by Leslie North
Madison O’Connor strode into the room, her fiery red hair knotted up from the graceful, controlled line of her neck, and pinned back from her furious face. So she had come dressed for battle as well. Without thinking, Vlad reached into his pocket to touch the folded note that had been the start of all this.
He was shocked to find it gone.
"Excuse me, gentlemen, but just what the hell is going on here?" Madison demanded. Lukas darted a look between them, clearly trying to get a bead on the situation. "I'm about to open for the day, and I would like to know who let you in here, and what the hell you think it is you're doing."
Vlad noticed her gaze, though furious, didn't linger on him for long. He wondered if even in her fury at the intrusion, Madison O’Connor was having as hard a time forgetting where his hands had been the night before as he was. He decided to use it to his possible advantage now.
"I'm addressing a blind spot in your security system," Vlad said. "Did you forget already? We tested it out at great length last night."
"I wouldn't say we spent a lot of time discussing it, Mr. Karev. And I certainly wouldn't call the length in question 'great'." Madison's cheeks colored, the constellation of her freckles darkening by degrees. Lukas' glances between them were becoming almost comically frequent as he tried to read the subtext of the confrontation. Vlad didn't care if he succeeded or not; all he cared about right now was winning against Madison.
But she wouldn't be easily deterred. Her dark brown eyes snapped away from his to focus on the duffle bag; she kicked it with the side of her heel, gauging its weight. Lukas winced at the indelicate treatment of his equipment from such a delicate-looking woman. Remembering her comment about the lengths of things, Vlad thought a small part of him could sympathize.
"I'm not authorizing this. Any of this," Madison stated.
"And I don't require your authorization in the matter," Vlad returned immediately. "It's only right that I should be justified in taking the initiative to protect my family's investment. In fact, I'd say it's a generous gesture, considering I'm paying out of my own pocket to cover flaws in the security system set up by your family."
"Flaws? Plural? Is it just one blind spot you're looking into?" Madison kicked the duffle bag again, much more savagely this time, and Lukas groaned at the maltreatment. "Then why am I looking at multiple pieces of hardware here? You're not intending to set these up around the gallery and double-down on footage, are you? Who is this?" She trained her dark eyes on Lukas suddenly, startling the security technician.
Lukas pulled his baseball cap off and turned it over nervously in his hands. Vlad felt a thrill of frustration looking at the other man. He needed an ally against Madison O’Connor, not a man whose professionalism fissured under pressure from a beautiful woman.
"Lukas Safin," Lukas said. "I've worked closely with Vlad's family for years. Sorry, I… thought we were all set here."
"And just where do these cameras feed to, Mr. Safin?" Madison asked. "Because I certainly don't see enough cord here to rig them up to the main system, much less assimilate the newer feeds with the old. Were you intending to install and operate these wirelessly? And just whose wireless were you—"
"I'll take care of this," Vlad interrupted. He shot a hand out to grab Madison by her bicep; she scoffed in protest realizing she was the this in question, but couldn't find the words in time to rescue herself from being steered away from Lukas.
For his part, Lukas looked relieved to be getting back to his work. Vlad's signature was enough for him to feel comfortable getting started. He bent to his bag, whistling, as Madison struggled to escape Vlad. He tightened the pressure on her arm in warning.
They went behind the column.
"Maybe you'll feel more comfortable discussing the details of our business partnership," he began to say.
"Take off your sunglasses," Madison interrupted. The order surprised Vlad. It was certainly one of the last things he had expected her to say now that they were alone together.
"Why would I do that?"
"Because I want to see what you're really up to." Madison canted her hip, resting her diminutive fist on the indent of her waist. Her posture immediately evoked ideas of all the things Vlad would be able to do with her if his hands replaced her own. "I want to see your eyes. And before you accuse me of being insipid, just remember that only one of us thinks he actually looks cool wearing them indoors."
"You think I look cool. You don't need to admit it out loud to me." He complied all the same, removing the black matte lenses and tucking them inside his suit collar. He tried to mask an appreciative look now that he could see her in full, vivid color before him. Less than twenty-four hours and he had already forgotten how truly stunning she was to behold.
"Just how many of my employees and contractors are working for you?" Madison asked. It might have begun in her head as a rhetorical question, but she sounded desperate for an answer. Vlad knew what that desperation was like. It was waking up one morning to find everyone you thought you trusted lacked an alibi. It was discovering that even those closest to you weren't who they seemed.
"The man you call Peter Franklin I know as Peter Fekhlachev," Vlad said eventually. Madison crossed her arms, but this time she didn’t interrupt him. "He's our organization's legal contact and lawyer, and a trusted member of the Bratva in his own right. He's the man who first found my father's body and called the police."
It was a fact of the case. He revealed nothing important in his investigation by telling her as much. If Madison O’Connor was at all involved in the circumstances surrounding Sergey's death, she would have kept herself apprised of its developments from the beginning.
Of course, there remained the question of how far Peter's own involvement extended. Before the unexpected meeting with Maxim last night, Peter would have ranked very high up on Vlad's list of suspects; now, he wasn't even sure the list had a hierarchy or a proper end to it.
"How did your father die exactly?" Madison wasn't pulling any punches today. She did look slightly sorry for the tone of her question, though; her full lips drew together as she considered her next words. "I mean, I know he was murdered, but—"
"My father died brutally," Vlad stated. "The back of his skull was staved in by an ice pick. The same one they found plunged into his chest and speared through his heart. There was blood everywhere, and other evidence of an intense struggle: broken furniture, an upset bookshelf. In the end, my father was no match for the individual who attacked him. I believe he knew his assailant."
He watched Madison very carefully as he spoke. The look of horror that dawned across her expression as he described the scene seemed real enough. The hand that covered her mouth, seemingly unconsciously, was a nice touch.
"Oh. God," she said.
"If there is a God, he wasn't in the room with Sergey that day," Vlad stated. It was something he had thought often, but never said out loud. He had certainly never expected to bare such a personal musing to Madison O’Connor. Her hand came away from her mouth, and he watched her unhappy frown twist in sympathy. That, he could use to his advantage now, too, even if it wasn't his preferred approach. Whether she was faking it or not, she couldn't back off now that he had bared a sliver of his soul to her.
"Let me make this installation," Vlad pressed. "If not for the safety of both our investments, then for your own safety. Many people saw us together last night. If there is someone picking off Karevs, then their mercilessness might easily extend to those closest to them."
"Close?" Madison repeated incredulously. Then she snorted. Vlad tried not to feel nettled by her disbelief; if there was one thing he was learning; it was that people could appear one way while being very different behind locked doors or screening columns. Whatever Madison thought of their relationship—whatever he thought—it meant little to the outside observer. If someone harboring a malicious will toward his family had seen them together last night, he could only guess at what they might have thought.
"Fine. Whatever."
Madison turned away from him. Lukas straightened from the cords he was untangling and smiled at her. Vlad thought he looked ridiculous, but said nothing. The encounter with Peter last night had been a rude enough awakening to his own capacities for jealousy. "It's obvious you're only doing this to spy on me," Madison continued. "I better not find one of these in my office. If you wanted a second date, you could have just asked."
Vlad felt his lips twist in a smile of amusement at her claim. "And what would your answer be if I did?" he asked.
"Hell, no." Madison raised her pale wrist to check her watch. "I'm here long enough to open the gallery, and then I'm off. I've got personal stuff to deal with today. Peter will be coming around to check up on things later. He has a meeting with my mother. She hasn’t been well since my father made such an ill-advised decision to jump into bed with Sergey and I don’t want her to be under any more stress than she already is. She still has no idea what an unrepentant traitor he is, and I intend to keep it that way for now."
"I'll be sure to keep any revelations between us," Vlad said. "I have a renewed respect for the fragility of mothers."
"Don't go anywhere near my mother, Vlad. I mean it, she hasn’t been feeling well," Madison advised. Then she was gone, striding from the room with an agility Vlad found unbelievable considering the height of her heels. Her ass looked just as good, if not better, than it had yesterday. He remembered all too well how it had felt beneath his hand.
"So." Lukas threw a freshly-untangled cord out in front of him. "You hit that? Because I was thinking…"
"I'm not paying you to think," Vlad growled. His territorial instinct once more reared its ugly head, but this time he decided to embrace it. However, he decided to deal with Madison O’Connor, he was going to be the one to bring the fiery woman to her knees; either in confession, or in complete submission to the overwhelming desire between them.
He left Lukas to his equipment and stepped outside for a smoke. He had no doubt that Madison had retreated to her office and would leave out the back when she was ready. He thumbed his lighter and cupped his hands around his mouth, before expelling a long sigh, as if he had been holding all that smoke for the entirety of their encounter. Some of the tension eased out of his shoulders, but it was inevitable they would begin to edge back up as soon as his thoughts turned toward the missing evidence.
Maxim. He must have stolen the note somehow when Vlad wasn't looking. Had the drunkenness with the broken and repentant confession all been for show? Had his own brother played him like a Stradivarius violin?
What he wouldn't give for another meeting with his dear sibling. It was almost enough to make him wish he hadn't been so quick to change the locks.
6
"Careful with that!" Madison exclaimed.
"Sorry, Miss O’Connor." The mover, a kid who couldn't have been long out of high school, reached up to tip his baseball cap, which caused him to relinquish his grasp on the box. Madison dove forward as it leaned, catching it before it slipped and fell to the floor of the apartment hallway.
"Careful!" She tried to keep her voice level—at the very least below a shout—but it was proving as difficult for her as not dropping anything was proving for her movers.
This is what came of trying out new services. If she thought the old company was bad when it came to handling gallery purchases gently, then this lot was even worse when it came to handling her personal property. At least she could console herself in the fact that she didn't own anything especially nice… and if she did, she was certain to find it in pieces by the end of the day.
The men didn't appear to be listening to her. Two of them loitered by the entryway to the stairs, their arms crossed and decidedly not filled with boxed items; a third stepped out of the nearby elevator and nearly dropped the chair he was carrying when he noticed something fall out of his left pocket. The two by the stairs erupted into rough gales of laughter when everyone watching in the hallway realized it was a joint.
Madison's face burned. Just what was she paying these people for? The move into her apartment was going to take all day unless—
"Get the hell out of my way," a low, measured voice warned from the stairwell. "And get that van unloaded in the parking lot in the next hour."
"What?" one of the loiterers questioned as he turned. "Who the hell do you think you—?"
Unfortunately, Madison already knew the answer to that question. She watched as the two men sprang away from the tall, ominous figure filling the entryway, surprised that they didn't yelp their terror like two frightened dogs dismayed to discover their master had just come home. Vlad stepped from the landing into the hallway, seemingly nonplussed by their reaction and unwilling to repeat his order. His bright blue gaze flashed down the hallway as he looked for more obstructions, finally alighting on Madison herself. Her stomach gave a startled twist as their eyes locked; she might as well have been riding a rollercoaster that just dropped out from underneath her.
It was an unexpected feeling, but it wasn't unpleasant. Not by a long stretch.
"Madison?" The cold edge to Vlad's voice warmed with his recognition of her, although he didn't sound any less confused than she felt. The cluster of gawking movers quickly amassed themselves back in the elevator and disappeared behind the closing doors. Somehow, Madison felt more confident now that her belongings would be unloaded in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, it had once again taken the particular charisma of a blond-haired mobster to motivate the men at her disposal.
"Today's my move-in day. I had to reserve the elevator." She had no idea why she was babbling about the elevator to the tall, too-familiar man standing before her. "Vlad, you… live here?"
"I live in that unit." He nodded to the door directly beside hers. He was dressed casually again today in a plain V-neck and jeans, and he carried a bag of groceries in his arms. Madison could plainly see the full sleeves of his tattoos now, and the fact that the midnight-black ink seemed to cover more muscle than his pale flesh did. What would those arms look like wrapped around her, contrasted with the milk-white plane of her naked stomach, her breasts?
"No… no way," she said, shaking her head once to clear it of the invading image. Her suspicions about the work he commissioned at the gallery came crashing back now with a vengeance. "Are you surveilling me?" she demanded.
Vlad's eyes dropped from her face to rake her figure. Her question may as well have been a self-fulfilling prophecy, Madison realized too late. She folded her arms across her chest, trying to obstruct his view, but knew it was a lost cause. He seemed like he could see right through her clothes.
"I might ask you the same," Vlad said, "considering I was the one living here first."
"I knew it," Madison muttered to herself. "I knew I shouldn't have moved into this building, sight unseen, with only a blueprint to guide my decorating decisions. All right, let the seeing commence." She moved away from him and reached for the handle to his apartment.
"Inviting yourself over already?" Vlad sounded amused. The door didn't give beneath her hand as she had half-expected; she heard the rattle of a ring of keys and stepped back as Vlad unlocked his apartment for her perusal.
"If you really live next door to me, then your apartment is as small as mine," she deduced. "I need ideas on what to do with the space."
She didn't know what she expected. She supposed her number one assumption was that a son of the mob would not be living in such a low-cost building. Maybe a part of her still thought Vlad was putting her on for his own amusement, but the fact that his key turned effortlessly in the lock proved her wrong. If he really did live next door, then surely his apartment would be furnished lavishly, expensively, hybridized by technology and rare antiques bought and paid-for by a resume of crimes Madison couldn't even begin to quantify. Maybe she expected to find a dark room; a jungle of wires; a tree of glowing computer screens displaying various rooms in her family's art gallery. Maybe she expected a table of half-assembled illegal arms and an open briefcase full
of money.
She didn't expect to find Vlad's apartment so… empty.
"You can't live here," Madison muttered as she gazed at the solitary armchair in the rugless room. She took in the lopsided window curtains; the single water stain on the side table; the empty bottles of vodka littered around the lonely chair. "Can anyone?"
"You know, you're at your most insulting when you aren't trying to insult me at all," Vlad observed. He deposited the bag of groceries on his kitchen counter and turned, crossing his arms. He appeared to be considering Madison like she was a new feature he wasn't sure he altogether liked installed in his living room.
"Boy, you really take the lone wolf thing seriously, huh?" Madison said as she turned a slow circle, hands finding her hips as she studied her surroundings. "I guess it's kind of romantic. You must consider yourself a prince in exile to live like this."
"My home is not a gallery for you to critique," Vlad expressed. "I'm not a wolf, or a prince, and I certainly don't need romance in here."
"None at all?"
Their eyes met and held for a long moment. Something fluttered in Madison's chest that she refused to acknowledge as her heart. Just when she thought anything might happen—especially a scenario where the Russian crossed the room and showed her just how much two people could do with so few available surfaces—Vlad exhaled and turned back to the kitchen counter.
"Well? Any ideas yet?" he asked her, in reference to her earlier play to gain entry.
"A few." Madison's eyes traveled down the length of his broad back, watching the way the thin material of his T-shirt hugged the muscles of his shoulders and the indent of his spine every time he moved. "Can I at least hang out here until the movers are finished?"
Vlad gestured to the chair in the living room without looking. "Help yourself. I was just going to make dinner."
"I was thinking more of helping myself to your liquor cabinet," Madison admitted. Her eyes fell from admiring Vlad's incredible physique to take in the fallen soldiers piled by the armchair. "If there's anything left," she amended.