Christ on a cracker, what was I going to say to him?
He looked up as I approached. He looked me over, head to feet. He didn’t smile.
But I felt my skin crawl. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. Innocent, innocent. What’s something innocent to say? I wracked my brain. I really should have prepared before I started walking.
Demetrius in my ear. “Ask him what he’s drinking.”
“What are you drinking?” I asked.
Nikolai smiled. “I believe is called a Sazerac.”
“What’s that?” I said. Oops, should I have waited for Danger to prompt me?
Demetrius: “Good.”
Okay, apparently not.
“Would you like one?” said Nikolai.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. It didn’t look like it tasted very good. “Is it… strong?”
“Perfect,” breathed Danger in my ear.
Nikolai chuckled. “A girl like you might find it so.”
“But not to you?” I cocked my head to one side.
“No, not to me.” He gestured to the chair next to him.
I sat down.
“Did Popov send you to me?” he asked.
“No one sent me,” I said.
He chuckled again. “Oh, you are quite good. I almost believe you.”
“It’s true,” I said. “No one sent me. I’m all alone in the bar, and I didn’t know who to talk to.”
“So, you picked me?” he said.
“He thinks you’re a prostitute,” said Danger in my ear. “Hand-picked by Popov for him. A gift. But you don’t want that, because he’ll try to get you out of here fast. You need to convince him that you’re just a girl who finds him interesting.”
Great. How was I supposed to do that? “I was supposed to meet my friend Tiffani here,” I said, improvising. “But she texted and said she wasn’t coming. I have to wait for the next bus now, and I didn’t want to be alone.”
Demetrius made a noise in my ear. “No girl would have you meet her in this bar.”
Really? What was it about this bar?
“You must be mistaken,” said Nikolai. “I am sure your friend didn’t mean for you to meet her here.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Here.”
Nikolai shook his head. “She must have meant different bar. There is a place in Georgetown called Al’s Tavern. She probably meant for you to meet her there. It is the kind of place a girl like you would fit in.”
“Oh,” I said. “Maybe you’re right. But it doesn’t matter, anyway, because I’m stuck here anyway.”
“Yes,” he said. “Unfortunate for you. Or perhaps not so unfortunate. Shall I buy you a drink?”
“Say yes,” said Demetrius.
“Yes,” I said, smiling.
“It’s good,” Danger said. “He believes your story. Now, you’ve just got to keep him talking.”
How was I going to do that?
Nikolai was signaling a waitress to come to our table. “Did you say that you were a student?”
“Yes,” I said. “At, um, American University.”
“Don’t get too into yourself,” said Demetrius. “Ask him questions.”
Like what? I fiddled with my fingers under the table. “Do you come here often?”
“Seriously?” said Danger.
Nikolai laughed softly. “I own this place, so yes.”
“You own it?” I looked around, pretending to be impressed.
“It only one of the many things I own.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Better,” said Demetrius.
“So, how long have you owned this bar?” I said.
* * *
Demetrius
Kiera was sickeningly good at flirting with Nikolai, and even things that I thought were missteps turned into advantages for her. It was because she was captivating on her own. Most people wouldn’t notice, since she hid behind her computers, but she was a beautiful woman with wit and intelligence. And when she turned her big eyes on a man, there was no way he could resist her.
But I had to admit that I didn’t like the fact that she’d turned those eyes onto Nikolai, even if she was only pretending.
I felt possessive of her, and I shouldn’t.
I had already decided that it was better if I was out of her life completely. I used to think that by staying close to her, I could protect her. But the arrival of Giovanni the other night had proved me wrong. He never would have come there if it hadn’t been for me. I had insisted on staying with her, ostensibly to keep her safe, but my presence had brought danger to her.
If I could get her away from this job somehow, then I would.
But as it was, it would be easiest to get this over with.
And then I would change my ways. I would stop going in to headquarters, stop following her to lunch, stop being close to her. I would leave her alone, because I was no good for her. Not in any way.
I had always known this, but now it was even more clear.
I only wished that I didn’t know the things that I knew about her. That I didn’t know how perfect her breasts looked when her nipples were drawn taut. That I didn’t know how she smelled when she was aroused. That I didn’t know the noises she made when she was coming.
I was an idiot.
Fucking her made me feel like she was mine, but she wasn’t.
She would never be mine.
Knowing that didn’t make it any easier to see her with Nikolai, though.
I made it through the evening, coaching her through various conversation topics. She laughed when he made jokes, she asked all the right questions, and she held his attention wonderfully.
After about two hours, I figured that the others should have had enough time to place the explosive charges. They were small charges, placed in strategic spots in the building’s supports. They would sit inert until they were remotely detonated. I didn’t know a lot about them, since Blaze was the expert, but I was sure that they would demolish the entire small building which held Nikolai’s office.
To be sure they were finished, I fired off a text to Blaze, and he answered almost immediately that they were on their way out.
I turned my attention back to Nikolai and Kiera. “Okay, Kiera,” I said. “Time to wrap this up.”
At the table, Kiera looked at her phone. “Oh,” she said. “I’ve got to go. I’m going to miss the last bus.”
“Go?” said Nikolai. “Oh, you must not. Stay for another drink.”
“I can’t get home without the bus.”
“I will take you wherever you want to go.”
“You’ve been drinking.” Kiera shook her head. “You seem like a very nice man, but I don’t get in cars with drunk drivers.”
“I have driver, of course,” said Nikolai.
“Oh,” said Kiera. She shot me a panicked look. “Well, I still can’t… I should be getting home.”
“Please stay,” said Nikolai. “We were having such a nice time.”
“Get up,” I told her. “Just get up and start walking away. Be polite, but firm.”
Kiera got up. “I really did have a nice time. But I just need to go now. Thank you, and it was nice meeting you.” She started to back away.
He reached out and grabbed her arm. “You aren’t leaving.”
“Please, let go,” said Kiera. Her voice was shaking.
I stood up. This was getting out of control. I could approach, pretend to be a bystander who saw what was happening and wanted to intervene. But did that make sense? No one would intervene with Nikolai Mikailhov, not in his own bar.
“Do you have any idea how many drinks I have purchased for you? I would not make such an investment if I expected you to simply walk away.”
“I thought you owned the bar,” she said, yanking her arm out of his grasp. “Do you really have to pay for drinks?” She started to back away again.
He got out of his chair and came after her.
“Stop it,” she said, looking
around. All the other people in the bar were minding their own business.
Nikolai seized her again.
That was it. I had to do something.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Kiera
My heart was thudding in my chest, and I struggled to push Nikolai away. I knew that I was probably blowing my cover, but I didn’t care. All I could think about was how bad his breath smelled, and how close I was to his double chin, and the way he had laughed about breaking girls. I wanted away from him, and I was going to get away, no matter what I did.
But Nikolai was strong for an old, fat guy, and this time, I couldn’t get free. His fingers dug into my skin.
I shoved at his chest with my free hand.
He grabbed that hand too. “What is wrong?”
“I just want to leave,” I managed.
“Have I frightened you?” His eyes lit up at the prospect. My fear excited him.
I was disgusted. And even more afraid.
And then Demetrius was there, yanking Nikolai away from me, pressing the older man back into the table. “I think the girl said that she wanted to leave,” he said.
I had never been so relieved in my life. I wanted to throw my arms around Demetrius, and I wanted him to take me out of here, away from that horrible man.
“Let go of me,” said Nikolai. “Don’t you know who I am?”
Demetrius backed up, but he still stood between Nikolai and me. “All I know is that she sounded distressed.”
Nikolai straightened his suit. “You. I know you.”
Demetrius flinched. “We’ve never met.”
“You’re a Gallo,” said Nikolai. He cocked his head to one side. “And yet you were also the cop under the hat at my office last week.”
Uh oh. This couldn’t be good. Nikolai recognizing Demetrius was a bad, bad thing.
Nikolai spun to face me. “And you? Why are you here? Are you part of this?”
I swallowed.
He pointed at me. “You are playing me, yes? Using her for some purpose… But what is it you want?” Then he turned back to Demetrius, his mouth curving into a smile. “This is about that girl, isn’t it? The other Gallo man—the bald one—he come to me weeks ago about a girl. Natasha, I think it was. I didn’t know who she was before that, but then I find out. Now, I know her. You are trying to get her back?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Demetrius, but his voice wasn’t strong.
“The first time you were distracting me while you looked in my office building,” he said. “Trying to find the girl in there. But you couldn’t. So, I bet you have tried to sneak into the bigger building tonight, haven’t you? There’s no way you got past my security.”
Well, he was drawing the wrong conclusions now, but they were just barely the wrong conclusions. He knew too much. He was onto us. There was no way that we could—
“I think I’ll move Natasha,” he said. “I think I’ll put her into high security. You tell that bald Gallo that I will never give his girl back. Never. In fact, I am going to groom her to be my personal girl. I will use her. All my men will use her. We will use her until she dies, and he will never see her again.”
* * *
Demetrius
I took Kiera back to the hotel, but when I tried to take her back to her room, she said she didn’t want to be alone, so I took her to my room.
She stood in the doorway, hugging herself, and I walked around, pacing in front of the couch. Everything was fucked.
I looked up at her.
She was chewing on her thumbnail. “He was so gross, you know?”
I ran a hand through my hair. Fuck. Here, the whole time, I’d been thinking about how much I didn’t like watching her flirt with him. I never thought about what it was like for her.
“And when he grabbed me, I got so scared.” She blinked hard. There were tears in her eyes.
I crossed the room to her and gathered her into my arms.
She clung to me, buried her face against my chest, and her shoulders shook.
I rubbed her back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let you do it. I’m sorry.”
She pushed away, wiping at her face. “No, I’m okay. I’m being a baby. I should have been able to handle it.”
“Kiera, he’s a dangerous man.”
“He didn’t do anything to me. Not really.” She hugged herself again. “But I kept thinking about him touching me. I could smell his breath, and it was horrible, and I kept thinking about him trying to kiss me, and it was awful.”
I went to her again. I wrapped my arms around her. I kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry.”
She shut her eyes and let me hold her.
We stayed like that for several minutes, and I liked the way she felt there, small and soft against me. I wanted to hold her and protect her forever.
But then the door flew open, and Blaze stalked in with Ambrose and Cass on his heels.
Kiera and I broke apart. She went to one side of the room, and I went to the other.
“What the hell is this text?” said Blaze.
Oh, right, I forgot I’d sent that. I’d sent a mass text saying, Armageddon, which was our code for the mission basically being destroyed. Because it was. On top of whatever I’d subjected Kiera to, we were in deep shit. Everything was screwed.
I gestured to the couch in my suite. “Maybe you guys should sit down.”
Ambrose and Cass did.
Blaze just glared at me. “What the fuck did you do?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Nikolai made me. He saw me, and he put things together. He’s moving Natasha, and he’s on high alert.”
“Why did he see you? You were only supposed to be there to watch Kiera,” said Blaze.
“He went after Kiera,” I said. “He grabbed her, and she was fighting him off. I stepped in. That’s when he saw me. And he remembered the fact that Matteo had talked to him, and he remembered Natasha, and basically everything is fucked.”
“Well goddamn,” said Blaze.
“So, what’s that mean?” said Ambrose. “Does that mean that we regroup and try to make another plan?”
I massaged the bridge of my nose. “I don’t know. I can’t think of how to proceed. Our plan was contingent on Natasha being in that big room with all the other girls. We just spent days camped out eavesdropping on him to get that information. Now, she’s going to be in high security, and I can’t think of how we’re going to get to her.”
“You saying that we’re giving up?” said Cass. “We’re done?”
“The money’s for killing Nikolai,” said Blaze. “We still going to kill Nikolai?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well,” said Blaze, “we don’t need five people to kill Nikolai. If I’m still blowing him up, maybe I want a bigger cut.”
“Hey.” Ambrose stood up. “We just helped you place those charges. That should count for something.”
I held up my hands. “I will find out some way to make sure everyone is compensated, even if I just take Nikolai out with a sniper rifle or something.”
“What about Natasha?” said Cass.
“What about the other girls?” said Kiera.
I sighed.
“This is on you,” said Blaze, shaking his head at me. “You fucked this up.”
“I had to help Kiera,” I said. “I couldn’t let her try to fight of Nikolai on her own.”
“Maybe you should have,” Kiera said in a small voice.
My head snapped up, and I gaped at her. “You kidding me? You were crying—”
“I was not.” Her eyes flashed. “I could have handled it. I was handling it. You don’t always have to rescue me, Danger. I’m not a kid.” She tore across the room, threw open the door, hurled herself out of it, and slammed it.
I stared after her, completely thrown. What the hell? She had needed me. Before everyone came in, she’d been in my arms, and she had needed someone to take care of her. I knew it, and so did she. Wh
at was this fucking denial of that? There was no reason for her to be ashamed of how she’d felt. She was smaller and weaker than Nikolai, and it was utterly rational for her to have been frightened of him.
“Why don’t you just hit that and be done with it?” said Blaze. “Maybe then you wouldn’t be screwing up the entire job because you want in her pants.”
I turned a sour face on him. “You don’t understand anything, do you, Blaze?”
“Oh, come on, it’s obvious that you have a chubby for her,” said Blaze. “And you keep screwing everything up—”
“Out,” I said to him in a mild voice. “Everyone out.”
“I’m not leaving just because I’m telling the truth,” said Blaze.
I went over to the door and opened it. “You’re not telling the truth. You’re just an emotionally stunted overgrown adolescent who thinks with his dick and is convinced that everyone else does it too. You couldn’t care about a woman beyond wanting to fuck her, so that’s all I must be thinking about too. The fact is, Blaze, she is a kid. And she was scared. And I…” I was starting to get really pissed off. “Get out, okay?”
Ambrose and Cass were already heading for the door.
Blaze stayed in place.
“Maybe you can explain it to him, Ambrose,” I said. “Maybe you can tell him that no matter how many times you have sex with your wife, you don’t work her out of your system.”
Ambrose cleared his throat. “Uh, maybe you just don’t say anything else about our sex life, huh?”
“No, I understand what you mean,” said Cass. “And I think it’s sweet. I think Kiera really likes you too. And—”
“Cass, he wants us to leave.” Ambrose tugged her through the doorway.
Then it was just me and Blaze. We glared at each other.
“She’s not really a kid, is she?” said Blaze.
“Hey, you just keep your hands—”
“I knew you had it bad for her.” He shook his head at me, like he was disgusted. “I’m telling you, man. You just need to have some naked time. That will fix everything.”
“Out,” I said again.
He shrugged and left.
I shut the door after him.
I took several deep breaths. Okay, good, now I was alone. That was what I needed. Solitude.
Rough: A Hitman Romance Page 14