Page 50 of Sexting the Bratva Beast

“That’s what I intend to find out. Has she mentioned her uncle before?”

“No. He just turned up out of the blue.” She hesitates. “Cartier was unsure about meeting him, but I told her to go and listen to what he had to say. It was just coffee.”

In my world, there’s no such thing asjust coffee.

I step around her and open the door. “Let me know if you hear from her.”

“IfI hear from her? You don’t think she’s coming back tonight?”

It means that Mika must pick up the slack again, but that’s the last thing on my mind right now. “I don’t know.”

I don’t elaborate.

The evening traffic is moving too slowly, so I walk to Your Place and instruct Richard to meet me there. The café is closed for the day, so I make my way round to the back, through the small, paved yard, and let myself in through the rear exit, disabling the alarm by slicing through the cables.

Having no one to deal with makes my life easier. The office isn’t even locked. The proprietor either has nothing to lose, or they have way too much confidence in the flimsy alarm system that I just obliterated. I locate the CCTV footage, one camera on the cash register, and the other angled to face the front entrance.

I rewind it to early afternoon, around the time that I left Cartier at the shelter. It’s a monotonous loop of customers coming in and going out, but I study the grainy footage until my eyes water.

My pulse gallops when Cartier walks in, eyes darting around the café. She’s looking for someone: the uncle who rocked up unannounced and flipped her world with his ‘we’re family’speech. There’s no reaction. She shows no sign of recognition, which means that she arrived before he did. She peers to her left, locates a booth, and I lose her as she sits down.

Back to the entrance.

I slow the footage down, pausing it every few seconds, scanning the faces for a glimpse of something I can work with.

Five minutes go past on the camera. Ten. Then, at twelve minutes, I spot him.

I zoom in as he looks at the booth on his left, a small smile dancing across his features.

I thought he left the country a few years ago.

I should’ve been notified the instant he set foot back inside the city.

The fact that I’m only finding out about it now fills me with fucking rage, but it will have to wait.

Because Yuri Asimov knows Cartier Black, and I’m not about to let my father’s enemy destroy the best thing that ever happened to me.

13

CARTIER

In my bedroom backat the apartment I share with Mika, I pull off the cowboy boots and toss them aside, closely followed by the pants and blouse. Then I grab a pair of worn faded jeans from my closet, a pink sweater, and a pair of Converse, and drag them on without stopping to draw a breath.

My heart is performing a crazy Argentine tango inside my chest, making it hard to think about anything else. Which is a blessing under the circumstances. If I allow myself to think, I’ll remember what he told me.

Yuri Asimov.

That Andrej’s family killed my parents.

I pull a weekend bag out from under the bed and stuff clothes inside it. Underwear. Pants. More sweaters. My phone charger. My to-be-read pile of books on the nightstand catches my eye, and I pause, chest rising and falling with the effort of keeping it all in. I never travel anywhere without a book, so it’s testimony to my utter confusion that I pick up a book and then put it down again.

No time.

No bandwidth to focus on a story either.

Zipping up the bag, I hoist it over my shoulder, and head outside, closing the apartment door behind me with a click that reverberates inside my skull. It sounds so final.

It feels so final.