This was what my life had become. Everyone was alienated from me except my roommate and best friend. My mother, my sister….and Asher.
It was painful even thinking about Asher. I had tried, so hard, to put him out of my mind these past few weeks. But I couldn’t. He was there. Always there, at the forefront of my thoughts, even when I willed these thoughts away.
Was my last thought going to be of him? The man who betrayed me? The man who made me fall head over heels in love, and showed me things that I never thought were possible, before pulling the rug out from under me?
No. I couldn’t have him as my last thought.
Nathaniel would be my final thought. As he should be.
As this man led me further and further into the field, and eventually into a wooded area, my mind drifted to little Nathaniel. A part of me was happy that this was happening, because I might get my fondest wish, which was to see him again. See his smile. Hear his laugh. Feel his baby skin against my cheek as he gave me butterfly kisses.
I wondered if I would see him again, and, if I did, would he be the same? Would he be made of flesh and blood, or would he be more ethereal like a ghost? Would he hate me for what I did, or would he have forgiven me? Is there any such thing as hate where I hoped I would be going?
Finally, the man said to me “kneel down.”
With my heart racing, I obeyed him. I bowed my head and silently prayed for this entire thing to be over quickly. I also prayed that I would be going to the same place that Nathaniel was.
The man put a blindfold over my eyes.
“I’ll take care of him, mom,” I murmured as I knelt down on the grass, waiting for the bullet that seemed inevitable.
Chapter 4
Asher
I answered the phone, of course. I figured that there would be some clue on what was going on, and, if it all had to do with me, I would know soon enough.
“Asher,” Sophie’s voice said to me. “Where are you?”
“Sophie,” I said to her, taking a deep breath. My mind tried to figure out why she would be calling me. If there was even the slightest chance that she was somehow involved in CJ’s abduction, then I was going to have to treat her with absolute kid gloves. She possibly had the fate of the woman I loved in her hands. “Can I ask what you want?” I made my voice as kind as possible when I said these words, even though I wanted to spit them out. Spit them out, and then find her and kill her slowly.
“I think you know,” she said. “Where is your girlfriend right now?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps you do?”
I took a deep breath. Be nice, Asher. Don’t piss her off. She probably has information that you need to find CJ. “I do believe you,” I said, sweetly, although that was far from the truth. I had long since surmised that Sophie had sent Marina Kushkov, who was a friend of Sophie’s back in the old country, to the cemetery to call me out in front of CJ. And how Sophie knew that CJ and I were going to the cemetery was pretty obvious. The sneaky bitch put a tracker in my limo. My security team found the microscopic item under the seat after the Marina incident.
“You don’t,” she said. “You seem to think that I had something to do with that.”
“I don’t think that anymore, honey,” I said. “Why don’t you and I have a drink and talk about things? Nikolai is here. It can be like old times.”
“You want information about CJ. I know that’s the only reason why you’re being civil with me. But okay. Let’s meet for a drink.”
We made an arrangement to meet at Rudy’s in midtown Manhattan.
“Okay,” I said to Nikolai. “There’s a change in plans. We have to meet Sophie at Rudy’s in Midtown.”
“I see,” Nikolai said. “Do you think that she has information on where this CJ is?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “The way that she was talking on the phone, I have no doubt that she’s somehow behind all of this. I have no idea, right now, what role she is playing, but she’s playing some role in it.”
“And you want to meet her? Don’t you think that you’re going to be lured into some kind of trap?”
“No. I do think that this whole thing is one big trap for me, though. But CJ is the bait, not Sophie.” Even as I said this, though, I wondered. Was I correct in that CJ was being used by this gang to lure me into a trap? Or was the trap being laid by Sophie herself? She was devious, and just devious enough to do something like this to get back at me. Or try to force me into doing something with her that I knew I wouldn’t want to do.
I would do anything to get CJ back at that point. And that would mean anything at all.
I, however, was going to have to play this one with some kind of finesse and realize that I was going to have to watch my back. Sophie was playing chess, and I had to play her game on her playing field. She had created this game when she apparently set CJ up to be abducted.
That was if my assumption about Sophie’s role in all of this was correct.
Nikolai shook his head. “Sophie was a spider when she was in Russia, and she apparently still is. What kind of connections does she have out here?”
I sighed. “She has more connections than I do at this point, I’m afraid. I’ve become a straight businessman. That was what my father wanted. I’ve stayed out of the underworld here, for the most part. That was probably a mistake, in hindsight.” Of course, I did have some connections to almost every group in the city, but they were mainly informants who I used as needed. I just didn’t have the same network that Sophie had.
“Yes, a mistake,” Nikolai said. “Although we do appreciate your largesse.”
I knew what he was talking about. I had sent money over to my father’s group on many different occasions. It wasn’t laundering, though. I made sure that the money I sent to them was money that was actually mine, not the company’s. The last thing that I needed was an FBI investigation into my activities.
Nikolai chuckled. “A straight businessman. That’s too bad, Alexei. You certainly had the skills to really help out some of the not-so-straight businessmen.”
I sighed. “I know.” And I did know. I was a skilled sharp-shooter and sniper. I was also extremely skilled in computer hacking. That was the part of the business back home that I didn’t mind so much – the cyberhacking. We were stealing money from large banks on Wall Street and London, money that they probably never missed. I didn’t feel that was necessarily wrong, as I knew what these banks did. How crooked they were. HSBC was our prime target, and this bank was laundering billions of dollars themselves for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels.
There was supposed to be honor among thieves, but I truly felt disgusted with these banks and their behavior. So, I was put in charge of the cybercrime division of our group, as everything else we did was completely repugnant to me. My father was mindful of my proclivities, which is why he chose that particular assignment for me.
I found out, when I was only 15, how good I was with cybercrime. Computers always came easily to me, and I had an excellent mentor in the field. His name was Vladislov, and he had been doing it for 20 years himself. He taught me everything I knew, and, I admit, I took to it like a duck to water. So, that was what I did until my father “released” me from his service, telling me that he wanted better for me, and that he knew, with my intelligence and ingenuity, I could go far in America. Even he couldn’t anticipate exactly how far, though. That was a surprise to everyone back home. It was even a surprise for me.
But, of course, my life back in Russia was not without violence. I was still basically a soldier in the group, and, as such, I had to run security and surveillance. More than once, I had to kill in self-defense, and, more than once, I was assigned to take out somebody who was a rat. We couldn’t have rats, of course, and there were quite a few of them in our organization. I hated doing that, of course, but I knew that it was me or them, and I chose me. Besides, everyone knew that being a rat meant that you had a short life in the organization. Literally.
&n
bsp; Now, here I was, trying to desperately save the woman I loved from certain harm if not death. And I was rusty, to say the very least. That was why it was so important Nikolai be here, because Nikolai wasn’t rusty. He was still in the organization. He had amazing reflexes and had no compunction about killing somebody who was threatening his life or any of the lives of his comrades.
Right now, he was invaluable to me.
We drove along in silence to the bar where Sophie was going to be. I would be able to bring Nikolai’s pistol into the bar with me, as I had long since obtained a concealed carry permit. I had to, considering my past. I simply told the State of New York that I needed this permit because I had been threatened by some unhinged person who hated me because he was paranoid and thought that I was trying to take over the world with my company. All that was true, of course. I had been threatened by a schizophrenic who accused me of attempting world domination. I wasn’t actually, personally, threatened by him, though. I could take him, and I knew that I had bodyguards who could also take care of him.
He provided me a good excuse, however, to have a concealed carry permit, so I actually was grateful to the poor crazy guy.
Nikolai chuckled. “This is like old times, isn’t it, Alexei? Having a meeting with some person who is possibly dangerous and wants to stab us in the back. All those meetings didn’t exactly go as planned, though.”
I shook my head. “No, they didn’t, did they? We always tried, though. We always tried to talk some sense into those men, but, if they couldn’t be reasoned with, what else could we do than what we did?”
“Very true, very true,” he said. “So, you really don’t know what kind of connections Sophie has over here?”
I sighed. “I do know. She has some connections with the Kazakov family, which is one of the most powerful in the city. I would like to think, though, that she wouldn’t go this far to get to me.” I suddenly felt naïve, though, to think that Sophie wouldn’t stop until she got what she wanted, which was me. And the guilt I felt by putting CJ in the middle of all of that was overwhelming.
Why I never saw that putting CJ up to posing as my fiancée, in order to get rid of Sophie, wouldn’t backfire, I didn’t know. It led to disaster, apparently, and I was desperate to do anything to ensure CJ’s safety.
We finally got to the bar, Rudy’s, and went in. Sophie was sitting in the back, waiting for us with two drinks. She stood up, and Nikolai kissed her on the cheek. “Good to see you again, Sophie,” he said to her. “You’re looking more beautiful than ever.”
“And you, Nikolai,” she said with an enormous smile. “Asher,” she said to me in greeting. It was a rather cold greeting, but that was to be expected. She wasn’t exactly happy to see me.
Nikolai chuckled. “Asher. I keep forgetting that Alexei isn’t one of us anymore. He is a legitimate American businessman, with a legitimate American businessman name.”
Sophie sat down, and the two of us did as well.
“I got you a scotch neat, Asher,” Sophie said to me sweetly. “I remember how much you love them.”
I took a deep breath. I wanted to kill this woman more than I have ever wanted to kill anyone. Yet, I couldn’t. I needed her for information.
“Thank you, Sophie,” I said to her. “I do love my neat scotches.”
“Okay. Well, I guess we should probably get down to brass tacks here,” she said to me. “Your girlfriend is missing, and I know where she is and who has her.”
“And you’re behind it?” I asked her.
“Actually, no, I’m not,” she said.
I rolled my eyes.
“I’m not. I know that you don’t believe me, but that’s not really my concern.”
“Sophie, you hate her. You hate her and you clearly want me. Getting her out of the way would be very advantageous to you, wouldn’t it?”
“I admit it would. And I almost wish that I had thought of it. But I’m not that evil of a bitch, believe it or not.”
At that, Nikolai laughed.
“You can laugh all you want, Nikolai, but I think that you know me better than that. I’m not that girl.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Unlike Asher here, I’ve never been responsible for anybody’s death, and I don’t plan to start now. For that matter, CJ herself has been responsible for more deaths than I have.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Are you never going to let that go? She made a mistake. A tragic mistake. She has paid for that mistake every second of every day of her life. She might be indirectly responsible for what happened to her poor little brother, but only indirectly.”
“I know all that, Asher,” she said. “Are we going to keep going over this, or do you want information about CJ and where she is?”
“You know I want that.”
“Okay. Well, it’s going to cost you, of course.” She raised her eyebrow, and I knew what she was getting at.
I narrowed my eyes and looked at Nikolai. He was studying Sophie as well, trying to ascertain, as was I, if Sophie was on the level. I assumed that she was, as she knew that CJ was missing before she spoke with me. She probably did know where CJ was.
“Okay,” I said to her. “What’s your price?”
She crossed her arms in front of her. “You know what I want, Asher.”
I took a deep breath. I wanted to tell her to go to hell. To go fuck herself, because I would never fuck her, no matter what she did. No matter how much blackmail she tried.
I thought better of it, though. CJ’s life was literally at stake, as far as I knew.
I bit my lip. I wanted to go about this in a different way, but I knew that was fruitless. I didn’t know this man who had CJ. I had long since put the underworld into my past. When I became Asher Sloane, I deliberately left behind everything that was associated with Alexei Pushkin. I still had my contacts, but they were superficial. I really wanted nothing to do with these men and what they did.
Like it or not, I needed Sophie.
“How long does she have?” I asked her.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Knowing the person who has her, I would think that she has less than 72 hours at this point. Not that this person is going to kill her, but I know that he’s looking for girls to ship overseas. Once she’s in that group, you won’t ever know what happened to her. I think that you know this. She’ll end up a courtesan of some Saudi oil man, or become one of his wives.
“I don’t believe that she’s been captured for white slavery,” I said to Sophie. “I believe that she’s been captured because she’s being used as bait for me. And I think that you’re involved with all of that.”
“Think what you want. The fact is, I know where she is and who is keeping her.”
I took a deep breath. Was she bluffing? I knew that she wasn’t. She knew that CJ was missing before I ever said a word to her.
72 hours. Was Sophie right about that? Did somebody from the Kazakov family end up with CJ in their clutches? That was the only family that Sophie was friendly with, so if CJ was in the hands of a Russian mobster, it probably would have been somebody from that family. Did they really want her for white slavery, or did they want her to trap me?
At any rate, I knew what I was going to have to do, once I found her. I was simply going to have to make a trade. My life for hers. If it was me they wanted, then they could have me. I would give myself up without hesitation to insure that she was safe.
Without even a moment’s hesitation.
“Okay,” I finally said, feeling that giving Sophie what she wanted would be the quickest way of finding out where she was being kept. “Let’s go.”
She cocked her head. “One night?” she said. “That’s all it will be. I know that you don’t want to be with me for the long term, but one night is all that I ask for right now.”
I swallowed, hard. Gut check time. She said that she only wanted one night with me. I knew differently. “What else do you want?” I asked her. “I know you, and I don’t think that you will be satisfied with just one
night. So, what else do you want?”
It was her turn to draw in a deep breath. “I’m pregnant,” she said. “It’s not yours, of course. That would be impossible, as we haven’t been intimate in years. But the father is a member of the Kazakov family. A married member of the Kazakov family. Needless to say, I would be erased if this man found out I was carrying his child.”
I groaned. “You want me to claim that I’m the father. Is that it?”
“Yes,” she said. “And you can never tell anybody that you’ve done this.” She pointed at Nikolai. “And you, Nikolai, I hope that I don’t have to tell you what might happen if you told anybody the truth about this baby.”
Nikolai went white and just nodded his head. I could only assume that Sophie had something on him, so I kept quiet.
“Okay, Sophie,” I said. “So, I guess you and I won’t be having sex tonight after all.” Thank God for that. I couldn’t stand to betray CJ like that, and I was glad that I wasn’t going to have to. “Obviously you need my help as much as I need yours. So, we’re on equal footing here.”
I actually was kind of loving this position. Sophie was as desperate as me, it turned out.
She leaned back. “Not so fast. This is actually why I didn’t object to Nikolai being here and listening to all of this. I need some insurance that you will actually do this for me.”
I looked at Nikolai. “I’m a man of my word, and if I tell you that I’ll do this, then I’ll do this. But I don’t know exactly why Nikolai would be an insurance policy for you.”
“It’s very simple.” She looked directly at Nikolai. “You know that you owe me, Nikolai. I also know that you have connections here with not just the Kazakov family, but also the Karensky family and several other ones. If Asher here does not keep his word about claiming this baby as his own, then I want you, Nikolai, to make sure that CJ is abducted again. And please make sure that she doesn’t make it out alive next time.”
Focus: Exposure Series Book Two Page 3