Big Bad Wolf

by Suleikha Snyder

  Yulia wanted to cheer, wanted to throw cash into the secret betting pool that the Kamchatka servers and kitchen staff had going, but she knew better than to make her feelings on the subject public. Be seen and not heard. Tight skirts and even tighter lips. It was Yulia’s job to play hostess, not just of the club but of her brother’s entire enterprise. And should she fail in that endeavor…well, the Confessional could always fall victim to faulty wiring and go down in flames during happy hour, couldn’t it? So tragic, how fragile these old Brooklyn buildings were.

  Her brother excelled at casual threats, spoken over thick bowls of Austrian goulash, the extra syllables sopped up with crusty bread. Yulia wished he’d been there the day that Peluso shot up the dinner meeting. How much simpler her life would’ve been if Aleksei had been among those breathing their last in their borscht. But she couldn’t subsist on such dreams, couldn’t survive on those fantasies. So, she spent months drifting through the hallways of Kamchatka, a ghost in a sparkly dress and black eyeliner, catching cig breaks in the alley when she could, shifting into fur late at night to draw comfort from her braver beast. She haunted doorways, was the smoke slipping through keyholes—and she slowly fashioned herself as the specter of Aleksei’s doom.

  And now she was ready. She had no choice but to be ready. Her brother was vulnerable, behaving erratically, upsetting the men he answered to. There would not be a better time to put his downfall, and her own bid for freedom, into motion.

  Yulia tucked into one corner of the kitchen storage room, dug her phone from the depths of her purse, and texted Danny five words.

  Smoke break. Got a light?

  * * *

  Smoke break. Got a light?

  It was the text Danny had been dreading and praying for at the same time. Proof of life. Contact. An opening into Vasiliev’s organization. And Yulia putting herself in harm’s way. Fuck.

  For you? Always. Just tell me when.

  He typed out the reply quickly and then put his smartphone down on the table, knowing he had to update the team regardless of his personal feelings. That was how Third Shift worked for the most part. Everything on the table. One hundred percent cooperative. Elijah and Jack had put together the organization with a single goal in mind—meting out justice outside strictly legal channels—and he’d joined up just a few years ago determined to do his part, to help in ways he couldn’t while he wore a badge. He was one of the newer recruits to a twenty-member team—in the half that stayed stateside while others embedded themselves in Eastern Europe or South Asia or Brazil—and still earning his stripes. And now Yulia needed his help, was asking for his help. It was more than a stripe. More than on-the-job training. It was everything.

  And as he finished explaining the implications of Yulia’s message to Lije, Jack, and his fellow operatives around the conference table, he couldn’t keep the worry from his voice. “She’s giving us a direct route to her brother. But I don’t want anything to happen to her.”

  “She’s already in harm’s way, bruv.” Elijah, ever practical, glanced up from the dossier he was studying. Far from a normal 411, it had clips from the few grocery-rack gossip magazines that still existed, screenshots from Twitter and Instagram, and news stories pulled from Google Alerts. As if knowing what kind of nail polish Meghna Saunders favored and who she hung out with in the Hamptons might help him on his next op. Maybe they’d exchange fashion tips as Elijah tracked down whatever secret bioweapon her arms-dealer boyfriend was trying to sell.

  “These women…” Danny’s boss tapped the folder with two fingers. “They know they’re up to their necks in it. They’re not collateral damage standing on the sidewalk. Your girl grew up in a Bratva family. In a supernatural family. And this one…?” He looked back down at a photo of a beautiful South Asian woman with thick black hair and a full face of makeup. “No way she doesn’t know her boyfriend’s rotten to the core. But power’s attractive. Addictive.”

  He had a point. Yulia had always been aware of her brother’s criminal ties. She’d been as honest about them as she could when Danny admitted to being a badge. And she hadn’t run far enough from the family before Vasiliev pulled her back in. But this was different. This was bigger. NYPD, the feds, Ukrainian and Russian gangsters, supernaturals…all converging on the same clusterfuck. Plus the people in this room—so off the books that only a few high-level officials in strategic government positions knew what they did. Yulia didn’t remotely know the scope of it all. And that could get her killed. Just like whatever Elijah had planned could get Meghna Saunders killed.

  “They’re still innocent,” he pointed out. “They didn’t ask for this.”

  “Yeah, well, we didn’t ask for six dead Russians to fuck up our month and yet here we are.” Trust Finn to make Joe Peluso’s hits sound like a minor inconvenience. Up there with a 4 train going local instead of express. The Irishman rolled his eyes…and then immediately looked contrite. Presumably because of the icy look Grace shot him across the conference table. The cocky vampire wasn’t afraid of sunlight or fire or garlic. Just Gracie’s glare. And Danny couldn’t blame him one bit. Dr. Grace Leung, their resident physician and all-around science wonk, was formidable. Biracial Black and Chinese, movie-star gorgeous, and a total badass. “Where do we go from here? What’s our next move?” Finn asked, rubbing the back of his neck and fidgeting.

  “We keep it small. Secure. Everyone in this room. Mack on transport. Joaquin on tech. No need to pull in more operatives. Elijah and I will be taking point on the situation, obviously, but we have our own projects in play, too.” Jack gestured to the Saunders dossier. “We still have to focus on the bigger picture.”

  Elijah and Jackson had always been on the bigger picture, ever since putting the firm together in 2010—and that partnership was more than a little strange, considering how different they were. It was common knowledge in-house that they’d met after 9/11, around the time of the Iraq War. The rest of the whys and hows had been a mystery until recently—when they revealed the truth about their ties to the Apex Initiative. They still made for an odd couple in Danny’s book. Lije was a brawler at heart, and not just because he was a shape-shifter. Former British Army, all Cockney accent and Premier League games on satellite. He played in a rugby league between ops and taught one term a year at a military academy just north of the city.

  Jack was a sorcerer whose family magic went all the way back to the Salem witch trials. He had family money, too. He was whiter than white, as American as apple pie, and he dressed like a high-end model. With his commendation-laden military record and DoD ties, it wasn’t hard to imagine him taking his initial Third Shift marching orders from POTUS himself. Something that was definitely not possible under the new administration, with the man who barely deserved the title of POTUS. Danny wasn’t sure who dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s for Third Shift now, but it certainly wasn’t anyone at the White House.

  “So how do we proceed?” he asked as Jack’s searchlight gaze swung around the conference table and landed on him.

  “Go ahead and set up a meeting with Yulia Vasilieva,” the sorcerer said sharply. “Keep her and her secrets safe. And yourself, too. Finn, I want you to see what Peluso’s legal team knows. There’s no way Neha Ahluwalia hasn’t looped them in.”

  “I’d be delighted to pick Nate Feinberg’s pretty little brain…and his pretty everything else.” Finn flashed his fangs before leaning over to remind Gracie, “He looks like Anderson Cooper, you know.” It was the verbal equivalent of yanking on her hair for attention. “Positively dreamy.”

  “I do know. You may have mentioned it five, six, or seven hundred times.” The lone medical professional in their current group—a trauma surgeon, at that—Grace had nerves of steel. So, it was no wonder Finn couldn’t rile her. She refused to give him an ounce of her jealousy and turned to Jack. “What about me? Am I just on hand to patch up the inevitable GSWs and claw marks?”


  “Definitely not,” he assured. “Right now, we need you on medical records. Access Peluso’s records from Brooklyn Detention. See if we can match the pattern of his beatings to any of Vasiliev’s known associates. That might narrow down who they’re sending after him. And check the redactions against what we have—because the last thing we need is the city having access to classified intel.”

  Danny tuned out the rest of the briefing. Rude, yes, but Yulia was his bigger priority. The last time he’d seen her at her bar, she’d been bone-thin, dark circles weighing down her pale-blue eyes. “I have to quit,” she’d told him, worrying the dish towel she used to wipe down the wells. “Aleksei…he wants me to go back to Kamchatka and work for him.”

  He’d tried to talk her out of it. To no avail. And now she was caught in the center of something that eclipsed them both. Her brother’s vendetta against Joe Peluso. And Third Shift’s overarching mission. After all, neutralizing and netting Vasiliev would lead them one step closer to undoing the whole criminal network. To nabbing the next person up the food chain. Mirko Aston was allegedly a sorcerer and definitely hoarding a massive cache of weapons that he sold to the highest, and most lethal, bidders.

  Word on the street was that he’d secured his most valuable weapon yet sometime in the last month. A biological agent of some kind. It was anybody’s guess as to where he would unload that sucker—Russia, North Korea, ISIS, potentially their own government—and 3S needed to get a bead on it before he could broker a deal. Elijah had vowed to chase the leads to the ends of the earth if necessary. Danny’s missions were local, less with the tactical assaults and more with the research and legwork, utilizing his skills from years with the NYPD. Local…but never personal. Not until now. And it terrified him.

  Got a light? Yulia had texted him.

  What if all he could give her was darkness?

  Chapter 15

  His first impression of Neha as a damn Disney princess was right on the money. And he was the damn Disney villain. That had never been clearer. Joe flattened his palms on the tiny bathroom counter, like that would steady him or maybe lock him down. Like he was in an interrogation room with two-way glass instead of a mirror. He couldn’t fucking breathe. No. That wasn’t true. It was more like all he could breathe was her. Her skin and her hair and the salty tang of her pussy on his fingers and his tongue.

  They’d gone for another round two seconds after walking into her little safe house. He couldn’t help himself. He had to have her again. He’d crushed her up against him and stumbled with her to the bed at the end of the room and just gone at her like an animal. Because you are one, remember? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had sex three times in less than twenty-four hours. The last time he’d had sex at all. But Neha was a drug and he was addicted. He couldn’t stop touching her. He couldn’t stop wanting her. The creature under his skin, twisted into his blood and his soul, had her marked. Mine, it kept telling him. Mate, it kept insisting. And that was bullshit, because he had free will. He had choice. And he’d made the wrong one. Again.

  Fuck. Fuck, he’d fucked this up so bad. Letting her come with him. Letting her come on him. All over his cock. Letting. Ha. Okay, so she’d encouraged it. Demanded it. ’Cause digging bits of grit out of her shredded palms after she got plowed in an alley by a criminal and a monster was apparently her idea of a good time. ’Cause this whole damn thing was apparently turning her crank. ’Cause she had no regrets and no questions and nowhere near enough sense to stay away from a man like him. ’Cause she’d made her choice.

  Joe stared at his reflection. At hers as she walked up behind him. They couldn’t have been more different. She was all golden and beautiful and perfect. He was a walking bruise. It was like somebody had locked a cheetah in with a retired circus bear…except that wasn’t what they actually were, right? She was human. Completely human. And he’d been something else for years. Something so much worse.

  “Why are you here?” The question came out raspy, like he needed to shave his voice along with three days of scruff. If he accidentally cut his damn throat in the process, it would be doing them both a favor.

  “Why are you here?” she asked. She was bare-assed. Unselfconscious. And, hell, with her slammin’ body, he couldn’t blame her. He could only blame himself for staring. For forgetting to answer her question or prompt her for one to his. “You didn’t have to come with me. You could’ve ditched me at any time. I have no power over you.”

  She had every power over him. And the worst one was her belief that he was decent. He could still see her face when he let slip about Nonna hitting him. So much sympathy. So much understanding. For someone who was a shrink and a lawyer, she was pretty fucking naive. And it gutted him. It scratched up his insides and shredded whatever was left of his heart and soul. The same way he’d scratched and shredded enemy combatants on his country’s command. He was no hero. He didn’t deserve her faith. He didn’t deserve her beautiful body pressed up against his back. Her lips on his neck. Her sweet whisper of “Come back to bed.”

  But he took it all anyway. He clung to her as she walked him backward toward the queen-sized bed, now all nice and domestic with the flowered sheets she’d just put down. He hung on tight. Because he was greedy and selfish and he might die tomorrow. That was all this was. That was all it could be.

  * * *

  Neha had never seen Joe so naked, so vulnerable. And not just because he was naked. He was wrecked emotionally, shaken to the core. Like she’d somehow shaken him. This big, powerful brute of a man. She saw it in the set of his shoulders and his jaw as he followed her back to bed. She read it in his haunted gaze. “What is it?” she asked softly, even though she knew the answer. “What’s got you so twisted up inside?”

  “Do you feel the blood on my hands, baby? It’s all over you now.” He leaned back, slouching, a thumb across his lips, eyeing Neha like he’d left handprints across her breasts, her belly. Impressions of his meaty fists on her hips and thighs. “But maybe you like that, huh? Maybe that’s what this is all about.” He tried to sound disgusted with her, but the look in his eyes told her that the loathing was really aimed inward.

  “No,” she murmured, pushing aside the comfortable cotton sheets and climbing into the bed. The sheets were pristine. And there were no stains on her that she hadn’t asked for. “You don’t get to accuse me of slumming again. Not after yesterday. Not after last night.” A stuck-up princess having a fling with a thug didn’t jeopardize her career by leading him away from the courthouse and the cops. By bringing him home. “We’re in this now,” she told him as she leaned back against the headboard. There was a space next to her if he wanted it. And she hoped he wanted it. “You tied me to you the first time you kissed me. And I’m not walking away until you walk free.”

  A laugh burst out of his throat. Tired and cynical but still a laugh. “Ah, Doc. I ain’t ever gonna be free,” he said. But he joined her on the mattress, sinking to his knees in front of her. “You still shouldn’t be here.” It wasn’t the first time he’d said it—and it probably wouldn’t be the last—but it was the first time it really stung. “You should’ve let me go.”

  “So where should I be?” she asked, sitting up, letting the sheets pool around her hips. “Forgetting I met you? Going to the office every day? Filing motions? Drinking lattes and moving on?” There was no normal now. She’d accepted that the minute his lips touched hers. Apparently, he was still having problems adjusting. “You want me to just walk away? So you can go on some one-man mission against Aleksei Vasiliev? And you think I’m going to comply? What the fuck, Joe? What the actual fuck?”

  He flinched, and she wondered how she’d ever thought his face blunt and brutish. Because his eyes were soft and his mouth was kiss-swollen and his broken nose against her clit had made her come harder than her favorite vibrator. Joe was not as cold as he pretended to be, not as cold as he wanted to be.

  That
was part of why she was still here. She couldn’t really address the other part, the part where her feelings were getting involved. Not yet. So, she shoved it deep down inside, somewhere dark and protected behind the cage of her ribs. “I’m not leaving,” she assured him as she climbed atop him, throwing one leg over his hip. The world’s least believable cowgirl. But he didn’t buck her off as she rolled a condom down over his length. Instead, his hands closed around her waist and he pulled her just the slightest bit forward. So he could nudge his cock into her. Inch by inch and then an easy slide home. “I’m not leaving,” she said again on a gasp. “You can’t make me. You told me that, remember?”

  “So, what can I make you do, Doc?” he growled against her neck. “What power do I have?”

  “The most important power.” Her arms came up to cradle his head. She leaned into the piston motion of his cock, rising and falling with each snap of his hips against hers. “You can make me come.”

  A tormented groan tore from his throat. “You’re damn right.” And he swept her back with him, keeping her on top as he sprawled against the pillows. She’d demanded he do the work, but he let her set the pace…so she reveled in it, drawing out her pleasure and his. They fucked slow, without the frantic heat of their first few times together. Like they had all the time in the world and weren’t racing a clock. Like lovers and not a lawyer facing disbarment and a shape-shifter on the run. He kissed her face, her throat, her breasts. He took handfuls of her hips and her ass and squeezed, urging her to go faster, to take him harder. Neha did. She took and took and took. This wasn’t how she’d expected her life to be, but this was how it was playing out. Dirty, sweaty, sticky, unapologetic…and good. So fucking good.