There’s silence on our side while I watch Koslov’s face with scrutiny as he sees what is inside the first container. I know the moment he realizes, his face scrunches and his chest puffs out like a bull. Then as his eyes grow wide and his lips press into a tight line—he must be noticing the explosives now.
“Really, I’m not asking much. Just for you to watch a few short videos. And this is your incentive: if you don’t watch, I will blow up your latest shipment. And with three containers, I can’t even imagine how many millions in cocaine you’ll lose.” I shrug and make a mock-confused face as he turns red.
His face rages and he barrels a few steps toward me. “Ah-ah-ah,” I say, pointing my gun back at him.
“They’re at a safe distance,” Roan reports, and I paint a smile on my face.
“Alright, Koslov, time to decide. Three, two…” I raise my brows and pause, giving him a chance. “One.”
Seconds later, the shipping container explodes in a giant blast. I watch in glee as his face falls and his hands ball into fists.
“You can blow up all my supply—I don’t care. It won’t bring her back,” he grumbles, and I can tell it hurts him to see his money go up in literal flames.
We go through the show-and-tell with the second container, and I can’t help but appreciate the contrast between the fiery, golden mess of the first barge against the inky indigo of the bay. People like to say violence is ugly, but those people have never appreciated it as an art. And right now, as I have the Bratva’s metaphorical balls in a vice grip, I’m creating a masterpiece.
“Hey, no!” Koslov howls.
“Something wrong?” I shove my hands in my pockets and revel in the onerous position I just put him in.
“You left him on the barge.” He is shaking now, and his men are looking noticeably unsettled behind him.
“I guess you better make the right choice then. Three, two…” He clenches his jaw so hard he must be cracking teeth, but his mouth remains firmly shut. “One.”
Boom.
The second blast rips apart the night, covering Koslov’s infuriated yell. He looks at me like I’m evil, but he’s the one who chose his soldier's fate, not me.
“He was an innocent,” Koslov hisses.
“No one in this world is innocent, Koslov. But what do you say? You want a tour of the last container, or do you trust me when I say it has the majority of your product. So, despite the night’s losses, you can still recover most of your shipment.”
Koslov’s second leans over to speak into his ear, and I share a smug look of victory with my brothers. With hatred in his eyes, he finally relents. “We will watch your video.”
It’s close to midnight when I arrive at Harlow’s apartment building after the docks. I scoff when I find the front-entry door’s lock is broken, letting just any crazy wander in.Don’t they know there’s a killer on the loose?
If she wasn't already living with me, I’d make her move. This building has abysmal security—I’m surprised it took this long for one of them to get killed.
I stare down the elevator like it’s an impassable passageway, the stone rolled in front of Jesus’s tomb.Fuck it, I’ll take the stairs.
I climb the stairs, telling myself I want a better understanding of her building’s layout. But I’m not fooling myself. I know why I avoided the elevator. The same reason I didn’t pull her out of the hot tub and fuck her over the table. It’s the reason I let the imbecile Beer Guy walk away breathing.
I want her to like me.
And the elevator is just a reminder that while she may not hate me, she doesn’tlikeme.
And I’m not ready to face how far I’ve fallen. I’ve never given a single lick of concern about what anybody thinks of me, let alone wholikesme. Then she shows up in heart-shaped glasses and spilling coffee, and I’m fucking falling all over myself.
Roman keeps warning me to not let her get into my head, but she’s already in my fucking bloodstream.
Once I get to her floor, I use a copy of her key that I made on her second shift at the Den and let myself into the small apartment. It smells like her, gardenia and vanilla, but with a hint of old food. It doesn’t surprise me that there are dirty dishes in the sink and dead plants dotted around the place.
She’s earnest, but a goddamn mess. I learned that quickly when she stumbled over herself switching hats and faking phone calls while tailing me. I want to explore every inch, learn every intimate detail of her life she’s concealed from me. But I’m pretty sure that’s a swarm of fruit flies over the sink, and I won’t be able to concentrate until I clean this place up. Once the dishes have been cleaned and put away and the floors swept, I’m ready to start my inspection.
There’s a bookshelf next to the couch that's filled with fantasy titles, a bunch that I don’t recognize, and several books on writing craft. I take one down and flip through her annotations. I can tell which pages she found most helpful because they have creases from continued dog-earing and water droplets.
I turn on the TV and open the different streaming apps to flick through her recently played. There’s a lot of those ridiculous crime shows—probably what gave her the confidence to stalk the most dangerous man on the East Coast. People watch a few episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and think they’re doctors. I’m not surprised she thought she was a full-fledged FBI agent without the badge after the amount of junk she apparently watched.
I realize there aren’t a ton of photos around. Though that’s not particularly exceptional in this digital age. The few they have are mostly of Harlow and Beth. I analyze her smile in a series of photos of them at some outdoor concert or music festival. It’s so genuine that a warmth radiates from the photo and nuzzles its way into my chest. It’s wide and beautiful and full of laughter, and soon that slight warmth is quickly chilling as I realize I’ve never seen her smile like that.