| |
––––––––
I PACED BACK AND FORTH in my apartment, trying to burn off the energy that was coursing through my system. I felt as though I was going to blow a vein at any moment, but I couldn’t get out of here, couldn’t run to see what was happening in the rest of the city – I had to obey Mauro, and stay put.
He had told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was to remain right here while he tried to work out what was going on throughout the city, and especially with Kozlov. He was sure there was something up, and he was going to make sure he didn’t let anything happen to me as a result.
“You have to trust me,” he told me, as he pulled on his coat. “Stay here. I’ll check what’s happening on the streets, and I’ll get back to you.”
“You could get hurt—”
“Not as much as you could,” he replied, shaking his head. “You need to stay here. It’s the only way we can be sure you keep safe.”
I sighed. I wasn’t sure I believed him. How could I be sure I’d stay safe anywhere in this city, now that the Serbs seemed to have run out of patience waiting for me to make a choice? I needed to know what the hell was going on, and there was only one way I could do that – send Mauro out, let him get the feel of the city, find out what was going on out there.
I wished I could talk to Nadia, but I knew she was the last person I should be thinking of in that moment. Shit, I couldn’t believe she had really turned her back on me when I had been doing everything I could to help her. It just didn’t make any sense. She must have seen how sick it was, that she would leave after all we had been through, but maybe I had misread everything that had happened between us. Maybe I had seen more depth to our relationship than there ever had been. Maybe I had wanted it to be there, because I had put so much on the line to try and make sure that she was okay, and then...
I didn’t even have the end to that sentence yet. I had no idea what she had done. She could have run, sure, she could have put as much distance between me and her as she could, or maybe she was just putting on an act so she could come back to me once the heat was off. That was what I was clinging to with all my might, the belief that she might return when all of this was over.
Though, the more time passed, the more and more clear it seemed to become that she was just... gone. And that I was going to have to get used to it. I never thought that she could pull something like that, but honestly, maybe I needed to switch up my expectations of her, of everyone else around me.
It was far too easy for me to believe that people meant better than they did. Especially when it came to Nadia – Hell, from the moment I’d seen her, it had been like everything else had just vanished from my mind, all the focus I’d had on my father’s empire was gone, just like that. I couldn’t fight it, didn’t want to – I just knew I wanted her, and I would have done anything at all to make sure I had her.
And look where it had gotten me. I didn’t even know if she was safe, and that was enough to make me fucking sick – even if she wasn’t anywhere close to me, or New York, I wanted to know she had nothing to worry about. I wished I could have sent some of my men out after her, but I was sure Nikita would have clocked on and worked out that I was trying to track her down. And I doubted he would have taken too kindly to that.
And so, there I was, stuck in my apartment, unable to do anything but wait for some new information as I prayed Nadia and her father had made it out of the city okay. I couldn’t believe I was pulling for them to have left, but what choice did I have? If they had stayed, they would have been in even more danger, and I didn’t want that for her, for either of them. Nadia wasn’t part of this world, or at least, she hadn’t been until I had pulled her into it. It was only fair that she get out of it in one piece, never have to look back and see what she had left behind.
Would she miss me? I wished I could ask her that much. There was so much I wanted to say to her, even now – so much I wished I could have spoken out loud, before she was out of my life for good. That I loved her, that I was grateful she had been part of my life, that she had shown me there was more to me than I had ever thought. That I believed I could fall in love now, in a way I never had before, and that I had her to thank for that. I prayed she knew all of that already, I would never have been able to forgive myself if she had gone out there thinking I didn’t care for her...
But there was nothing I could do about that now. I had to hold steady and wait for information from Mauro, hope he was getting me what I needed. Pray the Serbs hadn’t done anything to hurt him. I hated not being able to push this forward myself, but Mauro was right, I needed to hide out and make sure I didn’t attract any more attention than I already had. Shit was already chaos right now, the last thing I needed was a bullet in my gut to turn it up to eleven on the bullshit scale.
I was going to pour myself a drink when my phone buzzed, and I snatched it up at once. I didn’t recognize the number, but that wasn’t exactly new – burner phones were a fact of life in this business, and I knew that whoever was on the other end just didn’t want me to know who they were. I answered it immediately.
“Hello?”
“Andreas?”
The voice that came down the line was muffled, as though whoever it belonged to was doing their best to disguise it; I frowned, trying to pick out more information about them through the strange front they were putting on.
“Yes?”
“You have enemies who are posing as friends,” the voice continued. Whoever it was, I was certain that they didn’t want me to hear their actual voice, and that bugged me – who the fuck was calling me with no intention of actually letting me hear what they had to say?
“Who?” I demanded.
“Not Nadia or her father.”
My spine prickled when I heard them say her name. I didn’t like that she seemed to have become a part of this. It wasn’t what she deserved, and I knew she was safer if fewer people knew about her.
The accent, that was what I was having a hard time placing – I couldn’t work out if it belonged to someone I knew or not. It sounded vaguely familiar, but that could have been because it was Eastern European – maybe Serbian? I’d heard enough of those the last few weeks to burn the memory of them into my head, and I couldn’t work out who with that kind of voice would have been willing to talk to me.
“How do you know that name?” I demanded. I couldn’t make sense of any of this, but I supposed that was the point – whoever it was on the other end of the line wanted me to have to dissect every word they said, and I needed to take it all in before they decided they were done with me.
“Look at the people closest to you,” the voice continued. “That’s all I can say.”
And with that, the line went dead, leaving me even more confused than I had been at the beginning of the call.
What the fuck were they talking about? Enemies posing as friends? What did that mean? Whoever it was seemed intent on making sure that I didn’t mistake Nadia as one of those people, but that didn’t clear up much in my head. What were they talking about? Who were they talking about? Was this just an attempt to get me even more confused than I had been before? They must have known that I was starved for information, that I would take anything I could get, but this – this was a lot more oblique than I had been prepared for.
I poured myself a bourbon and took a long sip. It was going to be one hell of a night, I could tell that much, and random phone calls from people on burners who didn’t even seem to want to use their real voices weren’t going to help with that. Mauro would have told me to get some sleep, but I knew there was no way that I would have managed. I’d just toss and turn, thinking of her, of Nadia, of how much I wanted to make sure that she was okay, and that would have been useless.
The people closest to me. There weren’t many of those – I considered the few I had as I turned those words over in my head. Maybe someone who worked for me at one of the clubs? Or maybe—
Before I could think on it any longer, my phone rang again, and this time, Mauro was the one calling me. I answered at once.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. I had been waiting long enough, and I had no idea where he had gone, what exactly he had been up to all this time. I needed to know what was going on, even if it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
“I haven’t been able to get hold of Nadia yet,” he explained, and he sounded almost out of breath, as though he had been sprinting right before he had put in this call. What was going on? Was he all right?
“Are you okay—”
“I’m fine,” he replied quickly, a little too quickly, as though he wanted to shut down any doubts I might have had before they could take root in my mind. He knew I could get way too far into paranoia if I wasn’t careful, and that would only lead to chaos in the state that I was in right now. I needed to hold myself together, no matter how hard it might be. I felt like an animal locked up in a zoo, but I wouldn’t stay like this for long – as soon as I found out what was happening with Nadia, I would be able to relax a little.
“Do you have eyes on her?” I pressed. I had no idea how he could, given that we hadn’t known she was going to make a break for it until it was too late, but I desperately hoped he would say yes.
“I don’t have much, but the guys I do have last spotted her getting off a plane in St. Petersburg,” he explained. “They think she’s going to carry on to Serbia. I wouldn’t be surprised if she passes straight through and we lose her after that.”
“What guys do you have down there?” I asked, confused. All the way in Serbia? It wasn’t like we had any connections down there, any reason for him to bother with a place like that. What was the point of him having contacts all the way out there?
“Just old friends,” he replied quickly. A little too quickly. I frowned.
“Do I know them?”
“No, they were – I worked with them before I met your father.”
“Can we trust them?” I asked. I didn’t want to tell him about the phone call I had received yet, no need to worry him with something as heavy as that, but I needed to know he wasn’t putting too much of our information on the line.
“Of course we can,” Mauro shot back, and he sounded a little annoyed that I was even questioning him on that. But come on – did he really expect me to just let him tell anyone what was happening right now? This was serious. We were in the midst of something huge, something bigger than anything we had dealt with before, and there was no way that I was going to allow him to brush me off as though I was crazy for wanting more.
“Then tell me who they are,” I replied, trying to keep my voice steady. He paused, hesitated – and I felt a rush of panic hit me. Why couldn’t he just tell me? What the fuck was going on right now?
“I’ll explain it all once I’m back at your place,” he promised. “It’s hard to get into over the phone. I’ll speak to you soon, okay?”
And with that, he hung up before I could say another word. I didn’t like this – didn’t like it one fucking bit. But I knew that Mauro wasn’t going to let me choose how all of this went. He had his contacts, he had a life before my father and I.
And right now, I didn’t like that one little bit. I needed to know everything that was happening, everyone who was involved, and the way he was dancing around answering my questions didn’t sit right to me. I needed to get him to tell me what was happening, but I had no clue how I was meant to do that, not really. If Mauro had secrets, it was going to take a hell of a lot for me to get them out of him.
But maybe I needed to push a little harder to make sure that I did. Because I couldn’t risk having anyone keeping shit from me right now – least of all the one person I was meant to be able to trust above everyone else.
