by Alyssa Cole
Bardhyn clasped her hand gently, but then tugged her over to him and turned her wrist at a painful angle, running his thumb over the raised scars there. He grinned at her and then slackened his hold as he continued his phone conversation.
“She’s becoming quite the liability,” he said in a tone that imparted barely controlled anger. He had long ago gotten rid of any traces of his Albanian accent. His voice was one of those international mash-ups that revealed nothing of their speaker; he could have been from Dublin or Des Moines.
“What do you mean you just let her go? You should have handled her,” he continued, his face impassive. Linda had modeled her own expressions after his, careful not to reveal anything she felt. The antianxiety pills she popped every now and again also helped with that. But it was becoming harder and harder to keep playing the character she had created—or that Bardhyn had created—over the years. All the anger and fear she had suppressed kept popping up at inopportune moments, like right now. She knew he hated to be interrupted, but she did it anyway.
“And Yelena got out of her room this morning, again, and made a phone call from the bar. To the teacher,” she said, cutting into his conversation. Bardhyn’s grip on her wrist tightened painfully, but she didn’t flinch. “I’ve restrained her, so it won’t happen again. She swears she didn’t tell the woman anything, but there’s no knowing that for sure.”
Bardhyn turned his attention back to the phone call, his voice edged with annoyance. “Look, I know I said not to kill her, but things have changed. The meeting is tomorrow, and I don’t want to risk her fucking this up. Have your men take care of this today before she channels this newfound bravado into something that might upset me. What’s the status on Julian?”
Linda reinforced her bland expression, watching as Bardhyn stiffened in his seat. Bardhyn had sent Alexi and some other men to the apartment listed under Julian’s name in the file Henderson provided. Obviously the men had failed.
“If he’s not at home, then go find him. Do I really have to explain this to you? I want him here, immediately. Kill the teacher; bring me Julian. Can you manage that?”
He ended the call and threw the phone onto his desk. Disgust was etched onto his face, a snarl pulling at his full lips as he got up and began pacing the room. “Maybe you should cover up those wrists of yours if you don’t want these little idiots getting ideas about suicide,” he said to Linda without looking at her.
“Maybe you should tell your men stop to touching the girls whenever they please,” Linda countered. “There used to be limits, but now they think they can come and take whenever they feel like it. The girls need to know that there is some time when they are safe, even if it’s only a couple of hours a day.”
“Why?” he asked, stalking over to her. “This isn’t the Girl Scouts. They need to realize they belong to me now, and they had better do whatever they’re told.”
“I understand that, probably better than anyone, but we aren’t back home now,” she said, drawing on her dwindling supply of patience. “We need to be prudent. It’s a waste of time and money to acquire them and then break them for the hell of it. If you provide them with protection, just a bit of it, they will adjust more easily.”
The muscle in his jaw ticked, and she knew he was agitated. Bardhyn was usually completely in control of himself, but she wasn’t the only one who had been slipping of late. She had always had to handle him in a particular way, but in the past few months, she had often felt more like a babysitter than a right hand.
“I’m wasting drugs on them, and now I’m supposed to treat them like they’re staying at the Ritz?”
Linda looked at Bardhyn for a long moment. She thought about stabbing him through the heart but knew if she hadn’t done it by now, she never would.
“Do you doubt my assessment?” she asked, her voice edged with steel. He needed to remember who handled this aspect of the business, whether he was having a temper tantrum or not. “I think even you would agree that this is my forte. I’m telling you: even the basest animal works better with the illusion of safety than under the constant end of the whip.”
“They either get used to it, or they die,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Why should I care?”
“Because you’ll be losing money,” she explained softly, as she always had to when he was in one of his moods.
“I don’t care about money!” he sneered, whirling so his face was inches from hers.
She yawned demurely before meeting his gaze.
“I know you’re upset that Alexi didn’t find Julian at his apartment this morning,” she said. “But do remember that you’re an adult in charge of a multinational syndicate, not a five-year-old who’s lost his favorite toy.”
Bardhyn was incredulous. “You don’t care? This piece of shit who has broken the Besa to everyone he ever knew is not only alive but has been trying to take me down, and you don’t care?”
“I care. But I don’t have the luxury of indulging in my emotions, darling,” Linda said. “And if this deal with the West African syndicate is to be successful, neither do you.”
“All these years, sniffing after me like a dog,” Bardhyn muttered, ignoring her. “Now he’ll get what’s coming to him.”
Linda wondered what it would be like to see Julian suffer, and what Bardhyn had in store for him. She wondered if it could possibly be worse than everything she had been through.
“It’s a shame about the teacher, though,” she said absently as she ran her nails lightly over Bardhyn’s neck in an attempt to calm him. He shuddered, exactly the reaction she knew he would have. “She was only trying to help the girl, and now she’s going to die.”
He pulled her close to him, pressing the length of his hardening cock against her thigh. “No good deed goes unpunished,” he said with a devious grin on his face. “You aren’t going soft on me, are you, baby?”
“Never. I’ll kill her myself,” she said, meeting his eyes to show him she meant it.
Bardhyn nuzzled into her neck, licking and sucking at it as if she gave him sustenance. She stared past his head at the thick curtains that shielded him from the bustle of city life outside the window.
“Even so,” she said, feeling a surprising sadness for the teacher despite the woman’s stupidity. “I wish I’d had someone who cared that much for me. Enough to risk everything.”
Bardhyn pulled her head back with a vicious tug of her hair. His eyes blazed with anger. “You had me,” he growled. “I was the only one who looked out for you. You’d do well to remember that.”
“I do remember,” she said, moving to unbutton his slacks. It was the easiest way to calm him, and she was tired of talking, tired of everything, for that matter. She slid to her knees and looked up at him. “How could I ever forget?”
Chapter Twelve
“Home sweet home,” Salomeh said as they entered the top-floor apartment, the rasp in her voice reminding Julian of the marks on her neck.
He took a slow, controlled breath as he followed her inside. He was very good at presenting a calm veneer when he was feeling quite the opposite. However, seeing Salomeh’s bloodied head and bruised neck was pushing his acting skills to their limits. He had to remind himself that exploding into a howling rage before revealing he hadn’t been honest with her was probably not the best game plan.
“This door is too flimsy,” he announced as he walked in, trying to focus on anything else but her injuries. “You should get a reinforced one or at least some better locks.”
She turned and glared at him.
“But your apartment is lovely.”
The walls of her living room were a warm orange, accented by furniture in various shades of beige and brown. Large windows let in the morning light and provided a homey feel, despite the black security gates over them that could have made the place feel like a prison.
Salomeh shook the metal gates when she caught him eyeing them.
“Remnants of the bad old days,” she said. “The
neighborhood is pretty safe now.”
“Forgive me if I don’t quite believe that,” Julian said with a glance at her bruises. He made a quick circuit of the apartment. Small kitchen, walls lined with copper-bottomed pots and other cooking utensils. One good-sized bedroom with clothes strewn about, and the scent of lavender in the air. One office that was in need of a paper shredder.
When he started pulling the closet doors open, Salomeh cleared her throat loudly. “You know, I offer a guided tour in case you’re interested,” she said, swiping a towel irritably through her hair and drawing attention to the way her wet T-shirt clung to her body. “Otherwise, feel free to continue completely invading my privacy.”
“Sorry, the assurance of safety requires that you relinquish a bit of your freedom,” he said as he held up a stuffed animal that had fallen out of her bedroom closet. Their Homeland Security joking had been fun the night before, but it fell flat for him now, knowing he was about to do what he should have done from the beginning—tell her the truth.
She rolled her eyes and left the room just as his phone vibrated in his pocket.
What happened?
Yates checking in. It seemed like ages ago that he had texted her about Salomeh.
I’m at her place. She’s been roughed up by someone, not sure who but possibly by Bardhyn’s men. I’m getting the story now.
The phone buzzed so quickly he didn’t know how Yates had possibly already read and replied to his text.
Working that old Tamali charm, are you? ;) I’m heading your way to assist.
Great. Now he had a time limit.
Julian made a pit stop in her bathroom to get some first-aid necessities before joining her in the living room. He found her sitting on the long beige couch. Her legs were curled up under her and her eyes were closed, her head leaning back into the couch’s soft pillows. She looked utterly exhausted.
He walked over and sank into the comfortable couch, reaching out instinctively to take her hand into his. She didn’t move to look at him, but her fingers gave his a slight squeeze. He allowed himself the pleasure of pretending just for a moment that they were a normal couple enjoying a Saturday morning at home before heading out to do something mundane like going to the grocery store or picking out new tiles for the bathroom.
“I guess you want to know what happened this morning,” she said.
“Yes. I want to know who I have to kill later.”
She gave him a wry smile, but he didn’t return it. He wasn’t joking this time.
“A Russian thug who I was stupid enough to try to intimidate. He threw me up against the side of a building and choked me,” she said, pulling her hand from his and bringing it to her throat.
Instead of punching a hole in the wall, Julian reached for the bottle of peroxide he’d placed on the coffee table. He poured some onto a cotton ball and dabbed delicately at the abrasion on her head. A small knot had formed beneath it, and she winced at his ministrations.
“Ah, zemer,” he murmured and then froze. His shock must have been apparent, because she scrutinized his face as he finished cleaning her abrasions.
“Who’s Zemer? Your last conquest?” she asked, and Julian was happy to hear a note of jealousy in her tone. Anything that distracted her from being frightened was a plus in his book.
“No, it’s Albanian. It means ‘warrior princess.’ Like Xena. Remember that show? I used to watch reruns of it to practice my English.”
“Sure. Has anyone ever told you that you’re a terrible liar?” she asked irritably, but her hands dropped from their defensive position at her neck, and a hint of a smile lifted the corner of her mouth.
“Actually, no,” he said, shifting uncomfortably.
She gave him a dubious look.
“Trust me, it would be impossible for me to confuse you with anyone else, Salomeh,” he said.
“Why? We’ve only known each other for a few hours,” she said.
He glanced over at her, unable to stop a wolfish smile from forming on his lips. “You’ve left quite an impression on me,” he said, trying to make her smile. “On my back in particular. Your fingernails should be classified as deadly weapons.”
Salomeh’s cheeks flushed the color of dark rose petals, and Julian fought the urge that had become so familiar over the brief time he’d spent with her. He wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her, to feel her warm skin against his.
But before that he had to tell her who he was. And after that, she’d probably want nothing to do with him. Romantically at least.
“Actually, about that whole knowing-each-other-for-a-few-hours thing—” he began.
“Are you reconsidering your offer to help? I had good reason for leaving this morning,” she said.
“I’m sure you did,” he said. “But first, I should—”
“There’s a girl. One of my students,” she said, cutting him off again, her voice urgent. “She’s more than a student, really. We’ve become so close over the last two years that she’s become much more. She’s in trouble…and I’m to blame.”
The girl she tried to protect, Julian thought. “Why would you be to blame?” he asked.
“Because I tried to help, but I just made a huge mess of everything,” she said sadly. “I’d worked with her a few times during my teaching internship and at a camp I helped run at the local YMCA. She was a good kid but so shy. When she landed in my high school lit class two years ago, I started trying to engage with her, and she responded. She came to my class after school to talk about what we were studying and life in general. After that she joined my writing club.”
Salomeh sighed.
“It seems that you had more than a teacher/student relationship,” Julian noted.
“She looked up to me, and I grew to care for her,” Salomeh said. “A lot. Her mother was horrible to her, so she spent as much time away from home as possible, often with me. She came to be more like an apprentice, or a d—”
Salomeh sucked in a breath and focused her gaze on him, a challenge in her eyes. “I can’t have children.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Julian asked and then added, “I’m sorry, if that’s something you wanted for yourself.”
He could see the tension ease from her face.
“Some people think I care so much for my students and mentees because I can’t have any children of my own. That’s not true of any of my kids, especially not Yelena. But I’m human. I did sometimes wonder why someone like her mother was blessed with a wonderful child when I could never have one of my own.”
“Hey, I’ll be the first to tell you that life isn’t fair,” he said. “Tell me what happened.” His prod was meant to bring her back to how she had gotten involved with Bardhyn. He knew it must have taken a lot for her to share her history with him, but he needed something more tangible if he were going to help her.
“Yelena wouldn’t say anything, but she started missing school, quit the clubs she had joined. And she started to pull away from me too. A couple of months ago, the heating system was going haywire, and the class was sweltering, but she just sat there with this sweater on. One of her friends pulled at her sleeve…”
Salomeh paused, and Julian already knew what was coming. Child abuse wasn’t his specialty, but the people he dealt with weren’t usually up for parent-of-the-year awards either.
“Her arms were mottled with bruises. Old and new.”
“Did you ask her what happened?” Julian’s fingers curled into a fist and uncurled reflexively, and something in the motion seemed to fortify Salomeh. She took his hand again.
“First, she said she fell. Then she said it happened during gym class. I kept pressing her. And she finally told me about her mother and the mother’s new boyfriend. All I knew about Yelena’s family to this point was that her mom was Russian and loved getting drunk and telling Yelena what a mistake it was that she hadn’t aborted her. Her mother was dating some guy who claimed he was a gangster. When Yelena’s mother
wasn’t home, he thought he was entitled to try to get a piece of the daughter too.”
Julian had already known where the story was going, but even so, it sickened him. He had never stopped seeing Ryli’s smiling face in the teenage girls he met, as well as her lost potential. He knew more than anyone how easily a young flame could be snuffed out at the whim of a monster.
Julian leaned forward and cupped Salomeh’s face in his hands, using his thumbs to wipe away her tears.
She looked up at him.
“I went to talk to the mother to try to figure this out, to ask her to go to the authorities,” she said. “But she already knew what I was there for, and she told me to mind my own business. When I got there, she was high out of her mind on who knows what and started telling me how Yelena was a little bitch who was asking for it. She even had the boyfriend, Alexi, try to intimidate me.
“I ran to the nearest police station and reported that fucker,” she said angrily. “They said they would notify child services and be in contact with me.”
“Did anyone do anything?” he asked.
“Nothing. I repeatedly called the officer I had spoken to, and he kept assuring me he was looking into it, but also hinting that maybe Yelena was confused, and I should just drop it. And after that… I don’t even know how to talk about what happened next,” she said, obviously distraught from rehashing the events that had set her on a path to ruin.
Julian heaved a sigh. It’s go time.
“I have something to tell you,” he said. “And it’s going to upset you.”
“The words every woman wants to hear,” she said with a sniffle.
“I know who you are,” he blurted out before she could interrupt him again.
She stared blankly at him. “Of course you do,” she said, shifting slightly away from him.
“I mean, I knew who you were last night before I approached you. I know what you’ve been accused of. I know that you’re in trouble, and I want to help.”
Quicker than he would have thought possible, she jumped up out of her seat and dashed across the room. The light slanting through the windows highlighted the look of helpless confusion on her face as if spotlighting for Julian exactly what he had wrought.