Page 5

The curtains parted only a few seconds after I smashed the doorbell. I was expecting her father to be there, but there was a slight flash of dark curls from behind the fluttering curtain at the window. Now, I turned and recognized Olivia’s nondescript car parked on the curb.

“I know you’re in there,” I called. I stopped knocking furiously and crossed my arms, staring at the slight opening in the curtains.

A moment later, the door swung open, and there she stood in all her glory, hair flowing over her shoulders in a wild tangle I longed to run my fingers through. But first things first. She smiled breezily, or attempted to, and acted like nothing was wrong.

Did a piss poor job of it, too.

“Dima?” she asked, looking at me and then the sun, which had barely reached the tops of her neighbor’s houses. “What brings you here at this hour?”

“Cut the crap,” I said, raising my eyebrow at her.

She was dedicated and seemed to love her job. She was friends with Max’s wife. Maybe she would have decided she wanted something new and resigned, but leaving without saying goodbye? Something was definitely not right about that, and I was irritated at Max for not seeing through her odd behavior before it came to this. I felt like a caged tiger, ready to strike, but had no idea what I should be striking at.

When had I gone past having a mild interest in this woman, to actively wondering how I could get her professional facade to crack, to winding up with this fierce protectiveness over her? As if she was my own to keep and care for?

Sure, I cared about all my friends if I thought they were in trouble and needed my help, but this was something else entirely. This was bordering on crazy.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, stepping halfway out the door and blocking my view inside the house.

The look on her face as she tried to keep me outside on the porch, all while desperately attempting to come up with a story I’d believe, told me I’d made the right decision to drop everything and come to her father’s house. Her eyes were dark and heavy with worry, and every line of her body screamed that she was about to break under some untold pressure.

Having enough of her acting, I pushed past her into the house. The place was a shambles and there was evidence of a shoddy packing job underway. Her father, Benedikt, whom I’d met on a few other occasions when working with my brother Aleks, was slumped over his breakfast at the kitchen table, with a nearly empty bottle of vodka. Before I could say a word, he snarled angrily at Olivia.

“You worthless little—”

“Watch it,” I interrupted.

He barely fixed his drunken gaze on me for a second before focusing back on his daughter. “You told him? I always knew you had no honor, but ratting out your own father?”

While I didn’t know Benedikt very well, I couldn’t give him the benefit of the doubt at the moment, because I didn’t like the way Olivia shrank from him, trying to appease him with her comforting tone as she tried to assure him she didn’t tell me anything.

What was there to tell?

Benedikt didn’t seem to believe her, and was out of his mind in an instant, going from slumped over and slurring to jumping up and shoving past me to raise his hand to Olivia.

“I don’t believe you! You’re on their side, aren’t you, you useless—”

Okay, it was obvious he didn’t want me here, but that was just too bad. I grabbed the older man’s arm before it came close to his daughter and forcibly sat him back down in his chair.

“Calm down, Benedikt,” I snapped, glaring at him until he stopped baring his teeth at Olivia. “I only came to say goodbye. But now you’ve got me curious.”

Both father and daughter swore quietly under their breath, which might have been funny in better circumstances.

“Please, Dima,” she said, brushing past me to take her father by the hand and pull him into the kitchen. “Just give us a second.”

I stood there watching them through the archway, feet planted and ready in case Benedikt tried anything I didn’t approve of. He was acting much too unhinged for my liking, drunk and surly so early in the morning was never a good sign. I leaned forward to overhear what they were saying.

“I didn’t tell him anything,” Olivia hissed at him. “Why did you have to blow up like that? It’s your fault he’s suspicious at all.”

“Don’t you dare speak to me like that,” Benedikt said, not bothering to whisper. “How dare you disrespect me.”

Once again, he raised his hand, and I went feral at the sight of Olivia shrinking away from him, clearly used to him acting this way. My hand was locked around his wrist before he had a chance to know what was happening, and within a few seconds, I had him pressed back down in the kitchen chair, gripping his shoulder tight enough to make him grunt in pain.

“All right, enough screwing around,” I said. “Is this about owing money to the Kuzmins?”

“So, you didn’t tell him anything?” Benedikt shouted, lunging for Olivia despite my death grip on his shoulder.

I whacked him in the side of the head hard enough to shut him up and sat down across from him. “Speak to me, and like a human being, please,” I said. “Don’t even look at her. Now, if you owe money to Rurik Kuzmin. I can understand you being a little worried about that. But why not just ask Aleks to help you out? Surely, he’d let you work off a loan?”

Benedikt looked at me stonily but remained silent, and I waved Olivia over. With a long sigh, she sat down and let her chin drop to her chest. My heart tightened to see her so defeated.

“It’s not just Kuzmin he owes,” she said. “It’s your brother, too.”

“Which one? Aleks?”

She nodded while her father still sat there looking like a petulant child and not offering any explanation. “And it’s a lot. A quarter of a million.”

“Two hundred and fifty grand?” I asked, trying not to let the shock in my voice come out. I quickly calmed myself down. It was a hell of a lot, but they’d been friends a long time. This could still be worked out without all this fuss. “Okay, so is it split evenly between Kuzmin and Aleks?”

Olivia turned to her father and he scowled at her but made his face more neutral when I gave him a glare.

“It’s just the two-fifty I owe to Kuzmin,” he grumbled. “And there’s the shipment of guns I lost that he still doesn’t know about.”

“Fucking hell,” I snapped, turning to Olivia. Her eyes were wide, and it was clear she knew nothing about this. I turned my gaze to Benedikt, and the look on my face told him he had better spit it all out already.

“It’s twice that amount I owe to your brother.”

“What?” Olivia yelped, leaning back so that her chair nearly toppled. I reached out to grab her if she fell but the legs of her chair hit the floor at the same time she put her head in her hands. “Five hundred thousand? Is that what you’re saying?”

His silence was answer enough. Olivia moaned, then shot up, pacing frantically. “Oh Papa, how could you? Now I see why you’re so hellbent on getting to Russia so fast.”

Benedikt swore at her for that little slip-up, and jumped out of his chair, smacking her across the face before I could grab him and get him under control. I popped him in the nose, and he sank to the floor in a heap, groaning and clutching his face.

Olivia’s cheek was bright red, but she barely noticed she’d been hit. Which meant she was used to it, causing me to feel a kind of rage I’d never experienced before. Taking a deep breath, I stepped back to keep from kicking the living shit out of her father and tried to take stock of the situation.

Nearly a million dollars all told, not to mention this shipment of guns. My brother wasn’t one to be crossed, and the Kuzmins were ruthless. If I were in their shoes, I’d probably be fleeing the country too. Except I knew from firsthand experience in tracking people down that, there was really nowhere someone could hide forever. Even if I could make Aleks see reason as a personal favor to me, that still left one of the craziest bastards I’d ever had the misfortune to deal with. Rurik wouldn’t stop, not even if he got his money and guns back, not if he felt he was being insulted by Benedikt trying to run out on him.

I couldn’t have Olivia in that kind of danger. Moreover, I couldn’t have her thousands of miles away from me. That was untenable.

In fact, now that I’d seen a glimpse of what her life was like when she wasn’t putting on her facade of professional perfection, there was no way I could let her stay one more second alone with her brute of a father. If he could slap her like that in front of me, what would he do when I wasn’t around?

Nope, not going to happen.

“Olivia,” I said, my voice sharp enough to cut through ice. She flinched as I pinned her with a hard look. “Leave us alone so I can talk to your father.”

She glanced anxiously at Benedikt, then back at me, finally scampering out of the room. A few seconds later, I heard a door click shut down the hall and I looked down at her father, who still whimpered about his nose. He tried to give me a defiant glare but one blink had him shrinking back against the wall.

I leaned over and hauled him up to sit in the kitchen chair, tossing him a pile of napkins for his bleeding nose.

“We need to figure this out,” I said. “Now, listen and agree to everything I say, and you might just make it out of this alive.”