How the hell did he get to this point?
The bullets and blades were headed his way if any knew the Reaper was a farce . . . a complete farce . . . well, not entirely. It wasn’t like he’d never killed anyone, but his marks had usually deserved it, and those he was ordered to kill he simply didn’t think about. The target was an order to be followed. Period.
The end was coming for his tour and he wasn’t about to let them decide when he finished. He’d be damned if he turned into one of those rogues who had to be put down like a rabid dog.
Shaking off the anxiety and fatigue, he stood, rubbed his hands over his face again.
The triple chirp from his cell had him reaching for the little silver piece of technology. The LCD screen showed him who it was.
“What do you want?” he asked without preamble. He patted his pocket for a cigarette.
“This phone still secure?” John asked, his British accent clipping the words.
“As secure as I can make it. Why?” Damn it, he was out of cigarettes. He took a deep breath and wondered how he’d missed that one.
“We’ve picked up chatter.”
“What would the intelligence communities do without chatter?” he muttered.
For a moment the man on the other end was silent. Then, “Something happen?”
“No, why do you ask?” Dimitri rummaged through one of the kitchen drawers where he also kept an extra pack, relieved to see he hadn’t even opened that one yet. One thing about Europeans, they weren’t as health crazed as Americans.
He ripped the package open and shook a cigarette out, reached into his pocket and pulled out his silver lighter. The click echoed over the line.
“You were supposed to quit that disgusting habit.”
“If you called to tell me the important chatter is the fact I’m still smoking, then I do believe your boys need some updated equipment.” The nicotine hit his system on his first deep drag. “Or perhaps you need new boys.”
“You’re even more caustic tonight than normal. What happened? Did you kill a defenseless animal?”
Dimitri ignored the remark from one of the few men he honestly considered a friend and trusted with not only his life, but that of his family.
“What do you want, Johnno?” he asked, using the nickname John Brasher hated.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Why”
“Who are you about to take out?”
Dimitri frowned, took another drag and studied the cigarette as the paper slowly disintegrated from the burning tip. On a deep breath, he asked, “Who says I’m marking anyone?”
“Sources.”
“And those would be?”
John’s chuckle grated on his nerves. “Look, our bosses both want to know who the mark is and . . .”
“And?”
“And we believe the Raven has been sent after you.”
That was news. The Raven. Dimitri smiled. He was marked? Wasn’t that refreshing? And he knew ahead of time.
“Well . . .”
“The powers that be are not pleased. One, they hear you’re marking someone, and then that you’ve been marked. Now, me—I don’t think you’ve marked yourself.”
“Yes, that’s always a concern, isn’t it?” Idiots.
“Who’s your mark?” John asked.
“We don’t discuss that, you know.”
“Yes, but some are worried.”
He leaned up and stabbed the cigarette out in the ashtray on his glass coffee table. Dimitri sighed and leaned back, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Johnno, I have no idea who my damn mark is. Hellinski hasn’t told me yet. I’m to meet the man tonight to find out.”
Neither man said a word for a bit.
John cleared his throat. “Any ideas?”
“Yeah, Elianya.”
This time John’s silence was filled with more than quiet. Dimitri knew what the man wanted, and had vowed to give it to him.
“When?” Rage snapped the word over the phone.
He sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know for a fact that it’s her, Johnno, and . . .”
“You swore to me, Ian. You swore and if you take this from me—”
“Do you honest to God think I’d do that?” Anger sharpened his own words. He knew Elianya’s name sent his friend into a black rage. The fact John had used his real name, Ian, was evidence of just how far the woman still pushed Mr. Brasher.
He could hear John grinding his teeth. “She’s mine.”
“You don’t need to remind me.”
Something on the other end crashed.
He patiently waited. “Look, Johnno, it’s only a feeling I have. When I know for certain, I’ll let you know.”
“She’s mine.”
Again, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I will never dispute that fact.”
“But some things are out of your control, aren’t they?” John asked, tired.
He stood and walked to the window. “If, and that’s a damn big if, Johnno. Then she’s yours. Somehow she’ll escape or . . .” God, he was so fucking tired. “I don’t know. We’ll come up with something.”
“I should have just killed the bitch years ago,” John snarled.
“Yes, but then you’d be behind bars. Sanctioned marks are one thing. Vendettas are equivalent to murder, my friend.”
“Bullocks, that. And you bloody well know it. As if you’ve kept the lines separate.”
True. He twisted his wrist, pushed the sleeve of his shirt up to check the time. “I’m late, Johnno, and since you’ve informed me that I’m marked, I’d rather get my meeting with Hellinski over with, if it’s all the same to you.”
Again the silence stretched. “I’m in Prague at the safe house. When we heard you were marked, I was sent down here. I think they’re going to take you out soon.”
“Cheery fucking thought, eh?”
The line went dead.
*****
10:30 p.m.
Dimitri realized how rattled John had been to use his real name. No one called him Ian anymore. No one but Johnno, Pete, and his brothers—when he actually saw them. Which was rare, though more so in the last couple of years than in the dozen since he left the family. Last he knew, everyone was faring well. But then he hadn’t checked in the last couple of months. Things had been too hectic and dangerous here and he wanted no one, no one connecting Dimitri Petrolov, the Reaper, to anyone remotely connected to Ian Kinncaid.
He’d taken chances when the need arose and there were more of those than he’d cared to feel comfortable with. He’d had to use Johnno twice. Once to help him out in Colorado and again last year when a bastard congressman had been after Brayden’s wife, Christian. Only his brothers had ever realized who he was and that he was helping, and even then he’d been in disguise.
His sleek BMW cut through the late-night traffic as he made his way to Nero’s. The noises from outside were muffled through his car. He rarely listened to music—music lulled and he could never afford to be lulled.
Constant watch. Constant guard. If he was a civilian, he’d be neurotic. But as it were, this was all part of the job. Focused attention, a gun in his shoulder holster, an extra 9-millimeter under his seat and a couple of cans of tear gas in the console.
He was thirty-six years old, trusted very few men and knew he’d probably die as alone as he’d been forced to live for the last few years.
He vaguely wondered if the Raven were successful and blew his head off, if anyone would notify his family. On that realistic but macabre thought, he picked his phone back up and redialed Johnno, who answered on the first ring.
“What?”
“If Raven’s successful, I need you to do something for me.”
Silence. Then, “She won’t be.”
“She’s good or she wouldn’t have been hired and you know it.”
“What is going on with you?”
Dimitri sighed. How to explain that he’d lived so long pla
ying this game, had taken so many out that he knew his time was up? “Just listen. If she succeeds, I need you to notify . . .” He trailed off. Last time he checked, his car was bug-free, but then he hadn’t checked in a couple of days.
“I understand. You concentrate on your end and I’ll look for her.”
He hung up and pulled into his parking space in front of the club. Alighting quickly, he ignored the swarm of people out front and cut through them, heading for the door. He narrowed his gaze at Ivan. “Problems tonight?”
Ivan smirked, but the smile slipped and he looked away as Dimitri continued to stare at him . . .
“Problems?” Dimitri repeated.
Ivan shook his head. “No, Mr. Petrolov. No problems.”
Dimitri watched him and leaned close. “How many pretties have you let in tonight, Ivan?”
The man actually blushed. Would wonders never cease. “Three. No, four. Wait.” His eyes got big. “Five. It was five, no?”
Dimitri slapped him on the shoulder and walked inside. One of the men at the front of the line muttered about cutting and going to the end of the line.
From under his brows, Dimitri merely stared at the brash, rude college kid. The kid, blond, blue-eyed and maybe twenty-one, gulped and stumbled back a step.
Knowing he sufficiently put fear into the brat, he turned to Ivan and said loudly, “Ivan, have this person removed from the premises. I find he offends me.”
Ivan nodded and moved to do his bidding. “Y-yes, sir, Mr. Petrolov.”
The air from the club hit him as it always did, thick and sweet with pumping music and fogging smoke from too many cigarettes and enough recreational drugs that a patron could get high simply standing in the doorway.
Dimitri made his way through the throng of bodies.
“Hey, sweet thing,” one of the regular girls said to him.
“Olga.”
“When you going to ask for a massage that will take you to Heaven?”
He flashed her a smile. “Not tonight. I have a meeting with the boss man.”
“Pity.”
“Isn’t it though.”
As he wove through the people dancing, laughing and talking, to the band screeching on the stage, a tingle prickled up the back of his neck.
Slowly, he put his right hand on the butt of his SIG and made it to the staircase. She wouldn’t hit him here in the middle of a club. Too crowded, though if memory served, Raven preferred crowds—was it crowded streets or parties? He’d have to look her up as soon as he returned home. Walking up the stairs he scanned the crowd. A woman. She never disguised herself as a man. Rumor had it she was beautiful.
And with her profession, she wouldn’t be drinking or getting high. At least not staking out a mark.
Damn it.
There were four women watching him. A blonde with another guy over in the corner. From her glazed eyes, she probably wasn’t it, and unless he was mistaken, the man was giving her a nice little present under the cover of the table. Give them a couple more hours and people would be fucking against the wall.
Two redheads were candidates, but red hair was memorable. And they were too . . . something. Too flighty, happy. Not his image of the elusive Raven.
Maybe that one. Over at the bar, trying to ignore the man beside her. She had short black hair and skin the color of a frothy café mocha. From here he could see the muscles of her shoulder as the sweater dipped off one. Looking down he noticed she was wearing boots. Not lace up to the thigh boots, like many in here, not even platform boots. No, unless he was mistaken, the woman was wearing very practical boots. He ran his gaze back up her, watched as she crossed those long legs and wondered what her calves and thighs looked like. Her eyes did surprise him. With her coloring, he’d assumed they’d be brown, but even from here he could see they were light. A blue? Or gray maybe? Green. Interesting. Soft jawline, straight nose, arched brows. Rather beautiful actually.
He narrowed his eyes and smiled at her.
Something in him clicked and he knew, knew the woman at the bar was Raven. Perhaps it was the awareness that tingled like a quick jolt of electricity through him. Whatever it was, he would almost bet she was his assassin. Almost.
If she was, he wanted to know who the hell had hired her. And if she wasn’t . . .
He grinned wider as he walked up the rest of the stairs. Time to see who Viktor wanted him to kill.
*****
Raven watched the man walk up the stairs and had to admit he was even more handsome in person than he was in his photographs. Must be his shadowed beard. Or the eyes.
And in that one quick assessment he’d given her, she’d gotten the feeling he knew who she was and why she was here.
Which was bloody stupid, but there it was. She still hadn’t accepted the job, but she decided she would. Probably.
Whether or not she would kill him would depend on him and what he was really doing. If she was right and he was something other than he appeared, then she’d cross that bridge when she got there, but . . .
But if he was only the Reaper, a cold-blooded assassin who worked for one of the most brutal crime bosses in Europe, then she’d happily take him out without a second thought.
Then again, he might not be so easy to take out . . . She had the distinct impression she might have finally met her match.
Just her luck, the last assignment she accepted would kill her. Maybe she waited too long to get out. Probably. Maybe she never should have started on this career path, but that was beside the bloody point and freaking pointless.
“Come dance with me,” the man beside her asked yet again.
Raising a brow, she only looked down at the hand he’d placed on top of hers.
“Luv, you really want to move your hand.”
He quickly snatched his hand back. “You don’t have to get testy. A dance isn’t a reason to be rude.”
She stood, grabbed her drink and walked away. She found a quiet place—as quiet as she could in a raving club—and watched the wall of mirrors above the stairs.
Just who was Mr. Dimitri Petrolov?
She should just kill him and be done with it, take the money and retire. But something stayed her, and if she’d learned anything at all, she knew to follow her instincts. Where they were concerned, she wondered if she’d kill the man at all.
*****
Dimitri stood at the wall of mirrors and looked out onto the club below. Again it was packed, bodies so close together that Hellinski would have even the bribed police all over him if a fire ever broke out. But Hellinski was never one to worry about such things. He scanned the crowd again and saw the woman had moved from her perch on the bar stool. Methodically, he glanced over the occupants below.
There she was, leaning against the wall, taking another sip of the drink, but the amount of pink confection stayed the same.
Nice front, love, but you need to actually drink a bit.
Her eyes rose to the windows, and again their light stare caught him off guard.
“I can’t believe I’m asking you this,” Viktor said for the third time
Dimitri sighed, kept his hands loosely at his sides. “Who? It’s a name, Viktor, just a name.”
Viktor’s dark blasphemy made him turn from his study of the mysterious woman below and study his boss. Viktor was pale, dark circles under his eyes, eyes normally as cold and unfeeling as the devil’s heart. But now, they were worried, creased. The man sat on the couch and leaned up on his knees. Dimitri merely waited, knowing there was no rushing his boss.
Viktor’s shoulders rose and fell as he clasped and unclasped his hands. In a low voice, he said, “Elianya. I need . . .”
Dimitri’s eyes slid closed. Taking a deep breath, he said quietly, “I understand.”
Viktor’s head whipped up, sharp and predatory, his slanted eyes as threatening as a wolf’s. “No, you don’t. She’s . . . She’s not . . . I thought as she grew older.” Viktor thumped his fist on his thigh and stood. “Damn it all.
What I do is one thing. Business is business, but Elianya . . .” He shook his head and raked a hand over his queued hair. “Children, now, Dimitri. The stupid bitch will be the death of me. She’s pimping out children and God only knows what else.”
For a moment, Dimitri could only stare at the man who, if he was ordered, he’d have to kill. Viktor Hellinski wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination a nice man, but even the crime boss apparently had his limits.
“I heard she was opening up negotiations behind my back to the American bosses as well.”
“The deal you nixed last December?” Dimitri asked.
Viktor nodded and paced. Dimitri waited.
“Stupid. So damn stupid. I knew something was wrong with her. Even the doctors she saw as a child warned me she was dangerous, but I never wanted to . . .” Viktor looked at him, his face stamped with pain. “I thought I could help her.”
The woman had been raised in a world where vice and crime were a normal means, brutal as it was, and she learned she liked the nice things that benefited her from others’ pain. Of course other crime bosses were married, had sisters or daughters, and Dimitri had never met anyone as wicked and depraved as Elianya. No matter her upbringing, something was twisted within her.
Dimitri shrugged and decided to be honest. “I’ve never cared for your sister.”
Viktor glared at him. “You liked her enough to fuck her.”
He didn’t deny it. “Some things one learns one can live without. No man needs a blow job that badly.”
“You think I don’t know that? She asked me to have you castrated when you turned her down and told her to leave your apartments.”
Dimitri almost crossed his legs. “Thank you for not following through on her request.”
Viktor shook his head. “Children, Dimitri. Interpol will be all the fuck over us. You take care of this. Clean it up. Her photographer called me. Leos. He is a good man. I don’t want him hurt.” Those slanted, amber eyes pierced him again. “I mean it. The man is decent and talented and I can use him.”
Dimitri shuffled through his memory of Elianya’s entourage and clicked on the neatly trimmed man with the ponytail. Quiet, but temperamental, always behind a camera or computer. New age porn producer . . .
Deadly Games Page 4