
“He’s at the bar,” Ivan said in my ear.
I nodded, bracing myself for the meeting I had been avoiding. I stalked through the VIP area, noting the men of the bratva who were letting off steam tonight. For Chernov men, that usually meant snorting illicit substances off pliant, paid-for flesh. I didn’t partake in the debauchery of my men and never had. I was above it and couldn’t afford to lower my guard. I might be heir to the kingpin, but I was only one of two potential heirs. I could never forget it, not even for a moment because that was when Nikolai would make his move.