Ultimate Vengeance (Wanted Men Book 4) (15 page)

“A few minutes,” he said, hiding his frustration. “That’s all I need.”

“Then you will leave?”

For now.
“Yes. You have my word.”

She stepped back and silently waved him into her home. Despite the seemingly polite gesture, her eyes now blazed with a rancid emotion he hoped to kill dead in these minutes she was granting him.

Yes, he thought as the scent in the air filled his nostrils. Babies. He looked around. His first impression was that the unit was small and clean. Lonely and worn was his second. And almost barren. Most of the surfaces were empty as if she hadn’t wanted to bother with knick-knacks or framed pictures. Not Sacha. She enjoyed those sorts of things and had always had pretty little trinkets scattered all over their apartment.

He relaxed slightly. Maybe Sheppard didn’t take her places where she could indulge her harmless habit. Maybe the asshole didn’t see things throughout his day—a figurine of a couple dancing, or a delicately handcrafted carousel painted in pastels with ribbons hanging from it—and pick them up, hoping to please her when he saw her next.

As Alek looked around, another thing registered. Sheppard’s stamp was nowhere. Two years ago, it had taken Alek less than a week for his presence to be noted in her tiny bachelor apartment in Brighton Beach. Among other things, he’d left shaving supplies, a change of clothes, and a secretly stashed weapon Sacha hadn’t been aware of. If she hadn’t spent the night at his place, he usually ended up joining her in her bed in the wee hours. Not once had she turned him away.

He could have continued his tour without moving away from where she’d closed the door behind him. He moved anyway.

Wandering over, he glanced at the table that held an array of junk mail and a stack of papers that had Yale University stamped in the corner. There was the open course Maks had mentioned.

Another step and he was in front of three doors. One led to a broom-closet-sized bathroom, another to a bedroom that he peered into. It was relatively empty, had bare walls, a small desk—photo of her parents in ballroom garb was front and center—a playpen, and two chairs.

“We can speak over here. There is no need for you to invade my privacy completely.”

He didn’t push his luck by opening the third door, her bedroom, presumably. One that must house a crib because the smallest charge was missing. The one that had been nearest her in the stroller. The boy that was left was chattering away in a gated play area shaped like an octagon that took up most of the living room.

As Alek pulled his gloves off one finger at a time, he approached her. For her sake, he stopped with the sofa between them. “I never did apologize for the presence outside.”

“You do not have to. Just take them with you when you go and respectfully ask your uncle not to send them again.”

Well, that was direct. More direct than he was used to with her. And it seemed as though he was going to have to keep his coat on a little longer to hide what the fire crackling in her eyes was doing to his softening cock. “How did you know Vasily sent them?”

“Anton mentioned it last night.”

Huh. Anton needed to keep his mouth shut. “Getting to know the boys, Sacha?” he drawled as he shoved his gloves in his pocket. He spied a snow globe housing the Staten Island Ferry sitting on the window sill next to a plant.

She blanched. “Certainly not.”

“Good. That wouldn’t be wise on your part, or theirs.” The idea she was getting friendly with her protection killed his hard-on dead, so he took off his coat and threw it over the back of the sofa. “Where are all your things?”

“Pardon?” She came over and very deliberately picked his coat up. She handed it to him. “I did not invite you to get comfortable.”

He had to work not to smile as he put his arm out. Mmm. He liked her like this. She laid the soft fabric over it and moved away.

“Your things.” He waved his hand around. “Your carousels and dancers. Your parents’ trophies. The photographs you have of them.”

Pain moved swiftly through her eyes and she just looked at him with that slightly accusatory air surrounding her. She wasn’t going to answer him.

He offered her a gentle smile. “I never would have guessed my docile, subservient angel capable of an anger so intense it practically singes my eyebrows from across the room.”

Her cheeks went pink, and after her hands curled into small fists, she rounded a scratched coffee table and came right up to him, tipping her head back so she could hold his gaze. The glare from the overhead light in the kitchen shimmered off her hair as it slipped from her shoulder, and those tipped-up-at-the-corner eyes burned.

In Russian, her voice silky but cold, she said, “And I never would have guessed my passionate, attentive boyfriend capable of a betrayal so evil it practically tore out my heart from across the room. Say what you came here to say, Alekzander, and then get out.”

A long-suffering sigh pushed from Sergei’s lungs as he looked across the street. “No sense of self-preservation,” he muttered. “She has a child. Why would she invite him into their home?”

“Dollars signs blind them every time,” his partner said from where he sat at a desk in the empty classroom. The idiot was carving something into the surface as if he were a delinquent student.

Turning from the window, and the view of a three-story walk-up opposite the closed school they’d entered illegally, Sergei leaned on the teacher’s desk. He glanced at a test sheet. Fifth grade English. As memories of helping Evan with long division came, he felt molten steel skewer that small area of his heart that still functioned normally. The rest was black and charred from the fires that raged.

“If Alek does not leave within a few minutes, that can only mean they are working things out, and I will have to follow through with plan B.” Leaving the desk behind, he went and picked up a yardstick from the base of the chalkboard as he glanced out the window again. Anton had joined Grigori and Lucas, and the three were standing to the side of the doors, their watchful eyes posing one large but expected inconvenience.

When would Sacha tell Alek about their daughter? Maybe she was doing that right now. If so, Sergei’s chance to get her alone had just gone up in smoke. Because once Alek and Vasily became aware of her, the security detail assigned to that infant, and in effect, her mother, would be difficult to penetrate. Difficult, but not impossible.

“You hear anything about why your cousin was given his own guard?” Reynard asked.

“No. Nothing was said about it.” Anton being assigned to Alek could only mean one thing. An announcement was coming. His uncle would appoint his first Sovietnik; the most trusted individual to the Pakhan of an organization. With Alek being Vasily’s protégé, the choice made sense. But was insignificant in the long run because when Sergei was through with them, titles and appointments would mean nothing.

Reynard stood, and startled Sergei by clapping his hands. “You decided on a plan? Stakeouts bore the fuck out of me. You wanna run the piece of ass off or kill her? And what about the kid?”

Sergei’s teeth mashed together. Sacha Urusski was much more than a piece of ass to Alek, but he wasn’t about to argue that point with someone who could never understand that. “I would rather not harm them, but…”

Another glance out the window. Everyone was still in their place right down to the Hummer on the street. Damn it. The two were likely having sex. Which meant she was cheating on her current boyfriend? He was having a hard time accepting that. It didn’t fit with the Sacha he’d known. Maybe Alek was confused on that point, and the boyfriend didn’t exist.

“But we probably will?” A hopeful note rang out in Reynard’s voice.

Sergei leveled a fiercely disapproving look at the disgusting moron he was forced to work with. When the time came, he would happily pierce this man’s empty chest with a couple of bullets. “Probably,” he grudgingly admitted. “But at this point, two more casualties will not make that much of a difference.”

Reynard went and leaned a shoulder into the wall and stared out the window. “Betcha he’s fuckin’ her. Wonder what she’s like? Looks soft. Or maybe she’s on her knees. That mouth of hers looks like it could suck a mean dick. Think she’s a whore behind closed doors? The quiet ones usua—”

The crude ramblings cut off when the tip of Sergei’s blade found its way beneath the flapping jaw.

“Shut your disrespectful mouth, you piece of shit. She is a mother; an innocent girl who came to America to find a good life, and instead found Alek. She deserves your sympathy, not your disparaging assumptions about what she does with the man she is unfortunate enough to love.” He pushed until the skin broke and a bead of blood trailed down the glinting blade. He pictured giving it a good shove.

“Fuck, man. Calm your tits.” The moment the knife left Reynard’s skin, he was pushing Sergei’s arm away. “You touchy fuckers. What is it with you idiots and all this respect you offer these bitches who’re probably only in it for the cash? I met this one chick at Rapture the other night. Didn’t want fuck all to do with me until I told her I work for Maks. Then the bitch’s legs were spreading right there at the fucking booth. I swear…”

Tuning out the noise, Sergei went for the door and prayed Sacha was on birth control. If there was one thing the world didn’t need, it was another Tarasov.

♦ ♦ ♦

Wrecked. The pain that came through in Sacha’s voice as she spoke of what he’d done to her absolutely wrecked Alek.

“I didn’t do it,” he said hoarsely, relieved to admit the truth after all this time. “What you saw that night in my office was fabricated.”

Her fragile jaw tightened and she looked around, taking a minute before she said, “Last night, when I walked into that restaurant, did you see Justin kiss me?”

Storm clouds swept in to blacken his mood. How could she so carelessly toss that in his face? Sheppard’s kiss had been tender and genuine. What Sacha had seen in Alek’s office couldn’t have been further from something honest and real had he and Maks’s dancer been paper cut-outs.

“Yes, Sacha. I saw him put his hands on you, and I watched his mouth come into contact with your skin. What about it?”

Her smile was quick and didn’t reach her eyes, but her condescension reached his fucking ears. “He did not do it. What you saw was fabricated.”

Well, holy fuck. He took a slow step back. Couldn’t fucking stand that tone. Hated when someone used it with him. Her? Yeah, it was worse. He roamed the small room, each step causing the parquet flooring to shift and creak. He didn’t stop until he’d once more placed that goddamn sofa between them.

Drawing in a slow breath that sounded like a snake hissing as it passed through his teeth, he couldn’t help but think the little guy’s jabbering coming from the corner didn’t fit with the tension now hanging in the air. He concentrated on it and allowed it to bring him down.

He had to get a grip. He shouldn’t have to work so hard to control this. He was supposed to be the cultured one in their group. Gabriel was the leader, Vincente the muscle, Maksim the brains, and Alek used to be the gentleman his father and uncle had raised him to be. The problem was, he didn’t feel gentile. He felt raw and wounded, and so far into defense mode it was disturbing. His time spent without her had done something to him, changed him. Made him think in ways he would never have before. Made him feel things he shouldn’t. Dark, ominous things more suited to Maks or Vincente’s mind than his own.

“I will caution you to think before using that tone with me again.”

She made an indifferent sound that grated on his nerves like fine sandpaper on an open wound. He ignored it and studied this courageous little soul for a moment. She had changed. Toughened up.

Because of what he’d done to her?

Never before would she have given him lip like this. Too often she’d been an agreeable little princess whose favorite expression had been
Whatever you like, Alekzander.
She was the only person aside from his mother who’d ever used his full name. Even in the midst of an orgasm she’d extended those four syllables in a way that soon had him joining her.

“You probably enjoy having Sheppard to throw in my face, hmm?”

He got a brief but clear view of how much she
didn’t
enjoy it when her composure slipped to reveal her remorse before she hid it again. A small line formed between her brows as she rubbed at her nose with her palm in that way she’d always done just before they’d argued. God, he missed that little rub.

“How did you meet him?” The question slipped from him before he could catch it. He didn’t expect an answer, so he was surprised when he got one.

“His friend lives upstairs. I care for Steve and Angela’s son.” She pointed to the playpen, and then went over to gather a small pile of toys that had been thrown over to their side of the barrier. The smile she flashed at the little guy inappropriately hit Alek right behind the zipper.

“Cozy little fucking family you’ve found,” he muttered under his breath. “What is he to you, Sacha?”

“He is my charge.” She petted the boy’s dark head. “I have known him since he was born.”

Alek’s heart melted a little. “Not him, angel. I’m asking about the asshole I met last night.”