by L. L. Ash
He sent the plate into the room through the crack in the door then snatched his hand back just as the door slammed closed again.
“I swear to God, living in France has just made her feistier,” he mumbled to himself as he pulled on the ends of his hair again.
It’d been a tell he’d had forever, revealing when he was upset or stressed.
“I need a ride to the airport, along with a knife, a burner phone, and pen.”
“A pen?” he whispered to himself as he went to gather up the things I’d asked for.
I wasn’t all that surprised that the man came back with a big bowie knife tucked into a leather sheath. He’d always been the kind to be prepared, and firearms weren’t his style.
“I don't have a gun for you,” he told me with a frown. “Getting a legal one here is hard, and Adele insisted she wouldn’t allow any other kind.”
Evidently his wife turned him into a rule follower.
Oh, how the tables have turned.
“That’s fine. I’d only have to dump it anyway. I can stash the knife in the target’s bag and we’ll have it with us at all times off the plane.”
He nodded, then put a pen on the table next to the knife.
“Just a sec with the phone,” he told me before going over to his couch.
Stashed underneath in the thin fabric, he eased a small bag out. An emergency bag. Bringing it to the table, he opened the zipper and started stacking out all the things a good, prepared boy keeps around.
Knives, money in several types of currency, and passports for all his family members were inside, as well as several small burner phones.
“Perfect,” I said, taking one before dropping my current one to the ground and stomping on it.
When I found the small chip, I took that out too and snapped it in half. They’d never be able to trace it back to me or him.
“Do you have this number?”
He shook his head, then copied it down from the outside of the phone case. Stripping it off, I shoved it in my pocket before stomping back to the bedroom.
“Time to go,” I yelled through the door, giving it a couple loud bangs just so they knew I was serious.
The door opened and out stepped Mila in clothes perfectly made for Paris in the winter. A long wool coat covered her from head to ankle, and a matching hat sat atop her head.
“Do you approve?” Mila asked with a caustic tone in her voice.
“I do. Seeing as you’re a Frenchwoman on vacation, you’ll do just fine.”
Adele handed over a small suitcase that was really fucking heavy, and I just took it. I wanted out of the tiny apartment and to simply get to my safehouse.
Mila followed me to the front door where I pocketed the pen, then stuffed the bowie knife in her bag. Hopefully the airport didn’t lose it. That would suck. If they did though, I did have backup.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” Adele said to Mila at the door. “I can’t believe we finally get to go home and get back to normal life, but we’ve just sentenced you to living off the grid.”
She swallowed hard, but looked into the older woman’s eyes.
“Max was right in one thing. I am at least safe from the Russians. Or at least, all but one.”
“She’ll have a chance at a good life, Adele,” I told my friend’s wife, just to assure her, but then my eyes landed on Mila’s. “I’ll see to it myself.”
Her face scrunched in confusion at my words, but I didn’t give her much time to think on it. Instead I ushered her out the door and followed her down the stairs with her bag in my hand.
“Oh my God we forgot your bag at the airport!” she said eventually as we got to the bottom of the stairs.
“I didn’t want it,” I told her. “It would just slow us down.”
She looked at the bag in my hand and then back into my eyes. “Then why did you have me pack a bag?”
I couldn’t answer her. Honestly, I couldn’t. The only answer I had for her was because I wanted her to be comfortable. We could have been ok with what she was wearing before, but every little thing that we changed about her and me would make our getaway cleaner.
“There’s one more stop we got to make before leaving town,” I told her.
“What?” she asked as Serge brought us to his car. We got in and I admitted to her, “You have to change your hair.”
Her mouth flopped open, then closed again like a fish on dry land, then her eyes watered all over again.
“It’s just hair, kisa,” I told her, pressing my hand against her thigh.
I didn’t know why I did it, or why I wanted to comfort her. But I did, and she looked into my eyes like she always had before. With awe.
God, I shouldn’t like it so much, but I was kind of learning to live off of it.
Chapter Thirteen
Mila
Of all the things I had to do since leaving Russia, it shouldn’t have been such a big thing, but when I stepped out of the salon with short, blonde curls, I wanted to cry all over again.
Serge, the man who used to be part of some mafia had pity on me and gave me a weak smile saying, “it looks nice.”
I just frowned at him. He didn’t deserve my smile.
Following the men back to the car, I looked at Max who was getting a haircut in the chair next to mine. Only his was so much quicker.
The man was now mostly bald, only a small prickle of dark hair coated his head in a short buzz. Then, with the jeans and the boots and the muscles and the hair, he looked like a man who went on operatives and took on ‘targets’. I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t see it before, but I could only blame it on the charm the man possessed when he wanted to.
Or maybe I just wanted to believe him.
Looking like a total military man, he got into the seat beside me and dragged his hand over the absence of hair over his head. With a contented sigh, he opened his phone, a new one, and started inputting numbers.
“I’ll get you a phone when we get there,” he said to me absently while punching the buttons of the old-fashioned flip phone.
“Why?” I asked him. “I still have mine.”
His head shot up sharply as he jerked his hands toward my pockets.
“You have your fucking phone?” he yelled, digging through my person until his hands landed on the cold piece of glass and metal.
“Motherfucking son of a bitch!” he yelled, snapping the thing in half before rooting for the SIM chip inside of it. “Pull over, Serge. I’ll take us from here. Report your car stolen in an hour. Take a cab home and get your wife and kid out of here. It might already be too late. They might know we’re associates now.”
Serge took a sharp turn into a parking garage and stumbled out of the car just before Max flung his body into the driver’s seat.
“I could really use that gun about now!” he said with a frown before screeching out of there, leaving his friend behind.
“What do you mean?” I asked him. “Why do we need a gun?”
“They can track your fucking phone, Mila!” he growled. “All this time they’ve probably been tracking us. Here. To his house. Why the fuck did you take your phone with you when you decided to run away?”
Because I always had my phone. Tată insisted.
“Hopefully we have enough of a headstart that they won’t catch up to us,” he bit out. “Or else we’re both fucking dead.”
My heart started pumping hard and my stomach turned with nausea. It felt like my little French omelette was about to spew back up and make a reappearance.
“I didn’t know! I didn’t think...”
“Of course you didn’t think!” he yelled. “You don’t think. It’s not your job to think. You have a drug dealing, bloodthirsty, criminal for a father who does all that for you!”
Tears started dragging down my cheeks as he chastised me. And for a good reason. Now that I thought about it, he was right.
“Now they know we’re in France. They’ll look for flights heading out and they’ll
probably send men each way. You’re fucking lucky I’m a god at this.”
I couldn’t even disagree with him. Who knew? Maybe he really was. Not that I could question him after the huge problem I’d just caused.
We drove just right on the road, hitting the speed limit the same as all the other cars, and we blended into the flow. Don’t stick out, don’t bring attention to yourself. Blend in. Be forgettable.
At the airport we waited in line just like everybody else, then we walked calmly through security even though my heart was beating out of my chest. We got to our gate with our tickets to Bangladesh in our hands.
Why there? I had no idea. But he had a grand plan ticking behind his eyes that was spinning faster than I could even comprehend. He even managed to look bored while his eyes swept the place over and over again for something that stuck out or didn’t belong. For an hour he did this as we waited for our flight. When we were on the plane, that was where I relaxed for the first time. I sat back and took a strong shot of Absinth that burned all the way down, making my stomach sick again. But I needed something to cut my nerves. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack and an anxiety attack all at once after the scare in the car. It had just been a really shitty twenty-four hours…
No, not twenty-four hours. No matter what had happened afterwards, that time I spent with him in his room, on his bed, and between his sheets was...magical.
Turning to him, I wondered how much of that man that I knew was part of this man in front of me. The man who worked for the mob and protected his friends.
Yes, I knew why it all happened. After Adele took me back into her bedroom with little baby Amelia, I heard the whole story. Max took me because if he didn’t, Adele and Ami would die. Lives for happiness. Even I, whose happiness was in jeopardy, was on board with his plan. I mean, when it really came down to it, I got what I wanted too. I got away from Kir, and the Popovs and I got away from Tată. Tată who sold me to the devil.
In reality, I couldn’t have picked a better person to get me out of Russia safe and sound. If only he hadn’t been nice to me. If only he didn’t make me burn me from the inside out. If only he hadn’t made me fall in love with him…
Swallowing the pain back, I put it away for another time. Now wasn’t the moment to dwell on broken hearts and betrayal. There would be time for that later. Right now, we just had to stay alive.
Tată never showed up, and neither did his men. I had expected them just on the corner of every turn, hiding behind every door. But they weren’t there. Tată hadn’t found us, and we were almost there, or so Max said.
“Is your name even Max?” I asked him as we left the airport for the millionth time in two days.
“Yep,” he told me, speaking in an American accent in his perfect English.
“Well, at least that was one thing you didn’t lie about.”
He huffed and headed forward until he found a man in what looked like an American golf cart that I’d seen in movies. Tassels hung from the fabric roof like someone just laid a rug out over it, and the man driving looked almost too old to push himself around, let alone us, too.
When strange, foreign words dripped from Max’s mouth, he held out some American money, which made the man’s eyes widen with delighted surprise. He nodded and spoke back to Max, who motioned me into the little machine.
“Rickshaw isn’t my favorite, but it gets the job done,” Max mumbled to me as he slid my bag over both of our laps.
Then the machine darted forward.
There were no doors or seatbelts, so we both just hung on for dear life onto the metal bars that held up the roof.
I felt sick all over again, but the ride was short, thank God, and we stumbled out as Max handed over a couple small American bills.
Looking up, I saw what seemed to be a hotel or apartment building of sorts.
“What were you speaking?” I asked him as he led the way into the building.
“Hindi,” he told me before taking my hand and stringing his fingers through mine.
Right. We were the cute little couple on their honeymoon.
If anything, I could act the part. Even if the main man was a lying, conniving, backstabbing bastard.
We got a room with congratulations from the people at the front desk, giving us a key to a room. An honest-to-God key. Max pulled me into the elevator before letting go of me and putting space between us. And it hurt.
My feelings of rejection and betrayal were sneaking in again and I didn’t know what to say to him without telling him to fuck himself. So I chose not to say anything at all.
“I’m pretty confident that we’re safe for the night,” he told me as we got into our room.
He went to one of the beds and stood on it in his grungy boots, and just as I was about to ask him what in the world he was doing, he reached up into a ceiling tile and lifted it away.
What in the…?
Taking down a black bag, he dropped it to the bed then replaced the tile.
“How in the…?” I started, but he interrupted me with a grin.
It was one of those grins. The one that made my heart swell and pitter-patter against my ribcage, sending extra heat down to that little spot between my legs.
“This is one of my safe houses,” he explained briefly. “A place to rest if need be, or to get off the grid. And a place to re-supply.”
He unzipped his bag and an abundance of things came out of it, one by one.
Junky phones, money and guns were the first things that exited the bag. He found a black, felt-looking thing and wrapped it around his belly with Velcro. Securing it to his waist, he placed a gun in each side of the unusual holster, tucking it under his t-shirt. They looked flawless under his jacket and nobody could ever tell that he was packing serious heat.
Max gave a sigh of relief at having some firepower on his person, then he started unrolling some of the money and stuffing it into his wallet.
“What kind of person has this?” I asked him, wondering if I should be more shocked than I was.
Who was this man?
“Smart people,” he said cryptically. “Get some sleep. Here’s some food if you’re hungry.”
He threw a package at me, obviously a military ration of some sort.
“Just put some water in the coffee maker and pour it into the pouch when it’s hot. It’s not the fancy shit you’re used to, but it’ll fill you up.”
Fancy? Was that what he thought of me? A spoiled little rich girl?
Those pesky tears edged at my eyes again but I shoved it all down. At least, I managed to shove most of it down.
I stood at the ancient coffee maker, waiting for my water to heat, and looked back at him as he peeked out of the window to the street down below.
“Was any of it real?” I asked him, the words blurting out of my mouth before I could stop them.
I didn’t think he heard me at first. He just kept looking out the window, ignoring me. But finally, he sighed into the grungy curtains and shook his head.
“It was as real as it had to be, Mila.”
His words confirmed my own horrific thoughts that it had all been a ruse, and that I’d fallen in love with a man who was simply pretending.
“Why did you do it?” I begged of him.
I needed answers. I needed it to all make sense.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I kept my back to him.
“You already know why.”
“No. Why did you—take it? When you knew that you would only...”
He let the curtain fall, obviously feeling secure enough for now to turn his attention away from it.
“I needed you to have no other options, Mila.”
“You could have kidnapped me or...something. You didn’t have to lie to me and take something so precious to me!”
His heavy boots fell in low thumps on the tan, tiled floor as he approached me.
“I didn’t lie,” he said, taking my chin in his hand so I had to look into his eyes.
“What happened in that room...that wasn’t a lie. It was a means to an end, but it was...”
He licked his lips and turned away, shame flashing across his face.
“I hate you, Maxim. I hate you with every part of my being.”
He just flung his jacket off and dropped into one of the beds, his guns framing his waist as he got comfortable.
“I’m ok with that, Kisa. I wouldn’t expect anything different from you.”
And it was true. I hated him. I hated him so much that my chest burned hot with it.
The only problem was though, that hate born of passion could be flipped both ways. Because no matter how much I hated him, my heart still loved him.
Chapter Fourteen
Mila
We got up early the next morning after sleeping on the lumpy, slightly stinky beds, and boarded a small plane. Max spoke to the pilot in Hindi so I had no idea where we were going or what he was saying, but I went along. I had no other choice.
There was no security and no paper trail when we got onto the little plane. If Tată had managed to somehow follow us to Bangladesh, there was no way he’d be able to find us wherever this little puddle hopper was going to take us.
Max gave the man money, still hiding those double pistols under his coat, he climbed aboard and put on a pair of ear protectors. He gave me a matching pair and made sure it was snug over my ears, and that I was buckled in properly before he did the same to himself.
The pilot flicked on a few switches, squinted at a couple of lights on his dashboard, then the plane started moving forward.
A scream of terror had never left my lips before that moment. Sitting there, in that little tin can of an airplane with a man I didn’t know piloting something I only hoped he knew how to drive, sent my blood pressure skyrocketing. Max pressed his hand against my thigh, a grin on his face as he watched me scream.
“It’s going to be ok!” he yelled into my ear, only the faintest sound breaking past the loud engine of the plane and the noise protecting mufflers.
