CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 

 

Kiera

My heart was thudding in my chest, and I struggled to push Nikolai away. I knew that I was probably blowing my cover, but I didn’t care. All I could think about was how bad his breath smelled, and how close I was to his double chin, and the way he had laughed about breaking girls. I wanted away from him, and I was going to get away, no matter what I did.

But Nikolai was strong for an old, fat guy, and this time, I couldn’t get free. His fingers dug into my skin.

I shoved at his chest with my free hand.

He grabbed that hand too. “What is wrong?”

“I just want to leave,” I managed.

“Have I frightened you?” His eyes lit up at the prospect. My fear excited him.

I was disgusted. And even more afraid.

And then Demetrius was there, yanking Nikolai away from me, pressing the older man back into the table. “I think the girl said that she wanted to leave,” he said.

I had never been so relieved in my life. I wanted to throw my arms around Demetrius, and I wanted him to take me out of here, away from that horrible man.

“Let go of me,” said Nikolai. “Don’t you know who I am?”

Demetrius backed up, but he still stood between Nikolai and me. “All I know is that she sounded distressed.”

Nikolai straightened his suit. “You. I know you.”

Demetrius flinched. “We’ve never met.”

“You’re a Gallo,” said Nikolai. He cocked his head to one side. “And yet you were also the cop under the hat at my office last week.”

Uh oh. This couldn’t be good. Nikolai recognizing Demetrius was a bad, bad thing.

Nikolai spun to face me. “And you? Why are you here? Are you part of this?”

I swallowed.

He pointed at me. “You are playing me, yes? Using her for some purpose… But what is it you want?” Then he turned back to Demetrius, his mouth curving into a smile. “This is about that girl, isn’t it? The other Gallo man—the bald one—he come to me weeks ago about a girl. Natasha, I think it was. I didn’t know who she was before that, but then I find out. Now, I know her. You are trying to get her back?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Demetrius, but his voice wasn’t strong.

“The first time you were distracting me while you looked in my office building,” he said. “Trying to find the girl in there. But you couldn’t. So, I bet you have tried to sneak into the bigger building tonight, haven’t you? There’s no way you got past my security.”

Well, he was drawing the wrong conclusions now, but they were just barely the wrong conclusions. He knew too much. He was onto us. There was no way that we could—

“I think I’ll move Natasha,” he said. “I think I’ll put her into high security. You tell that bald Gallo that I will never give his girl back. Never. In fact, I am going to groom her to be my personal girl. I will use her. All my men will use her. We will use her until she dies, and he will never see her again.”

* * *

 

Demetrius

I took Kiera back to the hotel, but when I tried to take her back to her room, she said she didn’t want to be alone, so I took her to my room.

She stood in the doorway, hugging herself, and I walked around, pacing in front of the couch. Everything was fucked.

I looked up at her.

She was chewing on her thumbnail. “He was so gross, you know?”

I ran a hand through my hair. Fuck. Here, the whole time, I’d been thinking about how much I didn’t like watching her flirt with him. I never thought about what it was like for her.

“And when he grabbed me, I got so scared.” She blinked hard. There were tears in her eyes.

I crossed the room to her and gathered her into my arms.

She clung to me, buried her face against my chest, and her shoulders shook.

I rubbed her back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let you do it. I’m sorry.”

She pushed away, wiping at her face. “No, I’m okay. I’m being a baby. I should have been able to handle it.”

“Kiera, he’s a dangerous man.”

“He didn’t do anything to me. Not really.” She hugged herself again. “But I kept thinking about him touching me. I could smell his breath, and it was horrible, and I kept thinking about him trying to kiss me, and it was awful.”

I went to her again. I wrapped my arms around her. I kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry.”

She shut her eyes and let me hold her.

We stayed like that for several minutes, and I liked the way she felt there, small and soft against me. I wanted to hold her and protect her forever.

But then the door flew open, and Blaze stalked in with Ambrose and Cass on his heels.

Kiera and I broke apart. She went to one side of the room, and I went to the other.

“What the hell is this text?” said Blaze.

Oh, right, I forgot I’d sent that. I’d sent a mass text saying, Armageddon, which was our code for the mission basically being destroyed. Because it was. On top of whatever I’d subjected Kiera to, we were in deep shit. Everything was screwed.

I gestured to the couch in my suite. “Maybe you guys should sit down.”

Ambrose and Cass did.

Blaze just glared at me. “What the fuck did you do?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Nikolai made me. He saw me, and he put things together. He’s moving Natasha, and he’s on high alert.”

“Why did he see you? You were only supposed to be there to watch Kiera,” said Blaze.

“He went after Kiera,” I said. “He grabbed her, and she was fighting him off. I stepped in. That’s when he saw me. And he remembered the fact that Matteo had talked to him, and he remembered Natasha, and basically everything is fucked.”

“Well goddamn,” said Blaze.

“So, what’s that mean?” said Ambrose. “Does that mean that we regroup and try to make another plan?”

I massaged the bridge of my nose. “I don’t know. I can’t think of how to proceed. Our plan was contingent on Natasha being in that big room with all the other girls. We just spent days camped out eavesdropping on him to get that information. Now, she’s going to be in high security, and I can’t think of how we’re going to get to her.”

“You saying that we’re giving up?” said Cass. “We’re done?”

“The money’s for killing Nikolai,” said Blaze. “We still going to kill Nikolai?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well,” said Blaze, “we don’t need five people to kill Nikolai. If I’m still blowing him up, maybe I want a bigger cut.”

“Hey.” Ambrose stood up. “We just helped you place those charges. That should count for something.”

I held up my hands. “I will find out some way to make sure everyone is compensated, even if I just take Nikolai out with a sniper rifle or something.”

“What about Natasha?” said Cass.

“What about the other girls?” said Kiera.

I sighed.

“This is on you,” said Blaze, shaking his head at me. “You fucked this up.”

“I had to help Kiera,” I said. “I couldn’t let her try to fight of Nikolai on her own.”

“Maybe you should have,” Kiera said in a small voice.

My head snapped up, and I gaped at her. “You kidding me? You were crying—”

“I was not.” Her eyes flashed. “I could have handled it. I was handling it. You don’t always have to rescue me, Danger. I’m not a kid.” She tore across the room, threw open the door, hurled herself out of it, and slammed it.

I stared after her, completely thrown. What the hell? She had needed me. Before everyone came in, she’d been in my arms, and she had needed someone to take care of her. I knew it, and so did she. What was this fucking denial of that? There was no reason for her to be ashamed of how she’d felt. She was smaller and weaker than Nikolai, and it was utterly rational for her to have been frightened of him.

“Why don’t you just hit that and be done with it?” said Blaze. “Maybe then you wouldn’t be screwing up the entire job because you want in her pants.”

I turned a sour face on him. “You don’t understand anything, do you, Blaze?”

“Oh, come on, it’s obvious that you have a chubby for her,” said Blaze. “And you keep screwing everything up—”

“Out,” I said to him in a mild voice. “Everyone out.”

“I’m not leaving just because I’m telling the truth,” said Blaze.

I went over to the door and opened it. “You’re not telling the truth. You’re just an emotionally stunted overgrown adolescent who thinks with his dick and is convinced that everyone else does it too. You couldn’t care about a woman beyond wanting to fuck her, so that’s all I must be thinking about too. The fact is, Blaze, she is a kid. And she was scared. And I…” I was starting to get really pissed off. “Get out, okay?”

Ambrose and Cass were already heading for the door.

Blaze stayed in place.

“Maybe you can explain it to him, Ambrose,” I said. “Maybe you can tell him that no matter how many times you have sex with your wife, you don’t work her out of your system.”

Ambrose cleared his throat. “Uh, maybe you just don’t say anything else about our sex life, huh?”

“No, I understand what you mean,” said Cass. “And I think it’s sweet. I think Kiera really likes you too. And—”

“Cass, he wants us to leave.” Ambrose tugged her through the doorway.

Then it was just me and Blaze. We glared at each other.

“She’s not really a kid, is she?” said Blaze.

“Hey, you just keep your hands—”

“I knew you had it bad for her.” He shook his head at me, like he was disgusted. “I’m telling you, man. You just need to have some naked time. That will fix everything.”

“Out,” I said again.

He shrugged and left.

I shut the door after him.

I took several deep breaths. Okay, good, now I was alone. That was what I needed. Solitude.

I went over to the refrigerator in the kitchen of the suite and snagged a beer. I opened it. Took a long drink.

I slammed the beer down on the counter and went to the door.

Goddamn it. I was going after Kiera.