by Juno Rushdan
If the Russians had tracked him down, they wouldn’t get the drop on him twice in one day.
* * *
Maddox’s skin crawled. Standing still as death in front of her apartment, she stared at the doorknob as though it was coated in ricin. Her instincts vibrated like a hard-struck tuning fork. An intruder had been in her apartment and was possibly still inside. Even if her gut was wrong—and it seldom was—proof lay on the ground.
The small piece of monofilament fishing line she placed between the strike plate and door every time she left her apartment wasn’t there but on the threshold. A simple method of detection, no elaborate bells and whistles, but effective, easy on her government-salaried wallet, and unnoticeable unless a potential intruder knew precisely what to look for.
She had set down her groceries with the barest rustle of plastic. Her mind spun, retracing her steps. Had anything seemed odd, suspicious on the street? No one loitered near her building, no unfamiliar cars that didn’t belong, and Cole’s motorcycle hadn’t been parked out front.
Drawing her gun, she tapped in the code on the touch screen. She twisted the knob slowly. Inching the door open, she eased inside and crept down the hall. She snuck a quick glimpse over her shoulder to be certain no one was closing in from the coat closet behind her.
The air in the condo shifted. She sensed someone’s presence. Danger lurked somewhere in her home. Whoever had violated her sanctuary was going to get a bullet for their stupidity.
She skirted deeper, stiff spine against the far wall, giving her a clear view of the empty living room. Her finger rested on the trigger guard, never the trigger until she had sights on a target and was prepared to shoot.
A floorboard creaked in the kitchen. She sidestepped, rounding the corner, gun aimed, and came face-to-face with her intruder.
Cole held a gun leveled at her head, prepped to blow a hole in her. A wired energy thrummed from him, crackling in the air. He stood with the barrel trained on her, keyed up, riding a perilous edge.
She holstered her weapon. “Unless you’re going to shoot me, put your gun down.”
Eyes darker than a nightmare stayed narrowed, lean muscles bunched, poised to launch into explosive action. He lowered his gun, slowly, as if debating whether or not to put a bullet in her. He blinked twice, settling a hair.
Releasing a breath, he flipped the safety on, stuffed his gun in a pack, and tossed it on the sofa. The bottom vent plate on the fireplace slid to the surrounding marble with a clank.
She whipped a cutting gaze at him. “You rummaged through my things?”
“Can you blame me? You did kidnap me with no explanation.”
In a day, he’d fought off four armed men and been drugged and abducted—by her, no less. She couldn’t blame him. “I rescued you—big difference. And I told you to wait until dark to come.”
Reece and Gideon were probably having a laugh over this one. At least she was confident they’d give her the professional courtesy of not spying on their conversation.
“I’m not much good at following orders.” He shrugged out of his riding jacket, revealing those sculpted arms covered in tats he’d acquired in his new life. One where she didn’t exist.
Had he kept his first ink on his back or covered it with something that didn’t remind him of her?
“So I’ve seen.” She collected the groceries from the hall and locked the door.
The rubber-band tension in him eased, and he no longer looked ready to snap, but his eyes were wild and wary. He leaned against the counter, arms folded, ankles crossed, looking kick-ass cool. Her gaze snagged on the long, tantalizing line of his ripped physique, and her heart did a silly flip.
She wanted to slap herself for having the same old physical reactions to him. Better yet, slap him for pretending to be dead and putting her through the agony of mourning him.
“Are you hungry?” She forced a tone of nonchalance while unpacking the food and putting away the handful of perishable essentials in the fridge. “I can cook you something. Or order takeout.”
“How pedestrian.” He pushed off the counter, grabbed her forearm, and spun her around as he kicked the refrigerator door closed.
She bridled her defensive reflexes, flowing with his crisp actions as if they were dancing.
“I didn’t come for dinner.” He caught her by the back of the neck and with the two forceful strides that sent her feet scuttling, she allowed him to box her into a corner.
Pressing close, he clasped his hands to the counter on either side of her. Much closer than they’d been in the safe house. So close, the heat of him bore down on her, and she smelled him. Leather and musky salt. The rest was pure him. No cologne. No aftershave.
The scent she’d sucked in, face buried in one of his T-shirts, night after night, grieving, regretting, until the smell of him on the fabric had died too.
They were too close with him invading her space. If she could smell him, then he could smell her parfum de Icy-Hot. “I don’t like being crowded.”
His eyes locked on hers, hard as granite. “I remember. Frankly, I don’t give a damn what you do or don’t like.” The frost in his tone chilled her blood. “Tell me why you did it.”
Deep inside, she flinched but outwardly, she stilled.
“I made a mistake.” Her body drew tense when she needed to soften, raze her walls, exhume her suffering to abate his anger. But she couldn’t. “I’m sorry.” Such feeble words.
“The last night we were together…”
Cole had brought her home for one of many Sunday suppers with his family, hadn’t hesitated to throw the doors to his world wide open and usher her in. Whether he’d marry her hadn’t been a question, only when. But that night, his brother had sat at the table with them.
“My mother forced Ilya to sit with us because she loved you like a daughter,” he said. “I turned on my brother, defending you.”
Ilya had asked to be godfather to their half-breed children. Cole’s temper had flared and he had broken his brother’s nose before the second course had been served. Instead of excusing himself, Ilya had stayed, with his head held up, a snow-white napkin turning crimson as it soaked up his blood. Vodka had flowed heavily, and the conversation had turned to business.
“My father spoke freely in front of you. Because I trusted you.”
A meeting had been set for the heads of the Vory families. Ilya had voiced concerns about the Reznikovs not attending. No one ignored the call of the Bratva without consequences, but their father hadn’t wanted to drag the family into human trafficking.
“I let you in where no one ever got close. How could you?”
She wanted to uncork her remorse, let it overflow, but she was congested. Her throat, tear ducts, her very pores clogged long ago by heartache.
He snatched her by the arms. “Why?”
“Because I was greedy.” The only way she could vomit the details was to steel herself with her self-hatred. “My father ambushed me, attacked you, your family. He was relentless.”
Her father’s voice rang clear as a bell in her head.
You’re gifted, special. You want to piss away our money on an art degree, squander your God-given talents to be a curator, fine. But I’ll be damned if you waste your life on Russian mobster trash. Not after the sacrifices I’ve made for the Agency, this country. Over my dead body!
“Nothing new from your father,” Cole snapped. “You were used to it.”
No one got used to her father’s intimidation. They weakened under the strain.
“He gave me an ultimatum. Demanded I break up with you, or he’d cut me off. Forced me to choose.” As if there was ever a choice.
Cole’s face pinched in a scowl. “You needed Daddy’s money? Was that it? Ye of little faith. I would’ve taken care of you.”
“He threatened to cut me off from my famil
y. Castle would’ve turned his back on me. My mother would’ve had to sneak around to see me like I was a dirty secret, treating our children like dirty secrets, her heart breaking every time she looked at me because I had chosen you over family. Once my father laid down the law, nobody dared go against him. He was—”
“I know.” His voice was quiet. Too quiet. He loomed, sucking up the air around her.
Her lungs shriveled to peanut shells. She shoved her hands up in between his arms and rotated, breaking his hold, needing space to finish. Needing to be free of his grasp. A muscle knotted in his jaw. He didn’t touch her, but he also didn’t give her breathing room.
“I thought once he heard about the big meeting, how your father refused to participate in human trafficking, wanted to legitimize, it’d prove my dad wrong. That he’d give us a chance.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, not wanting to exhume the things she’d long ago buried, but had to now, for him. He’d loved her, trusted her, and had lost everything because of it.
“Then I could’ve had a big wedding, my father walking me down the aisle. My parents beside us as our children were christened. You arguing with Castle at Thanksgiving while our fathers watched football and our mothers played with the kids. Don’t you see?”
The crushing burden pressed down, and something in her chest splintered.
“I believed my father was a pencil-pusher for the State Department.” Agency? Sacrifices? She’d been naive, dismissive about the little things her father had said.
The anger and shame and misery of the past nine years jammed her throat, and she wanted to choke, but needed to finish.
“I didn’t know he was CIA. I never imagined he’d take the information to the FBI.”
He rocked back on his heels, stumbling away and shaking his head. His expression slid from shock to disdain to hurt.
“I would’ve chosen you over the whole world,” she said low, her insides clenching in the struggle not to unravel. “I’m so sorry.”
* * *
Cole had been in a room with her dad four times and it was clear there was more to her father than him being a low-level diplomat. Built like a Mack truck, Robert Kinkade had a wary way about him, picked up details a Joe Blow would miss, carried a concealed gun—at least in Cole’s presence.
But CIA?
Jeeeeesus! The worst exploiters. Absolute lowest bloodsuckers. Willing to cross any line.
“Nikolai, I didn’t mean to betray you. To kill us.” Her eyes were somber, but there wasn’t a flicker of the agony he’d endured showing through her tempered surface. “I loved you, Kol.”
There was a sudden God-awful twinge in his chest, the rage he had carried as his sole companion decomposing into something more corrosive.
Those with a foothold in his past inner circle had called him Nik. His family used the loving Russian diminutive Kolya, but only Maddox had ever called him Kol, a nickname straddling the two worlds that had divided him.
Cole was the only name that fit his new identity.
“Can you forgive me?” she asked, shutting her eyes. “For everything? For your father?”
He could never forget. Or forgive. Knowing why she did it changed nothing.
His father was dead because of her, and he was now a different man. He hated the selfish weakness that had driven her to spill his family’s secrets. Hated how the fallout had turned him into a killer, like his own father. Robbed him of the life he’d wanted with her.
He tried to convince himself he hated her. If only he didn’t miss her smile, the fire in her eyes, the sound of her voice. Crave her like a man possessed.
And he hated that most of all.
She gazed up at him in the strained silence choking the air. He couldn’t utter any absolution, and she seemed to pay a dear price, holding his stare. The raw intimacy shared in the look, as if they were lovers again, cost him also, for there was no going back.
“What happened to you?” she asked. “Did you really take out thirty-two men? Alone?”
He drifted into the living room, looking at those blank blue walls. His family’s absence at the Vory gathering had caused waves, but the FBI raid the same day had painted his father a traitor.
“My father was murdered because they believed he snitched, Maddox. They marked all of us for death. I did what I had to. Erased the threats to my family.”
He and Ilya had trained in the martial art of Systema since they were boys, brought up learning how to use a knife, a gun, hell, a fucking barstool to defend themselves. Ilya had lacked discipline and focus, choosing to rely on bodyguards, whereas Cole only wanted to rely on himself. His father had forged him into a lethal weapon. Vengeance had put that weapon into play.
“I knew word of what I’d done would reach powerful ears in Russia. So I had to die, to protect anyone close to me.” To protect you. “But I have more questions of my own.”
His cell buzzed in his pocket. He looked at the screen. Linda from Rubicon.
“I need to take this.” He waited, giving her a hard glance that spoke volumes.
“Oh.” She lowered her head. “I’ll freshen up. Give you privacy.”
She went into her bedroom, shut and locked the door. The shower started a second later.
“What did you find?”
Chapter 07
Vienna, Virginia
8:05 p.m. EDT
The threat of the Russians is serious as a heart attack while scuba diving,” Linda said in her croaky voice. “Big mafia bosses want you hacked into little pieces on Russian soil.”
A terrible dread gripped him. The bitter decade he’d spent a condemned soul, damn dead man walking, deprived of a real life, had been for what?
“Perfect start to my vacation. What did the team find out about her?”
The timing of Linda’s call couldn’t have been better. He’d have the truth to weigh against the story Maddox intended to spoon-feed him.
“Not sure you’re going to like that either.”
Whatever Linda had found better explain the passports and cash. He’d lost his way over the years, had done dark things he wasn’t proud of, but he only wanted Maddox to be safe, even if they couldn’t be together. “Tell me.”
“She likes privacy. No social media footprint. Mail goes to a PO box, which made getting her address tough, but you know us.” Linda gave the address of the apartment he was in. “The condo is one of a few properties under the name of a limited liability company established by her late father. The LLC is owned by her, the mother, and a brother. We figured out which property was hers because there’s one utility in her name. Never been married, and if she’s fucking, it’s no one steady.”
The news came with a strange sense of relief, but he had zero intention of psychoanalyzing why.
“For almost six years, she’s worked at Helios Importing and Exporting for Bruce Sydell. He specializes in black market goods, from stolen antiquities to nasty stuff that kills and maims.”
With her art history degree, he’d envisioned her selling paintings in a gallery, not trading death on the black market. This wasn’t the life meant for her.
Had his leaving sent her spiraling down a horrid path? Was she trapped in some shady business because he never came back for her?
“You’re right. I don’t like it.”
“Helios currently has a lucrative contract with a big pharmaceutical company.”
“Any arrests, federal wiretaps, signs of coercion?”
The feds had harassed his family for as long as he could remember, tossing their house every time a warrant gave them an excuse. His father—a Vory boss, a high-ranking member of the Russian mafia—had been untouchable. Until Maddox.
“No. But there was something else.”
He plunked down on the sofa, bracing himself. “What?”
“Someone worked
very hard to erase something from her past.”
The hairs on his nape bristled. “I hate suspense. Spill it.”
“Nine years ago, she was hospitalized for three days. But I don’t know why.”
His thoughts ricocheted in his head like ball bearings in a pinball machine, hitting every horrid possibility. “When?” He cleared the tightness in his throat. “The date?”
“She was admitted September nineteenth.”
Three months after she’d betrayed him and he’d killed anybody threatening the ones he loved, then faked his own death. He’d done it to appease the Vory, to safeguard his family. Especially her.
The news of his death must’ve been a shock to her at first. She was supposed to heal and move forward. Had she tried to hurt herself?
“There’s more. Our whiz kid found it, wanting to impress you, his superhero.” Tom was a techie genius who sliced through digital layers like a virtual surgeon. “Someone with resources buried it real, real deep, never meant to surface.”
A sickening feeling rained over him as if the bottom of his world was about to drop. “Tell me.”
“Afterward, she spent time at Privé Solace in Canada. One of those uber-private mental health places disguised as a spa, for depression, anxiety, PTSD.”
Slamming his eyes closed, he pinched the bridge of his nose, struggling to get a handle on the information rattling around in his skull. As soon as things had gotten tough, he’d bailed on her. He’d promised to always be there for her, but the situation had been a quagmire he’d barely escaped with his life. All because she couldn’t be trusted with his family’s secrets.
Fuck! “Anything else?”
“Nope. All I could find.”
That’d been plenty. “Thanks. Never mention Nikolai Reznikov to anyone. I owe you.”
“Stay safe, sugar. I want my box of chocolates.”
His fingers twitched like he had caffeine jitters. He couldn’t wrap his fists around this. The hell Maddox must’ve gone through, believing he was dead.
He grabbed his wallet and pulled out the frayed, torn-in-half strip of snapshots taken of him with Maddox in a carnival photo booth. They looked so young, so in love.
