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

by Airicka Phoenix

  Saeed thought about that, then shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah, sure.”

  “And you drive a cab?”

  “Drove a cab,” he corrected. “Check me out now.”

  Dimitri couldn’t help it. He laughed. Yeah, he really liked this kid.

  “Are you married?”

  A dark brow lifted. “No offense, boss, but you’re not my type. I’m kidding!” he said quickly when Dimitri kicked the back of his chair. “No, but seriously, not my type, and no, no wife.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “Got a sister you’re trying to pawn off?”

  Jesus, the kid was impossible.

  “No girlfriend,” he said when Dimitri glowered at him. “No boyfriend. No dog. I do have a parakeet named Melvin.”

  “Live alone?”

  He expected a smart ass answer, but the boy only nodded.

  “Yup, just me and Melvin.”

  They arrived on the scene of yet another mass gathering of stunned onlookers and law enforcement vehicles with their yellow tape. Dimitri recognized the dais rising up in a circle of stone and grass, connecting the sidewalk to the building looming several stories over the ones around it. It was his first time to the location in daylight, but he’d become fairly familiar with the place during his visit the previous night. The crowd poured off the steps to cluster along the outer parameters of the complex, far enough away not to be yelled at by the police, but close enough to watch as the ropes were undone and the body was peeled off the twisted heap of rusted steel decorating the lawn in the place of a fountain.

  Dimitri never cared for art, modern or otherwise, but the subtle X of this one had been exactly what he needed to make his point. The fact that Chan Lee had weighed nothing, had made the task moderately simpler.

  “Boss!”

  Rusty broke away from the crowd and jogged over, meeting Dimitri halfway up the tier of steps. The boy was in baggy jeans he had to hold up and a massive red shirt that read, Boy, I know where your sister sleeps. And he wore a grin so wide, Dimitri half expected it to rip open his face.

  “You ain’t gonna believe this,” Rusty crowed, practically bouncing on the spot.

  Dimitri said nothing as he followed the kid back up to where the tape started.

  The manicured courtyard was overrun by police, CSI, the medical examiner, and detectives, all searching, tagging, and bagging evidence to the murder they’d already taken down and tucked away from prying eyes in a black body bag. It must have all just ended, because the coroner was still zipping the bag up on the stretcher.

  “It was Chan Lee,” Rusty was saying when Dimitri focused. “All roped up to that…” He motioned at the artwork. “Whatever that is.”

  It was an expression of freedom. At least, that was what the plaque had read. Dimitri had only noticed it briefly while he’d been strapping Chan Lee to coils. The irony hadn’t escaped him.

  “He’d been done up good,” Rusty went on. “Had fish on his chest and everything, real street style.”

  It had been years since Dimitri had to resort to street lingo, but he had to make it clear why Chan Lee was silenced. He had to make his territory and those around it know that a takeover was not going to happen and anyone stupid enough to spill blood on his streets was going to get gutted like the fish they were. That was just how it was done. That was the street code.

  “I thought I said I wanted him brought to me.”

  Some of the smile died on Rusty’s face. “We didn’t do this. I swear, boss. This wasn’t the Vipers. I heard it down the pipeline like everyone else.”

  “Find me the person responsible,” he ordered, turning away. “Bring them to me. Alive.”

  Rusty hesitated. “See, there’s talk, you know? Some chatter, people saying it’s … you know who.”

  Dimitri’s raised an eyebrow. “Voldemort?”

  Rusty blinked at him, bemused, a sure sign this kid didn’t read very much. “Who?”

  Ava had made him read the entire Harry Potter series way back in the day. Begging and pleading until he’d agreed. But, by the seventh book, he’d been the one calling her, asking her if she could believe that shit. She’d been delighted by his enthusiasm as the stories had progressed. He’d never admit it to Rusty, but it was one of his favorite books.

  “Never mind,” he said.

  Rusty continued to eye him a moment before whispering the name. “The Devil.”

  Dimitri was very careful not to let his features get the better of him. “The Devil? That masked asshole everyone’s looking for? Why would he do this?”

  It was an odd sensation talking about himself in the third party, but it would have been strange if he didn’t.

  “It’s his kind of thing, you know? Getting justice for the little guy.”

  “Find him. Bring him to me.”

  “Uh…” Rusty cleared his throat, glanced over at a group of boys about his age standing off on the other side of the street. Dimitri guessed they were his crew, but they didn’t get any closer. “He’s a ghost, sir,” Rusty said, a little hesitantly. “No one knows who he is or where he’ll be next.”

  Dimitri looked back once, pinned the boy with an unwavering glower. “Find him.”

  Rusty nodded. “Sure thing, boss.”

  He made his way back to the SUV. Saeed stood against the driver’s side door, hands in his pockets, squinting at all the commotion with a contemplative knot between his eyes. He pushed off when Dimitri approached and moved to open the door.

  “You sure seem to know where all the excitement is, boss,” he said with a faint edge to his tone.

  Dimitri paused and peered at him. “Do you have a question?”

  Saeed looked at him, really looked at him the way people examined something that they didn’t understand, but could sense deep down was dangerous.

  He bit his lip and shook his head. “Nope.”

  Dimitri got into backseat.

  Saeed got in behind the wheel. “Where to, boss?”

  “The hotel.”

  There was a palpable silence in the cabin as they drove. Dimitri could feel it thickening as the kid went on pretending he didn’t want to know.

  It was a slippery slope with some people. Some, like Ava and Penny, embraced the situations they were in and grew to fit the new order of things. But there were some who had a harder time accepting things weren’t as black and white as they were led to believe. Saeed would either ask and Dimitri would answer, or he would go on in his ignorance and Dimitri would let him.

  He didn’t ask.

  They arrived at the hotel and Saeed let him out of the SUV, and asked if Dimitri needed him to stick around.

  It was then Dimitri realized he had no idea where the kid lived. How far was his drive every day?

  “South,” he said when Dimitri asked.

  “Christ,” Dimitri muttered, rubbing his eyes. “Are any of my employees from the north?”

  Saeed shrugged. “I was in the south when you got into my cab.”

  He ignored the lip. “Get a room here,” he told the boy. “I’ll have Penny arrange it. I need you close. Is that a problem?”

  Saeed shook his head. “Nope, except I need to get Melvin. She gets upset if I don’t come home on time.”

  He started to ask why his female bird’s name was Melvin, but opted that was the least strange thing about the kid.

  “Get your things and come back.”

  Saeed saluted him once before getting into the vehicle.

  Dimitri made his way to the suite, hands in his pockets, lazily tracing the stiff edges of his keycard. He faltered at the door to find the corridor absent of the men he’d left stationed there. He let himself in and paused on the threshold.

  The two men were in the suite, guns drawn when Dimitri walked in and shut the door behind him.

  “Just me,” he said, hands up just in case.

  They visibly relaxed and quickly straightened.

  “Sorry, sir,” the one on the right said. “We weren�
��t expecting you for a few more hours.”

  Dimitri waved the apology aside and glanced over the room. He caught Frank slip something under that morning’s crossword puzzle that looked remarkably like a 9mm before snapping the paper once and returning to his reading.

  “Where’s—?”

  “Hey!” Ava appeared at the top of the stairs, clad in a fluffy towel, her hair a sexy mess that made him think of how it had looked draped across his pillows only an hour before. “You’re back.”

  He met her before she could reach the bottom. His hands rested on her hips and he pulled her to him.

  “I don’t know how I feel about coming home to you in your robe, entertaining a group of men in uniform.”

  Ava burst out laughing. Her arms hooked around his neck and she swayed all her weight into his chest. He held her tighter.

  “You, Mr. Tasarov, have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

  His hands slid up her back. “No?”

  She shook her head even as she lowered it and rested her brow against his. “They wouldn’t know what to do with me.”

  It was his turn to laugh, which was rewarded by the offering of her lips when he tugged her closer. He kissed her, slow and deliberate.

  “I missed this,” he whispered against her mouth. “I missed you.”

  She lifted her face just enough to peer into his eyes. “Keep me?”

  A man in his position couldn’t afford the luxury of weakness. A man in his position knows when to keep those weak parts of himself tucked away for rare, private occasions. He’d been in the business long enough to know he wasn’t behaving the way a man in his position would and he didn’t give a fuck.

  “I was an idiot for ever letting you go.”

  That brought a smile to her face, one that danced in her eyes and mirrored in the slight tightening of her arms around him.

  “That was your one and only fuck up card, Mr. Tasarov,” she told him. “Next time won’t be so easy.”

  “There won’t be a next time.” He framed her face between his hands. “You’re stuck with me, Ava.”

  “I can live with that.”

  She kissed him. His hands hooked into her hair and he gave just enough of a tug to make her moan and part her lips. He swept in, tongue teasing as it flicked over hers. She tasted of toothpaste and coffee.

  “I was about to take a shower,” she whispered just for his ears. “Want to conserve water and share?”

  No man in his right mind would refuse a lady, even if he’d already had two.

  “Leave or pay for admission,” was all the warning he gave the three in the room in between the tiny kisses he scattered along her neck.

  He didn’t wait to see if they listened. He heard a click of a door closing but didn’t bother to check.

  “Admission, eh?” she teased, undoing the knot on her robe. “To watch or to join?”

  He lifted her up and carried her back into the dining room where Frank had abandoned his crossword and set her down on the table. He tugged her robe open and jerked the fabric off her shoulders and down her arms. Her breasts sprang into view, the peaks hard and pink against her creamy complexion. They jutted out, proud and taunting.

  “Neither.” He jerked her closer to the edge and filled her thighs with his hips. “Not to watch. Not to join. Your body is mine.” He scattered kisses along the column of her neck. “Mine to see.” Along her shoulder line. “Mine to touch.” Down her collar bone. “Mine to fuck.” To her left breast. “Mine to build and destroy.”

  He attacked her nipple, brutalizing the bud with his teeth and relishing in her husky moans. Her head dropped back and her hands burrowed into his hair. She dragged him back, breaking the suction of his lips. Her heavily lidded eyes met his over a wicked smirk. She wiggled back a notch and reclined on the heavy wood surface.

  She grinned. “Prove it.”

  Her knees parted wide.

  He intended to. He was already thinking of all the ways to make her properly suffer in sweet torment, when the doors burst open. He had just enough time to snatch Ava off the table and shove her behind him, still naked when John Paul stormed in, red faced and fuming. He took one look at the discarded robe still on the table, then at Ava huddled close against Dimitri’s back, and his nostrils flared. His hand twitched at his side and Dimitri knew the only reason he wasn’t getting shot in the head was because Ava was standing too close.

  “Is this why you wanted her here?” he snarled out through gritted teeth. “So you could…”

  Dimitri put one hand up, the other reached gingerly for the robe. “Normally, people knock to avoid situations like this. We could have been naked.”

  He pinched the robe between two fingers and dragged it to him. He never took his eyes off the man watching him like he wanted nothing more than to bash Dimitri’s skull in with a mallet. He passed it to Ava, who quickly slung it on.

  “Dad?” Properly dressed, Ava stepped out to face the man across the room. “What are you doing here?”

  John Paul’s thunderous expression never altered. “I’ve been trying to call you,” he said, eyes boring into Dimitri. “I got concerned when no one answered.”

  Dimitri reached into his pocket for his phone and peered at the screen. Sure enough, he’d missed fifteen calls, all from the same number.

  “I must not have heard it,” he mumbled a bit lamely.

  “No, I don’t imagine you did. You were too busy—”

  Pink flooded Ava’s cheeks. “How are you?”

  Any other time, Dimitri would have laughed at her adorable attempts to add a sprinkling of normal to an awkward situation. But John Paul wasn’t in the laughing mood. He was scarcely containing the urge to lunge across and throttle Dimitri where he stood. It was all over his face and in the way his hands kept bunching and releasing.

  “Dad.” Ava edged slowly around the table, one hand out stretched. “Are you hungry? The coffee’s still fresh. I could make you a cup.”

  John Paul shook his head. “We,” he spat the word out like it was something foul, “have a meeting we need to get to. There’s been a development.”

  Dimitri stiffened. “You found her?”

  The other man hesitated, picking his words carefully. “In a sense.”

  Saeed drove. It was just Dimitri and John Paul, but the cabin felt too small and airtight. He couldn’t think of a single good way to break the awkwardness without reminding the man that Ava was a grown woman. He even thought about mentioning that he intended to marry her, but something told him that would only get him shot. So, he allowed the silence to grow and fester. It was only a relief that Saeed seemed to be sensing it as well. The boy kept glancing into the mirror and occasionally shifting, like he couldn’t trust the pair not to start a knife fight in the backseat if he wasn’t watchful.

  Dimitri couldn’t fathom why the man had insisted on taking his car, especially when John Paul’s own SUV was tailing just behind them like a great, black shark. But he’d waved Jarvis off when the man had opened the door for him and climbed into Dimitri’s vehicle.

  At first, Dimitri thought he was going to warn him to stay away again or tell him how easy it would be to kill and dispose of him. But with every block they passed, John Paul seemed to grow pensive. Like his earlier anger at seeing Dimitri and Ava together had abated and was replaced with a new question. Whatever it was, he seemed to be mulling on it pretty hard.

  Dimitri left him to it, not sure he really wanted to know. He focused on the passing scenery and the gnawing ache in his stomach that he was slowly beginning to recognize as guarded excitement. He kept telling himself Elena was caught. She was finally caught. Ava was safe. It was over. But John Paul’s lack of enthusiasm made him wary.

  “You haven’t told her.”

  Dimitri blinked, startled out of his thoughts by the other man’s non-question. He turned his head and glanced across the leather seat at the man responsible for his birth.

  “What?”

  John Paul n
ever looked away from the window. His eyes were narrowed, his lips pursed. He seemed frustrated.

  “You never told Ava about that night.” It was another non-question.

  Dimitri didn’t need to ask which night he was referring to. “No.”

  “Why?” John Paul turned his head to him then.

  Dimitri thought about it a second. “Because she loves you,” he said at last. “And, because it’s not for me to tell her.”

  John Paul said nothing. He went back to studying the glass and Dimitri met Saeed’s gaze in the mirror.

  The boy said nothing and just as quickly lowered his attention back to the road, but not before Dimitri saw the question there.

  They arrived at Arrow Holding Corporation and took the elevator together in the same penetrating silence. Marcus, Erik, and Theresa were already there, gathered around the onyx table. Only Marcus and Erik glanced up when they climbed out of the metal box. Theresa seemed too busy going over something on her phone.

  “Where is she?” Dimitri asked, moving around to his chair.

  Theresa set her phone down, folded her long, pale fingers in front of her and peered at him through narrowed eyes. “Who? Your mom or my assistant?”

  Christ. They didn’t have time for this.

  “Not now, Theresa—”

  “I worked really hard to train her!” Her eyes sparked like blue flames. “You are an asshole! I want her back.”

  “No,” Dimitri said simply. “She’s mine now. You’re not getting her. Now, move on.”

  “What’s happening right now?” Marcus mumbled, glancing from one to the other.

  Neither paid attention to him.

  Theresa’s red lips peeled back over her clenched teeth. “I will get you for this, Tasarov.”

  “You’re welcome to try,” Dimitri shot back. “But ask yourself if one assistant is worth my retaliation if you do.”

  She seemed not to have anything to say to that. Her lips twitched, but remained firmly pressed tight. She sat back, gaze never leaving Dimitri’s.

  He looked away, focus instead on his uncle. “Where is she?”

  Erik hadn’t looked up from the bit of black glass in front of him. He seemed drawn, exhausted, like he hadn’t slept in days. He raised a hand and rubbed it absently over his face.