Kissing The Enemy (11 page)

S
he got it
. She knew now why I couldn’t back down and let her uncle and his thug of a partner take over. The really scary thing was that there’d been a split second, standing in her bedroom, when I’d
almost
considered it. I’d do almost anything for this woman. The power she had over me was frightening.

“How do we stop this thing?” she asked, her voice quavering.

I hugged her to me, pressing her small body against my big one and wrapping my arms around her to keep her warm. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think Vasiliy and Mikhail will stand for anything other than victory. They want this turf.”

“I’ll talk to Vasiliy,” she said firmly. “I’ll try and make him see sense.”

God, she was brave. I took off her sunglasses so I could see her face. “You need to be careful.
Really
fucking careful. If he suspects we’re together....” I slid my hand across her cheek. She was cold, as always. I put my other hand on her other cheek, desperate to warm her. I wasn’t ready for the upswell of emotion in my chest. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

She put her hands on my hands. “I’ve gotten good at lying,” she said, a trace of bitterness in her voice. She shook her head. “You know, Vasiliy didn’t used to be like this. He was ambitious but not like
this.
He used to be like you.”

Like
me?
I felt my chest tighten.
Crazy.
But I nodded.

“You need to help too,” she said. “Do what you can to calm this thing down.”

I sighed. And right after I’d told The Saints that I’d come down hard on the Russians. But...I looked deep into those cornflower-blue eyes and
dammit,
I couldn’t deny her, even if the thought of playing nice with the Russians made me die inside. “Okay,” I said at last. “I’ll do what I can.”

“And what about...us?” she asked quietly.

I pushed her back just far enough that I could kiss her. God, those lips tasted sweet. There was something in her soul that was clean and bright and untarnished—everything I wasn’t. Kissing her was like diving into a cool mountain lake and washing away my sins...and then slipping beneath the surface into the heated, tempting depths. Within seconds, I’d lost control, pushing her back against the wall and pinning her there with my body. My hands grabbed hers, our fingers intertwining. The kiss turned open-mouthed and panting and I started to calculate how many blocks we were from my apartment.

My phone rang.
Fuck!

I reluctantly released her and fished out my phone. Rico. I put my finger to my lips and answered. “Yeah?”

“We got a problem.” He sounded worried. No, not just worried:
upset.
And it took a lot to shake Rico.

“Hold on.” I covered the microphone. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I gotta work. When can I see you?”

She had to think about it, which didn’t bode well. “The day after tomorrow,” she said at last.

What?!
I was sick of these delays. I needed her naked in my bed,
now!
I’d never had to wait around like this for a woman before. But….

But for Irina, I’d wait. “Okay,” I said between gritted teeth, and gave her one last kiss. Then I stepped out into the street and waved for a cab for her. When the cabbies saw who it was, they couldn’t drive over fast enough.

I opened the door for her and slammed it when she was inside. Then I took the necklace from my pocket, leaned through the window and held it against her neck. Irina looked down at it, looked up into my eyes...and nodded. I fastened the clasp and smoothed the necklace against her skin...God, her skin was so soft! I gave her one last kiss and reluctantly pulled back through the window. Then I watched the cab pull away, putting the phone back to my ear only when it was halfway down the street.

This whole thing is going to be impossible,
I thought. But she was worth it.

I finally uncovered the microphone and put the phone back to my ear. “Sorry,” I said to Rico. “Why don’t you come find me? I’m on the corner of King Street and Arthur Avenue.”

“I know,” said Rico’s voice from behind me. “So am I.”

I spun around and there he was, close enough to touch, the phone still held to his ear. He must have been walking the streets when he called me, and he’d happened across me while I was saying goodbye to Irina.

One look at his face and I knew: he’d seen me kiss her.

R
ico’s a big guy and
, when he’s riled, he barely knows his own strength. He hauled me off the street and slammed me up against the wall of an alley hard enough to whump the air out of me. “Irina Malakov?” he demanded. “Irina
fucking Malakov?!”
His hands were twisted into the front of my shirt, pulling it tight around my body as he lifted me. My feet were only barely brushing the ground. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”

I tried to pull loose. “Get the fuck off me!”

But he didn’t let go. “Tell me it’s a plan,” he growled. “Please, Angelo, tell me it’s some fucking clever plan. You’re banging her to get to Vasiliy, right? She’s gonna tell you all his secrets!”

“No!” I tried again to break his grip, and failed. Then I hit him with a good punch to the kidneys that would have doubled up any other man. But this was Rico, and he didn’t even seem to notice. “It’s not like that!”

He released me. It was so sudden that my legs buckled under me as I hit the ground and I staggered, trying to regain my balance. I glared at him, but his anger had gone...to be replaced by fear. He’d seen something in my expression, something that terrified him.

“Is it a sex thing?” he asked. “Is it about fucking over Vasiliy by fucking his niece, like revenge?”

“No! Jesus! I haven’t even slept with her yet!”

Now Rico looked
really
scared. He ran a hand through his hair. “You haven’t even—Oh, shit. You
like
her. You’ve fucking fallen for her.”

I opened my mouth to snap at him, to tell him not to be so fucking stupid, but the words wouldn’t come. I looked away, unable to meet his eyes.

“Oh, shit. Oh, Angelo, what the fuck am I going to do with you?”

I straightened my shirt. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“
Tell
anyone? Who the fuck am I going to tell? The Saints? They’d crucify you for this. You’d be
gone.
The guys? Who’s going to listen to you, if they find out you’re secretly banging
her?”
He took a deep breath and shook his head. “No, I’m not going to tell anyone. But you gotta end this.
Now!”

I thought about lying and saying I would, but I’d already lied to him for too long. I shook my head.

“Angelo, what’s going to happen when Vasiliy finds out you’re banging his pride and joy?
Jesus Christ,
you’re going to bring the whole Russian mob down on us! There’ll be
war!”

“We’re heading for war anyway,” I muttered.

“Oh, so you thought you’d just help things along?”

“
I didn’t mean for it happen!”
My voice lashed out like a whip. I stood there for a second glaring at him, but the anger faded when I saw the hurt and confusion in his eyes. I sighed and tried to soften my gaze a little.

“You should have told me,” he said.

“I didn’t
know.
Not at first.” I took a deep breath. “But...yeah, I should have.” And then I had to struggle with it, a word I hardly ever used. “Sorry.”

Rico gave a long sigh and nodded.

“You still got my back, right?”

He gave me a look. “You really gotta ask that?” He took two quick steps over to me and pulled me into a hug. It was like being crushed by a grizzly bear, but I felt better.

“So what did you call me about, anyway?” I asked when we stepped back.

Rico shook his head grimly. “It’s Cinderella's,” he said. “It’s bad.”

* * *

C
inderella’s has been
around for over a decade. A big old house out in Westchester with electric gates and high hedgerows for privacy, a parking lot around the back and discreet security guards. It could be a spa or perhaps an exclusive rehab clinic.

What it actually is, is a brothel. The kind where the women work in rooms plusher than any hotel, the clients are screened and the cops turn a blind eye—mostly because the Chief of Police has his own favorite girl there. The women are happy, they make a lot of money and there’s very, very rarely any trouble.

Until today.

Normally, Grace, the madam, would greet me with a smile on her face and my favorite drink in her hand. This was anything but normal. She was waiting for us on the porch when we pulled up, her arms hugging herself against the cold. I’d never seen her look so shaken. “She’s upstairs,” she told us. “In my room. I don’t want the other girls or the guests to see her.”

Icy fear sluiced through my veins. I shoved open the door and led the way to the stairs.

Inside, Cinderella’s is done out like a turn-of-the-century merchant’s house, with lots of dark wood paneling, velvet drapes and chandeliers. There’s always soft music playing and wherever you go you can hear the soft sound of female laughter. Every woman looks stunning and they walk around not in lingerie, but in sexy, tasteful gowns that cost a thousand dollars apiece. It’s just about the most relaxing place a man can be. But today I hurried past the grinning guys in suits and the girls smiling and flirting with them. I needed to know,
now.

I burst into Grace’s room and saw Kirsty. And tried to control my face.

Grace and Rico trooped in behind me and closed the door. Rico cursed under his breath.

I said nothing for several seconds. Then I knelt down beside Kirsty’s chair and gingerly hugged her, not wanting to cause her any more pain. After a long moment, I looked over my shoulder at Grace, my arms still wrapped around Kirsty. “Who did this?” I asked. My voice was quiet but my whole body shook with anger. “Is he still here?”

Grace shook her head.

“Why did you let him leave?!”
I am going to kill him. I am going to beat him until he’s a hair’s breadth from dying and then I’m going to lock the fucker in the trunk of a car and drive it into the Hudson River and drown him
.

“It didn’t happen here,” said Grace. “Kirsty was on an outcall. A hotel.”

We don’t let the girls do outcalls for precisely this reason.

Kirsty shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. As if somehow, this was
her
fault. “I know we’re not supposed to.” Her voice was an agonized rasp that made my hands tighten into fists behind her back. “But he called me and said he’d give me two thousand for a few hours. He sounded okay….”

I gently released her and moved back a little. I had to look at her face, now. I couldn’t avoid it any longer, not without upsetting her.

Both her eyes were swollen shut and both cheeks were bruised and bloody. There were sharp, square marks that I couldn’t figure out, at first. Then my stomach lurched—they were the indentations left by the guy’s rings. There were red finger marks around her throat, too—the guy must have had big hands because they wrapped almost completely around. There was a darker red mark there, too, a serpent
,
as if one of his rings had it carved on the inside.

She swallowed with difficulty. “It’s worse lower down,” she said, nodding to her robe. “He used his belt on me. And before that, he...
did
stuff to me. Stuff I don’t do.”

She’d been under my protection and I’d failed her. I was only barely managing to hold my anger in check. It was boiling up inside me, filling me with the need to smash, to punch, to kill. I glanced across at Rico and it was like looking into a mirror. He gave me the nod, ready to do whatever I needed him to. But this one I’d take care of myself.

I had to take a deep breath and smooth down the lapels of my suit—that calmed me enough to pull out my phone and take a couple of photos of Kirsty’s face and neck. When I found the bastard, I’d shove them in his face just before I killed him, so that he knew
why.
“Who was he?” I asked.

Kirsty tried to speak but started to cough instead. Blood from her split lip dusted my shirt. “Big guy. Rich. Called himself
Simon
but I don’t think that was real. He didn’t say much.” Her voice quavered. “He started on me as soon as I got in the room.”

I looked at Grace. “Get her the best,” I said. “The
very
best: doctors, plastic surgeon if she needs it. I’ll pay. Be firm with the girls—no more outcalls.”

Grace nodded. “Got it.”

“And get the girls to talk to their friends, the ones who don’t work here. They have chat rooms and forums and shit where they talk about clients. Get the word out. Let them know this guy is dangerous. And let them know I want him found. Twenty-five thousand dollars to the first person who gives us a name.”

Grace nodded gratefully. “Thanks, Angelo.”

“I want to be the one to do him,” said Rico quietly. His face was like thunder. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him so upset. “When we get a name, I’ll take care of it.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “When we get a name,” I told him, “you and me will do the bastard together.”