by Bella Rose
Courtney took a deep breath and tried to keep her voice carefully measured. “Who are you?”
“I’m a concerned individual.”
She couldn’t help the snort that escaped. Concerned? “That’s hard to believe, since you snatched me off the street against my will. Or are you just referring to the fact that you’re concerned with your own interests and not mine?”
“You are feistier than I first imagined,” the voice said with obvious amusement. “I can see why he likes you so much.”
“Who likes me? Kemper? Kemper needs his head checked. I wouldn’t marry that philandering asshole if he were the last man on earth!” Courtney couldn’t help her outburst. She was so annoyed with Creighton right now, she could happily smack him between his legs with a baseball bat.
“Philandering asshole.” A man finally wandered into view. He was big and broad and definitely not Creighton. He smiled at her. He was handsome in his own way, and vaguely familiar. “I like your creativity.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Vasily Romanov.”
Courtney froze. She vividly recalled hearing her father talk about Mikhail’s criminal relations back when he was telling her that Mikhail’s bad decisions had gotten him killed. “What do you want?” she whispered.
“A very interesting question.”
“You weren’t talking about Creighton before,” she said suddenly. “You were talking about Mikhail.”
“Da!” Vasily clapped his hands. “I almost feel sorry for you.”
She swallowed, feeling the bile begin to rise in her throat. “Why?”
“Because you are far too good for Creighton Kemper.” Vasily shrugged. “And yet I am going to make sure that you marry him because it will benefit me greatly to do so.”
* * *
Mikhail stood in front of Vasily’s home. The place certainly didn’t fit the profile of a Russian mobster’s base of operations. Although maybe that was the point entirely. The entire abode spoke of understated elegance and good taste. The narrow three-story structure was at least a century old and renovated to perfection. Mikhail knew without looking that the interior was stuffed with antiques and expensive art. Vasily had impeccable taste, and his wife Oksana adored spending money to furnish, refurnish, and refurbish whatever she could get her hands on.
He took a deep breath and ascended the steps to the wide front porch. Usually there was a man stationed there to watch the street and the door. Tonight there was nobody. That was Mikhail’s first sign that something was very wrong. The second was that Ekaterina answered the door.
“Katy,” Mikhail said softly.
“Hello, Mikhail.” Her smile was as brilliant as ever, but there was nothing about her that affected him in the way Courtney did.
“Katy, where’s Vasily?” Mikhail didn’t bother trying to pretend he was there for anything else.
“Papa has gone out.” Katy clasped her hands in front of her. “He asked me to remind you that if you want her back, you’ll give him what he needs.”
Mikhail saw a gaping crevasse opening before him. Vasily had obviously taken Courtney. Now he was holding her as collateral for the company that he wanted. The Russians obviously had their sights set on Pierson Security and refused to admit when they were outfoxed—or technically outbid, in this case.
Mikhail felt a grin tug unbidden at the corners of his mouth. “You father always plays the hand he is dealt and then cheats. You know that, Katy. Why help him?”
“I’m just the messenger.” She shook her head and shrugged.
Mikhail cocked his head, wondering how far and how thin her loyalty stretched. Especially given her recent marriage to a man she most likely didn’t care anything about. “He has the mother of my child, Katy. He has Courtney.”
Katy’s jaw tightened. He could see her clenching her teeth and knew she was angry. Then she pursed her lips and looked away. Her gaze seemed to stretch far away. “You never came back to see us after you left.”
“Your father would have killed me, Katy,” he reminded her.
She seemed hung up on something in particular. “What happened that day?”
“With your brother?” Asking was pointless. He knew exactly what she was referring to. “Uday went crazy, Katy. You knew that.”
“He wasn’t crazy,” she argued. “He was tired of Papa’s pushing him.”
Mikhail shrugged. “I did as I was told.”
“Papa said you went on a rampage.” She looked at him accusingly. “He said that is how you got your reputation and why everyone left you alone.”
“Did he?” Mikhail mused. “It wasn’t quite like that.”
“How was it, then? I want to know?” she insisted.
“Your father ordered me to shoot Uday,” Mikhail told her softly. “I refused.”
Katy looked stricken. “No.”
“They were going to kill us both then.” Mikhail could feel himself slipping back to that moment. “I started shooting. I don’t even know how many men I hit. I emptied my clip and slammed another one in the gun and that’s when I saw your brother go down. I didn’t kill him. But I got the credit. And as far as I know, Uday was shooting just as much as I was. There was no telling who was responsible for what. But I was the one who walked away, and I suppose that meant I earned the credit.”
“Papa took the woman to Creighton Kemper’s family home,” Katy whispered. “It’s outside the city. In the country somewhere. Apparently nobody goes out there. Or that’s what Kemper told Papa.”
“Thank you.” Mikhail gently touched her hand. “And I wish you all the happiness. No matter how you get it.”
* * *
“What is it you think you know about Mikhail Krachenko that would make you want to be with a man like that?” Vasily said with an exaggerated sense of the dramatic.
Courtney was hesitant to answer. The man had been pontificating endlessly on the virtues of Creighton and the match that she’d already agreed to make with him. Courtney couldn’t imagine what Vasily cared about who she married. None of it made any sense.
“Would you just shut up and get to the point?” she finally shouted. “I don’t understand what this matters to you. Go home to your Russian mobster lifestyle and leave me out of it. Mikhail isn’t a part of your organization anymore. I know he’s not. I don’t think he ever was! That was something my father concocted just to blacken Mikhail’s name and make me hate him!”
“Is that what you think?” Vasily crossed his arms over his broad chest, looking very smug. “Let me tell you a few things about your precious Mikhail.”
“What?” Courtney snarled. “Is this where you tell a bunch of lies to make me hate him too? I’m sorry, but my father already screwed that up for you. I’m done believing all of the crap. I know him. He’s a good man.”
“He murdered my son.”
Courtney froze in her chair. She knew Mikhail carried something around on his shoulders, some kind of guilt or some perceive wrongdoing. Something. But could it really be something so awful?
“I thought you were related to him,” Courtney said slowly. “Wouldn’t your son be Mikhail’s cousin or something?”
“Why do you think we have never come after Mikhail before now?” Vasily blustered. “We have left him alone as long as he stays out of our business interests. For a man who was once blooded as one of us, that is not normal, little girl. Not at all.”
Courtney hated the condescending way he spoke to her. She ground her teeth together and tried to see through all the bullshit. She was so tired of everyone lying to her and just expecting her to eat it up.
“We let Mikhail Krachenko walk away, because he was such a brutal killer that the idea of going after him made grown men shake in their boots.” Vasily waved his hand. “It is embarrassing, but there it is. He slaughtered my son along with ten of my best men that night. He is a killer through and through.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that you’ve left him alone until right n
ow?” Courtney argued weakly. “Why now?”
“We had made arrangements with Kemper to acquire your father’s company when Kemper married you. It was to be your dowry, no?” Vasily rushed ahead, not even waiting for her to try and explain that he didn’t quite understand how her father had meant for that to happen. “Then Mikhail swoops in right under our noses and steals the company! It is insulting!”
It occurred to Courtney that Vasily was giving her way too much information. “Why are you telling me all of this? You’re doing the classic evil-villain info dump. I don’t get it. What’s your angle?”
“Oh, me?” Vasily shrugged. “I was wasting time until the priest got here.”
Courtney nearly choked trying to speak. “Priest?”
“Somebody needs to perform the marriage. No?” Vasily looked as though he’d just played the biggest joke ever. Courtney was just hoping it was all a nightmare and she would wake up in the morning and find out she could start this day over again.
* * *
Mikhail was already stepping into the driver’s side of his car when he felt the cold steel of a handgun muzzle pressed against his temple. He lifted his hands slowly, reflexively taking the stance of surrender and trying to figure out who had managed to so completely get the drop on him.
“I don’t know what you want,” Mikhail said slowly. “But I can get you a lot of money if you just turn around and walk away.”
“Money.” The bitter voice belonged to Gordon Piers-Cameron.
Mikhail stepped back onto the pavement beside his car and lowered his hands. He stared down the barrel of Gordon’s gun and waited. His heart was steady and his breathing regular. He did not believe in his heart that Gordon had the machismo or commitment to pull the trigger. The man wanted something. He wasn’t ready to give up just yet.
“You have to stay out of this,” Gordon said haltingly. “You can’t go messing things up again. You keep doing that, you know. Even when you were a boy you were always making matters more difficult than you should have.”
“How is that?” Mikhail asked in a neutral voice. “What did I do?”
“You put ideas in her head,” Gordon insisted. “She was happy until you came along and told her that she wasn’t. Now it’s the same thing all over again.”
“If you think your daughter was ever happy,” Mikhail growled, “then you never knew her at all.”
Chapter Eighteen
Courtney was doing her level best not to freak out. It wouldn’t do her any favors to make Vasily think he had rattled her. The man couldn’t force her to marry Creighton. This wasn’t the eighteenth century; people had to agree to marry. There was a legal contract involved. There were licenses and—well—other stuff. No matter what this crazy Russian mobster said, she wasn’t going to marry Creighton Kemper.
Of course, at the moment she wasn’t about to marry Mikhail Krachenko either. In fact she was contemplating a life of being single. It had to be far easier than this incessant wondering about who was lying to her, why and for what purpose.
“Ah!” Vasily’s countenance brightened as he looked toward the room’s wide entryway. “There you are! I was wondering if you were getting cold feet.”
Creighton entered the room, but not really under his own power, or at least not of his own volition. One of the giant ham-fisted men who had snatched her off the street was prodding Creighton into the room at the end of his very large, very dangerous-looking rifle. Creighton looked sulky at best. He actually glowered at Courtney as thought it were all her fault. Within minutes the men had him trussed up in a chair too.
“If you had just done what you were told, none of this would have happened!” Creighton burst out, pointing at Courtney. “This is your fault!”
“My fault?” Courtney started to stand before remembering that she was literally tied to her seat. “Look at me! I was kidnapped and brought to your family home by Russian mobsters, who have now informed me that they intend to see me marry the biggest asshole on earth just so they can somehow magically acquire my father’s business”—she glared at Vasily—“which by the way my father no longer owns, so I have no freaking clue how they think this farce of a marriage scheme is going to help them at all!”
Vasily was looking very amused by all of the goings-on. Several more of his men moseyed into the room. They spoke to each other in Russian, and the mood was almost jubilant. They were practically laughing as they pointed back and forth. Maybe they were imagining what married life at Creighton and Courtney’s house would be like. A constant freaking war, that was what!
“You know,” Courtney said irritably, “I don’t know who to blame anymore. I don’t even know who to be angry with. Creighton, because you,” she snarled at him, “can’t take no for an answer and totally can’t keep your dick in your pants, my father for being too stubborn to face facts, or Mikhail for dragging me into this to begin with!”
Vasily gave a sage nod. “You’re right, malenkaya, you really are stuck in the middle. It is the fate of women to be pawns in a man’s game.” Vasily shrugged. “That is simply life.”
Courtney ground her teeth together. Life? This man thought it was her lot in life to be nothing more than a play piece on some man’s game board? No way. Not happening. She was going to get out of this somehow. And she was going to find someplace far away from all of this crap to raise her child. Her baby was not going to suffer the same fate. He or she wasn’t going to be stuck living out someone else’s dreams and aspirations like Courtney had been. It had taken her most of her life to realize that she’d never actually lived for herself. She had been the eternal good girl. That stopped now.
* * *
Mikhail stared at Gordon Piers-Cameron. Gordon stared right back. The time drew out. Tension filled the air, and Mikhail wondered exactly how long he was going to have to face off with this man before he gave up the battle, cut his losses, and walked away.
“I hate you,” Gordon said honestly.
Mikhail didn’t respond. The muzzle of the gun had started to shake. No doubt Gordon’s arm and hand were getting tired from the position he was forced to hold. It wasn’t like the man was trained with a weapon. It wasn’t as if he spent a lot of time handling one. That wasn’t in the wheelhouse of a man like Piers-Cameron. He hired his dirty work done. The only reason the man was sullying his hands right now was due to his reduced circumstances.
Gordon’s chin began to quiver. “I should kill you.”
“But you don’t even want to,” Mikhail murmured. He was taking a chance, goading this man who danced so perilously close to the edge of sanity. But Mikhail was used to gambling. And he was even more accustomed to trusting his instincts to win the day. “You want me dead, but you don’t want to pay the consequences because I’m not worth it. Obviously you have some plan in mind. You’ve made a deal. So don’t screw it up by spending the rest of your days in jail. That would be handing me the win, don’t you think?”
“You bastard!” Gordon began to squeeze the trigger. His finger flexed. Mikhail tensed, but the shot never came.
Gordon dropped the gun. It clattered to the pavement, and Mikhail quickly kicked it away. The weapon spun and wound up beneath Mikhail’s car. Gordon was focused on that. So much so that he never saw Mikhail move. Before the angry man could react, Mikhail had him by the shirtfront and had lifted him off the ground.
“What did you do?” Mikhail demanded roughly. “What deal did you make?”
“Some Russian thug,” Gordon wheezed. He scrabbled against Mikhail’s hold, his slim uncalloused hands uselessly pushing at Mikhail’s powerful grip. “You should know him. Isn’t he part of your inner circle? We all know that’s the only reason you built your business. You’re not legitimate! You’re just a low-life criminal!”
Mikhail heaved a sigh. “You all keep believing that if it makes you feel better about your own failings. I don’t even think I have to tell you that you’re wrong. You already know that you are.”
“The Russian
came to me. All I had to do was keep you busy long enough for Creighton and Courtney to marry. It’s too late!” Gordon struggled to point to his watch. “She’s out of your reach forever.”
“What is with you people?” Mikhail grunted. “Don’t any of you realize that this isn’t the sixteenth century?”
With those final words, Mikhail flung Gordon Piers-Cameron into the gutter and got into his car. It was nearly an hour’s drive to Creighton’s family home in the country. He was no doubt going to be cutting it pretty damn close.
* * *
Courtney cleared her mind of everything but the need to escape. There was nothing else. She let her eyes flutter closed and tried to shut out Creighton’s constant whining and the foreign chatter of Vasily’s men. She sought the calm she had carried inside her since she was a little girl. Her breathing slowed and her heart calmed. She could do this.
She opened her eyes and gazed around. There was no way she was going anywhere until her hands were unbound. But she was pretty sure they were going to have to untie her to let her get “married.” She had only to be patient. The time would present itself and she would act. And then she was getting the hell out of here for good.
“This is stupid!” Creighton’s tone was practically an infantile wail. “You can’t boss me around like this.”
“Funny,” Vasily mused, his face an exaggerated mask of thoughtfulness. “But according to your family, you are a worthless piece of shit that they have washed their hands of. You do recall exactly how far you are in debt to us, do you not?”
When Vasily let that slip, a few things began to make sense to Courtney. She gave Creighton a look of derision. “You went in debt to the Russian mob? Are you a complete imbecile?”
“Shut up!” Creighton snapped. “Your father went bankrupt. He was trying to sell you off just to get enough money to keep his company afloat for another quarter.”
“Yes,” Courtney agreed. “But none of that is my problem. This is the twenty-first century. Women in America don’t get sold to pay off their parents’ debt.”
Creighton’s cruel laugh only stoked her anger further. “Oh, honey, where have you been? It happens all the time. Just look around you. You think your little friend Bella really wanted to marry that loser Toby?”
