The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2)

by Airicka Phoenix

  “It sounds like his car,” Dimitri said, cutting into her thoughts. “Or rather, it smells like him. He spends a lot of time around bombs. The smell is embedded in his skin, even when he showers.”

  Ava swallowed hard. “Bombs?”

  Dimitri met her gaze evenly. “He likes bombs.” He said it so flatly, like that was normal. Maybe it was for Ivan. “What did Elena want?”

  She hesitated, not exactly sure why, but once she opened her mouth, it all came out in full detail about everything that happened between waking up to Elena sitting at her bedside and the moment she found herself in Julian’s car.

  “He took me to eat and then brought me to Hector’s house. He never asked about you or me, except my name. I don’t know how he knew you were there.”

  “He said he knew the minute I boarded that I was there to find you,” Dimitri said almost absently.

  “He’s not dangerous,” Ava said quickly. “I don’t believe for a minute he had an ulterior motive.”

  “I don’t believe he had one either, but no one does anything without wanting something eventually.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Whatever he wants, I will get it.” Those beautiful golden eyes met hers. “But it won’t be enough. I can never repay what he did.”

  She squeezed his fingers. “How’s Robby?”

  His expression tightened all over again. “He’s in the hospital, but he’s fine!” he added quickly when her mouth opened.

  “What happened? Did Elena hurt him?”

  “He was drugged,” he explained slowly. “He OD’d.”

  “Oh my God!” Her hands flew up to her mouth.

  “We took him to the hospital and the doctors assured us he was going to be okay.”

  She shook her head wildly. “It’s not okay. He could have died.”

  “He was very alive when I left.”

  Ava wasn’t listening, her mind a white, pulsating fog highlighted in streaks of crimson that just kept spreading until all the white had been conjured. Robby’s smiling face blurred across her thoughts. His laughter rang in her ears. Robby with his lovely soul and generous heart. Her best friend.

  “She almost killed him,” she breathed, her lips feeling unnaturally stiff. “She’s ruined his life.”

  What Elena did would go on Robby’s record. The hospital would find out. He would lose his residency. His entire future, everything he’d ever worked towards, would be gone all because of her.

  “I want her dead!” Everything Elena Tasarov had done to Ava seemed oddly overshadowed by the knowledge that she’d nearly murdered Ava’s best friend. That alone was the spearing wound that propelled her bloodlust. “I want to watch her suffer.”

  Cool fingers took her chin and lightly turned her face to his. “She will.”

  They arrived home eight hours later, exhausted, jetlagged, and miserable. Dimitri hadn’t said a word to her the entire flight, which had suited Ava just fine. She was preoccupied with images of Elena’s slow and painful demise. Plus, she had so many things she needed to do once she had her feet back under her. Calling her super was one and finding out about her apartment. Then was work. But before any of that, before her life could be put back in order, she needed to see John Paul. She needed to make sure Robby was all right. Everything else took a backseat to that.

  “The men after us,” she turned her face away from the passing scenery and peered at the solemn figure behind the wheel. “They work for Elena. She didn’t tell me who they were, but she put the kill order on me.”

  Dimitri said nothing. There was no outer reaction at all. He pulled up to stop at a red light and reached for his phone. He hit one number.

  An explosion nearly sent Ava out of her seat. Her head whipped around as it continued, one after another in a rapid succession that rattled her brain. Her hand flew to the door handle, prepared to lunge out of the car at a single word from Dimitri.

  “It’s all right,” Dimitri muttered, unfazed as the assault continued … inside the car.

  It took her several shaky minutes to realize the sound was coming from the car speakers, that whoever he’d called was blowing something up. Her heart just about died in her chest.

  “What…?”

  “Fucking hell!” cried a voice over the loud clicking, the pop of gunfire. “There is no way those assholes knew where our flag was. No fucking way!”

  “Stephen!” Dimitri shouted.

  There was more clicking, more swearing, then the inevitable game over chime. Something clattered.

  “Fuck.” The person muttered. “Bullshit.” He sighed. “Hey D, what’s up?”

  Dimitri shook his head slowly. “That shit is going to rot your brains.”

  “Meh, brain’s already rotted.” He sniffed. “You back in town?”

  Dimitri’s eyes narrowed. He was silent as the light flicked green and he pushed onward.

  “How did you know I was out of town?”

  Stephen was silent, not the he was too busy killing virtual villains quiet, the oh shit, busted kind of silent.

  He cleared his throat. “Hey man, I—”

  “You’ve been working with Elena,” Dimitri cut in, fingers tense around the wheel.

  “Look, it’s nothing personal. It’s a job, you know?”

  It was Dimitri’s turn to be silent.

  “Shit, don’t kill me! I’m just a kid and I needed the money, okay?”

  Ava glanced at Dimitri, refusing to believe he would hurt a kid, but he was still squinting out the windshield, his features a perfect, blank mask.

  “Did you know she was after Ava when I was asking about her?”

  Stephen hesitated.

  “I see…”

  “No!” Stephen blurted in a near panic. “I mean, yes, I kind of knew, but I didn’t know they wanted her when she asked me to track your phone. I swear, I had—”

  “What did you say?”

  Stephen sniffled. “What?”

  “You were tracking my phone?”

  “Man, come on. I’m only eighteen!”

  “Is Elena tracking my phone?” Dimitri snarled.

  “Yes, but you know—”

  Without waiting for the explanation coming, Dimitri pitched his phone out the window. Ava gasped and turned in her chair just as it struck the pavement and shattered beneath a minivan.

  “I guess we know how her men have been finding us so easily,” he mumbled, rolling his window back up.

  “You’re not really going to kill that kid, are you?”

  Dimitri hummed quietly. “Should.”

  “But you won’t, right?” she pressed.

  He exhaled. “No … but I’m tempted.”

  Partially relieved, partially wary, Ava glanced through the window and eyed the high buildings, the new and the old standing resolutely together. It had only been mere days, but being back on her streets, seeing the familiar, it felt like it had been years.

  “How long was I gone?” she wondered mostly to herself.

  “Nine days,” he murmured.

  Ava sucked in a gulp of thick air. “It felt longer.”

  “Much longer,” he agreed quietly.

  It was unclear which of them reached over the console. Maybe it was a melding of their minds, a similar need to touch the other in assurance, but their fingers brushed, then wove together. She dragged them both to her side and held them in her lap.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, not recognizing the surrounding shops.

  “Stephen’s.”

  “You said you weren’t going to kill him!”

  “And I meant it … mostly.” He shot her a quick, sidelong grin. “I never said I wasn’t going to scare the shit out of him.”

  Ava shook her head in a sort of amusement. “Who is he?”

  A shoulder lifted in a shrug. “A good kid normally. Found him a few years back trying to hack into an ATM.”

  “Did he get in?”

  Dimitri nodded. “He did. In five minutes, he’d emptied it and was nearly
caught by the police. I told him with talents like that, he’ll either wind up in prison or dead.”

  “So, you offered him a job.” It wasn’t a question. She knew him.

  “Like I said, he’s normally a good kid.” A muscle bunched in his jaw. “I just thought I knew where his loyalties lay.”

  “Did you tell him not to work with anyone else?”

  His frown deepened. “I shouldn’t have to. It’s implied. Loyalties,” he stressed.

  Ava chuckled. “He’s eighteen. You flash a fifty in his face and he’ll do whatever you say.”

  He scoffed. “Doesn’t matter. I need him to tell me what Elena knows and where to find her.”

  “Wouldn’t she be home?”

  He shook his head. “She would know by now that I have you and that you would tell me everything. She’ll have gone underground, which means you can stop looking over your shoulder for the time being. Elena’s too smart to come at you with the entire city searching for her.” He reached for the cup holder, cursed when is fingers closed around air. “I need to call Erik.”

  Ava glanced back over the headrest of her seat. “We could maybe superglue it together.”

  He ignored her teasing and focused on the shops they passed. “We need to make a quick stop.”

  She didn’t ask where. She didn’t need to when he pulled up alongside a mobile store. He started to reach for the glove compartment and stopped.

  “Stupid rental!” he muttered, then huffed.

  She hummed softly in agreement. “How dare they not come fully loaded with semi-automatics and hand grenades. Bastards.”

  He shot her an unimpressed glower. “Lock the doors.”

  After assuring him that she would, she watched as he hurried into the store. There was nothing to do but wait and watch the steady flow of early afternoon traffic. Men and women rushed through the streets, most likely on their way to meet friends for lunch or finish shopping before the kids returned home from school. She briefly wondered if school was still in session. It had been so long since she’d thought about it that she almost missed the guy in the dark coat hovering just out of sight between two buildings. She only caught him in the side mirror when he poked his head out, glanced at the car and then popped back.

  Could be nothing, she told herself over the unsteady patter of her heart. They didn’t have Dimitri’s phone anymore. No one would know where they were. This guy was probably just a creeper waiting for someone.

  But she never took her eyes off him. Her fingers fumbled with the latch on the glove compartment. She pulled out a pen and gripped it tight between her fingers. All the while, she watched and waited and held her breath.

  When the knock cracked against the glass, Ava screamed and brushed the felt ceiling with the top of her head when she jumped. Her head snapped around, expecting an attack.

  Dimitri watched her from the driver’s side door, expression baffled and slightly annoyed. She should have seen him come out and circle the car. The shop was directly in front of her. But she’d been preoccupied by trench coat guy.

  She unsnapped the locks. He swung the door open and peered at her, then at the pen in her hand.

  “What are you doing?”

  Her gaze jumped to the side mirror and the man still there. “That guy keeps looking over here,” she said. “The one in the trench coat.”

  Dimitri pulled his head back and glanced in the direction she indicated. “Lock the door,” he told her, already slamming the door closed.

  She did and watched as he stalked back onto the sidewalk, strides long, but watchful. His head turned casually as though he were taking in the scenery, but she knew he was looking for anything out of place. She looked too, but saw nothing.

  He was on the guy before she could blink, grabbing him by the coat front and shoving him out of sight through the gap. No sooner did they disappear, Dimitri reappeared, face as dark as the cloud now thundering over his head. He stormed back to the car. Ava unlocked the door before he reached it. He threw himself into his seat and slammed the door with enough force to rattle the car.

  “What?”

  He put the car into drive without a word.

  “Dimitri?”

  “I’ve just seen things I will never unsee,” he muttered, his lips curled back like he’d just swallowed a bug. “Next time, I’m sending you and your pen.”

  “What was it?” she demanded, trying to catch sight of the other man in the mirror, but he was gone.

  “Nothing,” he mumbled. “Absolutely nothing.”

  It took her several seconds before it all made sense, the sketchy behavior, the trench coat … Ava burst out laughing.

  “Was he naked?” she wheezed.

  “We are never speaking of this again,” was all the response she got, which was fine, she was laughing too hard to hear him anyway. And it felt amazing.

  Stephen’s apartment was a rundown loft above a Chinese restaurant. It smelled like a teenage boy and looked like a frat party had taken place the night before. Ava almost didn’t want to be put down amongst the mountain of dirty dishes, the towers of pizza boxes, the festering piles of clothes—one she was sure actually moved a foot since their arrival—soda cans, snack wrappers, and a tough gang of cockroaches that seemed immune to the presence of human. One she could have sworn flipped her off.

  “Don’t put me down,” she half hissed, half groaned into Dimitri’s ear. “I swear to God, I will scream like a little girl and wet myself.”

  He frowned at her. “I can’t be intimidating with you in my arms.”

  “Do not put me down!” she growled through clenched teeth.

  With a roll of his eyes, he stomped over to a wooden chair and gingerly set her down. It was the cleanest thing in the place, once the splatters of red were overlooked. But she crouched on it like an over grown bird, refusing to let her feet dangle anywhere near that mess.

  Across the room, shifting restlessly from foot to foot in a nervous twitch, Stephen watched them. His wide, blue eyes flicked from one to the other, a violent color against his ashen complexion.

  Tall and gangly and hosting a litter of pimples big enough to start their own colony, he looked eighteen and scared enough to piss himself. He stood next to an open suitcase filled with computer equipment and a desk stamped with deep imprints of all the places he’d had stuff for ages without cleaning the surface.

  “Going somewhere, Stephen?” Dimitri took a step forward and stopped, hands going to his hips.

  “No?” the boy squeaked. “Just … cleaning.”

  Dimitri hummed quietly and looked over the rest of the place that could have doubled as a landfill. “About time, I would say.”

  Stephen’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I wasn’t—”

  Dimitri put up a hand, stopping him. “You betrayed me.”

  Stephen’s blue eyes all but bulged from their sockets. “No! I swear, I never meant—”

  “I trusted you,” Dimitri went on slowly.

  “Yes, but it’s not what it looks like,” Stephen blurted, hands up as if to ward the Devil to stay back. “I didn’t know about her.” He pointed at Ava without taking his eyes off Dimitri. “I mean, I did because of you, but I didn’t know Elena was after her.”

  “Tell me everything.” The command reverberated from deep within Dimitri’s chest.

  Stephen gulped again. “Okay, uh … a while back, like a year ago, Elena asked me to tap all her men’s phones. She said she wanted to make sure she knew where they were so she could protect them if something happened. I showed her how on her laptop and she left. I didn’t see her again until like three weeks ago. She said you were doing some kind of top secret mission or something and she needed me to keep an eye on you for her, let her know where you were, how often you went there. Things like that. I was just trying to help you, man,” he finished weakly. “I swear.”

  Dimitri glanced back at Ava, one eyebrow lifted as if asking her permission.

  “What?�
� she said. “You can’t kill him.”

  “Kill?” Stephen croaked.

  “He betrayed me,” Dimitri rationalized. “He’s essentially useless if I can’t trust him.”

  “You can!” Stephen half wept. “I swear, you can. I will never, ever tell anyone anything ever—”

  Ava sighed. “It was an honest mistake. He was trying to do the right thing.”

  “Yes!” Stephen jumped on the wagon quickly. “I was. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  Dimitri sighed. “I don’t know. How can I believe he won’t do it again if someone offers him more money or women?”

  It was a struggle maintaining her neutral expression on the last part. “I’m sure he won’t,” she mumbled.

  “I won’t,” Stephen agreed. “Not for all the money or women … no, not even for women,” he concluded after a second of deliberation. “Bros before hos, right?”

  Ava caught the quick twitch of Dimitri’s lips before his face returned to its calm fury. He turned back to the kid.

  “I want to gut you alive like a fish and hook you up to those rafters as an example of what happens to rats.” What little color remained on Stephen’s face vanished. The boy actually swayed a little. Ava felt horrible for him. “You would be alive through the whole thing, feeling the knife cutting you from neck to navel in a slow slice, feeling the hot rise of your blood through the incision as it runs down your chest, and then your insides spilling out.” Dimitri sighed heavily. “Unfortunately, she…” Dimitri jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Ava, “won’t let me and a gentleman doesn’t spill blood in front of a lady. But next time, I won’t bring her, understand?”

  Stephen may have been nodding, or trying not to faint. It was impossible to tell when his eyes kept rolling back into his skull.

  “Good.” Dimitri raised his chin. “Now, put your things together. I need you to look something up.”

  “Can … can I use the bathroom first, please?” Stephen slurred.