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AS SOON AS I EXPLAINED what had happened to Nadia and her father, I watched as Mauro’s face darkened, something shifting inside of me to a deeper, less simple tone.
“You’re sure that’s what happened?” he asked, and I nodded.
“I’m sure,” I replied, and I rolled my shoulders back, trying to prepare myself for whatever it was that was going to come next. I needed to make sure I didn’t fail, that I didn’t let any of this get away from me. I had to make certain I saw it through and got Nadia and her father out of this. Because there was no way that I was going to let the Serbians pull any shit that involved them – if this was between Kozlov and I, then it was going to stay that way.
“I’ve heard of this happening before,” he continued, shaking his head as he slumped down into a chair. “Serbs making sure that traitors don’t get too far from them. It’s not a new tactic, but it’s an effective one. Keeps people in line, keeps them scared, keeps them ready to do anything to avoid it.”
I paced back and forth in his office, trying to gather my thoughts, gather myself. I couldn’t make sense of any of this. It seemed too overstuffed inside my head, for Nadia to have been pulled into this the way she had – just dragged out of Miami and dumped back in New York. And for what? Did they see her as a traitor? Her father? If they did, why? Was it because Nadia was talking to me? I wished that I could find all of it out without having to go to Kozlov for the information, but I knew he would hold back on giving me anything at all if he could. He wanted me to be running around, worried and unsure of the truth.
“What do we do now?” I asked Mauro. I felt helpless, a sensation that I loathed more than anything in the entire world. I needed to have a plan. I always had a plan, and there was no way that I was going to give Kozlov the satisfaction of knowing that he had managed to twist me into such a mess I had lost myself.
“I think you need to talk to him,” Mauro replied. “I don’t see any other way to work out what he’s trying to do here. I know that you don’t want to, but you have to speak with him, see what his plan was with all of this.”
“His plan was to get to me,” I growled. “Even though we agreed that we were going to leave off until we got a chance to meet again.”
“He’s going to play it like he’s just taking care of his own business,” Mauro warned me. “And once he knows you care that much about what happens to Nadia and her father, it could make it worse.”
“It could,” I muttered, rubbing a hand over my face. That was the last thing I needed right now, something spinning further out of control than it already had. But I needed to keep Nadia safe, and there was no way that I was going to be able to do if I didn’t show Kozlov that I wouldn’t put up with any of the shit that he was trying to pull.
“I know it’s not easy,” Mauro told me, and I could see a flicker of doubt pass over his face – he wasn’t sure if I could handle this, handle the enormity of everything that had been laid out in front of me. He might have trusted me, but he also knew me too well to see this as anything other than a risk – he was sure that he had reason to be concerned. He’d never seen me this invested in a woman before, after all, and I couldn’t remember the last time that I had felt this kind of connection with someone outside of my family.
But Nadia – with Nadia, it was different. She made it impossible to think of anything other than making sure that I could keep her safe. I wanted her in my arms right now, wanted to move her into my apartment and just lock the doors and tell the entire world to fuck off and leave her alone. That protective urge ran deep inside of me, and I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do to shut it down.
If I had been a little colder, a little more calculating, I might not have been in this mess. And Nadia might have been able to stay out of it, too. But when I thought of her, I knew that I couldn’t just let her go – and that was our problem. I would bet that Kozlov kept his relationships casual and thoroughly removed from his business, if he had them at all. Maybe I should have taken a leaf out of his book.
Too late for that now. I needed to speak to him, find out what the hell he had planned, where the hell he was taking all of this. Exactly what he intended to do now that he had Nadia back in the city, after so long away.
I had wanted her return to New York to be something that both of us could enjoy. Wanted it to be something to celebrate. But here, now, Kozlov had managed to get in the middle of it, and it might just cost us her peace of mind. I would never forgive myself if she ended up completely wrecked from this, but I had no clue how she was going to recover from the kidnapping that he had put her and her father through for the sake of scaring them straight.
I grabbed my phone and stepped out of the office. I didn’t want Mauro to hear what I was going to say to Kozlov, though I was sure he would hover close enough to ensure that I didn’t get us both killed. I had wanted out of this world, out of the dark underbelly of this city, but this man seemed intent on pulling me back in, and I had no idea what it would take to get it through to him that I wasn’t going to be pulled down with him.
I dialed his number and kept pacing as I waited for him to answer. He must have known I was going to call for him. He knew that what he had done was utterly over the line, but I had no doubt he was going to play it all off as though he had just been working on his own terms, and that I shouldn’t take it personally. There was no way I was going to let him try that shit, not with me, not now he had involved Nadia in this. She was meant to be off-limits, and I intended to do anything that I could to make certain he got that through his thick skull.
The phone rang, and rang, and for a moment, I thought that he was going to ignore me entirely – but then, all at once, it was picked up.
“Hello?”
My heart froze. That wasn’t Kozlov. No, it was...
“Nadia?” I breathed, panic lancing through me. There was no way. No way this could be happening. No way that she could be with him. How had he found her? Where was she? She sounded shaky, but how frightened was she right now?
“It’s me,” she replied. She sounded muted, tense, as though trying to swallow down whatever panic was in her system right now.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded. I was angry, but not at her – at whoever the hell had put her in this situation, at whoever seemed so intent on making her life harder and more dangerous than it needed to be.
I heard a fumbling on the other end of the line, and a moment later, Kozlov’s voice replaced Nadia’s.
“Good evening, Andreas.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” I spat. “Where do you have her?”
I was already planning to get down there and get her the fuck away from this psycho, but he just let out a small chuckle. That only made me angrier – did he have any idea how angry I was that he had pulled her into this? She was innocent, for fuck’s sake, she had done nothing wrong, and there was no way in hell that I was going to let him make her a part of this...
“We were just chatting about her trip back from Miami,” he explained. His voice was infuriatingly calm, and I wanted to reach through the phone and throttle him for daring to speak to me that way. I hated this. Hated him. I should never have let Nadia go back to her apartment, I should have sent guards right away, made sure he never got near to her or her father.
“Though it doesn’t seem like she remembers much of it, do you?” he remarked. I could imagine him looking over at Nadia as he said it, and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I hated that he was close to her right now, and I would have done anything to pull her away, pull her out of that. But I was stuck here, on the other end of the line, trying to work out what it was this man really wanted so I could ensure that I gave it to him.
“Well, it’s a long journey,” he continued. “I suppose that it’s only natural that she’d have slept through most of it.”
I clenched my fist at my side. He had drugged her, kidnapped her, brought her back here, and now he was acting like she’d just been dozing on the plane or something?
“You need to get out of there,” I growled at him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You can’t pull shit like this, it’s beyond the pale—”
“Maybe you should keep your men from sniffing around my clubs, then,” he replied, his voice suddenly arched with anger. I felt a shiver run down my spine. He was serious. But I hadn’t been looking at his clubs, not really – I had just thought about asking him to allow us some space there, thinking that it would make for a good chance for us to consolidate our new allyship.
But now that he had pulled this, I didn’t know if I could keep going with anything that had been running through my head. It was one thing for him to start shit with me, and it was another entirely for him to try and drag Nadia and her father into this too. He knew that what he was doing was something that I would never in a million years have allowed if I had known anything about it, and I intended to do what I could to make that clear.
“You need to leave her alone,” I growled, and I meant it. If I had to drag him out of there myself, I would do it. He clearly didn’t understand just how important Nadia was to me, but I was all too happy to remind him if that’s what it took.
“Or maybe you need to do a better job looking out for her,” he replied. And, just like that, before I could get another word out, he hung up the phone.
Leaving me standing there, knowing I would do anything to get Nadia out of that situation. Anything.
Anything at all.
