by Roxie Rivera
I didn’t want to dig into the dark and complicated history of Erin’s husband. Ivan was a big, scary guy, and I had no problem believing he had done some less than savory things. Even so, he had never shown me anything but kindness and respect. I believed in second chances, and he seemed to have earned his. Turning the conversation, I insisted, “Kostya doesn’t have those tattoos.”
“Maybe not on his hands or arms but who knows what’s under his shirt?”
“Well I haven’t seen him naked yet so I wouldn’t know,” I replied rather testily.
“It’s not just the mob rumors, Holly. There are some not-so-nice things about Kostya that are facts.”
“Like?” Even as I asked for information, I feared what she would say. Savannah was the biggest gossip in the salon and had an uncanny knack for getting people to divulge their secrets.
“He owns strip clubs.”
I blinked at that unexpected revelation. “How do you know that?”
“Nisha recognized him outside the church at Bianca’s wedding. She told me that he co-owns a bunch of clubs around town with some gangster loan shark guy.”
“How does she know that?”
“Her uncle, Nicky,” Savannah said. “You know he’s into all that shady stuff. Her ex is in the pen for same kinds of awful shit so when Nisha tells me that someone is trouble, I believe her.”
I swallowed hard. Honestly, I didn’t know how to feel about the discovery that Kostya made money from strip clubs. It was a dirty, exploitative business. “I don’t know what you expect me to say, Savvy.”
She stared at me for a long moment before exhaling slowly. “I expect you to say that you have your eyes wide open and you understand that Kostya has a complicated history. He’s probably done some bad things, Holly. Maybe he’s doing bad things right now. I need to know that you’ve thought long and hard about that before you go chasing after him.”
“I’m not chasing after him.”
“Not yet,” she retorted, “but you will. If you want him, you’re going to have to go and get him. Quit waiting for him to make the first move and make it yourself.”
“This isn’t high school, Savvy. It’s not that simple.”
“You’re right. It’s not high school so stop acting like a scared teenager whose never been kissed and act like a grown ass woman who knows what she wants and what she needs.”
Hating that she was right to call me out for being so ridiculous but unwilling to concede defeat so quickly, I frowned up at her. “Well, aren’t you just Miss Bossy today!”
“I’m too tired for my usual grace and charm. I had to get up super early to grab a spot in the confessional before Mass this morning.” Smilingly mischievously, she admitted, “After the fun I had last night, I deserved every single one of those Hail Marys.”
Her nearly blasphemous remark made me twitter with nervous laughter. “You are horrible.”
“Oh, please.” She tipped her nose up in the air. “You know you’re jealous.”
“I am. Completely.” Poking her with my pen, I said, “You know I want the details of all that fun you had, right?”
“Tomorrow,” she promised. “Right now, I have a dinner date at Goodnight Charlie’s with the Katies.”
The Katies were three of our sorority sisters who sat on the charity gala planning committee that Savvy chaired. The Houston alumni for our sorority hosted a huge, ritzy New Year’s Eve dinner and dance to raise money for sick children. Every year, Savvy said she would never chair the committee again. Yet, every year, her hand was the first to go up when volunteers were sought.
“What are we donating? I asked, certain she had figured out the max gift the salon could offer.
“More than last year,” she said, checking her watch. “We’ve set a very aggressive goal for the overall fundraising of the gala so you may need to shakedown all of your mother’s super rich friends.”
“Can’t wait,” I replied sarcastically.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come? Be my backup against the Katies?”
“I’m good.” I gestured to my desk. “I need to deal with all the things I’ve been putting off for the last week.”
“Fair enough.” She shoved off my desk and headed for my door, leaving Harry behind to keep me company. “Don’t stay too late. We have a staff meeting tomorrow.”
“I won’t.”
“Follow me out and lock up behind me?”
“Okay.”
“Oh!” She hovered in the doorway of my office. “What did the alarm folks say?”
“Nothing helpful! I think we may need to find a new company.”
“I’d offer to call around for bids but something tells me you’re looking for a reason to go knock on Kostya’s door. Far be it from me to deny you the chance to get your flirt on…”
“Get out of here,” I said while dramatically shooing her away from my office. Her laughter echoed down the hallway as I followed her to the rear exit. After a quick hug and goodbye, I made sure the shop was locked tight behind her and detoured into the employee kitchen to grab a can of soda from the fridge. I cracked the tab, took a sip of the fizzy lemon-lime sweetness and returned to my office.
I had just started sorting through vacation requests when I heard the first shrill chirp. Oh, no. I recognized the sound instantly as the low battery alarm for a smoke detector. Flopping back in my desk chair, I pinched the bridge of my nose and exhaled roughly. Every few seconds, the smoke alarm chirped.
Shoving out of my chair, I walked out of my office and down the hall to the maintenance closet for a step ladder and battery. I hefted the ladder around the salon, working my way from the back of the building to the front in search of the chirping alarm. Standing in the reception area, I waited patiently for that annoying beep but heard nothing. I waited and waited but there was only silence.
What the hell? I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was screwing with me. More and more, I became convinced that someone had hacked our system or something. This isn’t normal, I thought as I dragged the ladder back to the closet and tucked away the battery.
Back in my office, I sat at my desk and picked up my soda. As I took a long drink, I tried to piece together the timeline of strange occurrences around the shop. Either the security company wasn’t telling me the truth about all the issues we were having—or someone was maliciously targeting our business.
Unfortunately, the latter possibility wasn’t too far-fetched, not for Houston at least. Not that long ago, one of our clients had nearly lost her life when a greedy developer had hired arsonists to force her out of her bakery building. This town had a dark, seedy underbelly that encouraged terrible deeds in the name of money.
But who in the world would want to attack my business? The building was owned outright by my mother so we didn’t have landlord problems. Savannah and I had a good relationship with the businesses on either side of us, a little coffee shop-slash-café and a clothing boutique. We’d never had any issues with salons in the area so it definitely wasn’t a professional jealousy thing, and we hadn’t fired an employee since our first year of being open.
I took another sip, making a face at how flat the soda tasted, and then tapped at my keyboard. Thinking about the security system, I wondered if the easiest option would be to simply replace the entire system and switch providers. If that didn’t solve our strange issues, well, then I would start to worry.
Yawning loudly, I rubbed at my tired eyes. The words and numbers on my computer screen seemed so blurry. I blinked and picked up my can of soda, hoping the jolt of sugar would give me the energy I needed to get through this last bit of paperwork before calling it quits and heading home. I should have grabbed something with caffeine…
Focusing on my bright computer screen, I tried to make sense of what I was reading but there was a weird disconnect between my eyes and my brain. Suddenly, my eyelids felt heavy, so very heavy, and I felt my body starting to relax. Whether I wanted to or not, I was going to fal
l asleep. My sluggish brain urged me to give in and accept the drowsiness. A nap now was better than falling asleep while driving, right?
As I leaned forward and rested my head on my arms, I thought maybe, just maybe, I had detected a hint of movement reflected in the computer screen. Shadows, I convinced myself. It’s all just shadows and dust…
Chapter Two
A CURL OF cigarette smoke drifted on the night air as Kostya stood on the roof of the high-rise and watched the city slowly slide into darkness. He felt the heat moving ever closer to his fingers as the unsmoked cigarette burned from the tip to the filter.
He’d lit and wasted four so far. Still not in the mood for a smoke, he dropped the fifth and crushed it with the toe of his boot. He bent down, picked up the butt and slipped it into his pocket to dispose of later. There wasn’t much chance of anyone discovering his stakeout spot or combing the rooftop for evidence but old habits like these were ingrained.
There must never be a trace of evidence left behind. Ever.
Clean it.
Burn it.
Destroy it.
He projected cool disinterest, but the pit of his stomach was a mess of knots and tangles. His mind raced with the bits and pieces of intelligence and recon that his little spiders had been gathering and reporting back to him all day. He checked his watch. Ninety-four minutes—and the whole damn city would erupt in chaos and violence.
His stomach pitched violently as a streak of anger and despair zipped through him. All that work! All those years of planning and scheming and setting up his intel network! All that money spent and all those favors traded to turn snitches inside the Guzman organization had been wasted.
Tonight, Hector Salas would lead a bloody coup, taking out the power players standing between him and the cartel throne. Come sunrise, a new man would be in charge south of the border—and that intricate web his spiders crawled would have to be redesigned and woven all over again.
Blowing out a resigned breath, Kostya wiped a hand down his face. This wasn’t the first time he’d been forced to start over from scratch. His entire life seemed to be an endless cycle of hastily wiped slates and new starts. When the dust settled, he would have to take stock of which informants had survived the power shift and begin the tedious process of rebuilding his network.
His personal cell phone in the front pocket of his jeans started to vibrate. It was a number only a handful of people had—one of them Holly. Worried she might be calling, he unzipped the dirty overalls and retrieved it. The phone number wasn’t Holly’s. It was Liam, the Irish gunrunner he had worked with for many years. Despite the bad timing, he had to take the call.
“Yeah?” he answered gruffly.
“I’m sure you’re busy,” Liam replied quickly, “so I’ll cut right to it. Can you do some freelance work for me?”
“Depends.” Freelance work for Liam could mean anything from old school wetwork to acting as a broker or go-between.
“I need help getting one of my Russian contacts a green card. He needs to get into the US as quickly as possible, and he needs to be able to stay there. It’s a life or death matter.”
“It always is. Does he have any ties to Houston?”
“Yes. He’s got an aunt and uncle there. One of them works in your boss’s restaurant. He’s traveled there a few times for me on business.”
“How’s he set up for money?”
“He’s good.”
Good meant millions in their world. Gun running had its perks, apparently. “And his record?”
“It’s clean. No arrests. No time served. Not even a fucking parking ticket.”
“Interpol?”
“He had a blue notice thirteen or fourteen years ago. He was just a kid then.”
“Watchlists?”
“I can’t be sure. It’s not likely.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Whatever solution I find won’t be cheap or easy.” He was already thinking that it would probably include a marriage of convenience and a large payment to a suitable woman who could keep a secret.
“These things never are. That’s why I go to the best.”
“Anything else?”
“No. That’s it.”
“Send the information about your colleague via my courier. I’ll sort out the details on my end.”
As soon as he had secured his personal phone, the burner tucked into the back pocket of his dirty overalls vibrated. One of the knots in his stomach relaxed and unwound as he read the message from Fox.
It’s time.
He tapped out his short one-word reply—coming—and slipped his phone back into his pocket.
Adrenaline surged through his system as he pulled on the baseball cap emblazoned with a plumbing company’s logo. He hopped behind the wheel of the van he had borrowed to satisfy a gambling debt owed by the proprietor. After a quick glance in the rear-view mirror to check the fake moustache he’d applied earlier, he pushed a pair of thick-rimmed glasses into place. Nobody paid attention to tradesmen, especially not the ones who looked like someone’s creepy fucking uncle, and that was the way he liked it.
As he left the parking garage, he ran through the plans in place for the night. Nikolai wouldn’t let Vivian out of his sight, as usual. The boss had ensured that all his captains knew to keep their soldiers in public tonight. They would be seen in bars and restaurants and clubs. Everyone needed a solid alibi. There wasn’t to be a whisper of Russian involvement in the violence that was going down tonight.
Certain the rest of the family would be safe, he was focused solely on protecting Holly. It hadn’t been that hard to convince one of the coffee shop baristas working next door to Holly’s salon to sabotage the plumbing in exchange for the promise of a new car and a fat envelope of cash.
Fox, one of the street kids he had saved years earlier and now employed, had been hacking into the salon’s security system repeatedly. It was imperative that Holly grow so frustrated with her current security service that she come to him for help. After tonight, he needed to have his eyes on her at all times. Setting off the alarm randomly during the day and having Fox hijack the security tech support phone line would push Holly over the edge and force her to look for outside help. From me.
Guilt soured his gut when he thought of all the ways he was manipulating Holly’s life. He was doing it to keep her alive but that didn’t lessen the uneasy feeling twisting his stomach. Their friendship had been the truest of his life, and now he was abusing it and gaslighting her in ways that would have made his instructors back at the Centre so very proud.
From a very young age, he had been conditioned and trained by his parents, both covert Soviet operatives based out of East Germany, not to feel guilt. He’d been taught never to get involved, to build walls, to never trust. He had taken those lessons to heart, especially after his mother and father had been betrayed and murdered. Their deaths had taught him the most painful lesson of all, and he’d promised himself that someday he would revenge their deaths.
Someday? Blyat. Never.
All these years later and he was no closer to solving the mystery of his parents’ gruesome deaths. It had been an inside job. Of that, he was certain. The KGB had been in turmoil at the time his parents had been killed. As members of the inner circle, they had been high value targets. Their deaths had signaled the end of an era and the beginning of a newer, leaner and even more corrupt intelligence agency.
Kostya had wasted no time in pledging himself to the FSB, the KGB’s successor agency. He had been just a boy, but he’d been determined to prove himself. It hadn’t taken him any time at all to get out into the field where he had excelled in a specific kind of covert work. Mokroye delo. Wet work. Assassinations. Cleanings.
But he’d never been good at playing the kinds of games that were necessary to stay alive inside the agency. He didn’t like politics, and he sure as shit wasn’t going to lick boots to climb the ranks and move from the field into a cushy foreign post on an official diplomatic miss
ion.
So, when the rumor of his impending demise had reached his ears, Kostya had quickly pivoted and sought employment with Maksim. Moscow’s most ruthless criminal godfather had been in need of a man with Kostya’s skillset. Once hired by Maksim, he had jumped at the chance to leave the country and leave it fast.
A clean identity and a fresh start in the United States.
He had made a good life for himself here in Houston. But he had a gnawing ache in the pit of his stomach that wouldn’t go away. It was a foreboding sensation he couldn’t escape. He had a bad, bad feeling that his good days in Houston were numbered.
And the countdown was starting tonight.
For weeks, there had been rumors circling the Houston underworld of a retaliatory cartel hit planned for someone close to Nikolai. Kostya had feared the hit might be meant for Vivian, now pregnant with the boss’s heir, but the truth had been even more earth shattering for him.
The intended target for tonight’s hit was Holly Phillips.
His fingers tightened around the steering wheel.
His jaw clenched.
My Holly.
He wasn’t an easily surprised man, not after all that he had seen, but his knees had gone weak and his stomach had lurched painfully when he had read the information in the file Finn Connolly had handed him during their earlier rendezvous.
The middle Connolly brother was neck deep in hot water after taking out a cartel hitman with a perfectly placed sniper shot during a shootout earlier in the summer. Now Finn was being blackmailed into helping the cartel with their Russian problem. Someone out there had informed the cartel that Holly and Nikolai shared the same father. Now the cartel wanted to send a message to Nikolai and the big boss back in Moscow by killing her: No one is safe.
If what the file said was true, if Holly and Nikolai were half-siblings, her life was about to get very complicated. She had grown up in a tangle of secrets and lies. Once the truth came out—and it would—she would be devastated.