by Leah Wilde
We took the elevator up to his floor. As he unlocked and opened his door, I was floored by the exquisite beauty of his view of the city. When we walked in, he flipped a light switch by the door and the apartment was filled with atmospheric accent lighting along the walls, the bar in his kitchen, the fountain where I would have expected there to be a fireplace, and along the floor in the hallway leading to his bedroom.
Outside, against the backdrop of the beautiful night sky, the city was lit up like so many stars. I hurried to the window and stared out into the night. “It’s so beautiful,” I told him. “So, so beautiful.”
I stood like a child in a candy store, looking back and forth, trying to take in everything I could possibly see. I could see the headlights and taillights of cars speeding along the streets below us. I could see traffic lights, streetlights, and the lights in all the windows of every building downtown.
“Do you ever get dizzy standing here?” I asked him.
He chuckled behind me. “No. Honestly, I don’t really pay it much attention. Like yourself, I’m usually working and not giving myself time for things like the view from my apartment.”
I turned to face him, and he towered over me, an intimidating, looming figure carved in stone. I wanted to touch him, but he seemed so unapproachable in that moment, as if he had somehow been removed from the scene.
His apartment was not at all what I expected. I would have expected someone as rough around the edges as Gage to live in a place more like mine—small, old, cramped, and cluttered. I hadn’t pegged him for the kind of guy who would have smooth immaculate wooden floors, tall ceilings, mostly bare walls, and a wall of glass overlooking downtown. I expected posters for old rock bands, his favorite movies, girls in bikinis, that sort of thing. I walked around in a dreamy daze, looking at how every surface in his apartment was completely spotless. It was rather impressive indeed, and it just made me want him more.
“So, were you serious about the bed and the couch?” I asked him at end of my impromptu self-guided tour of his apartment.
“Absolutely,” he said, putting his hand on the small of my back again and leading me down the hallway to his bedroom. “Step right this way and I will show you the amazingly comfortable king-size bed I’m offering you for the duration of your stay with me.
He pushed the door to his room open, and the lights were already on around the top of his king-size canopy bed. The four posts around the bed were like wooden columns carved out for the temple of some Greek god or goddess. Sheer curtains were gathered at the posts, hanging from the railing at the top of the canopy.
This is where you’ll be sleeping,” he said, stepping over to the bed and putting his hand down on the mattress. “Here, have a seat.”
I sat down on the bed, and the mattress welcomed me like an old lover wrapping their arms around me for the first time in many years. I lay back and sank into the bed. “Oh my God, it’s perfect,” I told him. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m never leaving this spot. You’ll just have to sleep around me whenever you want to sleep in your bed.” As the words came out, it occurred to me how they might have come across as teasing or tempting, but I didn’t care. Part of me wanted to tempt him.
Part of me didn’t want to sleep alone tonight.
“Stay as long as you’d like,” he said, his voice heavy with suggestion.
It was possible, I hoped, that he was thinking the same thing I was.
After lying in his bed for a few minutes, he shook my foot. “Hey, Julia, how do you feel about Chinese?”
I pushed myself up on my elbows. “I’m fine with Chinese,” I said. “Are we going out?”
He looked down at me and smiled. “No, I’m having it delivered so we can have a lazy night in and take it easy.”
“That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day,” I told him, lying back down on his bed.
I was asleep before dinner ever made it to us.
I woke up early the next morning still in my clothes from the night before with a note on the pillow next to mine.
Julia,
You fell asleep before dinner arrived. Leftovers are in the fridge if you’re hungry. Plates and bowls are in the upper cabinets next to the fridge. Silverware is in the drawer underneath. I’m sorry I didn’t wake you. I didn’t want to disturb you. I’ll see you in the morning. Don’t worry about trying to be quiet. I’m a heavy sleeper.
--Gage
I crept down the hallway to the living room to find Gage sleeping on the couch, just as he’d said he would, with a thin blanket pulled over his mostly naked body. I stared at the scars and the tattoos on his toned chest and abs. They told a story, a story I wanted to read with the tips of my fingers and my longing lips that hadn’t been kissed since before I could remember.
He hadn’t bothered me all night, and he’d even slept in another room. This brute of a man, this sleeping beast before me, had shown the common decency to treat me with respect even though I was passed out and available to him on his bed.
I couldn’t say I had known too many other men who could claim that. Even the best men I knew had their moments when their gentlemanly behavior would be forgotten for pure, primal lust.
I was sure there was plenty of lust waiting to be fulfilled in that body before me. Gage was just good at controlling it. The question was, then, could I control my desire for him?
And for how much longer?
Chapter 10
“Something’s different,” Dimitri said when I sat down across from him.
“What’s different?” I asked him. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s more confidence, but you’re not the same person you were yesterday.”
He was right. I was more confident, but not in my ability to work with him. I was more confident in Gage. If I had wondered who he really was before, I knew now. I knew the gentleman he could be, the noble savage. Gage managed to blend his rough and tough exterior, his hard-nosed thuggish biker persona, with a caring and gentle man, while so many I’d known before couldn’t even get the gentleman part right.
“Well, thanks, I guess,” I said.
I shifted my weight in the chair and sat up a little straighter.
“So, let’s talk.” I remembered what I’d said to Gage about using his idea of researching the Russian underground through Dimitri, and I decided to treat our interviews as research. Maybe by digging deeper into Dimitri’s history, I could get some good current information to use.
“Alright, let’s talk,” he agreed, but his voice sounded like it was hiding something dark and sinister.
“Do you have anything for me today?” I asked him.
“That depends,” he taunted me.
“Depends on what?” I wasn’t afraid of pursuing him.
He grinned. “It depends on what you’re bringing me today.”
“Well, I’ve got some questions of my own today,” I started. “Just some things to satisfy my personal curiosity.”
“Okay. I like the sound of that.” His eyes narrowed as if he was trying to get a read on me.
“I told you my name when I came in, right? Dr. Julia Danvers at the University of Chicago. I’m a research fellow and the history department chair. My specialty is Russian history and culture. I’ve made a career out of it, so instead of sitting here running over the same old drills, I figured maybe we could actually talk a little,” I explained myself.
Dimitri nodded. “What can I teach you about Russian history and culture that you don’t already know?” he asked.
“Organized crime.”
His blue eyes focused on me suddenly.
“Don’t worry, I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble or anything like that,” I assured him. “I just got to thinking last night, I don’t know a whole lot about the Russian underworld, and you can probably help me out.”
“Can I refuse to answer?” he asked cautiously.
“Sure, if we run across something you don’t want to discuss, we don�
�t have to talk about it. You can pass,” I agreed, establishing the boundaries of our conversation.
“I’m ready to start whenever you are,” he said.
I took a deep breath. This was a different approach, and I just hoped I didn’t give myself away too easily. “Alright. First, how long have you been working for Ivan?”
“I’ve only been working for Ivan for a couple of years, as long as I’ve been in the States.”
“How did you get connected to someone in the States?” I asked him.
“It’s not that different from the way it works here,” he told me. “Ivan has connections back home, and he told a guy who knew a guy who knew me that he needed some muscle, so someone reached out to me, and here I am. Networking is networking, whether it’s in America or Russia. Or, in Ivan’s case, in both places.” He smiled, pleased with himself.
“I guess it really wouldn’t be different, would it?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s different,” he added. “The networking is the same, but back home we have more power than we do here. Here we have to be careful a lot of times when we wouldn’t have to be back home.”
“Really. I guess I shouldn’t be shocked, with all the changes that have occurred over the last few decades.”
“Exactly. See, you already know.” He seemed amused at my questions, and maybe they were a little naïve, but in all of my time studying Russia, I had never really paid attention to the criminal element, especially in regards to organized crime.
I added the Russian mafia to my bucket list of things to study.
“So, that’s all I’ve got,” I told him. Hopefully, I thought, it would be enough to get him to talk a little more to me.
“Well, I’ve got something for you,” he said. “Something you need to know.”
“Okay.” I wondered what he possibly could have told me that I just needed to know.
“I know why you seem a little more confident today,” he started.
I sat back and crossed my arms. “Why’s that?”
“You went home with Gage last night, didn’t you?”
“I’m sorry?” I knew my face must have given me away.
“Maybe you didn’t sleep together, but it seems like you guys are circling each other right now, maybe flirting a little, trying to figure out how to court each other,” Dimitri taunted me.
“How do you know all of this?” I ask him, incredulous.
“I’ve seen it all before,” he said distractedly.
“What are you talking about? You’ve seen what before?”
“Nothing in particular.” He tilted his head back and looked into the darkness above the light hanging over us. “He’s using us both, you know. Well, you should know, but maybe you’re a little blind right now because your hormones are firing off here and there, and you think you might be falling for this big alpha male street thug.”
“Come on, now. Stop dancing around it, Dimitri. Tell me what you’re really trying to say.”
He looked at me again. “It’s easy. He’s got you thinking you’re helping him out with me, and he’s got you thinking he might like you, making it easier to get you to come down here and ask me questions, trying to find out where Ivan is or what he’s up to. I think you even believed at one point that he was going to let both of us go home when all of this is over.”
I had believed that at first, before conversations with both Dimitri and Gage made me realize he probably wasn’t leaving the interrogation room in the basement of the Kings of Hell HQ. I didn’t want to admit to Dimitri that I had changed my mind.
“The truth is, doll, he’s not letting either one of us go. Once he’s done with me, he’s going to finish you off. And honestly, things will probably get a little stranger and more intense for you before that happens.”
I thought about how Gage had passed up the perfect opportunity to take advantage of me the night before; he’d had a couple of opportunities, and he passed them all up. But if Dimitri was right, then all of it was just his way of disarming me so that I would continue to work for him without any fuss.
“Neither one of us is going to get out of her alive, Dr. Danvers, unless you help me. I can free us both.”
Then again, it was entirely possible that Dimitri was doing the same thing he accused Gage of doing—filling my head full of distractions to get me to help him when all he planned on doing was double crossing me in the end.
I began to feel the drain of talking to Dimitri again. The confusion he worked so diligently to foster in me sapped me of all of my energy. I didn’t want to put up with it again.
“Dimitri, I’m not going to help you. I’m going to take my chances with Gage,” I told him.
“You’ll be sorry,” he told me. “Gage is not who you think he is. He’s putting on his charm so you won’t see how ruthless he is. Why do you think Ivan needed me to come all the way from Moscow to work for him? Gage is ruthless and brutal. He will leave us both dead. You already know the Kings’ reputation.”
Again, Dimitri was right. The Kings of Hell did have a pretty nasty reputation as a brutal motorcycle gang. They definitely weren’t anything like the MCs that had been springing up over the last few decades, the groups who tried to help their communities by getting kids off the streets and giving them something to do.
From what I’d seen prior to meeting Gage, the Kings had more in common with the motorcycle gangs of the 1970s and earlier. They had developed a strong prison network through a regular revolving door of members getting sentenced and let out.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Dimitri, but I can’t let you do this to me again tonight. I can’t let you confuse me again like you did before.”
I pushed my chair back and stood up to leave.
“Listen, just watch your back,” he added with what looked like genuine concern in his eyes, but I was pretty sure guys like him were good actors when they needed to be.
“Thanks for the advice, but our conversation here is done.” I turned and walked back to the door, unlocking it on my own. Gage had given me the key for it when we came in that morning. He told me I could come and go as I pleased to talk with Dimitri.
He was still sitting in a chair waiting for me when I walked out.
“Anything yet?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “Nothing yet.” I didn’t want to tell him what Dimitri had told me this time.
“You look troubled,” he said. “What did he say?”
“Nothing. He’s just trying to confuse me,” I said.
“How so?”
“Nothing, alright?” I snapped at him, storming away through the pit, heading for the stairs. “I need some fresh air.”
For all I knew they were both trying to manipulate me for their own selfish needs in this. Once again, I found myself trying to figure out who was the actual good guy in this story. It was very possible, I realized, that neither one of them was the hero. That would make me the heroine. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with that idea either.
I didn’t go back downstairs all day. I didn’t want to talk to Dimitri again. It was beginning to seem like a hopeless pursuit to try to get information from him. He just wanted to get out, and he was pretty determined to get me to help him. My loyalty was already paid for. My allegiance in this was no secret.
That being said, I also avoided Gage the rest of the day. Every time I saw him, all I could think of was Dimitri telling me that I was essentially a prisoner, just like he was, and my fate was going to be the same as his once Gage tired of his little game.
Gage had told me only to pack about a week’s worth of clothes and that ideally I wouldn’t be returning to my apartment until all of this was over. He’d also told me to let the department know that I was chasing a research lead on the Russian underworld.
Was he going to kill both of us and make it look like I’d been shot by someone who’d been tracking Dimitri? And wouldn’t his criminal connections be what got me shot anyway? If Gage did it, wouldn’t it be the same a
s if someone random had done it?
By the end of the day, my head was spinning with so many conspiracies, suspicions, and doubts.
Gage found me sitting in a metal chair in the garage at the end of the day, my head in my hands, trying to stop the spinning and contain the noise.
His large hand rested gently on my shoulder. “Are you ready to call it a night?” he asked in a tender, caring tone.
I touched his hand, expecting my confusion and suspicions to subside, but they did not. I was in too deep to turn from him, though. I couldn’t run at this point. I was stuck playing the part I’d been paid to play.