Sold: A Billionaire Bad Boy Mafia Romance (12 page)

I’m exultant because I got the hang of the game last night. I called every bluff of Zhurov’s, every reverse tell, every attempt of bullying and wooing. I read the man so well that he never had a chance. I risked Ace’s billion, and left the casino with two.

I’m furious because Ace hasn’t answered my calls, and the last thing I heard from him was that he was flying to the United States to protect the blonde bombshell I met that poker night in Chicago.

Was I wrong in trusting him? Should I have listened to Tsvetaeva about the wolf and the woods? I feel so outraged that I feel my breath accelerating as I walk around the house looking for him.

I find him at the gym, working out. He doesn’t notice that I’m there until I talk. He’s lying on a bench, lifting a weight so heavy that if he let go of it, his chest would probably be disintegrated.

Not that he wouldn’t deserve it.

“What do I mean to you?”

I take him by surprise and the chest-crushing scenario almost comes true. He lowers the bar into its support and sits up. He’s sweaty and breathing heavily.

“Van,” he says, and quickly regains his cool. “You mean a lot to me. What is it? Are you angry about something?”

“Tell me.”

He grabs his towel and wipes the sweat from his handsome face.

“Tell you what?”

“What do you truly feel for me?”

He stands up and comes to me. His manly scent reaches me before he does. I nearly fail in my resolution, but I stay strong.

“Baby,” he says, reaching out with his massive arms. I try to give him a severe look, but I’m aware that something else transpires: insecurity and fear. I need to be reassured so much.
He’s never said it. Only I did.

“Tell me.”

He’s towering over me now, his piercing blue eyes revealing something strong and hard, but also a softness behind it all.

And now he kneels down and looks at me from below.

“I love you,” he says. And it’s enough.
Almost.

“You love me, but you run to save
Tara
when she’s in trouble? And you leave me alone in a country I’ve never been to?”

His face changes now. His lips curve upward, tiny wrinkles form around his eyes. He’s
smiling
. I want to kill him, but I must know first. Does he find this funny?

“Tara was in danger. I had to save her, find out what was happening. She’s a very valuable asset.” The irony vibrates in his voice and reverberates inside me like a knife made of sound. I feel so betrayed that I am about to punch him.

“An asset? And I’m an asset too? How much am I worth? Is she more valuable than me, asshole?”

Now he smiles openly, inching ahead on his knees like a little boy going for his mother. He grabs me by the hips and kisses my navel.
Oh gods, I swear I will kill him.
My voice comes out weak.

“So...?”

“I can’t overestimate how valuable Tara is... as our computer whiz,” he says.

“As... as what?”

He kisses my navel again, then the rest of my belly, with little touches that feel like butterflies hitting me with their little wings.

“Tara is in charge of keeping track of everything in our network,” Ace explains, smiling again. “Who owns what, how much they bet, who wins, who loses, who has already paid and which transfers have failed. She designed the software and she maintains it. The Chinese have been trying to poke holes in her system for months, but until now, nobody knew who she was. Now her identity has been leaked somehow. If anything happens to her, it will be a catastrophe for Little Vegas. We’d have to stop all operations for months, or maybe indefinitely.”

“The bombshell— the bombshell is the nerd?” I ask, incredulously.

“You can’t catch ’em if you can’t see ’em,” Ace replies. He’s still smiling, but I don’t want to smash his face anymore. Now, I find his smile charming, just like before. “Remember the night you saw her in Chicago? Yeah, well, she doesn’t normally go to the scene. She’s always on the computer, doing her thing. But we’ve had several problems with people trying to hack the system, and they are pretty advanced, so she needed to actually be there and quietly observe the computers to see who could be manipulating them. You know, through a hooked cellphone or something.”

“I don’t know much about that,” I confess.

“Me neither. The thing is that nobody is supposed to know that, as you said, the bombshell is the nerd. But someone knew. Because the other night, while we were in Monte Carlo, they put something in her drink, and she had to be carried to the hospital.”

“Really? Who did that?”

“The Chinese, I bet. But I hope you understand why I was so worried.”

Part of me wants to just call him a liar and punch him in the face. But I have to admit that he doesn’t seem to be lying.

“Are you telling me the truth?”

“Of course I am. Haven’t I just told you that I love you? That must account for something,” he whispers, and stands on his feet once more. He holds me in his arms. His lips are so close to mine that his minty breath fills my nose and mouth as he speaks. “You are much more than an asset to me. I still care about money, but you have made me care about other things more.”

That’s it. The softness under the iron shell, the tender core that you can only find if you dig deep... or push hard. Ace sounds unnatural saying this kind of thing; he speaks the language of love clumsily. But he’s authentic. I see it in his eyes.

“Other... things?” I ask, because I want him to keep talking this way. It makes me feel safe again.

“Other things... like being with you and never, ever, leave you again,” he says, and he’s already kissing me.

25. A SECOND CHANCE

ACE

“OK, it’s decided. Do it.”

“The button?”

“The button.”

Tara stares at me as if she expected me to change my mind. But I won’t. It’s decided.

“It’s because of the girl, right? The Russian?”

I nod. There’s no need to argue the finer points. I’m doing it for me, but because of her.

Tara sighs. “I knew it would be something like that. Well, I guess I don’t have any reason to care. I will say that you’ve been a good boss.”

“Thanks. But Harlan will be a good boss too,” I reply.

She rolls her eyes.

“I hope you burn in hell for leaving me at his mercy. The man won’t get a clue. I suspect he thinks I’ll want to marry him when he gets the promotion.
Yuck.
”

I just have to laugh.

“Well, I hope she’s worthy,” Tara adds. “More than the other one.”

Ouch.
“That hurt.”

“I’m sorry.” She lets out a deep sigh. “Fine, I’ll press the button for you. But you absolutely need to go to Panama first.”

I nod. “Can you make me a list?”

“It’s already done.”

We first talked about this a couple of months ago. By then, I was ready to accept that something had changed inside me. I could no longer live by simple rules. Vanina had come to mess with everything, make the simple complicated, and generally ruin the order I had established so carefully. So I wanted to try again. I wanted out.

Tara spent weeks designing the button. I told her that it was “just in case”, a thing we should have ready for eventual future use. But the truth was that I wanted to use it as soon as it was possible.

The button is not a real button, of course. It’s a metaphor. What Tara built was a simple process that would let me disappear in an instant. Cut all my ties with anyone commercially related to me, transfer companies and other properties, convert in cash whatever could be converted in cash, wipe my calls, emails, Internet history, erase my address from any records, and leave me as the sole proprietor of a brand new account outside the country that would let me start a new, isolated, affluent, untraceable life. All of this, with a single computer script that she could run at any time.

Vanina is part of the deal, but since she’s already off the books, she doesn’t need any engineering. Her fake passport as Polina Igrok will serve her for the trip, and after that, she will be Vanina Vokhtazin, again and forever.

It’s good that she doesn’t need any paperwork to join me, because that means I can keep it all a surprise. I want to see her face when I tell her what’s the reason we’re going to Panama. She thinks it’s only an everyday thing that we can also use as a vacation.

I wish Tara would have told me that she could press the button right away. But there’s one more step before we can do that. Panama. There are papers to sign, people who talk to. Tara has made a list of all the paperwork I need to do there. Only then I will have my second chance. The chance Rhonda snatched away from me years ago.

Incidentally, that’s also the reason that Tara is so important to me. Right now, she’s the only one who could make it true. Talk about job security.

“Is that all?” Tara asks, leaving her beer on the table, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I’ve essentially put my life in her hands.

“It’s all. Thanks. Take care,” I say, waving her goodbye.

She’s already out of the room when I speak again.

“Tara,” I call.

She comes back and leans on the doorframe, waiting.

“Yes?”

“What if you had the chance to start again?”

“What do you mean? The button?”

“Exactly.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Ace, I’m twenty-nine. I’m just starting. No need to start again.”

“You’re twenty-nine, and people want to poison you already.”

She stays silent, her gaze lingering on some indeterminate point outside the window.

“OK, I’ll think about it.”

“Thank you.”

She leaves for good. Jack enters almost immediately, not before ogling her ass as she walks down the corridor.

“Hey,” he says. He takes a cigarette from somewhere and lights it. He offers me one and I refuse. Instead, I chug the rest of my beer.

“Hey,” I reply. “Let me ask you a question, Jack, since you’re
too old for this shit
.”

A grin appears on his face. “Fire,” he says, pointing at his own chest with both hands as he exhales a cloud of bluish smoke.

“What if you had the chance to start again?”

26. A TRIP TO PANAMA

VAN

“Paperwork”, Ace said when I asked him why he was going to Panama. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t be tourists too.”

“We? Am I going with you?”

“Of course. I’d go with you anywhere”, he said, kissing me tenderly. But I knew there was more. He had been on the phone a lot lately, gathering info about the Chinese and other things. He feared for my safety, I could see that even though he did his best not to mention anything to me.

I am fairly certain about the kind of paperwork he’s going to do in Panama. The country is a well-known fiscal paradise, and I guess he needs to move around some offshore assets. The fact that he will be travelling in person suggests that he will do a pretty big move. I don’t know if I should be afraid or hopeful. It may be that the feds are on his tracks... or even worse, that the Chinese, or even the Bratva, are. But on the other hand, it may mean that he wants a change of direction; that he wants to come clean somehow, and take out part of his properties so that he can get leave all this mess behind.
With me.
The thought makes my heart race, but I can’t find the courage to ask him. I am still a little girl in many ways.

So, we’re heading for LaGuardia again. I have a first-class ticket to the name of POLINA IGROK and a fairly small travel suitcase filled mainly with books. We’ll be there for a couple of weeks, and we’ve had so little time to prepare for the trip that I don’t know what I’ll be doing or where we’ll be going. For me, books are always a safe bet.

“We’re on time,” Ace announces as he takes the Grand Central Parkway, checking on the mirror that Harlan and his mate are following us in their own car. The road is pretty loaded, and it would be easy to get split in traffic. One of those huge trucks used by moving companies is chugging along before us, and cars speed past us on both sides.

I would have preferred Jack Starr instead of this other guy, but Jack is in charge of protecting Tara, so Harlan took one of the new recruits with him.

“Don’t worry, Ace,” I tell him. “We’ll make it. We have plenty of time, for the trip and for whatever comes after it.”

He looks at me as if I were something precious.

“Things will change, I promise you,” he says. “Once we come back...”

But things change right now. One of the cars speeding ahead of us makes a sudden turn and stops in the middle of the lane. Another car does the same a couple of seconds later, blocking the way completely. Ace has to turn the steering wheel violently and almost loses control of the car. He turns to the right, then to the left, and steps on the brake until the Mercedes comes to a halt with a screeching sound.

Behind us, Harlan stops too. And behind him, two more cards stop dead on the road as well, blocking our escape both ways.

Two men step down each of the cars that are trapping us ahead. They all look Eastern, they all wear impeccable white suits and, of course, they all hold guns. One of them shouts something in what sounds like Chinese. I think he says Ace Hurt’s name among all the gibberish.

Ace grabs my hand and gives it a brief squeeze. “Head down,” he says. His voice is so calm and authoritative that I almost stop worrying. I crouch as tight as I can and put my arms over my head as Ace grabs his gun from below the driver’s seat.

“Oh, no, no,” I try to warn him, but he’s already opened the door. the car is a shield between him and the men who point their weapons at him. Who is in the passenger side, right in the trajectory of the bullets if they start firing? This gal. I’m worried again, more for Ace than for myself.

Ace starts talking out loud. He’s speaking Chinese, making ample gestures with his left hand that everyone can see, while his gun is in his right hand, out of sight for everyone but me.

As soon as he finishes speaking, the Chinese man replies angrily. Ace answers in a cool, calm tone. I have no idea what they’re saying, but when he gives me a quick look, as if he were saying goodbye, I realize that he’s trying to protect me. He wants to convince them to let me go and take only him. I can imagine the words:
Let her go. She has no part in this.
And I understand that the only thing that can make this man afraid is the chance that I come to harm.