British Bratva

by Flora Ferrari

  Rumours of his work being destroyed in a house fire. Publisher says: he's always been so protective of his sources, and we respected that. We never saw something like this coming. Right now, we're not sure we have enough to go to print at all.

  Critics say it's all one big publicity stunt, but as the hunt for the missing journalist and his step-daughter Elizabeth Harrington, who was last seen walking out of her final exam last Thursday, continues, suspicions have risen over this man, seen with her. The pair are believed to be working together.

  It's believed the unidentified male, who appears to be in his mid thirties, was also captured on CCTV footage outside Sutherland's Chelsea home just minutes before the fire. A man matching his description was also seen around the offices of his agent Sandra Charlton, before the arson attack gutted their home.

  "Pierce came to us because we're not one of the big guys. I think he thought that meant we'd be immune to any kind of pressure. We aim to represent writers and journalists who go after the truth. But in all the years we've been running, we've never had anything like this. It's horrible to think that this could have been a malicious attack, and I can only hope that wherever Pierce and Elizabeth are now, they come back safely."

  Police are asking for anyone who knows this man to step forward, and urge the man to get in touch so they can rule him out of their enquiries.

  I grimaced and rubbed a hand through my beard. Shaving didn't appeal to me, given the way Elizabeth seemed to like the rough scratch of it against her skin, but it would grow back and I reckoned she'd like me without it a lot better than as an inmate of HMP Pentonville.

  I looked up when I heard a noise, and my smile rose as Elizabeth squinted blearily at me.

  Her hair was standing up at odd angles and she looked like some kind of street urchin. That shouldn't have made my cock stir, but it did.

  "What time is it?"

  "Late. Early."

  "What's going on?"

  "Nothing, darling. I couldn't sleep."

  "Come back to bed, Max."

  I closed the lid of the laptop and walked over to her scooping her up into my arms. She let out a giggled shout that she barely muffled against my shoulder as I hoisted her legs up, Princess style.

  Her eyes were dark and wide, watching me quietly when I set her down on the bed, and she reached out to trace the scars along my side, nestling her fingers and thumb into the bullet holes along my side.

  Last night, I hadn't given her much opportunity to explore.

  "What happened?"

  I let out a slow breath, and reached to stop her hand. I kissed the inside of her wrist, knowing it was an excuse to still her questing fingers. I had the same urge to explore her body, to trail my fingers over the edges of the bruises that lined her ribs, but I knew instinctively she'd push me off.

  She saw them as evidence of her weakness. I saw them as markers of her strength. Maybe it was the same for her when she touched my scars.

  "Wrong place, wrong time."

  "Max…"

  "Sweetheart, it's not a pretty story. No heroics involved."

  "I don't care. I want to hear it."

  I gritted my teeth, and shook my head. There were shadows I'd been keeping at bay for a long time and I didn't want to let them out. I came out of the army unscathed. I went into it a different way. These marks stretched back to boyhood. Back to Russia. I had the Bratva to thank for getting me and my family out, untangled from a family in St Petersburg who thought it was their right to take our home, just because they liked it. I would always have a debt to repay for that.

  "Let's just say I owe the Bratva my life. The world is a complicated place, but Russia, when I was growing up, it was simple. Certain men, they wanted something, they took it."

  "What did they want?"

  "Our house." They'd come in the night. Guns and fire against the snow. It should have deterred me from the life I fell into, but it only made me hungry for revenge, even as a boy. Maybe that was why I understood the drive Elizabeth had.

  Her eyes widened. "Who took it?"

  "Someone who's long dead. It doesn't matter now."

  She settled in against my chest, lying back, letting me stroke along her side, fingers smoothing over the bumps of her ribs and her flawless, warm skin. I never wanted anything to mar it and I would spend the rest of my days making sure no one got the chance to try.

  "You should get it back," she said softly, voice drifting close to sleep.

  "What?"

  "Your house, in Russia. You should get it back."

  I let out a lazy huff of a laugh, lying back as I felt her breathing slow, staring blankly at the ceiling. I should get it back. Maybe I would. St Petersburg was a place I'd love to show her.

  CHAPTER 20

  Maxim

  Elizabeth levered up on her elbows, blinking at me blearily from the bed as I pulled my jeans on and ducked into a clean t-shirt that I pulled out of my drawer.

  I leaned over to kiss her. "Make yourself at home, I'll be right back."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Nothing in here to eat, sweetheart. I'm going hunter-gathering."

  Elizabeth snorted a laugh and shook her head. "I don't think it counts as hunter-gathering when you really mean going to Waitrose."

  "The cheek of it. See, I was going to pick you up a coffee, now I don't know."

  "You better. You wouldn't like me when I'm hangry."

  I let out a grumble as I forced myself away from the bed, out into the hall, where I pocketed my wallet and keys and shrugged into my jacket.

  It was the perfect morning. The sun was peeking out from between the clouds, and everything felt fresh and clean from the rain that must have come in the night sometime when we were sleeping, or maybe before that, when I was making Elizabeth mine.

  I felt brand new. Strolling down the street, I could have been anyone. I wasn't just part of the Bratva when I was with her. But I didn't have to hide that part of myself off either. It was intoxicating, knowing that she knew exactly what I was, and wanted the whole package.

  I'd always assumed having a woman close to me, starting a family, would mean I'd need to leave it all behind, or keep secrets in a way I never wanted to. I always told colleagues and friends that there was no way I was ever settling down. No one would fit into my life, at least no one I wanted. But that wasn't true any longer. Elizabeth changed everything.

  Being on the alert came naturally to me after so many years, and I identified the two men tailing me when I turned onto Brompton Road. Hair cuts were too regulated, too Russian. They had FSB written all over them from their hulking awkwardness in off-the-rack suits, to the way they stalked along the pavement, too militarised in their movements, too obviously aware of their surroundings. They walked the same way they did when they had on full body armour, in the middle of Moscow, carrying Pecheneg machine guns just to let the public know they were armed.

  From the badly hidden bulges at holster level on the jackets of both men, I figured they had been downgraded to the standard Glock 17’s today. If you knew what to look for, all that spelled out Alpha Unit. And I did know what to look for.

  They stuck out to me as clearly as if they'd been dressed in dayglo. The last thing I wanted was to disrupt my plans to figure out why they were sniffing around me. Elizabeth was naked in my bed. Not even the FSB was going to keep me from getting back home to her.

  I ducked into Harrods, picking up my pace to power walk through the departments, zig zagging through outdoor wear, then walking into a cloud of perfume as I excused myself through groups of elegant Arab women, wearing expensive Hijabs, and middle-aged French grand dames, in flawless, tasteful smock dresses with matching pastel jackets and pearls, examining the makeup.

  I doubled back through the jewellery section, pretending to glance at a case of watches, while keeping my eyes on the first of the muscled pair through the glass of the display. I watched as he stalked through designer outlets that touted luggage for all occasions
amid the smell of expensive, supple leather.

  Whatever this approach was, I didn't want it. My links were with Timoshenko and Valentin directly. I didn't deal in any of the politics. I didn't have the patience for it. The last thing I wanted was any kind of accord with the official security services. Doing that made it all the more likely I'd be pinned up as a scapegoat whenever their plans bungled.

  I didn't trust organisations like that. Hadn't since I left the army. At least the Bratva was honest about its motivations. There was a code, and we all lived by it. Politics was too changeable for my liking.

  Given this attempt at surveillance, I had every confidence that those plans would be bungled, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

  The food hall was always the busiest area of the store, whatever the time of day, and I squeezed through crowds of tourists taking pictures of perfect trays of baklava and mounds of hand crafted chocolates, pushing through to the grocery section of the store. I strolled along the refrigerated section and pretended to consider mineral water from Fiji while I figured out whether I'd given the pair the slip.

  Around the corner, tasting bars with marble counter tops and bar stools offered everything from sushi to charcuterie in the opulent gilded surrounds that was the perfect London department store, thanks to Mohammed Al-Fayed and now the state of Qatar. It wasn't only us Russians buying up the best business opportunities across the globe.

  And my two friends were ducking between the fish counter and the butcher, scanning around for me, while I calmly turned and walked back the way I'd come, stopping in on the street-facing cafe on my way out.

  I ordered coffees and pastries to take away with one eye on my surroundings and paid on the company debit card Valentin had arranged through our money man, along with my secure identity. No need to tie my movements to my real name when everything was a little too out of control for my liking.

  Elizabeth had just come out of the shower when I walked back in, and she wrapped herself into one of my shirts with all of the long-legged grace of supermodels everywhere, still towelling at her hair.

  I swallowed as I watched her take out a clean pair of my boxer briefs and slip them on over her hips.

  "Christ, you're going to need to put more clothes on than that if you plan on me letting you leave the bed today."

  "You say that like it would be a bad thing." She grinned at me as I stood there dumbly in front of her. She did make a good point.

  "What were your plans for today, besides me, anyway?" She plucked the paper bag out of my hands, and liberated one of the coffees from the cardboard tray, taking both back to the bedroom with her.

  "Dismembering your stepfather, actually."

  She looked up from peeking inside the pastry back and then took out an almond croissant, flicking away a layer of icing with barely any pause. "Harrods. How fancy."

  She took a large bite and I rocked back on my heels, curious to see whether she was going to address what I'd told her at all. She took her time chewing and I watched her swallow and wet her lips.

  "I thought we'd be tracking down that storage locker of his."

  I tilted my head, one shoulder rising up in a half shrug. "Clean up as you go is always the best policy. In the kitchen, and in life."

  "Where did you put him? I thought the fire was to take care of that."

  "Only amateurs think a house fire reliably burns hot enough to get rid of a corpse. No sense risking the forensic team getting curious about bullet holes."

  She took a small sip of her coffee through the plastic lid, and then peeled it off the top of the cup. "Hm. You learn something new every day. Did you bring any sugar?"

  I fished in my back pocket and pulled out a couple of paper sticks of demerara, which I tossed over to her along with a wooden coffee stirrer.

  "You're an angel."

  "Only for you."

  She met my eyes, teeth worrying her lower lip, probably to hide her smile. Even though it didn't work. "Good. I like it that way around." She set the cup down once she'd stirred the sugar in, and set to work dismantling the croissant, pulling the pastry apart before she ate it.

  I sat down on the edge of the mattress next to her and leaned in to give her a coffee flavoured kiss. "Do you want to come with me?"

  Her brow wrinkled and she looked down at the sugar-dusted paper bag. "Honestly, Maxim. I never want to see the bastard again for as long as I live even if all that's left of him is bones."

  I nodded shortly. "When I'm done with him there won't be anything left to see."

  CHAPTER 21

  Maxim

  Valentin had hackers access Sutherland's email account and go through every deleted file. It took two days for them to send me the restored PDF receipt that Elizabeth had seen on the computer in his study right before she killed him.

  The pen drive she'd gone in with only had a partial download of his system on it. They were still ploughing through the contents to find anything useful.

  In the meantime, we had something to go on at least.

  The left luggage section of St Pancras station was bustling and busy and the staff hadn't paid any notice to us when we walked in. We'd scanned down the rows of lockers, looking for the number on the keyfob.

  And realised the key was never going to fit. The locker we needed wasn't in the station.

  Elizabeth looked despondent when I glanced back at her with a weary grimace.

  The disappointment with the locker should have meant more to me than to her, but she was taking it to heart as though she had a stake in all this that went deeper than wanting Sutherland dead. For her, it had never been about stopping the unmasking of the shell companies that acted as a vehicle for the Bratva's funds.

  "Come on."

  I took her hand and lead her through the red brick arches to the side of the station that stretched up tall above us, windows on the level above even taller, like some great cathedral to steam.

  The St Pancras Hotel occupied one end of the station's Victorian splendour and the Booking Hall was now a bar and restaurant. Higher up on the modern, glass balcony there was a terrace of tables overlooking the magnificent arch of the glass and steel roof curved over the tracks, giving the pigeons premier addresses, high above the bustle of the station. The Eurostar terminal was across the other side, the gateway to the Continent.

  In the middle of the week, past lunchtime, it was deserted. A rare thing for London.

  But I wanted the intimacy of being tucked into a corner with her, the space of the leather seats and old world brass fittings on the bar of the Booking Hall bar hemming us in. Victorian opulence paired with clean modern lines, dark wood and moody leather. It suited us better to be here, in the shadows.

  I watched her slide into the seat across from me at the table the waiter showed us to with more poise that I thought it was possible to embody in an oversized t-shirt with no bra underneath. I shifted, adjusting myself what I thought was discreetly beneath the table top as the thought of her naked inside my t-shirt made me harden. I couldn't have been that subtle, because her brow arched up as she picked up the menu.

  "Alright there, Maxim?"

  I'd watched her pull that bloody t-shirt out of my closet and knot it around her waist this morning, rolling up the sleeves so it all looked intentional. A tank top, oversized, devastatingly cool over her high waisted jeans. I knew then she could have styled a black bag. In my line of work, the kind of presence she could embody was worth a thousand hours of experience. Maybe I was biasd, but every inch of Elizabeth was pure sex appeal.

  I wasn't entirely sure she should be let out on the streets on her own ever again. I certainly didn't want her to.

  I could picture her working her way into any setting. In the right outfit, she could Breakfast at Tiffany's her way in anywhere. And she wouldn't have to do more than smile alluringly, with that twinkle in her eye. God knew I wouldn't let anyone touch her. But she could make any number of men think she'd let them, to get ahold of whatever they knew. />
  She could be the perfect asset for the Bratva as well as the perfect wife for me. If I was bringing her into this, there was no way I was doing it without laying down my claim right from the beginning. No way was I letting her stride into the midst of my Russian colleagues, half of whom were a hairs breadth away from being Tartars, and they thought anything that they wanted was theirs for the taking. Well no one was getting Elizabeth, except me.

  "Champagne, please. Tattinger. Blanc de Blanc. Bring the bottle."

  "And fish and chips, please."

  I grinned at her order. Scanning down the menu, she could have chosen anything from oysters to sirloin steak. It wasn't that kind of day. "For both of us," I confirmed, doubling the order and handing back the menu.

  The waiter bobbed and smiled and exited, trained in the art of being as unobtrusive as the standard English toff likes his waiters to be. Seen and not heard, unless addressed directly, in which case an appropriate level of instant camaraderie is to be expected and only genuine warmth will do.

  When we were alone again, Elizabeth tilted her head, eyes narrowing slightly as she leaned back in her seat, folding her arms over her chest. "What are we celebrating, the locker's a bust?"

  I shifted in towards her, leaning my elbows on the table top and it tilted dramatically under my weight. "Us. You. Freedom from Sutherland."

  Beneath the table she stretched her leg out long, to rub our calves together, and she folded her arms neatly onto the table top, shifting her plate and cutlery an inch forward to mirror me without causing a dinning wear related incident. "Us?"

  Her eyes held mine, and I could see the sharpness in them. She was ready to defend herself, to guard her heart if she had to. But I would never hurt her.

  "Us," I repeated, voice solid and unshakable. She had to hear the truth in my voice. "I've wanted you since the first time I saw you. That makes this worth a celebration."

  She laughed, smile glinting. "Let me get this straight, we're toasting me becoming a notch on your bedpost?"