Page 4 of Kept in the Dark (Hitmen of Ulysses #2)

“That Matt’s family has ties to the Russian mob. That’s what my dad said. Or, they don’t call them mobs, do they?” she continues, distracted now as she whips her phone out of her wristlet, pulls up a browser, and types in her request. “I forget what he called it… brat-something. Bratwurst?”

“That’s a sausage.”

“ Bratvas ,” she says triumphantly, turning her phone around to show me the Wikipedia page.

I grab it from her hand and scan through the first couple of paragraphs.

“Organized crime… dissolution of the Soviet Union… Known for illegal sales of weapons and drugs, money laundering, prostitution, and human trafficking… This says they were a huge threat in the 90s. You weren’t even alive then. ”

“Yeah, whatever,” she shoots back, plucking her phone out of my hands.

“It says that as of a few years ago, the FBI classified Bratvas as a ‘criminal superpower.’ There are a ton of branches… it’s like families in the Italian Mafia.

And they’re not just in Russia; they’re all over the world, apparently.

So, Matt’s family could totally have Bratva ties. ”

I’m about to wave off her concern when I notice someone’s head turn as she says the word Bratva . Honestly, you really never know. I’ve seen enough gang violence victims in inner-city hospitals to know better than to write off organized crime as a possibility anywhere.

I lean in, keeping an eye on the man whose attention we seem to have caught. “Wikipedia maybe isn’t the best source for this kind of thing, huh?”

“True,” she says slowly. The music dies, and the band announces their next number, causing Emma to perk up. “Ooh! This is me and Nat’s song! Come dance!”

“Maybe later. Have fun.” I wave her off as she whirls onto the dance floor and tugs her girlfriend out of the line for the bar.

I watch them, smiling. After a moment, the table shakes again, but this time I have to swallow down my irritation at who fills the seat next to me.

I have to admit that Kyle is a handsome guy in his dark suit and contrasting tie that sets off his light eyes.

He has slicked back his light brown hair, which makes his forehead look higher and somehow creates the illusion that he’s taller.

He’s in good shape, and a bit shorter than me, even when I’m not wearing these ridiculous heels.

At first, I was honestly a little flattered when it seemed like he was seeking me out—offering to get me a drink at cocktail hour, sitting next to me at dinner, finding me in the hallway on my way back from the bathroom.

But he hasn’t made a ton of effort to actually talk to me, and every time I try to make polite conversation, his eyes scan the crowd like he’s searching for a better option, or he doesn’t care about what I have to say.

I’ve decided he’s the kind of guy who pretends to be taller than he actually is on a dating app, and his About Me bio says, “just ask lol.” I don’t mind a short king, but in my experience, if they lie about it, it means they’re self-conscious. And who has time for boring men with fragile egos?

At an even six feet tall myself, I have always been several inches taller than every man who lists his height as six-foot in his profile. Funny how that works.

Growing up, I felt monstrous, unfeminine, even goofy around my friends, who giggled with each other about the boys they crushed on, who could pick them up and carry them around. And as I grew and didn’t stop, I resigned myself to never feeling—to never being—a small girl.

But I don’t need to be; I am more than just my body. And I know that the only way to live in it is to do so unapologetically.

“Bet it looks like fuckin’ zebra stripes when they scissor,” Kyle jokes, eyes on my cousin and her dark-skinned girlfriend as they laugh and twist around each other, dancing together.

“Excuse me?” I demand.

He rolls his eyes. “It was just a joke; loosen up. Here,” he says, holding out a drink and shaking it until I reach for it.

I try not to frown at it or him. Earlier, when he asked if I wanted anything, I said no. It’s a clear liquid, and if it weren’t for the tiny bubbles, it could just be water. “What is it?”

“Vodka soda. Girls drink those, right?” he asks, leaning back on the chair and throwing his arm over the back of mine. His leg knocks into me, jostling me and making me spill some of the drink I didn’t want.

I place the glass on the table and grab my napkin. “I’m not much of a straight vodka/flavorless mixer kind of girl.”

“Maybe you should be,” he counters, letting his eyes drop as I pat at the small wet mark on my dress.

This time, I do frown—what does that mean?

—but when I glance up, the look on his face is odd, hard to put into words.

Not anything so extreme as disgust or desire, but somewhere in the realm of making an assessment, like he’s trying to decide what he wants to do.

The closest comparison I can come up with is the look on someone’s face at the end of a date before they pop the “wanna come back to my place” question.

When he sees that I’ve caught him, he wipes the expression clean and offers his charming smile—all teeth and lips. “What do you do again?”

We already talked about this. I know he’s an insurance adjuster, and he hates it. “I’m a travel nurse, mostly working in ERs.”

“Oh, sick. And you live around here? You said you’re new to the area, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So… you’re all alone?” he asks, and there’s a strange glint in his eye. “You need someone to show you around?”

“Um… no. I have some family nearby,” I say, just so he doesn’t think I’m sad and alone. I might as well be, because I don’t really plan on hitting any of them up just because of something as tenuous as a distant family tie, but he doesn’t need to know that.

He nods, but looks distracted again. “Right. So. You wanna dance?”

“No,” I say, leaning away as he sways into my space.

“Wanna go up to my room?” he forges on in a much lower voice, placing his hand on my thigh.

“Hey, Kyle, my man!” a passing bro exclaims.

Kyle straightens, looking startled, and immediately removes his hand and moves to the far edge of his seat. “G-Town,” he shouts back with a loud laugh, pointing with finger guns.

“G-Town, down to clown!”

While they go back and forth, singing the song of their people, I stare down at the place on my leg where his hand was, settling into a serious case of the ick.

The way he pulled back… it was like he didn’t want to get caught by his friend making a move on me .

Maybe that’s not what it was. Maybe I’m jaded. But I’ve worked in healthcare for nearly a decade, and it’s been whittling away at my faith in humanity for a while.

Regardless, any guy who doesn’t want to be seen showing interest in me isn’t worth my time.

He does nothing to disprove the assumption, either, as he waits until his friend is out of sight before leaning back to me and waggling his eyebrows.

“So? What do you say? I’ll give you a key, you can meet me up there in, like, 10 minutes?

” He reaches into his pocket and holds the electronic room card up between his index and middle fingers.

So we won’t be seen together. Called it.

I’m locked in indecision. The word “no” really ought to be a complete sentence, but he seems like the kind of guy who’d hurl appearance-based insults if you denied him, even if you did it gently.

And I’m already in such a weird mood, I know it would probably ruin my night. I don’t want to give him that power.

Before I can decide on what to say, he tosses down the room key, and it clangs against the plate. “Meet you up there. I gotta go take a leak,” he says, and leaves.

While I stare at the room key mutinously and contemplate tossing it into the fountain, the music shifts into a slow song, and everyone starts clapping. When I look around, I see why.

Jenny and Matt had their first dance already, but you’d think they were the only two people in the room with the way they’re locked in on each other.

He’s whispering in her ear and gently running his hands up and down her bare arms, and she’s pressed so close to him that his legs are lost, swallowed in her voluminous tulle skirt.

They’re smiling soft, private smiles at each other.

My breath catches.

And there it is, the real reason for my bad mood amidst this beautiful night and wonderful occasion—loneliness. And fuck Kyle, this isn’t about him. It’s an ache in the center of my chest, full of ugly emotions that I’ve been trying to ignore all night, like spite and frustration and sadness.

I’m used to feeling lonely because of my lifestyle and having to constantly start over, but this runs deeper. There’s a difference between being lonely and feeling alone.

And nothing makes you feel quite so alone as the celebration of someone else’s love.

I… need some air.

I stand, wobbling a little and unsteady in my heels, and head for the terrace that leads down to the formal garden area.

As I descend to the gravel path lined with rose bushes and boxwood, I catch sight of shadows and shapes moving around in the lingering twilight—occasional flashes of silk in the up-lit corners of the garden and giggling lovers stealing moments.

With no real destination in mind, I follow the path shakily, letting it lead me around the house towards an overlook with a bench.

The perfect spot for a solo pity party.

By the time I reach my destination, the blisters on my pinky toes have broken, and I’m gritting my teeth against the pain. Gratefully, I sink onto the stone bench, facing the break in the trees to admire the view as I remove my shoes.

When you move around as much as I do, some aspects of the cities start to blur together.

But there’s one thing everywhere has in common, and that’s the brief time in the pastels of twilight on a clear fall evening when everything looks perfect from afar.

In the purples and pinks of the sunset bleeding into the dull blue-black of night, the cityscape of Ulysses is thrown into brilliant relief.

It’s too far to see, but I know the facades of the buildings are dark, setting off the few lights shining from windows of apartments and office buildings where some people haven’t ended their day yet .

There’s something sad and lonely, yet strangely comforting about how full the world is of places I’ll never go, and people I’ll never meet doing work I’ll never know about.

Everywhere around me, people are going on with their own small lives in complete parallel, and as ignorant of my existence as I am of theirs. I’m like a secret observer.

I’m shaken from my reverie by the sound of gravel crunching underfoot. I glance over to the right, expecting to find someone out for a smoke or wandering and texting, then do a double-take.

Being a tall girl myself, I tend to notice the heads that stand above others in a room.

So I don’t know how I missed him before, because this guy would be a head and shoulders above the crowd.

He’s not lanky, the way some very tall men are; he’s bulky.

Buff. And he’s wearing that suit like he’s doing it a favor.

It clings to a broad chest and thick arms, tapering down and following the line of his waist so perfectly that there’s no way it isn’t custom.

The thickest, roundest ass I’ve ever seen peeks at me from under the split of his jacket.

And the way he moves… You’d expect a guy his size to be stiff, or hold himself the way bodybuilders do when their lats are so big that their arms angle slightly away from their body, even at rest. Not this guy.

He’s almost graceful, gliding down the walkway that splits and leads one way towards the tall hedge maze or the other, in my direction.

He reaches the end of the path and pauses long enough that I get a view of his profile and see a flash of a long, thick white scar that cuts up his cheek at a steep angle before it disappears into his short-cropped, dark hair.

I can’t help but stare, intrigued even more by what seems like a weighty secret.

Whoever he is, he’s seen some shit. No one who’s got a scar that deep in a place that obvious lives a soft life behind a desk.

Bratva . The word comes to me, swift and unbidden .

Is he one of them? He certainly looks like a man who’s acquainted with violence.

When his head comes back around towards me, I look away so he won’t see that I’ve been gawking, transfixed, like some kind of lunatic.

I try to focus on the scenery in front of me. The colors of the sunset are all but gone now, and I wonder how long it will be until I can see the city’s night lights.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

It’s getting louder. Too loud. I can’t ignore it anymore.

I glance up, heart racing for some odd reason, and see exactly what I expected, hoped for, and feared at the same time. The huge, scarred man is standing at the edge of my bench, eyes hooded from the tilt of his head, and he’s focused right on… me.

“May I join you?”