by N. Alleman
Fucking hell. I don't like the idea of them hanging out alone even longer, even if it is the best thing we can do right now, but what choice do I have? I gulp everything down painfully and nod.
“I’ll also be doing my part,” I insist, not wanting to just be the honey trap in this. “I’ll get Dimitri to confess some stuff too.” Okay, so I might not be able to find out for sure if he killed Damien, but he may well tell me more about the business, and I might find some clues as to where Karen’s daughter is being held. “But first off, I need to look amazing.”
My motive for this is two part. I do want to keep Dimitri interested and therefore distracted and I want him to think things might be going somewhere between us, but I also want Alexi to be jealous too.
I want the man I love to be thinking about me with Dimitri, in the same way that I’ll be thinking about him with Karen.
Luckily, I still have a bag of my things in the back of the car, and there’s a really nice dress in there that will be perfect for the occasion. It’s not too dressy, which might look suspicious, but it does hug my curves and show off a little cleavage.
As soon as I’ve put the dress on and fixed my hair, I examine my appearance in the mirror. I suppose I don't look bad, considering. But all I can see is the slightly crazed look behind my eyes, the one that suggests I might be in way too deep.
“Let’s go,” I say, trying to sound confident as I walk back out into the hallway where Karen and Alexi are waiting. They both turn to look at me, and right away I spot a spark of desire in Alexi’s eyes.
Good, he should know what this jealousy feels like. Because it’s driving me insane! I can’t stand the thought of being away from him, and I want him to struggle with it too—even if it’s not helpful to our task. “I’ll drive over there, and I guess I’ll see you later.”
I push past them and climb into my car. I’m a messy mixture of fear, anger, and jealousy—probably not the best combination heading into the lion’s den. But maybe I’m doing this at the right time, when I’m so pissed off that I’m not thinking about how dangerous this could be.
I need to get this over and done with so I can put this part of my life behind me.
In my rear view mirror, I notice Karen get into Alexi’s car with him. Soon his engine is roaring behind me, but I’m doing my best to keep my eyes trained forward, rather than looking back at them. I need to get into the mindset of taking Dimitri down... or at the very least finding out whether or not he’s guilty.
Is it possible he’s really behind all of this?
Am I being naive by assuming that I can take him at face value?
I hope I will be able to read him properly, because if not, everything around me might be about to fall apart.
Again.
21
Alexi
Karen and I follow behind Nadia’s car, and my mind is all over the place. There’s something going on with her, something potentially dangerous, and I don’t know how to help her. I agree it’s a good idea to get this done sooner rather than later, but I would much prefer to have devised a more thorough plan before she just goes in there with no contingencies in place.
“Do you think that she’s alright?” Karen asks, sounding about as concerned as I feel. “I feel really awful about what I had to tell her today.”
“I know,” I agree. “But there was no way that she was going to take the news well. You did the best that you could.”
Of course my delivery left something to be desired, but I’m trying not to think about that right now. “I think she’ll be fine, she seems pretty determined.”
God damn that dress!
That thought keeps unhelpfully popping into my brain, and I don't know what to do with it. I mean, to me Nadia always looks amazing, but to see her dressed like that, going to spend time with a very dangerous, but charming man who is in love with her plants cold dread deep in the pit of my stomach. I’m confident in the way that she feels about me, but what happens if she finds herself unable to resist? Or what if he takes advantage of her? I can’t bear to think about it.
Finally, she pulls up to an amazing Mediterranean style villa, and once again I can’t help but think that a life of crime really does pay, and that the further you are into it, the truer that becomes. Why the hell were these guys so desperate for more? They had so much. Considering my line of work, I try not to judge, but Dimitri and piece of crap brother just seemed greedy to me.
“There he is,” Karen gasps then slides down in her seat. It must be instinct, because I’ve parked far enough away that we’re not going to be seen. Plus we’re not under any street lights, so we’ll be fine. “Oh my God.”
Even in the dark I can see her face has gone pale, and I realize how deeply this man has affected her. Not only has he done a number on her heart, but by stealing her child away from her as well, he’s left her a total mess. He knew what he was doing too, by the time he made his move, she was so deeply involved in his life of crime that she couldn't even involve the police. She had to keep up the appearance of everything being normal just to keep her life intact. That must have been really fucking hard.
“Are you sure that you’re okay with this?” I ask her. “I can go in there alone.”
No, no,” she shakes her head violently at me. “I need to do this. I have to do this for Lisa... my little girl needs me.”
“Okay, then if you’re sure, we should go now. Scan the outside area and wait until it’s safe for us to go in.”
We move quickly and quietly from the car, using our combined surveillance and tactical experience in this area to execute our mission. I sneak around close to the house, trying to determine where they are, while Karen hunts around the outside garden area, trying to see to discover anything that can help us. It occurs to me she might be trying to locate some kind of underground bunker where her daughter might be held, and for that I can’t blame her. She has her priorities, just as I have mine.
Eventually I spot Nadia and Dimitri in the living room, and I stare with a coarse, muddy jealousy in my heart as she laughs prettily at something he’s saying. I know she’s only playing a role, but she looks so comfortable around him, and I don't like that one bit. It gets worse when he hands her a glass of champagne, and he puts some romantic sounding music on. He clearly thinks that he’s getting somewhere with Nadia, and that makes me want to stab something.
“Okay,” I whisper over to Karen.. “Let’s go now. They have music on so they shouldn’t hear us.”
She shoots me a funny look, almost as if she can sense what’s going on inside of me, but fortunately her eyes are too firmly fixed on the prize for her to ask much. Maybe she knows that there’s something between us after seeing us at dinner, or maybe she was too hopped up on nerves to realize at that moment, either way she seems to know now.
Using a crowbar, I pry open a window in what looks to be an exercise room, and we climb inside. After scanning that room and not finding anything, we tiptoe through the house quietly, trying our best to stay in the shadows. I’m good at this. I’ve spent half my life doing this, but somehow I still feel really anxious tonight. Dimitri is clearly unhinged, possibly more so than anyone I’ve ever dealt with before, and it’s got me on edge. It’s not helping that Nadia is alone with him, and anything could be happening. Despite the knowledge that I need to stay focused, I keep getting distracted.
“How about in here?” Karen quietly asks me. “It looks like an office of some kind.”
I nod, internally cursing myself for being so in my head that I missed that. Maybe it’s a good thing that Karen is here—she’s turning out to be more help than I anticipated.
I follow closely behind her, and when she starts attacking a file cabinet, my eyes are drawn towards the computer sitting on the desk. I know for a fact that most people like store information digitally these days. Oddly, they seem to be under the impression that they can hide it better. When one of my targets saw me coming, he begged me to let him clear his hard dr
ive before I ended him.
I did not oblige. I never will. I have no intention of helping out these assholes.
I flip the screen on and start looking through everything that’s been saved, which frustratingly doesn’t give me anything. I do find an entire folder of Nadia and Damien’s wedding photos which is as creepy and a little sad, but I don't allow myself to look at those for too long. I can’t stand seeing the woman that I’m falling for wearing that white dress for anyone else.
She should never have married him. A voice in the back of my head reminds me that she would have ever met me if she hadn’t, but I still I don't like seeing evidence that she was in love with that douchebag.
“Why are you doing this?” Karen suddenly asks me, finally releasing the question that she so clearly needs to know the answer to. “I mean, why are you so involved in this case?”
“I was hired to kill Damien,” I tell her coldly, not wanting to get into the details of my feelings right now. I know she’s a police officer, and she could have me arrested, but I figure she already knew that much already.
“I know,” she continues exasperatedly. “But someone else got there first. Why are you working so hard to get to the bottom of this? I mean, I know why I’m doing it, what I don't understand is why you haven’t backed off.”
Is she serious? Does she really want me to admit it all right now? I’m not the sort of man to reveal my emotions easily, and I don't feel comfortable doing it now.
“I couldn't leave Nadia to deal with this by herself. I’d never have been able to forgive myself if she ended up dead.” I sigh deeply. “Nadia and I, we have similar backgrounds. I see a lot of myself in her. I couldn't just let her go through this alone. That’s why.”
“Right...” she replies slowly, clearly not buying it. “Sure.”
Wanting to get out of this conversation, I turn my attention to Dimitri’s emails. I know I’m much less likely to find a paper trail of anything there if he’s as clever as he seems to be, but since I’m not finding anything anywhere else, I need to give it a try.
“Are you having any luck?” I hiss at Karen, hoping that she’s actually found something, but I don't actually pay attention for long enough to hear her reply. My eyes have spotted something that I never expected to see. An email exchange between Dimitri and someone at the office I work for.
What the fuck?
Why the hell would this be happening? Why would anyone from the agency be communicating with Dimitri when we were already hired to murder Damien by Nadia? And why would they do their utmost to pin the blame on someone else—that isn’t how we do business. We’re quick and clean killers, in and out. This... this is something else.
But the more I look, the more I can see that this is what I think it is.
“Karen, fucking hell, come here and look at this,” I whisper.
When she doesn’t answer, I turn around only to find Karen with a gloved hand over her mouth, her gun on the floor in front of her. She looks petrified, and as I glance up to see who has found us out, another gun is pulled out and pressed against Karen’s temple.
“Aidan?” I gasp out in shock. “What the hell is this?”
My heart thunders in my ears as my mind races to process this. My mentor, the man I’ve looked up to my entire life has betrayed me, and I don’t have a clue why.
Everything in my entire universe shifts, as I suddenly start to realize why he warned me to keep away... it must be because I’m screwing up whatever the hell it is they’re trying to do. I’m a problem, and I know first-hand what happens to problems.
“I think we both know what’s happening here,” he sneers at me, showing me a much uglier side to his face. “We both know that you’ve seen the emails, and I’m sure you’ve pieced the rest of it together. You’re a smart man.”
“But why?” I ask, balling up my fist, trying to hold it all together. “Why would you betray me like this?”
“To be fair, I did try to get you out of the way,” he laughs nastily, rolling his eyes at me as if I’m completely stupid. “I warned you. But you decided to stay involved, and for some woman that you barely even know—what an idiot! When you did that I was really disappointed in you, Alexi.”
“But what’s point? What are you after?” I ask, trying to stall while I come up with a plan to get us out of this.
“You know why I’m doing this—for the same reason that I do everything. Money.” My heart sinks as he chuckles once again. This is the most fucked up thing to ever happen to me, and I’m devastated to see Aidan treat it as a joke. “I’m a greedy fuck, and the offer here was much too good to resist.”
Money? Over friendship? Over dedication and commitment... really?
But I don’t say it out loud because I’m too busy staring at him in shocked silence.
“Come on,” he finally says. “Let’s stop fucking around here. Let’s go find Dimitri and see what he has to say.” He holds the gun tighter to Karen’s temple, pulling her even closer to him. The threat here is clear, do this or she dies, which literally leaves me with no damn choice.
22
Nadia
I practically cringe when Dimitri snuggles up next to me on the couch, but I do my best not to let it show on my face. I need to stay in character and play my role if I’m going to prove to Alexi and Karen that I can be useful too.
I have no idea what they’re doing, whether or not they’re even in this house, which makes me anxious. But as long as I’m doing my part, that’s all that matters.
“So how are you feeling?” he asks, handing me yet another glass of champagne. “It must be hard, huh?”
I know that he doesn’t want to hear how much I’m missing Damien here, so I give him a version of the truth. “Of course I’m sad that he’s dead,” I say diplomatically. “But to be honest our marriage wasn't perfect, and it was continually getting worse.” He nods slowly. happily, which just proves I’m giving him exactly what he needs to hear. “He cheated on me a lot, and the beatings were getting worse all the time.” I want to be able to take this one step further, and to allow a tear to fill my eyes, but I can’t. My nerves have frozen that part of me.
“Oh, I’m sure,” he nods sympathetically. “I’m sure as you saw at the funeral, our family expresses their emotions through hitting. Damien was always just like our mother. He was aggressive even as a child.”
He rubs my shoulders, and I force myself to allow it. “I just wish that I’d managed to warn you sooner.”
“You did try,” I smile weakly up at him, remembering all the times that he tried to steal me away from Damien. “It’s my fault that I didn’t listen.”
“Well, you’re listening now,” he grins at me. For a horrifying second, I sense he’s about to lean in and kiss me. Despite myself, I freeze, consumed by panic. What the hell am I going to do now? How am I going to deal with this? If I go along with it, I open up the possibility of things going further, but if I don't, if I push him away, I risk blowing my cover entirely.
Shit, shit, shit.
But luckily, he leans back and grabs hold of his drink instead, allowing me to breathe a sigh of relief.
“So, have you thought any more about the offer I presented you at the attorney’s office? I mean, I know that you said you wanted to talk to your lawyer about it, but I’m sure y that it isn’t necessary. In fact, if you think about it, we really don’t want to pay lawyer fees for something that we can quite easily negotiate ourselves now, do we?” His tone is innocent enough, but I have a feeling that there’s a threat there somewhere, and that makes me incredibly nervous. Now that I know how potentially dangerous he is, I’m more than wary of him.
“I... I...” I stutter, my heart pumping away like a jackhammer. “I’m not sure yet, I honestly haven’t had time to think it over.”
“Well, I would love it if you did...”
This is it, my chance to find out more. I just need to be brave and do it.
“I guess what I want to know is a
little more about the business.” I start, sitting up straighter. “I mean, I’ve been having a look through all the paperwork at the house, and a lot of it doesn’t quite add up.”
“Well, that won’t matter if you sign it over, will it?” He asks, his tone cold, and I notice an instant shift in his body language. My instinct is to back off, but I don’t.
I can’t.
If I don't get this out now, I’ll never be brave enough to go there again.
“Business isn’t for you, is it? You’ve never been involved so of course it doesn’t make any sense,” he says smoothly. “Which is why you should just sign it over to me and just get the hell on with your life. If it’s money that you want, then that’s what I’m offering you.”
That cuts deep—to think that he’s accusing me of the same thing as his mother, and that changes things. If he really genuinely thinks that I’m nothing more than a gold-digger, than that leaves no one who believes me.
“It’s never been about that, and you know it,” I snap back. “I don't think I’m out of line asking about the business that I’ve inherited. It’s almost like you’re forgetting that I own a big stake in it now.”
He stares at me, waiting for me to back down, but now that he’s pissed me off I’m not doing it. He can continue to give me that look for as long as he damn well pleases... it isn’t going to fucking happen. I’ve reached my limit now, and it feels like I have nothing left to lose. A person like that is almost as dangerous as a psychopath.
“You really want to know?” he teases. “Are you sure that you can handle it? It might be more than you can handle.”