Conflicted (Undercover #2) (5 page)

“You don’t know what these Russian men can be like,” she said. “A lot of them have big families. Lots of
brothers.”
She was talking about the brotherhood, the Russian mafia. “It makes it difficult for them to form attachments with women. In fact, they don’t get on with women at all. Do you remember I told you about my old boyfriend, Dmitri?
He
was Russian.”

I felt sick. I remembered Dmitri. She’d told me, one night after too much wine, about how one of her first missions had required her to steal documents from his office. He’d caught her, beaten her and tried to rape her. “I remember,” I said in a small voice. “But Luka isn’t like that.”

“I really think you should come home,” said Nancy. “I know your dad thinks it’s good for you to be out there, seeing the world, but I’m really worried you’re going to get your heart broken. Just come home, Arianna.”

“I’m fine,” I said again. The car was slowing. “I have to go. Take care.” And I ended the call before she could argue.

I wanted nothing more than to speak to her. Hearing her voice after so long with nothing familiar around me was like coming home. But if I kept talking to her, she was going to persuade me to bail. God, she didn’t even know about the trip on the yacht, yet. If she knew I was planning to do that, she’d freak out completely. And the scary thing was that she was absolutely right—I was way out of my depth.

The cab pulled up outside a boutique that was all soft lighting and artfully displayed mannequins, a world away from the places I normally shopped at back home. My stomach tensed. In theory, I had the new Arianna Ross credit card Adam had given me, but my instincts took over.
Shit! I couldn’t afford this!

As soon as I took a step inside, a woman in an immaculate black designer dress stepped from behind the counter. Her blonde pixie cut was so precise I suspected it was styled with a laser. Something about my clothes clearly marked me as a tourist, and not a rich one. “Can I help you?” she asked in English.

There’s a certain way that store assistants can say
Can I help you
so that it sounds like
Please get out of my store.

“Um,” I said. “I think I need some clothes. Quite a lot of clothes. I’m not sure exactly what.” We stared at one another.
Well done, Arianna. Very decisive.
I looked around. “I’m not sure I can afford this place…”

The store assistant gave me a smile so incredibly patronizing, it felt as if she’d kicked me in the chest. “There are some cheaper stores a few streets down,” she said sweetly. And she picked up the coffee she’d been drinking and leaned against the counter, smirking. Even her coffee mug was designer, with some achingly cool clothes company’s logo on the side.

A hot flush rose in my cheeks. She made me feel as if I was something she’d scraped off her shoe. I turned to slink out and then remembered something. “Luka Malakov sent me,” I mumbled.

There was a crash as the designer coffee mug hit the floor.

I thought I’d offended her. I thought maybe his name was so despised that she’d thrown the mug down in anger. I headed for the door.

She
ran
in front of me, slipping and almost falling on the marble floor, and blocked my path. And now I saw how the color was draining from her face. She babbled at me in Russian for a few seconds, begging forgiveness, before she remembered I was just a dumb American tourist. “I’m sorry!” she said in English. “I didn’t know! Alina!
Alina!”

I’d seen people go pale, but I’d never seen anyone go
white
before. She looked as if she was about to throw up.

A slightly older woman with dark hair came running in from the back. At first, she frowned at the commotion, especially when she saw the coffee all over the floor. Then the blonde woman hissed in Russian, “
She’s from Luka Malakov!”

Alina stopped dead in her tracks and then swallowed as if she was trying to choke down a football. Her hand played nervously with the necklace at her throat. “You work for Mr. Malakov?” she asked in Russian.

“She’s American!” the younger one said in a terse whisper, still in Russian. Holy shit, there were tears in her eyes. “I think she’s his….” She looked up at her boss with huge, scared eyes. “
I was rude to her!”

Alina stared at her and then at me. I actually saw her knees weaken. She spoke in English for the first time. “You are Mr. Malakov’s…” She swallowed again. “You are
with
Mr. Malakov?”

I nodded, growing more freaked out by the minute.

Alina glanced at her assistant and then at the spilled coffee and smashed mug. She spoke in English, so I knew she wanted me to understand. “Clean this up,” she snapped at the store assistant. “Then collect your things. You’re fired.” She looked back at me, eyes wide with concern, clearly hoping this would appease me.

I was too shocked to react. The scariest thing was that the store assistant didn’t even argue. She just nodded, head down, and ran to fetch cleaning things.

“Please allow me to help you,” said Alina. She stressed the
allow me,
as if nothing could be a greater honor.

“I—” I was completely freaked out, now. All I wanted to do was run. “I’m not sure I can afford this place.”

Alina reacted as if I’d said I was thinking of drinking bleach. “There’s no
charge!”
she said, aghast. “We would never charge you!”

For the next hour, Alina showed me dresses and jeans, jackets and shoes. She picked out long woolen coats for above deck and figure-hugging dresses for below deck. I soon had more clothes than in my closet back home. And then we started on the shoes—towering heels I could barely walk in, but that did wonderful things to my legs and ass.

“And will you be needing...underneath?” asked Alina, her English failing her. She yanked her dress away from her chest and pointed to her bra.

“Um…” I flushed. I hadn’t even thought about lingerie. In my suitcase back at the hotel, I had the same plain briefs and bras I always wore. Would those do? “I don’t know.”

Alina flushed too. “For Mr. Malakov,” she whispered, “I think you need—” She gestured at her breasts and groin in a
va-va-voom
sort of a way. “Upstairs,” she said.

She led me up to the next floor and shooed away the sales clerk there. She started to bring out artful constructions of lace and satin, mainly in black, purple or red. I didn’t doubt that one of Luka’s blondes would have looked fantastic in them. Was this what Nancy did on assignment: pick out underwear to seduce her target? Or did she have a secret closet full of it in Virginia that she packed into her suitcase along with her guns?
I am so out of my depth.

I tried to imagine myself in one of the lingerie sets and couldn’t. Then I remembered what Luka had said. “Do you have anything more...innocent?” I asked, red-faced. “White?”

She blinked at me. “Like bride on night of wedding?”

“Exactly like that. Innocent but good quality and”—
am I really having this conversation?—
“sexy.”

She nodded quickly, but gave me a look that was almost pitying. Aghast, maybe, at the idea of an innocent in Luka’s hands. She brought out white bras and panties, hold-ups and suspender belts and even a corset. They were all strokably soft and gorgeously made. I told her I’d take them, along with some of the tamer black sets.

When I finally returned downstairs, the coffee was cleaned up and the clothes and shoes had already been packed into my cab. The driver was still waiting patiently for me, even though it had been over an hour. Luka’s money was going to take some getting used to.

“Please,” said Alina, squeezing my hand. “Give Mr. Malakov our regards.” Her eyes were wide with fear when she said his name.

I felt bad about the store assistant. She’d been rude, but she didn’t deserve to lose her job. “Please...you don’t need to fire that woman. Could you...get her back?”

From Alina’s astonished face, compassion wasn’t high on the list of traits when it came to Luka’s previous women. Maybe, when you were that powerful, people started to look like bugs to be stepped on. And now everyone thought
I
was one of those women.

“Of course,” said Alina. “Whatever you wish.”

The scary thing was, I sensed that I could have asked her to fire the woman, or get her back, or cut off one of her fingers and she would have done it, without question. And it was Luka who had instilled this fear in them.

The man who wanted to corrupt me.

Back at the hotel, I dumped the shopping bags and then called Adam, telling my “dad” excitedly about how the guy I’d met wanted to take me on his yacht. He was silent for a moment. Then he told me he had a surprise for me. “I’m here,” he said.

“Where?”

“
Here.
Let’s meet. Gorky Park.”

What?!

I got a cab there and waited on a bench, watching couples laugh and cling to each other on the ice as I sipped a coffee. When a man sat down on the bench next to me, I had to study him for a few seconds before I really believed it. “You’re
here?!”

“I flew in last night,” said Adam. He pulled his winter coat tighter around himself. “God
damn,
I forgot how cold it gets here.”

My head was spinning. Someone as senior as Adam didn’t normally leave Langley, except to go to Washington. They certainly didn’t jet off to Moscow to meet up with field agents. Not for the first time, I had that twinge of unease. This was my first mission, so I had nothing to compare it with...but still, nothing about it seemed normal. What if Roberta and Nancy had been right? “Why—Why are you here?”

“We followed Luka’s car to the nightclub, then back to his penthouse. You stayed the night. I assume you
...
hit it off?”

Deep, hot embarrassment rose up in me. Only the icy wind stopped me turning beet-red. “Yes.”

“That’s when I thought I should come out here. Things may move very quickly, now, and I want to be on site, where I can help. You’ve done well, Arianna.”

Despite my unease, the praise triggered a deep, warm glow inside me. It was almost scary, how much I’d needed to hear it. “What are we going to do about the yacht?” I asked. “I don’t even know where we’re going.”

“Go with him,” said Adam without hesitation. “We think this trip is tied in with the arms deal. Stick to him like glue and see if you can find out who the buyer is.”

“But I’ll be...alone with him. Out at sea.” There’d be no way anyone could tail us, out there, without being seen. I’d be totally without backup.

Adam put a fatherly hand on my back and leaned close. “You can do this, Arianna. I wouldn’t have sent you here if I didn’t believe you could.”

Again, his words sent a wave of pride flooding through me and that helped to counter my fear. I tried to look at it rationally. If I wanted to bail, this was the time. Adam would be able to get me on the next plane out of the country. Luka would be pissed, but would think his new girlfriend had gotten cold feet and run home. I could go back to listening to his phone calls from a safe, cozy office.

And I’d never see him again.

He’ll kill you if he finds out.
Roberta’s words. I didn’t doubt they were true. I thought I’d seen glimpses of warmth in him—vulnerability, even. But that didn’t change who he was. And whatever lust, whatever affection he held for Arianna Ross, American tourist, it didn’t extend to Arianna Scott, CIA spy.

But Adam believed in me, in a way that Roberta didn’t seem to. He’d seen something in me that she hadn’t seen in years. I wanted to prove something—to him, to Roberta, to myself.

Mainly, though, what was going through my head was the feel of Luka’s hands in my hair. The things he’d whispered in my ear as we stood by the door of his penthouse.
He had to have me.
No man had ever wanted me with that intensity and it sat like a burning coal at my very center, glowing through the layers of ice. Maybe even melting it.

He’s going to end my innocence. In every conceivable way.
Was it worse that he wanted to do it, or that part of me wanted him to?