Red Alpha: A BWWM Russian Alpha Billionaire Romance (8 page)

When she realized who had come to pay her a visit, however, she relaxed, scowling in displeasure. Her forty five millimeter went back into its holster before the holster itself was removed and tossed onto the table to join her keys. “Can’t you greet people normally?” She snapped in her native tongue, stripping her slinky black dress up over her head to toss carelessly onto the floor in obvious frustration. She had neither the time nor the patience to deal with Demyan Boykov’s unhinged sister at this moment.

Not when she wanted nothing more than to crush that goddamned American’s nose beneath her four inch stiletto.

“Normal people don’t point guns at other people in their homes.”

“
Dostachnov
, Boykov,” Roksana tossed in the elder woman’s direction. “Enough. Why have you come and what do you want?”

For a moment, Elisaveta didn’t answer her, prompting Roksana to arch a brow as she stared across the room at her. She knew damned well that she was a vision in her lacy lingerie, and that Veta wasn’t picky in her choice of partners. It was a detail she often used to her advantage. “That American…what do you think of her?”

Roksana snorted, stalking across her apartment to duck into the kitchen and reach into the refrigerator for the bottle of wine she kept there. It was vile, cheap, and high proof – one of the reasons why she loved it. She swigged directly from the bottle before eying Veta once more. “Sniveling, ingratiating, manipulative. Osip was eating right out of her hands.”

Veta’s returning smile was thin. “Sounds like him.”

Roksana’s eyes narrowed. “Who are
you
to criticize him? Everyone in Christendom knows that you’re still just pining for dearly departed
Ivan
.” In a flash, the elder woman’s butterfly knife embedded itself in the wall roughly three inches from Roksana’s left ear.

She paused in her swilling for just long enough to lower the bottle from her lips, staring at Elisaveta challenging. “Go ahead then.” She spoke after she swallowed, her blood running hot at the thought of the fight she had wanted all evening. She’d struck a nerve intentionally, and now she was ready to reap her rewards.

However, it seemed that Veta’s reaction was more a split second of fury than a statement of intention. She massaged her palm thoughtfully for a moment before her hand lowered and her expression soured. “I have no intention of quarrelling with you tonight, Roksana.”

“Of course not.” The younger woman spat. “You only broke into my apartment and threw a knife at me. You have the best of intentions I’m sure.”

“I only
came
,” Veta emphasize the word with her inflection, “To see if the American girl struck you as fishily as she does me. There’s something…off. I don’t trust her presence here.”

Roksana eyed Veta for a long moment as she sized her up. Though the issues upon which she agreed with the elder woman were few and far between – she had fucked Roksana’s lover’s
father
, for God’s sake! When she was
half her age! –
She couldn’t argue with her on this point.

The fact that Osip just
happened
to start speaking of certain plans and then a few short weeks later, an American diplomat was dumped on them?

Osip might be blind, but she wasn’t; In all truthfulness, he was lucky he had a woman as perceptive as she by his side. Maybe one of these days he would bump off that wife of his and give her the power she deserved.

Or thank her for doing it for him.

“Neither do I.” With reluctance, Roksana replaced her wine bottle in the fridge before straightening. “I’ll keep an eye on her.
You
just keep that brother of yours in check.”

Veta exhaled hotly before nodding. Then, just like that, she strolled from the apartment as if it were her own – something that always irked Roksana to no end. The younger woman stormed over to the door to slam it behind her, inwardly seething.

Demyan Boykov…probably the only man close to Osip that she had actually considered fucking for the pure fun of it. But…Demyan wasn’t like the others…he didn’t fall into her arms and sing her praises. Whether it was for her loyalty to Osip or his own reservations, he didn’t dare to do so much as touch her.

He had always been weak.

And after years of Osip’s bed almost nightly, Roksana needed much more than to simply be touched. She needed to be fucked – violently.

Briefly, she toyed with the idea of calling Veta back before deciding against it. She would go without tonight. Who knew – it might make her sharper the next day – when she intended to keep all eyes and ears on the American for any length of time she spent in the Kremlin.

Veta was right – something
did
stink about her. And if anyone could find out what it was, it was Roksana Lichakov.

**

She must be absolutely out of her mind.

It wasn’t the first time Cadence thought she must be losing her mind in the last two weeks, and she was sure that it wouldn’t be the last either. By this point in her stay in frigid Russia, she had been in the Kremlin almost every day, watching pompous Osip Danshov make a fool of himself as he tried to live up to her lofty expectations.

It wasn’t hard concocting things to praise the man for. Cadence had done nothing but study the country’s history and culture for the past six months. In Cresseda’s opinion, most of the “new policies” the man had implemented were common sense and came years too late to make much of a difference in the lives of Russian people; and, indeed, the more time Cadence spent in Moscow, the more acute the disparity between rich and poor appeared to her.

Danshov’s policies weren’t so much helping as they were exacerbating certain issues – but Cadence wouldn’t dare say such a thing to his face. She needed the man to trust her – and if there was one thing that Osip Danshov disliked, it was criticism. The man had to be nearing his thirty sixth or seventh birthday and he had the mentality of an unruly teenager. He could be a man when he wanted to impress – he’d put on some very convincing shows for Cadence when she’d asked to watch meetings in session during a typical work day in the Kremlin. Of course, Danshov probably felt very secure in the fact that he
looked
official, with the knowledge that Cadence supposedly couldn’t understand a word that he was saying.

She herself found it very amusing to practice her blank face as she listened to the man make horrible speeches and bumble about while those who attended to him made him look good. Of course, she clapped at all the appropriate moments and was sure to give him all the credit – even when it was obvious that members of his cabinet were the only people that kept him from derailing completely.

And still…the man hadn’t mentioned a single word about what his plans were for the nuclear arms push that had recently started taking hold in the east. The first time that Cadence checked in with Cresseda, the elder woman was surprised that Danshov hadn’t at least let
something
slip. The man had a notoriously big mouth, and since she was being granted access to him exclusively, she’d had her fair share of opportunities to get him to talk.

However, the man seemed to be more close-mouthed than they had originally estimated. While he wasn’t opposed to speaking about the vast resources that his country had accumulated, he hadn’t listed any specifics – and so Cadence was left waiting.

And every day she got nothing was another in which Cresseda could decide that she’d gone rogue and yank her at any moment. The few messages that Geoff had slipped to her told her that the woman still wasn’t entirely confident that Cadence was the right person for the job.

But when it came to information about Alessia, the young woman hadn’t heard a single peep. She was careful to remind herself that there had been no guarantee that she would learn anything from coming to Russia, but she would have thought that if someone in Osip’s inner circle knew of the death of an American Intelligence member, directly or indirectly – they might speak up.

But so far, not a
single
peep. Cadence did her best to focus on the assignment in hand, but things were complicated by her fear that Cresseda would pull her before she learned a single thing – as well as another problem a little closer to home.

Demyan Boykov.

She couldn’t lay eyes on the man anymore without remembering the way he’d cornered her in the hallway on her first night in Moscow. He smelled of Vodka, spice and everything that was right in the world – and though Cadence hadn’t had a drop to drink, she’d wanted nothing more but to fall into his arms.

She had never in her life imagined that she would find Boykov’s subtle accent or the way he carried himself so ridiculously sexy. He was part of the
Russian Gentry
. All his money, she was sure, came from the hands of those who really needed it. Where the hell did she get off being so drawn to him?

It made no sense. She’d never let any
man
get in the way of her doing her job and she wasn’t about to now.

As she sat in the far corner of the room, watching Osip talk quietly with a group of bankers, she tried to catch hints of what they were saying. As they continued to drone on and on, Cadence found her thoughts drifting slowly.

Back to the night before…

Things between she and Boykov had been tense ever since that first night – when he’d gotten drunk enough to kiss her neck dangerously before seeing her to bed; and with good reason. She couldn’t see him without remembering what that decadent mouth of his felt like against her skin. He made her recall, for the first time in a long time, that she hadn’t been laid in ages.

Years
, really. Geoff, bless his heart, had tried, but ever since Alessia’s death, Cadence hadn’t given herself a moment to really stop and feel.

Nothing more acute than loss, anyway.

But Boykov made it so that she could do little else. He wandered about both the Kremlin and his own personal premises like some kind of tall, dark, avenging God – every brooding, muscled inch of him haunting her vision when she closed her eyes.

And dear
God
could the man brood. The only time he’d ever opened up in the slightest was when he was drunk, and then, perhaps too much.

Not that she hadn’t been tempted nearly beyond reason. Especially when she had wandered through the penthouse the previous night and come upon a room that seemed to be outfitted as a home gym. Cadence wished she had known about it earlier – she’d been feeling dreadfully sluggish since her trip had ended her daily physical punishing at Cresseda’s hands. She’d come back after she changed into something more comfortable, prepared to make use of the treadmill – only to be greeted by one of the most gorgeous sights that she’d ever laid eyes on.

Demyan was there – in the gym. He wore only a pair of tight, form fitting runner’s leggings on his lower half, and he was monopolizing the treadmill that she had planned to use.

At the time, she hadn’t minded. She was far too busy staring at each minute bead of sweat that trickled down his massive, sculpted chest as he breathed in time with his strides. Hidden in the shadows of the doorway, Cadence had watched him for a good ten minutes or so, trying to remember how to breathe herself as she’d committed every glorious inch of his mostly bare body to memory.

No
man she’d ever met working for intelligence in the US had a body like that. Made her wonder what on earth Demyan
did
to hone his form into such prime shape…eventually, she had managed to hurry back to her room, tail tucked between her legs, undiscovered.

And
supremely
uncomfortable between the legs.

It was times like these that the young woman wished she had a girlfriend with whom she could speak to about shit like ridiculously hot Russian gentry. But, of course, there was no such luck in Moscow. The only two women she saw with any frequency were Lichakov and Demyan’s sister, neither of which was very fond of her. She’d rather yank out her own teeth than try and speak to them about men – and so she was stuck solitary and summarily frustrated at every turn.

It would figure that the only man to garner her attention since she’d joined intelligence would be the one that she was supposed to stay far away from. Though, officially, the man was only a financial backer for Danshov, there was evidence that he was everything from a drug pusher to an assassin - and funnily enough, his sins were the least reprehensible of Danshov’s inner circle.

Lichakov was known to have a propensity for torture. Of course, no one in her other country had ever pinned her for it – the minister himself made sure of that; but her list of known crimes was at least a mile long back in the United States. The woman’s only positive attributes were her physical beauty and the fact that she seemed to have some misplaced sense of loyalty towards Danshov. Besides that, she was little more than a bloodthirsty, power-hungry bitch.

And Elisaveta…well, to say the relationship between sister and brother was strained would be the understatement of the century. They barely seemed to tolerate one another. When Elisaveta and Demyan were in the same room you could all but cut the tension with a knife – and the way Cadence sometimes caught the blonde woman looking at him…it was as if she expected her brother to bite her head off at any moment.

What the hell could be going on between them to raise that kind of animosity? Cadence had barely been in Russia for half a month, but that was enough for her to realize that none of the members of Danshov’s inner circle really liked one another. They were all loyal to the minister and so he, in return, depended upon each of them for different reasons: Demyan for his money, Elisaveta for her loyalty, Roksana for her cruelty, and the Yenotov brothers for…well…anything else.

They were an imposing group altogether, to be sure…but the only one she felt comfortable around in the absence of the others was Demyan.

He seemed less…harsh than his fellows. Less callous. When they spoke crassly in Russian, thinking that Cadence didn’t understand, he seemed to display just as much distaste as she hid. He didn’t deal in prostitution or trafficking as far as she could tell – and Danshov summoned him more than he sought out the Minister himself.