Talk about an empty existence.
Those years had taught me that focusing on independence, self-sufficiency, compassion, empathy, and kindness was far more meaningful than being a face people recognized and adored.
And now look at me.
I was once again somebody’s property. I’d signed another contract, giving someone else full reign over me.
Uh-uh, no. Stop that. He doesn’t own you. Don’t let him think he has any authority over you whatsoever.
Right. I’d made a lot of progress over the years. I’d gained self-confidence and built up my inner strength. I wasn’t going to let one irredeemable arsehole make me question myself.
I thought I’d seen glimpses of Nico’s humanity yesterday. Parts that had called out to me. When he’d spoken about his businesses, he’d acted…proud. No matter what nasty, apathetic oaths he’d delivered after that, I wasn’t totally buying his materialistic, indifferent attitude. Especially since he’d seemed humbled to be responsible for providing hundreds of people with paychecks. I could tell he’d wanted to come off as arrogant when he’d said that, but his tone hadn’t quite landed.
Honestly? I thought he was secretly honored to be in the important position he was in.
Another glimpse of his miniscule humanity?
He’d noticed my anxiety when the reality of leaving Russia had slammed into me like a head-on collision, and he’d brought me a drink. As if it was the only way he’d known how to help in that moment.
He’d actually wanted to help.
But none of that excused his cruel words.
One good deed did not redeem his verbal slaps to the face. His malice.
I wanted nothing to do with the man.
After locating a small shop where I could convert my currency, I meandered along the broken sidewalks of Rovinj, one of the small towns located in the Istria territory. The buildings on both sides of the road were painted in bright white, yellow, and red. Boats dotted the watery landscape near the marina to my right. The town’s cathedral towered above the horizon, briefly blocking the sun as I shielded my eyes to gaze up at its splendor.
Walking about in public like this without a guard was…freeing.
It wasn’t often I was without personal security. Even when I’d been away for secondary school and university, Batya had made sure I’d always been “looked after.” And in Moscow, Dimitri kept a watchful eye on Batya and myself at all times.
Dimitri.
I’d known Batya’s righthand man since I was eleven, when he’d started working in my father’s organization. We’d become friends over the years, confidantes. He’d never divulged where he’d come from, never spoken of his past. I’d sensed pain in his heart, but I’d never pushed. Having some scars myself, I knew how debilitating it could be to peel back that layer of skin where all your secrets were kept.
Our last conversation in my father’s house, just before the shooting started, replayed in my head.
His hand wrapped around mine, squeezing almost painfully. Ever since we were young, Dimitri tended to forget his own strength.
“You don’t have to do this, kotyonok.” Kitten. That had been his name for me as long as we’d known each other. To be honest, I’d always thought it a bit demeaning, but Russians used it as a term of affection. “I can speak to your father. We can come up with a different solution.”
I offered him as reassuring of a smile as I could manage. “Batya has asked this of me. I must respect his wishes. You know he is not an impulsive man, Dimitri. He has a plan.”
The enforcer’s eyes glinted as he glanced over my shoulder at my new husband. “Perhaps your father’s judgment is skewed in this one case. With all the pressure he’s under, it’s easy to make mistakes. And I don’t trust this American.”
“I don’t either. That is why we have to trust Sergei. He has never done wrong by either of us.”
A vein popped in Dimitri’s neck as he continued to lock eyes with Nico. “I don’t want to let you go. Not with him. Not without me watching over you.”
It was moments like this that I questioned whether or not Dimitri’s feelings ran deeper than friendship. Mine never had. But sometimes he got a look in his eyes or held a hug for far too long. He was overly protective of me, but something told me that wasn’t brotherly safeguarding. Even though I sincerely hoped it was because I’d never be able to return those types of feelings for this man.
“I will be fine,” I insisted. “Batya would never have allowed this if he thought I could be hurt by this man.”
Dimitri cradled my cheek in his large hand, his dark brown eyes intent on mine. “Pain comes in many different forms, kotyonok. Understand this, I will gut him and hang him from a tree if he even thinks of bringing any level of pain down on your head.”
I got a little antsy at the leashed hostility in his words. With Dimitri’s scarred face and four-fingered left hand, he looked like violence personified. I had to remind myself it was what made him good at his job—protecting my father and eliminating all threats to him. Even if the savagery in his eyes made me nervous at times, he had always been there when I’d needed him. The only friend I’d had for a long time.
“Save that for the Voiny,” I said with a small grin.
He frowned, not satisfied.
My fingers circled his wrist. “I will be all right. I promise.”
He closed his eyes and kissed my forehead. “Do zavtra.” Till tomorrow.
It was the only goodbye we’d ever said to each other. He used to come into my bedroom at night when I was younger after I’d woken up screaming from another nightmare. Although highly inappropriate for someone in his position, nothing untoward had ever happened. He’d simply let me cry on his shoulder, rub my back, and soothe me back to sleep. But he’d always whispered those words before leaving the room. Do zavtra. Letting me know that he was never far away, that he would always be there for me.
“Do zavtra,” I repeated.
I had to choke back tears as I forced the memory to fade. I would see him and Batya again. Until that day came, I would keep my chin up and my hope alive that everything in my world would soon be right again.
Despite my lack of security, I got the odd sensation that even as I strolled down the streets of Rovinj, I was being watched. The hairs on the back of my neck were tingling. But it was surely nothing more than the locals noticing the lonely tourist milling about.
Local merchants wheeled their carts along the sidewalks, offering tastes of the local fare and discounts on handmade trinkets. Instead of hopping into a café for a sit-down meal, I decided to take my chances on a rickety-looking cart with an old, mustached man with a sweet smile at the helm.
And if you had gotten a whiff of the divine smell wafting from his cart, you would have stopped to make inquiries, too.
In a coastal town like this, I knew locals were used to eating fish, oysters, and mussels for breakfast, but that had never been my schtick. I just couldn’t stomach seafood first thing in the morning. Whatever the man had cooking there smelled like just the ticket.
The only problem was…I didn’t speak Croatian.
From past experience, I knew that some Croatian people did speak Ukrainian. Before going to England for secondary school and university, I learned a bit of the language while I was in primary school in Russia.
Technically, I was originally from Siberia. The harshest region of Russia, by far. But I’d made it a point over the years to avoid all reminders of where I came from.
Primarily because I almost died there.
I pointed at the paper bags of baked confections on the man’s cart. “What is this?” I asked in broken Ukrainian, hoping he at least knew a few words.
My heart sank when he frowned. Then he looked to his left where a curly-headed girl with freckles that looked to be around ten years old stood smiling at me. I hadn’t even noticed her hiding back there.
The man said something to the girl, and she nodded. “You speak English?�
� she asked with a marked accent.
I beamed at her, relieved. “Yes.”
“This is called fritule,” she explained in English. “It is like…what do you call it…a…do-nut? But the part in the middle.”
“A doughnut hole?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Yes. Doughnut…hole. It is baked, with powdered sugar on top. Inside is rum and raisin.”
I handed over my kuna. “I’ll take two, please.”
Best. Breakfast. Ever.
What the hell is she doing now?
I’d been following Lexi through the streets of Rovinj for the last hour or so, only to discover that her actions were completely erratic. She was all over the place, moving from one merchant cart to the next, stopping to take selfies at every scenic overlook she passed, and breezing into storefronts where she spoke to any local who approached her.
Through it all, her smile never left her face.
Even as the little girl from the first cart—where she’d bought some kind of food that she’d ended up licking off her fingers—trailed closely in her wake. Lexi never seemed to mind the child’s presence. In fact, she was pointing things out to her, asking questions, making her giggle. She’d even bought her a bracelet from one of several artisan carts they’d passed.
The business brunch appointment I’d had scheduled that morning had to be pushed back to a dinner meeting, due to my associate missing his connecting flight in Berlin. I’d gone straight back to the villa after receiving that phone call to find the house empty and Lexi gone. And the stack of cash I’d left for her in the same spot on the kitchen counter.
So, she was using her own personal money to buy all that stuff?
Not that she was dropping loads of cash on Dolce purses or anything. Those bracelets and snacks were far from expensive. But why hadn’t she taken the cash? I thought she would have been thrilled to divest me of the money she assumed I was so obsessed with. The money I’d given her every reason to think I was obsessed with.
I approached a cart that Lexi and the girl had just purchased matching hair clips at before skipping off down the street together.
“Parli Italiano?” I asked the aging woman standing behind the cart. Do you speak Italian?
She inclined her head. “A little,” she answered in the same language.
There was a small portion of the Croatian population that spoke Italian, enough for me to get by and conduct business every time I visited the country.
I nodded my head in Lexi’s direction. “The blonde woman,” I said in Italian. “What language were you speaking with her?”
Because while Lexi and the little girl spoke English to each other—I’d heard it clear enough from where I watched them—she had spoken to this woman in a different language.
“The lady speaking Ukrainian,” the woman replied. “My Ukrainian better than my Italian.”
Ukrainian? I guess that wasn’t a huge surprise, since she was obviously fluent in Russian. But her English was so good and her Russian accent so slight, I knew she had to have been educated elsewhere.
“And she very generous,” the woman added before I could walk away. She waved down at her handmade hair accessories, and what looked like coin purses, on her cart, smiling brightly. “She only buy two clips but pay for ten. She a gentle soul, that one.”
That brought me up short. Generous. Gentle soul.
Huh.
Not the first words I would have used to describe my bride.
Now, flippant and antagonistic? That sounded about right.
I mean, what was the woman’s deal? Be-friending children? Essentially donating money to random people? Bouncing around all over a foreign town like she didn’t have a care in the world? Like she wasn’t the daughter of a Russian mobster and hadn’t escaped gunfire the day before? And why the hell was she taking all those pictures if she wasn’t going to post any of them online?
I re-checked her Instagram account on my phone.
Nope, not a single one.
Her last post was from three days ago.
Yes, I’d done some stalking on the plane last night after she’d daggered me with her sapphire eyes and left me for dead. Until Ace got back to me, all I had to go off of was anything that was already public information, including her Instagram account, which I had to admit, wasn’t what I’d been expecting. There weren’t a bunch of pictures of her and her friends partying it up in obscenely tight dresses, drinks in their hands, with vapid captions like, “I just love to laugh and have a good time.” I remembered seeing pictures like that of her during her modeling days.
But her Instagram was nothing at all like that.
There were artistic, scenic pictures with inspirational quotes and captions. Funny pictures and videos of babies doing hilarious things. Encouraging stories from real-life “heroes,” as she referred to them. And every selfie she posted was tasteful and often of her standing in front of some gorgeous background.
There wasn’t a single one where she was intentionally flashing her body.
It was a complete divergence from what I remembered of her public image when she’d been at the top of the modeling world and featured on the cover of almost every magazine. Back then, you would have had to have been living under a rock to miss that body. Almost every part of her had been on display at one point or another.
Though she’d never done nude shots. I specifically recalled her stating in an interview once that all of her contracts back then had “no nudity” clauses in them.
But little had been left to the imagination with some of the outfits she’d been photographed in.
Back then, her light blond hair had been long, about halfway down her back. Now, it barely reached her shoulders and was cut in more of a blunt style. She had bangs, too. The look made her appear older, but in a good way. Sophisticated, almost. Chic. Stylish.
Not going to lie. I liked this new look a hell of a lot better. It suited her.
All right, it was sexy as fuck.
There, I said it.
When I realized Lexi had gotten too far down the street, I sped up, striding after her at a brisk pace. I couldn’t explain why, but I didn’t like her being out of my sight. Most likely because if anything happened to her, my deal with Sergei would be off. I needed to keep her safe, so he would sign over his full shares of Kozlov Industries at the end of this.
That was the only reason why I cared whether or not anyone bothered her. That she wasn’t being followed. Except by me, of course. Like it or not, she was basically my responsibility now. And I didn’t shirk on my responsibilities.
Then what the hell have you been doing for the last ten years?
I caught back up to Lexi and watched her walk under an archway that led to a wine bar. Before she disappeared inside the building, she leaned down to give the little girl shadowing her a big hug and kiss on the cheek. Both of them actually looked a little crestfallen as they parted.
My body was operating on its own as I followed her into the wine bar. I had no clue what was compelling me to be near her—keep her close—but I couldn’t seem to shut off that part of my brain.
She took a seat at a small table on the outdoor patio, right next to the stone wall that overlooked the Adriatic Sea. She snapped a few quick pictures of the view before dropping her phone onto the table and just staring out at the water. It was nearing lunchtime, which in this country, meant everyone already had a glass of red wine on their table.
My feet were moving before I even knew what was happening. “It seems I’m not the only one who prefers to drink alone.”
Her head snapped around. I couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses, but I had no doubt she was glowering at me. “And I’d like to keep it that way.”
I pulled out the chair opposite her and sat down, taking a sip of her wine as I did so. “You’ve sure been a busy girl this morning, Mrs. Rossetti.”
“Don’t call me that.” She swiped the glass out of my hand and returned it to her side of the t
able. “What was I supposed to do? Stay home and knit?”
“I couldn’t care less what you do,” I lied. “But getting attacked or kidnapped wouldn’t exactly fit into my schedule, so it would be nice to at least know where you’re going. That way I can trace your steps if you do happen to disappear.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, her fingers squeezing her biceps in obvious annoyance. “We aren’t in Russia anymore. No one here knows who I am.”
“Your father’s compound was attacked by an unknown enemy yesterday with unknown intentions,” I grated in a low voice. “You have no idea who knows you. Running off on your own was a dumb move, legs.”
In fact, the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. She had been exposing herself so carelessly all morning. Had she no survival instincts? No sense of self-preservation?
She whipped off her sunglasses and pinned me with a seething expression. “This isn’t the first threat my father has ever received. Far from it. And I’m pretty sure you know that. I’m not going to crawl into a hole every time a security risk arises.”
“A security risk?” I hissed. “Trigger-happy men with automatic weapons converged on your father’s property. Don’t you find it disconcerting that those men got through all of your father’s guards and the high-tech security system? That tells me that these men, whoever they are, are smart and determined. And that combination is always dangerous.”
“Danger has always lurked around my father. It’s nothing I’m not used to.”
My eyebrow went up. “How do you know they weren’t there for you? An enemy could demand a lot of money for your ransom.”
Her eyes cleared for a moment, as if that possibility had never occurred to her. “I never go anywhere without my own security.”
Before I could ask her what the hell that meant, she snapped open her purse and discreetly tipped it in my direction. Tucked inside at the very bottom was a small silver gun, what looked to be a .357 magnum revolver.
Booze and Bullets (Brooklyn Brothers #3) Page 6