Zel: Markovic MMA (11 page)

Not wanting to hear anything that was happening in the living room of the penthouse, Sara turned on the television and then made her way into the bathroom for a long, hot shower. When she sat on the tiled bench, she broke down, burying her face in her hands and sobbing as the warm water spilled over her tired body.

Just a few hours ago, she had been sitting next to Zel, watching Shay and Alexei get married while dreaming of all the possibilities a future with him presented. Now? Now she was shattered inside, broken like a mirror. In her mind, she tabulated the many mistakes she had made in her life. There were so many decisions she questioned, so many things she regretted.

If only. If only. If only.

But this was the real world, and in the real world, she had to live with her choices and her mistakes. If that meant that she had to live her life alone? Well…so be it.

“Sara?” Besian knocked on the bathroom door. “Are you all right?”

Clearing her throat, she wiped at her eyes. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

Heartsick and broken, she finished her shower and changed into a pair of comfortable pajama bottoms and an old t-shirt. She found Besian kicked back on the couch in the master suite, a glass of scotch in one hand while he rubbed the back of his neck with the other. He seemed tired, more tired than usual, and leaner. It had only been a handful of months since he’d been shot. He’d returned to work remarkably fast, maybe even too fast.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he grumbled. “I’m not an invalid.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You didn’t have to,” he groused. He gestured to the room service spread of late night snacks and alcohol. Holding up a glass of white wine, he said, “It’s your favorite.”

Moscato. Of course. She dropped onto the cushion next to Besian and took a long, deep drink of the sweet wine.

Besian’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “I guess it’s a good thing I ordered a whole bottle.”

“Yep,” she said, already sitting forward to refill her glass. “I’m not going to ask about Ramsay.”

“I wouldn’t suggest it,” he dryly replied. “It’s done. He’s gone. You won’t have to worry about him ever again.”

She didn’t ask about the security tapes that were sure to have his face on them. Besian he had probably paid to make them disappear, or he’d used a local cleaner to tidy up the loose ends.

“Housekeeping cleaned away all the glass and blood. The concierge will send up a new table tomorrow. It’s going on my bill. I told him that I had a little too much to drink and tripped.”

“You should have blamed it on me.”

He shrugged. “They know me here.”

“You haven’t partied like that in years.”

“That’s what happens when you get old like me,” he warned with a playful smile.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re not old.”

“I feel old.” He rubbed his chest again.

“You were shot. You’re supposed to hurt and feel old after that.”

“It’s more than that,” he said, his voice wistful and his gaze dark. “I was sitting there watching Alexei marry Shay, and it hit me. I’m the last one who isn’t dead or married. Ivan? Married. Alexei? Married. Nikolai? Married. Julio? Dead. Lorenzo? Dead. Lalo? Dead.” He shook his head. “This life tried to kill me—and nearly succeeded.”

“But you’re alive,” she insisted.

“For what? To make money? What the fuck kind of life is that? I have power. I have money. I have a beautiful home, cars, property…”

“But you’re alone,” she finished for him.

He nodded. “I’m alone.”

“You don’t have to be alone, Besian. You’re surrounded by women all day long—”

“I don’t want a dancer.”

She popped his arm. “Hey!”

“That’s
not
what I meant and you know it.” He took a long drink of his scotch. “I respect the girls who dance for me. I’ve even dated some of them.”

“But mixing business and pleasure doesn’t work?”

“It does for some men. It might have worked for me, but then I saw her and—”

“Oh my God!” she reacted with shock as she finally understood what he was trying to say. “Who is she?”

He wouldn’t meet her searching gaze. “It’s complicated.”

“It always is, Besian.”

He drained the last of his glass. “She’s too good for me. If she’s smart, she’ll stay far away and forget I even exist.”

Sara started to protest, but then she considered what she had just done with Zel. She had sent him away to protect him, feeling the same way that Besian did about this unknown woman who had stolen his heart.

Dropping back against the couch, Besian said, “You know why Ramsay was here.” It wasn’t a question. “He made the reasons for his visit clear to me when I gave him his options.”

“He thinks I owe him money.”

“You
do
owe him money.”

She glared at Besian. “How the hell do you figure that?”

“He went to
la pinta
thinking his boss had his back, and he comes out and Lalo fucked him.” Besian made a crude gesture. “Then, to get Ramsay to stop causing problems, he had the bastard framed and sent back to prison. Yes, your stepbrother is an asshole, but he’s not wrong about Lalo and the money. You just inherited everything Lalo owned and that includes his debts. So, technically, according to the rules of our underworld,
you
do owe him.”

“And how do you propose I pay him? Huh? I can’t touch the assets that Lalo put in my name. I’ll be the one who ends up in
la pinta
!” She shook her head. “I don’t want any of it. Not a penny.”

“That’s good because the government is probably going to take all of it, even the shit you bought with your own money.”

“Good. I want that part of my life closed. I want it to be over. Finished.” She spread her hands out in front of her, only narrowly avoiding sloshing wine. “I want to be able to come back to Houston and not have to look over my shoulder every five seconds.”

“You’ll be safe in Houston. Nikolai’s blessing earlier made sure of that.”

“I’ll need a good lawyer to handle the inheritance bullshit.”

“I know someone you can trust. He’s on Nikolai’s payroll.” Besian touched his wrist as if to make a point that the lawyer was part of the family. “As far as Ramsay is concerned, I’ve taken care of it. He’ll get what he thinks he’s owed when he’s resettled.” He made a dismissive gesture. “We’ll work out the specifics of repayment later.”

“So that’s that,” she said quietly, already feeling herself drawn back into the Albanian mafia’s stranglehold.

“Not like that,” Besian countered. “This is a personal debt. It’s private between you and me. I promised you that once you paid your debts, you would be free of the family. I’m keeping that promise. This is a friend helping a friend.”

As Sara thought about how much Besian had risked to keep her safe in the many years they had been friends, her gaze drifted to the television still playing across the bedroom. She zeroed in on images of Zel. After seeing him fight in the flesh on the penthouse floor, it was a different thing altogether to see him fighting on television. The cherry-picked images and reels showed him at his very best, pummeling and twisting and kicking and subduing his opponents.

But then the voice-over switched to a harrowing recall of Zel’s opponent’s history. Mace was a hard-faced, snub-nosed brawler. Almost all of Mace’s highlight reels featured blood spatter and unconscious opponents. The stats shown made little sense to Sara, but the clips of Mace striking an opponent so hard he dropped like a bag of rocks made her chest constrict.

Learning Mace had killed the man made her very nearly ill.

Swallowing hard as her stomach roiled with nausea, Sara looked at Besian. “Zel is fighting
that
man?”

Besian nodded. “He’s the toughest opponent Zel’s ever faced. Actually, Zel did the league a favor by stepping in to cover this fight when the originally scheduled fighter went down with a bad injury.”

“Mace killed a man!”

“Not on purpose.”

“Like that makes it any better?” Sara shook her head. “He can’t go through with this, Besian.”

Besian seemed amused by her sudden concern. “This is what he does, Sara. It’s the risk he takes.”

“It’s stupid! He’s risking his life for what? Some money?”

Besian held her gaze. “Zel is risking his life for his freedom.”

“How much?” It was a dangerous question to ask, but she did it anyway.

“Sara…”

“Besian.”

“It’s a lot. More than you can risk.”

“What are the odds?”

Besian hesitated. “Mace is at -300. Zel is the dog at +340.”

“Your book is still open?”

“Sara,” he said with a warning sigh. “You don’t want to take any of this action.”

“I’m a big girl. I know what I’m doing.”

“You’re a
terrible
gambler. You always have been. I’m not taking your money.”

“Then I’ll go find someone else who will,” she threatened.

“You know that our friendship won’t protect you from the debt,” he warned. “That money goes into the family pool. You make your payments on time—”

“Or you go after my kneecaps,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I’ve heard it before, Besian.”

“I’m not taking your money tonight. Not when you’ve been drinking,” he decided. “If you’re still serious, come see me tomorrow. I’ll put you in the book.”

“When I win, I want you to apply my winnings to Zel’s debt. Whatever is left over goes to him.”

He snorted with something akin to amusement. “You would do something romantic like that.”

“Zel and I can’t be together, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help him.”

“I don’t think he wants your money, Sara.”

“Trust me. He’s better off with the money.”

“If you say so…” Stretching out his legs, Besian exhaled roughly. “There’s something you need to know about Lalo’s death.”

She swallowed nervously. “All right.”

“I’m telling you this because I trust you and I think you need to know,” he said carefully. “It involves Alexei and Shay.” He eyed her almost empty glass. “You might want to refill before I start this story…”

Chapter Eight

Tense and irritated, Ivan shut off the water and stepped out of the shower. He grabbed the towel draped over the nearby bar and wrapped it around his waist. He expected some tension and stress on the morning of a fight. He was always worried that he hadn’t prepared his men for their contests.

Had he drilled them enough? Had they sparred enough? Had they improved their ground game? Had he worked them too hard? Pushed them to drop too much weight? He was always mentally cataloguing their injuries and weaknesses and comparing them to their opponents, always working the angles and looking for any last-minute advantage.

But this stress that was eating up his stomach and making his neck ache? This was all Zel and that bullshit with the dancing girl.

When Besian had called to tell him to meet Zel in his room, he hadn’t known what to expect. Finding his fighter with a bloody neck and bruised hand had been something of a relief. He’d been expecting much, much worse. The hand wasn’t broken, just banged up, and the cut could be explained away as a shaving accident. Zel would be able to fight tonight, but his heart and his head were out of the game. Men who weren’t focused got hurt—and they got hurt badly. Sometimes they fucking died.

“You’re going to have a stroke if you don’t calm down,” Erin warned, her voice gentle but firm. She leaned against the doorframe, her ankles crossed and her toes pointed like a ballerina as she watched him with a worried eye. A sheer pink lace and silk nightie barely covered her perfect ass. Always effortlessly beautiful, she was at her loveliest like this. Tousled hair. Sleepy eyes. No makeup. Just natural, pretty Erin.

“I’m going to have a stroke if you keep walking around in that tiny little thing,” he retorted gruffly. Her bare bottom and her nipples were plainly visible in the see-through nightgown. “I hope you don’t intend to answer the door like that when our breakfast gets here.”

She rolled her eyes at his possessive remark. It was one of their games. He played up his caveman side, and she pretended not to like it. “Actually, I had planned to walk around naked this morning. I figured you would tear this off of me the second you saw it last night.”

There was no mistaking her annoyed tone. After all that champagne and dancing, Erin had been hot for him last night. Hell, she’d ended up on his lap during the cab ride back to the hotel.

He’d been aching for her, already planning out all the ways he was going to make her scream his name, when his iPhone started rattling in his pocket. Instead of a passionate night with his wife, he’d spent hours in Zel’s hotel room icing the fighter’s bruised hand and watching that cut on his neck scab over while examining him for any signs of head trauma or invisible injuries that would end his fighting chances.

“Evie?”

He hadn’t been fond of her nickname when she’d first started teasingly calling him Evie, twisting up the proper Russian pronunciation of his name to needle him during an argument one night. Somehow, that nickname had stuck and soon he found that he rather liked it. To everyone else he was Ivan or Vanya or Coach. For her and her alone, he answered to Evie.

Erin advanced on him with deliberate steps. She placed a small hand on his chest, her skin soft and cool against his. Rising on tiptoes, she kissed his jaw. “You’re going to develop an ulcer if you keep worrying like this.”

He slid his arms around her slim waist and nuzzled her cheek. “If I could snap my fingers and relax, I would.”

“I know how to help you relax.” She walked her fingers down the flat plane of his stomach and pressed ticklish kisses across his chest. His body reacted instantly to her teasing touch. He swallowed hard as Erin kissed her way down his stomach before gracefully kneeling at his feet. She cupped his stiffening cock through the damp fabric of the towel and nipped at his happy trail.

After she peeled away the towel, she grasped his cock, and he shivered with excitement and lust. She stroked him, dragging her hand up and down his shaft while gazing up at him with so much love. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve this innocent beauty who had chosen to love him despite the black stains in his history. When she smiled at him like that, he felt as if he could conquer the world. She made him feel invincible. She made him want to be her hero.