Page 12 of Lethal Torture

Curious, I click on the attached photographs.

Oh. Fuck.

I turn the glass of Scotch mindlessly on the table, its contents suddenly forgotten.

She’s a goddamn smokeshow.

White-blonde hair in an immaculate French roll. Flawless porcelain skin. Slavic cheekbones and carved lips painted vivid scarlet. She’s nearly always wearing enormous black sunglasses that hide her eyes. In the few shots without them, her brilliant sapphire-blue eyes stare directly at the camera with a disconcertingly opaque expression.

I’ve seen eyes like that before.

Usually set into the faces of men who’ve seen too much and killed too often.

And to my surprise, given the blood-soaked life I’ve led, I find it oddly unsettling to see them in the face of a woman.

No woman should have to endure the kind of horror that causes eyes like that.

From the distant reaches of my mind comes a snatch of a conversation between a couple of the bratva men back in Myanmar, when they learned it was Zinaida who was waiting in Thailand to take charge of the girls we were going to rescue.

Zinaida Melikov?Bryce had asked.You mean the psychopath?

Some long-forgotten sensation crawls along my spine, one I haven’t felt since I was a teenager standing in front of my sister Liana, facing down our bastard of a stepfather.

“She needs someone to have her back.”

Mak’s words echo uncomfortably in my mind.

I don’t believe Zinaida Melikov is a psychopath.

The same unerring instinct that’s made me a lethal military asset makes me certain that the only psychopath in this story was Oleg, Zinaida’s father.

The man who locked her in that cage, the sadist who whipped his own twelve-year-old daughter for the amusement of other men.

I close the photographic file with an effort, then close my laptop altogether.

Walk the fuck away, Macarthur.

I didn’t earn my reputation for impeccable professionalism by getting personally involved with my clients. Running security is a series of processes, not a sentimental urge to protect and defend.

Then again, my clients aren’t usually five feet, four inches of pure female smokeshow, with eyes I could drown in.

“Fuck sake,” I say aloud, standing up impatiently and refilling my glass. I take it out to the balcony, almost relishing the blast of the frigid October night.

Cancel the drink with Mak.

It’s been months since I took a holiday. Twenty-four hours from now, I could be back in Australia, surfing somewhere on the Western coast and drinking beers in my beachside shack. As far away, both mentally and physically, from the Russian bratva and problems like Zinaida Melikov as it’s possible to get.

Except I’m already planning a visit to Soho tomorrow, to start scoping out Pigalle’s security. Already working out how I’ll get around Mak’s supposedly impenetrable systems and break into the Quartier.

Already planning my first meeting with the lovely Miss Melikov.

And besides, I tell myself, until I sign on the dotted line, I’m just a bloke going to have a drink with some friends.

Three extremely deadly friends.

In London’s most risqué club.

Owned by the hottest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.