British Bratva

by Flora Ferrari

  In the shoe rack that went along one wall of the hall, there were a variety of men's shoes. All very large. I saw a pair of workboots I'd first seen Maxim wearing - the same ones. There was a splatter of plaster dried over the toe of the left boot.

  Into the large lounge, with painted panels on the wall and high, high ceilings, someone had moved the cushions on the sofa to make a more comfortable nest.

  I could imagine him here, stretched out in front of the fireplace, looking up at the paintings hanging on the walls that showed Russian landscapes in the snow. I peered in at the canvasses, getting up close to the swirled strokes in the thick oil paint, wondering how old they were. And how expensive.

  Was Maxim staying here, or did he own it?

  Maybe his interest in shutting Pierce up was even more personal than I'd thought.

  The kitchen was immaculate. The fridge was empty and so was the freezer, except for a bottle of vodka and an unopened bag of peas.

  The next room over was probably meant to be a bedroom, but it was set out as a gym with a treadmill and a rowing machine as well as free weights lining the walls. Underneath the scent of orange oil, there was a definite musk in the room that reminded me of the scent of him up close in the ring.

  I let out a hum, aware that just the memory of that had my nipples tensing.

  This time I had the advantage. I could stroll through Maxim's home and pick through his things, learn everything about him from what was on display.

  Only, there wasn't much to take a read from.

  His bedroom was sharply masculine and minimalist to a flaw. Dark sheets on a low bed frame. It suited him.

  I wondered whether he ever let those sheets get rumpled.

  I was bloody well going to give that a shot. Because after today, we were inextricably bound together, and I knew there was never going to be a man who was more perfectly meant for me.

  No one else would have closed their hands around mine and let me pull the trigger. No one else would be cleaning up the mess I'd left without a second thought.

  I opened the wardrobe casually, peering at his boxer briefs with a secret thrill.

  His clothes were immaculate, hanging neatly in the closet, ranging from incredibly expensive to incredibly ordinary. There was nothing flashy. Nothing evidently brand new.

  He had a selection box of wrist watches on his dressing table - everything from a cheap Sekonda with a plastic strap, to expensive technical diving watches by brands I'd never heard of. No Rolex. He had a Tag Heuer, pristine and shiny. I wasn't exactly surprised.

  I imagined killing people to order was a job that paid well enough to make it worth his while.

  But what caught my eye the most was the understated, sleek Larsson and Jennings gold-rimmed black watch with a set of interchangeable leather and metal link straps. I'd peered in the window of their little shop in Seven Dials on more than one occasion, impressed by their modern, minimalist designs.

  These were the watches of a man who knew the power of blending in. I wondered which one he chose when he was choosing for himself.

  He had a box of cufflinks to rival the watches. No common theme.

  No aftershave, only unscented aftershave balm.

  In the bathroom, his toothbrush on the side was the most personal thing in there. The shampoo and showergel were hotel miniatures. The bathroom cabinet were empty.

  If this was his home, he didn't spend much time here.

  Bored, I toed off my shoes and slumped down in the middle of his bed. I stared up at the ceiling, imagining him lying in exactly the same place and I glanced across at the bedside table. With a grin, I curled up onto my knees and crawled over to the side, on the hunt for something - anything at all.

  I expected a few condoms at the very least. Maybe a packet of tissues. But the only thing in it was a copy of the Bible. This really might as well have been a hotel.

  The other bedside table was the same.

  "I give up. Maxim Toropov, you really are a ghost."

  CHAPTER 17

  Elizabeth

  I woke up blearily, to the sound of my phone ringing. In the dark of Maxim's bedroom, the bright screen illuminated the ceiling, and I scrabbled for it, sleep making my limbs heavy.

  "Hello?" I rubbed at my eyes, sitting up as I answered.

  "Oh thank God."

  "Cassie? Wha-time is it?"

  "Sorry I woke you up kid. Your house is all over the news. I thought-"

  "What?" A shock of cold went through me. Maxim wasn't back yet. Surely no one could have figured out what I'd done already.

  "Shit, kid. It's gone up like a tinderbox. I thought you were charcoal when you didn't come in tonight."

  "What? No- I…" I didn't even feel the sob coming until it was out of my mouth, cutting me off. There had been a fire? All my things. Everything I'd ever owned was there. Everything that had been Mum's. I bit down hard on the lump in my throat, huffing out a breath and forcing myself to calm down. I wasn't going to go to pieces.

  I was on my feet in an instant, stalking towards Maxim's living room on a hunt for the remote control.

  "Elizabeth shit. I'm sorry."

  "I'm fine."

  "Yeah, I know, kid. You always are, but you don't have to be. Where are you? You want me to come get you?"

  I looked around on instinct, my brain slow to formulate an answer. "I - no I'm fine. I'm with a friend."

  "A friend, huh?" Cassie knew me too well. I've bitched and moaned about the girls at school who've always seen something in me that doesn't fit in. The ones who got the short end of my temper before I learned to cool it down. She listened through me losing my best friend because I started lying to her to cover for what Pierce was doing, stopped being able to come out with her to the movies, shopping - all those things that used to be normal before my time off had to bring in money.

  "Yeah." I chewed my lip and flipped on the TV, muting the sound instantly. "I’ve met someone."

  The news was up on the screen, and my heart clenched in my chest at the sight of the high flames lapping out of the windows of what used to be my home. Was Pierce's body in there, slowly being burnt to ashes? Wouldn't they find the bullets even after it all burned through? What if they put the fire out too soon?

  "Someone?"

  "Someone I trust."

  She lets out a soft hum. "Good. I'm glad. About time. I hope you let him take care of you."

  The camera panned across to the crowd of my neighbours out on the street, no doubt ripped out of their beds by the fire alarms. They'd assembled in a little crowd, oozing irritation at not being allowed back inside. And I realise that in the middle of all that, Maxim was standing there, head down, hands in his pockets. His jacket was different and his gun were nowhere to be seen.

  "Cassie I don't think I'm going to be at work for a bit."

  There was a solid silence on the other end of the line and for a minute I thought the connection had cut out.

  "Are you in trouble?"

  "No. Not right now. But, Cassie I might be." What happened if they caught him? What happened if he talked? I didn't like knowing he was in the middle of that crowd, no doubt being kept there to make a statement.

  What had he been up to all this time? Torching the place couldn't have taken that long.

  She let out a solid breath. "Shit, Elizabeth. What did you do? No - don't tell me. I don't want to know."

  "If anyone asks. Can you-"

  "Don't say it. I'm your boss. What do I know about what you get up to? You didn't even show up for your shift."

  "Thank you Cassie."

  "You owe me Harrington. You pay me back by making sure you're safe."

  I nodded even though she couldn't see it. "I will. I promise." She'd been so good to me over the years. One day I was going to find a way to pay her back properly.

  Maxim

  I walked away from the reporters and the fire trucks, ducking into the shadows the way I always do without the slightest raise to my pulse, but stan
ding on the doorstep, with the keys in my hand, I hesitated.

  There was a difference between wanting to kill someone and being on the other side of it. I wondered whether I shouldn't have held her back, done the deed myself. I was so proud of her when she took the gun out of my hand. Everything in her eyes told me it was what she needed. I couldn't have taken it from her.

  But maybe I should have.

  It was late by the time I got back to Belgravia, so late it was almost early. I hadn't been back to my London abode for more than the occasional change of clothes and a shower since I'd received the file on Sutherland and Valentin's accompanying orders.

  It was the company address. One of the perks of the level the company had taken me to, along with the multiple cars in the garage in the basement below. I kept another flat, for nostalgia. But I hadn't sent Elizabeth there. She deserved luxury not the cramped, narrow set of rooms so close to the run of train tracks sweeping into Victoria Station from the south that you could lean out of your window and read the newspaper over the shoulder of the morning commuters while the carriages were slowed to queue up waiting for a platform or a signal change.

  The balconies nearly brought you close enough to touch the trains, and their shunting, hissing progress over the tracks was the soundtrack I'd grown up to. The shuddering burnt-black bricks of the block and the windows rattling in their frames were what I'd known when we arrived from Russia. The better life my father strove for came with No Ball Games signs and parking lots instead of grass to play on.

  It was better than the alternative. And I still held a fondness for what I'd grown up with, but Elizabeth didn't need to see it. Here in London, and back in St Petersburg, I'd grown well beyond my roots.

  I'd learnt to hide my Slavic accent and then obliterate it, first with the vowel sounds of all the inner city kids, and then to temper it with a smoother edge - something like the boys who came into our unit before we shipped out, all tidy, smart and officer class. They were the blokes who made it through college. The ones who were smart enough to get themselves in places where life didn't take much toll.

  Life handed them a good roll of the dice, but I knew how to make my own luck. I had every mark of success any of them could have ever wanted - the money, the houses, the cars - but I felt the most alive, the most real, when I was sleeping on a cotbed in some abandoned building or other, some squat or building site or empty office, spending hours looking out of windows through high powered binos, pinpointing targets in the crosshairs of my scope.

  And lately, I'd felt that same vitality whenever Elizabeth was with me.

  Half of me wasn't expecting her to be inside. She could have gone anywhere. She had her plans, I was sure of it, and with Sutherland out of the way, she had nothing holding her back.

  But there she was, sitting in the living room in the chair opposite the door, with her legs crossed at the knee, waiting for me to come in. A single lamp lit up the side of her face and she was just as beautiful as she always had been.

  I closed the door behind me and shrugged out of my jacket, like I was just coming in from the office.

  She stayed exactly where she was, eyes fixed onto mine.

  "I saw you on the news."

  "Did you?"

  "Your torched my house." Unsurprisingly, she didn't look pleased about that. I'd hoped she'd understand why I had to do.

  "Yes, I did. I don't want questions. It wasn't a good place for a hit."

  Her jaw rippled and she got to her feet, eyes burning into mine.

  "You destroyed everything I own! What the hell is wrong with you? I have nothing! What kind of rescue do you call this?"

  I stepped closer and her fists found my chest, drumming against it before I took her wrists in my hands.

  "Elizabeth…"

  "I hate you! Everything that was my Mum's is gone! I can't ever get it back."

  I felt my eyes soften, a ripple of hurt chasing through me at those words, even though I knew she didn't mean it. I knew what it was like to be forced to leave a life behind before you were ready to let it go. "Not everything."

  I set the gym bag I was holding down on the hall table. The plastic rustled as I pulled out the box of photographs I'd watched her take out of her hiding place beneath the floorboards, night after night, when the rest of the house was asleep and she thought no one was watching.

  I knew she kept her valuables there. Her laptop was no surprise, but the revolver was. And I knew that meant she'd been planning to kill Pierce long before I came onto the scene.

  Elizabeth swallowed hard, and her eyes turned glassy. "Oh." Her hand rose to clamp over her mouth and her hands were shaking when she took the box from me. I already knew how much it meant to her. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

  "I shoved some clothes in the bag. Not sure they're quite what you would have chosen, I just grabbed what I could find."

  "No. Thank you. I understand. This is- How did you know?"

  Suddenly she wasn't mad with me any longer. I could see it in the way her shoulders softened and her stance shifted, no longer primed for defense and easy attack.

  "Elizabeth, I've seen you go over those pictures a thousand times on your knees in the dark. I wasn't going to leave them there to burn."

  Her posture shifted and she leaned against me, eyes still wet as she looked up at me, and I smoothed the salty trails away from her cheek with my thumb.

  "What now?"

  "Now life carries on. No going back."

  I saw her throat ripple as she swallowed, and she nodded, short and determined.

  "Okay."

  "They'll be looking for both of you. You'll be presumed dead."

  "Will they find him?"

  I tilted my head, grimacing a little. "I hope not. I have a record to maintain. I need to move him again, which can be risky."

  Elizabeth nodded. "I can help."

  "No. You don't know what you're doing. It's a skilled job. A messy job."

  She let out a breath and I could hear all of her frustration in it. "Well I have to do something."

  "You will," I told her. "We still need to make sure Sutherland's notes don't make it to press."

  "Oh - his computer. There was a receipt for luggage left at St Pancras Station."

  I raised a brow. It could have been something useful, but by now it was all quite literally up in smoke.

  "I found a locker key." She pulled it out of her pocket and dangled it in front of my face.

  With a pleased growl, I snatched it off her. "I knew you were bloody perfect, as soon as I laid eyes on you."

  I stepped closer and she didn't move back. Instead she wet her lips, tilting her jaw up and her hand settled onto my chest, squeezing at my pecs through my shirt.

  "Did you really think that?"

  My large, strong fingers circled her pearly throat and she leaned into my grip, smile curling in, even as I flexed and tightened my hold. "On my life I did, darling. I’ve never met a woman like you."

  The sound she let out, part mewl, part purr, went right to the core of me.. She made me feel like Superman, and with one touch I was definitely the man of steel. She had my cock hard enough to cut glass just by leaning up to brush her lips against mine.

  Her teeth grazed against the dry skin of my lower lip, sending a fresh charge right through me. Ten thousand volts, it had to be to make my cock twitch the way it did. The voltage channeled through me broke the fuse. She flipped the switch and there wasn't anything I couldn't do

  "Do that again," I growled, low and hungry, "And I won't be held responsible for my actions."

  Her eyes glinted with mischief, and her hand fitted over mine, easing my grasp from around her neck. Slowly, she ducked her head and slipped my thumb into her mouth, circling the broad, blunt end of it with her tongue, the small wet tip teasing over the pad of it where my fingerprints were.

  I nearly came right then and there, watching the attention she lavished, eyes tracking mine with every overly explicit lap of her tongu
e. I had another, much larger mouthful for her, and she damn well knew it.

  "Jesus, woman."

  There was no way she didn't know what she was doing to me. The bulge at my crotch was hard up against her hip, and harder every second. All I could think about was her sweet lips closing around my throbbing cock instead and her clever, clever tongue mapping all over me. I was craving entry to whichever part of her body she allowed, but if she kept this up, manners be damned, I was going to take exactly what I wanted.

  She drew off my thumb with a slick, solid pop and that was it. I was done for. With a growl, I hoisted her up and her thighs tightened around my sides, arms gripping around my shoulders as I pushed her back against the wall. Her hands drew my lips hard against hers and I plundered her mouth like I was sixteen again, and moments away from coming in my pants.

  I wasn't so far off.

  Too long there had been too much space between us, too many reasons why I had to hold myself back. But that was over now. There was nothing holding us apart, and all I needed was to make sure she knew she was mine.

  CHAPTER 18

  Elizabeth

  I groaned against his lips when Maxim's hot tongue pressed into my mouth, and I opened wider to let him plunder me. Gripping onto him, up against the wall, I had to turn my head away to find the room to breathe.

  He was all over me, and I loved it.

  All those nights he must have watched me like some kind of guardian angel keeping me safe, but when he'd swooped in, he'd let me take my own revenge and I loved him for it. I'd known I wanted him since I saw him loitering on the doorstep of the opposite building. There was nothing holding me back now.

  His lips went to my throat and his teeth tracked bluntly into my flesh, making me cry out and arch my body into him. Maybe I should have pulled away, but I didn't want to. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than for him to have me.

  After tonight, I wanted to be a woman in every way it was possible to be, but more than that, I wanted him to take my virginity the way I knew he'd been aching to for weeks. I couldn't get the image of him bursting into the office with a gun in his hand out of my head, and it had excited me more than I could admit.