CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

Demetrius

“What are you doing here, Matteo?” I stood at the front door of my house. My hair was still wet from the shower.

Matteo was standing on the front stoop. He had a messenger bag slung over his portly frame. “I wanted to show you some stuff.”

“Look, it’s not really a good time—”

“You got a girl in there or something?” Matteo tried to peer around me into my living room.

I blocked him. “There’s no one here.”

“Then why you trying to keep me out?”

I didn’t answer. It was basically because I wanted to be alone with my thoughts about Kiera. Maybe dial up my sick little fantasy again, rub another one out.

That was pathetic.

I stepped away from the door and let Matteo inside. “Come on in,” I said.

He grinned. “Thanks, man.” And he stepped inside.

I shut the door after him.

He made himself at home, sitting down on the black leather couch in my living room. He opened up his messenger bag and took out a laptop. “Come on over here.”

I sighed. “What is it that you want to show me?”

“It’s just some stuff about Natasha.”

I groaned. “Jesus, Matteo, what more do you want from me? I’m on this stupid job for you. We’re going to get her back.”

“Are you?” He looked up at me, and his chin was trembling a little bit. “When?”

“This stuff takes time.”

“Well, it shouldn’t. It should happen sooner rather than later. Because I don’t know what they’re doing to her in there. She could already be…” His voice cracked and he turned his attention to his laptop.

I sighed again. God damn it. I went over to the couch and sat down next to him. “She’ll be okay.”

“No, she won’t. I know what these men do to girls like her. She’ll probably come out addicted to heroin and afraid of any man touching her ever again.”

I licked my lips. He was right. His little girlfriend was probably being raped viciously by all of the men in the Mikailhov family, and no matter what kind of person she was, she didn’t deserve that.

I had made no secret that I didn’t approve of Matteo trying to get a bride from Russia. I told him that these sorts of things were generally scams. The women would flirt with him, make him promises, and then ask for money, which he—being besotted—would shell out, and then abruptly, she’d disappear when she’d bled him dry. These women were con-artists, as far as I was concerned. Sure, maybe there were a few of them who were genuinely looking for love.

But even so, a woman who was willing to leave everything behind and marry some guy in America, even if he looked like my cousin, well, she was an opportunist, at the very least.

I had said all of this to him.

And when he first showed me the picture of Natasha, I was even more convinced it was a bad idea, because she was gorgeous. Thin and blond and tall. Her only “flaw” was a quirk that only served to soften her and make her more attractive, a gap between her front teeth.

She spoke English badly. In order to communicate with her, Matteo paid ten bucks a pop for an email translation. He paid to translate his emails and hers.

He had spent a fortune on emails with this woman.

I thought of her as a sunk cost, one he wasn’t yet willing to give up on.

Still. She was a human being, and—

Hell, the thing was, though, I couldn’t stop the Mikailhov family from doing this. They shipped in women and they sold them as sex slaves. It was disgusting, but what the hell was I supposed to do about it? The world was disgusting. There were terrible things happening every minute.

I rubbed my forehead. “I’m going to get her out of there.”

“You promise?”

“Listen, I think you should consider the fact that when Natasha is released, she’s not going to be pleased to see you. She might only want to go home.”

He drew back. “That’s why I came over here to talk to you. You don’t understand anything about what is between us. I need you to understand.”

I raised my gaze to the ceiling. “Matteo, I know that you think that there’s some kind of love story between the two of you, but—”

He shoved the laptop in my face, and pointed at the screen. There was a picture there of him with Natasha somewhere in the Ukraine. They were outside, the sky behind them, the wind blowing her hair over her face. He had his arm around her, and she was looking at him and smiling. “This is after I asked her to marry me.”

I wrinkled my forehead. The truth was that Natasha looked pretty much sublimely happy in the picture. So did Matteo. That went without saying. But she had this glow about her, her skin red-tinged from the wind and the brisk weather, and the look in her eyes…

It was adoration.

I slammed the laptop shut.

“I have more,” he said. “I want to read you some of the emails she sent.”

“Those are translated, and you don’t even know if the translator is actually translating what she’s saying.”

“Oh, please, Demetrius.” He glared at me. He opened the laptop again. “I can’t wait to see you again. I am counting the days until we can be together forever,” he read.

“Stop it,” I said. “I’m getting her out. I don’t know what more you want from me.”

“Let me find the one where we talk about how many kids we want to have.”

I got up from the couch and faced him down. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Why are you resistant?” He cocked his head at me. “Don’t you believe in love?”

I didn’t answer.

“You don’t, do you? You think everyone is just as manipulative and underhanded as you are.”

“I’m not manipulative and underhanded!” I folded my arms over my chest. “I’m the cousin that left the family, remember?”

He just raised his eyebrows at me.

I turned away from him, running a hand through my hair. “Look, you haven’t seen the things that I’ve seen. People are ugly, Matteo.”

“Not everyone,” he said.

“Not everyone,” I agreed. “There are always innocents for the wolves to prey on.”

“That’s what you think I am, isn’t it? A sheep. And you think Natasha’s a wolf?”

“I think…” I looked over my shoulder. “I don’t know, okay. I don’t know anymore.” Maybe she really did love him. Maybe, as improbable as it seemed, this bombshell of a woman was truly in love with my dumpy, balding cousin. Even though she could barely speak his language.

“Do you want to find love?” said Matteo.

I snorted. “Me? There’s no woman on earth that would love me.”

“That’s what I thought too,” said Matteo. “And then I met Natasha. And besides, you have nothing to worry about. You’re a big man, but it’s all muscle, and you have all your hair, and—”

“And I kill people for a living,” I said. “Women sense it when they get near me. They know that I’m dangerous.”

They were the sheep. I was the wolf.

* * *

 

Kiera

“Swanky, huh?” said Cass from the door to my hotel room. “I can’t believe we’re getting put up in this hotel in addition to the big payout we’re getting for pulling this job. This is the life, all right.” She came inside and sat down on my couch. The hotel rooms were all suites with little kitchenettes and whirlpool tubs. “I can see why Ambrose used to do this for a living.”

“This isn’t exactly what Ambrose did,” I said.

She shrugged. “He made a lot of money. Neither of us have to work. But he’s afraid of having anything too flashy. Doesn’t want to draw attention and get in trouble.”

I was hanging up clothes in my closet. We were going to be here for a while, so I was getting settled in. “Matteo’s bankrolling the hotel,” I said. “He’s Demetrius’s cousin. His girlfriend is the one we’re springing. But he’s not paying for the job. That’s a government hit.”

“Government?”

“Well, sort of, anyway. The guy who ordered it is high up in the government, but I don’t think he’s paying us with taxpayer’s money exactly, if you know what I mean.”

She made a face, absorbing this. “How long do you think we’ll be here?”

“Until we finish the job,” I said. “Maybe a week. Maybe two? I don’t really know how long it’s going to take.”

“Well, it’s nice for Ambrose and me,” she said. “Having to drive in from where we live would have been a pain. But you live close by, don’t you?”

I shrugged. “Well, with traffic and stuff, nothing is really close by in D.C.”

She considered. “Good point.” She sat back on the couch, putting her legs up on the coffee table.

There was a big TV hanging on the wall, another in the bedroom. I had something on—some reality show about makeovers—but when Cass had come in, I’d muted it.

She stared at the silently moving figures. “So, I just came by because I wanted to thank you.”

“Thank me?” I hung a pair of jeans over the lower bar of a hanger and stuck them in the closet. “What did I do?”

“You recommended us for this job.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “But is that really that big of a deal? I mean, you just said that you guys don’t need the money.”

“No, we don’t. But ever since Ambrose has known that he had a job, he’s been a completely different man. No more drinking at ten in the morning, no more stupid arguments. And our sex life… oh my God. You would not believe—”

“That’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to get into that.”

She laughed. “Oh, fine, fine. I thought you might be up for a little girl talk, but I’ll keep it to myself if it makes you uncomfortable.”

I hung up a shirt. “I’m not uncomfortable. Well… okay, a little. I have a hard time thinking of Ambrose that way.”

“I keep forgetting that you knew him before I did. Anyway, it’s kind of a relief to hear you say that. I guess I’d always wondered if there was more to the past between you two.”

“What?” I nearly dropped the next hanger. “There was never anything between Ambrose and me.”

“Okay.” She grinned. “It’s just that I know he didn’t save himself for me or anything. And it’s not as if you’re unattractive.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Whatever.”

She laughed. “You don’t have to look so disgusted. He is my husband.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “I just… I don’t get involved in that kind of thing. I don’t need to have that kind of distraction. I’m single, and I’m unattached, and I’m happy that way.”

“Okay,” she said. “I get that. But someday, you’re going to settle down, right?”

“Sure, someday,” I said. “In the distant future.”

“Right now you’re playing the field.”

“No, right now, I’m focusing on my work,” I said. “I don’t have time for men at all.”

“Oh.” She chewed on her bottom lip.

“What?” I said.

“It’s nothing. It’s none of my business.”

“No, go ahead.” My suitcase was empty. There was nothing more to hang up in the closet, so I came over to the couch and sat down next to her. “You can tell me.”

She removed her feet from the coffee table, sat up straight, and studied her palms. “It’s only that I wonder if you might be missing out a bit.”

“Missing out?”

“We only get one chance to be young and thin and pretty, you know? It can be a lot of fun. And if you wait around, putting it all off, how is that living?”

I stood up. “You’re right. It really is none of your business.”

“I’m sorry.” She stood up too. “I should go.”

“No, I…” I fidgeted with the end of my shirt. “I didn’t mean to be like that. There are just things… When you say that about living, you don’t understand that people’s actual lives could be on the line, and—”

“Like who? I know that you work for contract killers, but I thought—”

“I don’t mean those people.” I massaged the bridge of my nose. “You know what? Just let’s forget this whole conversation, okay?” I looked up at her, pleading. “Still friends?”

She nodded. “Sure.”

But she left after that anyway.