Page 12

12

ROMAN

I have three missed calls from Pavel, but I wait until I’m back in the penthouse to call him. After spending my evening battling a serious desire to tear Lucia’s dress off and fuck her senseless, I’m going to need something stronger than champagne. And part of me is dreading whatever information he might have found. Not for the first time since I had the bright idea of making Lucia Lopez my personal beck-and-call girl, I wonder what the fuck I’m doing. Or more importantly, why.

Forget that. I know exactly why.

It took every ounce of self-restraint I possess not to make her mine the second she walked into my office this evening. But she’s going to have a busy night, and I’ve made a life out of practicing self-restraint. When I do take that body and make it my own, I want to be certain I have Lucia’s undivided attention. And I’m not going to deny that there’s a certain dark satisfaction in knowing I’ve left her wanting.

It’s a good thing I deleted the video of her in my office. Otherwise, I’m not certain I’d be able to resist the temptation of watching her again.

I pull my jacket off and pick up my phone. I need a distraction, fast.

“I don’t know who the old man is, boss.” Pavel’s voice on speakerphone echoes off the empty walls. “I don’t even have a name for him, other than Juan, which I learned from the day nurses she’s been hiring lately.”

I frown out the penthouse window at the city lights. “So it’s a recent thing, her caring for him?”

“I don’t think so. Her medical card has been used on his behalf several times over the past two years. His name isn’t registered anywhere, even on a medical card.”

“I thought that was illegal?” I shake my head. “Scrap that.” The irony of me concerning myself with what is or isn’t illegal doesn’t escape me. But there’s something about Lucia Lopez’s situation that feels odd.

And I don’t like odd.

Even if it waltzes into my office with siren-red lipstick and wearing a “tear it the fuck off me” dress that still has me hard.

“Boss?” Pavel asks tentatively.

“What?” I bark, trying not to think of how those siren red-lips would look wrapped around my cock. I keep imagining her dressed in silk and lace, dripping in quality jewelry instead of knockoff Fabergé earrings, no matter how good the fake replicas might be. There’s something about the idea of seeing Lucia dressed in clothes I’ve bought her, wearing diamonds I’ve chosen, that gives me an almost savage rush of pleasure. Although, not nearly as much pleasure as does the idea of stripping that silk and lace slowly away from her body, leaving just the diamonds around her neck as I fuck her, slowly and thoroughly, in every part of this penthouse.

Christ. I grip the window divider hard enough to turn my knuckles white. I need to get that little vedma out of my head. I was so damn terrified she wasn’t going to sign that contract I wound up handing my new secretary her ass this afternoon, meaning I’ve just added yet another crisis to a day that’s tested me more than any I can recall in recent times.

All because for some reason I cannot understand, I want Lucia Lopez in my bed more than I can remember ever having wanted anything in my life.

But not if she’s trouble. And so far, everything about her screams exactly that.

If I hoped Pavel’s next words would set my mind at ease, I’m sadly disappointed.

“If you will permit me to say so—”

“Just fucking say it,” I snarl. “I don’t need the preamble.”

“Yes, boss.” The injured tone is back. I ignore it. “There’s something strange about this girl.”

No shit. I tear my tie loose, pour a drink, and brace for the worst.

“Most illegals leave a paperwork trail a mile wide. The only evidence of this girl’s existence is her medical card.”

I take a mouthful of Scotch. It’s my preferred drink, but tonight the smoky taste feels wrong. I empty the glass and frown out at the midnight-black sea beyond the city lights. It’s the same color as Lucia’s hair.

“She’s Argentinian,” I say. “Surely there’s a record of her in that country.”

“If there was, you’d be holding it in your hands.” Pavel’s indignation is palpable. “Her passport was issued in Buenos Aires just over two years ago. The home address given was an apartment block that has since been demolished. She took a flight to Morocco the same day she got the passport and was given a tourist visa on arrival, after which she simply disappeared. Soon after that, she showed up working in the café here in Malaga.”

Which means she’s trouble with a capital T, and the last person I should be exposing Mikhail’s children to.

I certainly shouldn’t have her anywhere near either Hale or Mercura. My internal alarm ratchets to high alert.

“And she’s never even made an application for refugee status?”

“She’s never set a toe inside an official building, according to—”

“What you can find.” I cut him off brutally. “Which seems to be fuck all, so far.”

“If there was anything to find,” Pavel says with a long-suffering air, “I would find it. That’s why it’s strange. Everyone leaves a trace, boss. Everyone. But not this girl. She uses burner phones and replaces them on a regular basis. She doesn’t make close friends. She avoids crowds and cameras, pays only cash, and never uses her real name if she can avoid doing so.” He pauses. “I’m sorry to say this, boss, but—”

“What?” I snap, but I already know what he’s going to say. It’s obvious enough, even to a non-tech head like me.

I just don’t want to hear it.

“The girl is using a cover identity. A good one. Without fingerprints or DNA, what I’ve given you is all the information you’re likely to find. This is a girl who doesn’t want to be found. And one who’s used to running. I’d say the only thing you can know for certain about Lucia Lopez, boss, is that it’s only a matter of time until she runs again.”

His words slice through the years and walls I’ve built between myself and the past with ice-cold brutality.

“Your mother is gone, Roman.” My father’s voice echoes down the pathways of memory, accompanied by the fierce, sudden pain that has never, not even after more than twenty years, disappeared. “She had no choice but to run. It isn’t your fault, Roman...”

I thrust the memories down with the discipline of long practice.

“Pavel.” My voice is rough. I swallow hard, and the next time I speak, it’s back to my usual curt delivery. “Don’t leave the office for now. I might need you later.” I end the call before I betray myself, or before the little shit can start arguing. I pay him more than enough to soak up a little overtime every now and then.

I need time to think all of this through.

For all I know, Lucia could be an intelligence plant from the government, custom-made to exactly suit my preferences.

Except that she doesn’t.

Lucia is nothing like the women I usually date. She has more curves than any of the rail-thin models I take to public events, and none of their practiced seduction. She works more hours than any human ever should. And when I touched her naked body, she melted against me like I was shelter from the storm.

Not to mention the fact that she was working in that damn café long before I even bought the Hale building.

I twist away from the window and walk down the dimly lit corridor. It’s vodka I need tonight, not Scotch. I slip a card into the locked door I rarely open, then go to the safe. I keep only one item in the safe: a bottle of Graf vodka. It was my father’s favorite. I keep only one bottle at a time, and I save the drinking of it for rare occasions.

Even before Pavel’s report, there was no doubt in my mind that Lucia is hiding something.

I knew it the moment I saw the panic in her eyes when I mentioned the motel she slept in last night. The blood drained entirely from her face, the lush bottom lip sucked savagely inwards beneath her teeth, hard enough I feared she’d bite right through. Her eyes darted to the door, and for a moment I genuinely thought she’d make a run for it.

You can’t fake that kind of fear. The fear of being hunted by death itself.

I should know. After my mother’s disappearance and my father’s murder, I ran with that fear for six years. And no matter how hardened I became during that time, I’ve never forgotten how it felt to look over my shoulder, or the tension of keeping my identity a secret. Ten-year-old Roman Borovsky disappeared the night his father died in Miami. Six years later an orphan with no surname stood in front of a bullet intended for Mikhail and became Roman Stevanovsky.

I found a way out. And nobody, not even Mikhail, has ever known who I truly am.

I toss off the glass of vodka and refill it, gripping the edges of the vast dining table, staring at the clear liquid in the glass. None of this solves the problem of what to do about Lucia Lopez.

Except that for some reason, it does.

I know how it feels to have no choice but run. To guard secrets that aren’t mine to tell. To live with a revenge I can never take.

I don’t want to involve myself in whatever storm is chasing Lucia. But I can certainly give her a way out, or at least the resources to outrun it.

And if the storm decides to come for her?

Well, like I said, I protect what is mine.

And I’m no storm.

I’m the fucking apocalypse.

I put the stopper into the vodka bottle and walk back to the safe, which is the only piece of furniture behind the locked door. The safe cost me a small fortune at auction a few years ago. I anonymously outbid hardened thieves and Russian oligarchs, who were all drawn by the irresistible challenge of cracking a Borovsky safe. Not that any of them would have succeeded. They’d have wound up blasting it open, and even then, they’d have had trouble.

It took less than three minutes for me to crack it open.

After all, I’d watched my father build it.

I run my fingers over the brass plate bearing my family name. Opening the heavy door, I place the vodka bottle gently on the shelf inside.

“ Za Zdorov'ye , Papasha,” I say softly. “Have a drink on me. It’s your favorite.”

This is the room where I keep my father’s memory locked away, a private place only I visit. The safe is the last one he ever made. I keep it empty, except for the lone bottle of Graf vodka.

I close my eyes briefly, remembering my father’s strong, lined face. He was already an old man on that long-ago day when he knew they were coming for him.

“You must run, Roman,” he’d said, gripping my shoulder. “Do you understand me? The men coming for me know I have a son. I will not see you die beside me, or forced to live the same life I’ve given everything to escape. Do not try to help me. Promise me, now.”

His Russian accent was thicker than normal, as it always was when he was emotional. “Run, my boy, and do not look back. No matter what you see or hear. Go to the compound I showed you, and ask for Sergei Petrovsky. He will help you. And remember what I taught you. Live a good life. Make me proud.”

He’d waited until I gave my promise before thrusting me out the back door, moments before the Russian men crashed through the front one.

He never knew that I stayed, watching through the window, until the last breath was stolen from his body.

I did run to the compound. But when I got there, a car arrived at the gate. I saw the driver through the windshield.

His hands on the steering wheel had the same sparrow tattoo as the hands that tortured Papasha to death.

I kept running, and I never looked back.

“I ran just like you told me to,” I say now, my voice harsh in the empty room. “But I didn’t escape your life, Papasha. I became the king of it instead.”

It hasn’t been the life he wanted for me, I know that. And I doubt my father would approve of many of the things I’ve had to do to survive it.

But I know that he would approve of helping Lucia.

There was nobody to help my mother when she ran. Nobody to save my father after she left, or when those gutless fucks came for him. And there sure as hell wasn’t anyone to help me the night I fled the sight of my father’s lifeless eyes, nor during the hard years of street survival that followed.

But it doesn’t have to be that way for Lucia.

I want to shelter her from whatever storm she’s fleeing. To stand in between her and whoever put that fear into her eyes. Preferably with a gun in my hand. In fact, the idea of coming face-to-face with whatever caused the fear I saw in Lucia’s eyes gives me the kind of killing lust I haven’t felt in a very long time.

Mind made up, I dial Pavel back. “I want the beach villa set up for accommodating a wheelchair,” I snap. “Hire whatever medical help and equipment is needed to take care of that old man. And I need a bank account set up, along with a line of credit.” I give the long list of orders swiftly, then ask him to read them back in case I’ve missed anything. “And Pavel?” I say at the end.

“Yes, boss?”

“This stays between us. Entirely between us. Nobody knows about that girl’s presence in this house, nor one single detail of what you’ve learned, either about her or the old man in her company. If I ever hear the name Lucia Lopez leave your lips, or see it on a computer screen, my gun will be the last thing you ever see. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal, sir.”

“Good.”

I end the call, then place another one, this time to London. It takes less than five minutes and the offer of carte blanche with my black credit card to convince Vera to delay the children’s return by one day.

That dinner left me with an appetite that nothing but Lucia’s naked body is going to satiate. And selfishly, I want one night alone with her before there are any other demands on her time. One night to make her scream aloud, over and over. One night to tongue-fuck every bit of lipstick off her luscious mouth. One night when she is thinking about nothing more than my hands on her body and my mouth devouring her flesh, inch by inch.

One more day until she’s mine.

I shift restlessly. It’s almost unsettling, how much I want her. Setting up an anonymous account with a great deal of money in it for Lucia’s exclusive access is just good business, I tell myself. As is placing the old man she cares for into luxury medical care. It frees Lucia up to focus exclusively on my needs. All of this is simply the most efficient way to ensure that those needs are met.

And besides, five months is long enough to tire of any woman .

Hell, I’ll probably be paying her off within the week.

Except that I can’t help imagining the relief she will feel when she knows she is finally safe. And knowing it is me who has provided her with that safety gives me a deep-seated, primal sense of satisfaction. Which is nothing compared to what I’m going to feel tomorrow night, when I finally have Lucia Lopez naked and moaning under my hands.

I strip off my clothes and head for a very cold shower. It’s going to be a long damn night.