She thanked him absently, still not bothering to look away, but Mishca knew why, even if he didn’t understand it.
Here, she thought she was safe and there had been no reason for her to doubt this assumption. Mishca had no business—that she had been aware of—to be in Rio, especially not for a weekend like this, especially when he wasn’t particularly friends with the Cortez family.
But Mishca knew her. He knew with the amount of jewels that Lucia would be selling, she wouldn’t have been able to resist.
Only thing he’d needed to do was wait for his contact to get the information back to him.
Placing the bottle back down on the table, Mishca circled around, taking the lone seat across from her. As she looked up at him, she tried to mask her look of surprise at his interruption, only making him smile wider.
“Naomi.”
She was as he remembered her the last time she had come to New York. Dyed blonde hair in loose waves, signature red lips, but instead of her usual figure-hugging dresses, she was in a pair of tiny jean shorts, tank top, and flip-flops. Now, she looked more like one of the natives rather than the cut-throat bitch she was.
Recovering smoothly, she tapped her claw-like nails against the table, a slow smile curling her scarlet lips. “You know how I’ve always loved surprises, Mishca, but I’m curious to know why you’re here.”
“I could ask you the same,” he responded, giving a pointed look to the prints she had rested her arms on.
He didn’t have to look over them to know they were for Lucia’s villa.
“Kind of looks like I’m spending time with an old friend. Reminds me of when we first met.”
It was nothing like the day they met and she knew that as well as he did. She just wanted him to remember a time he wished he could forget.
It was a cold, winter night, when Mishca found himself at the Manhattan Public Library, attempting to study for a Psychology test that he hadn’t bothered to work on until the night before. No one could ever accuse him of being a good student, but it did help that a couple of the girls in his course were helping him with everything else—though one didn’t know about the other.
It didn’t help, however, that he had been working on a bottle of Smirnoff for the better part of the last two hours, and the last bit in the bottle was making its way down his throat.
That was the only way he knew how to deal with his father and the demands he was making. Mishca didn’t revere the Bratva the way Mikhail did, and for that reason, Mikhail was always in a perpetual state of disappointment when it came to him.
Tossing the bottle he’d hidden in his bag, Mishca left his things at the table, going to search in the stacks for a book on Classical Conditioning, stumbling all the way.
It took him far longer to find it than necessary, in part to the words jumbling whenever he tried to read the titles, but it was there, as he tried scanning through the titles that he felt someone near him.
“I could help you with that,” she offered in a soft voice, leaning a hip against the stacks.
At the time, he hadn’t thought much about her offer—too drunk to realize that even if she didn’t know what he was looking for—just accepted it for what it was.
She was unlike any other girl he had met in his life. That wasn’t to say he had never encountered a pretty girl, but she exuded a sort of confidence, and later, after he had grown to know her better, a cunning sense that he was immediately attracted to.
With just a glance, she had his full undivided attention, even if he were probably too drunk to remember it the next day.
“What exactly are you trying to help me with?”
She ran her fingers lovingly over the spines of the books he’d been looking at though her eyes never left him.
“Anything you want,” she answered in Russian, the inflections in her words only slightly off.
She reached for him then, trailing her fingers down his chest the way she had done the books. Mishca tried to focus on her face, or at least appear to, but his dick was doing most of the thinking at the moment.
He leaned back against the case, allowing her to touch him, not sure where they were going with this, but he wasn’t about to stop her.
Pressing up against him, she whispered, “I know who you are…and who your family is.”
He chuckled. Even wasted he wasn’t too inebriated to recognize what she was hinting at. “And what’s that?”
“How about I take care of you,” she said as she dropped down onto her knees in front of him, tugging at his belt, “and we can work out the details later.”
And what had followed was a whirlwind of sex and drunken confessions that spanned the length of two years. While she had moved in with him some time later, he had never viewed them as more than companions—the term sounding better than fuck-buddies.
He had never confessed any love for her, nor had he ever made any promises, and for the longest time, he thought they were in accord on this. Hell, most of his time was spent running useless errands for Mikhail, or drinking himself to sleep. He hadn’t bothered to change himself until a month or so before he met Klaus.
By that time, Naomi had already skipped town, bearing his mark, and carrying off with half a million dollars of his own money.
Another lesson, Mikhail had told him, that women were a bane.
That didn’t mean Mishca hadn’t cared for her, he had. Just not enough to let her in.
“But you did say you could always find me, no matter where I went. That begs the question, why are you looking for me now?”
Mishca rested his elbows on the table, leaning forward as though to whisper a secret, but in reality, he wanted to see if he still had the same effect on her. Her actions in New York told him nothing, he already knew she enjoyed games, so her affection towards him could have been faked, but there were other signs she couldn’t manipulate.
“I wanted to see you.”
Her lips parted, though no sound escaped her lips. For a split second, the emotion was there in her eyes, that hunger, before it was replaced with humor.
“And what of your wife?”
So she had been checking up of him. That only made his plan easier.
“And when has that ever mattered to you?”
“Perhaps when you treated me so coldly when I came to visit you,” she said with faux sadness while looking at him pointedly, trying to read him as he did to her, but he was not nearly as easy.
“I would have done the same for you.”
She took a sip of her champagne. “I guess I should take it as a compliment that you flew all the way here for me, but are you only here to interrupt my dinner?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m interrupting, merely waiting for you to finish.”
“And if I had plans?”
He smirked. “You don’t.”
“Well, there’s no reason for us to waste any more time.”
When Naomi was sure she had the upper hand, she never pondered the possibility that she could be wrong. For reasons Mishca never knew, she had always underestimated him, perhaps because of the position she found him in when they met, but Mishca was no longer that guy.
He’d expected more of a fight from her, at least he thought she would be suspicious of his motives, but perhaps he had given her too much credit.
In the darkness of the cab, Naomi’s hand crept over the space separating them, her fingers brushing his pants leg before moving to boldly rub up his thigh. There was, however, so much Mishca was willing to do for this ruse, and having her grab his cock wasn’t part of it.
He grabbed her hand before she could go any further, keeping hold of it. Sadly, it wasn’t a very short drive back to her hotel, since she made it a point to give the driver obscure directions, more paranoid than he had thought.
Leading the way up to her room, Naomi hardly paid Mishca any attention as she went, her focus straight forward. If she would have glanced back, she would have noticed that Mishca was checking for any security cameras, or if anyone
was paying attention to the pair of them.
Thankfully, there were none.
When they were finally in her room, with the door closed behind them, Mishca walked past her, going over to the windows to peer out, thinking of his actions, and what had brought him to this point.
He didn’t take lives needlessly, would rather maim than actually kill, but wanted to end Naomi. There was so much that could have gone wrong, and he might have explained this to her, but he knew in his heart that it wouldn’t change anything. She didn’t care, and would probably have done it from the beginning if she thought that would have helped her.
This wasn’t just about him, it never was.
Naomi came to him, slipping her arms around his neck, her eyes scrutinizing his face for any break in his composure. He had already sent the message to Marco, but he still had no idea how long it would take for the men to get here. If he didn’t want to blow it, he would have to play along.
Even if that meant breaking a vow to Lauren.
Mishca thought it would be easy—he had done things similar to this before Lauren came into his life—but as Naomi came towards him and he felt her mouth on him, it turned his stomach. He could only force himself for so long before he pulled away, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Don’t be shy, Mishca.”
There was no reason for him to be nice anymore, not when the door was slowly creaking open. While her back had still been turned, he’d left the door unlocked, knowing Marco wouldn’t be far behind him.
Hearing the movement, Naomi looked from them, back to Mishca, fear in her eyes. She backed away from him, but there was nowhere for her to go, not when she was surrounded on all sides.
“What the hell is this?”
“I wanted to help you,” Mishca said by way of explanation. “Jetmir would not have touched you so long as I gave the order, you knew this. It was why you came to me.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but Mishca grabbed her face, hauling her forward. Her eyes widened, but she was too shocked to try and fight her way free.
“You went to Brahim and sent him after Lauren. There was nowhere you could have run that I couldn’t find you. I warned you.”
He shoved her away from him, back into the arms of the men standing behind her. Withdrawing the envelope full of cash from his jacket, he handed it over to Marco, uncaring of the predatory smile that was spreading on his face. What he chose to do with Naomi was not his problem.
“Mishca,” she called when he was almost to the door.
He turned, hand on the knob, waiting for whatever she was going to say.
“She wouldn’t want you to do this,” she pleaded with him.
“You’re right,” he said with a nod. “But I’m not Lauren.”
Without another look back, he left the hotel room.
On a stage in the back of the restaurant, dim lights shining over her, Natalia captivated the room with her rendition of a traditional Russian folk song, dressed in a flowing gown of black silk, her hair done up in elaborate curls. She, nor any of the other patrons in The Den, paid any attention to the three men that entered. It wasn’t uncommon for the place to have a revolving door of men dressed in business suits.
This didn’t surprise Jetmir Besnik in the slightest.
It wasn’t like there was any mystery as to who the owner of the restaurant really was. There was no need to fear anyone attacking this place, especially when Mikhail normally had a few of his men stationed there at all times.
The three walking behind Jetmir waited for his signal, retrieving the guns from their jackets. This was the moment Jetmir had been looking forward to for months. While he had been momentarily set back by Anya’s actions, now that she was out of the picture, his plan was back in motion.
She had provided him with safe houses within the Bratva, all of Mikhail’s businesses, and those of Mishca’s that she knew about. This just wasn’t about Mishca anymore, he wanted to take them all down, slowly before taking their lives in the end.
This was just the beginning.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if I can have your attention.”
It took a moment for everyone to recognize his interruption, but when they did and turned to peer back at him, startled screams erupted from them, the fear of death now clear.
The guards stationed inside didn’t bother reaching for their weapons, not when they were so terribly outnumbered. It wouldn’t matter soon, they would all be dead.
“I hate to cut this performance short, but I have a message to deliver, and I need you lot to deliver it.”
There was only one brave soul that was willing to speak up, probably hoping that by complying to Jetmir’s wishes, he would be spared. “What do you need said?”
Jetmir chuckled, tapping his gun against his leg. “I can handle that.”
That man was the first to die with a single shot to his head. One by one, every person in the restaurant was shot, sometimes multiple times to make sure the job was done. Since there were silencers on the guns, the sounds of the bullets were muffled, giving them enough time to finish the job without interference, only the flash of the muzzle visible.
As they were finishing, Jetmir’s men dragged the bodies of the Russian soldiers to the front of the stage, callously kicking the singer’s body away. Jetmir watched as their bodies were maneuvered into elaborate positions, his men laughing at the sight they made. Ignoring their enjoyment of the task, Jetmir came forward, a sharpened blade in hand. He cut through one of the men’s shirt, then began the slow process of cutting the man open from the base of his throat, to his navel.
Since Jetmir was wearing gloves, none of the blood that was pouring out of the man’s body coated his skin. He dipped his fingers into the man’s stomach, covering them thoroughly as he went to the wall and began writing his message.
Mishca hadn’t even been off the plane for ten minutes before he got the call, but it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, not with the amount of press that was covering it.
“Luka, go secure it. See how bad the damage is,” Mishca said, hanging up with his enforcer.
His anger got the best of him as he ended the call, tossing the device across the car, rubbing his temples. Lauren was quiet beside him, and he was almost afraid to look at her.
“What’s happened?”
He didn’t want to tell her, hell he almost decided not to, but he knew she would eventually see it. “The Albanians are back.”
She shifted, just slightly, enough for him to know that this wasn’t what she was expecting. “You knew they were coming back, right? We talked about this.”
“Yes, we did.” And he wanted to leave it at that.
But, of course, Lauren was far smarter than that. “But what did they do to make you react like that?”
He thought about just showing her one of the articles, but he thought better of it at the last minute. “Twenty-five people were murdered at Mikhail’s restaurant last night.”
“Oh my God.”
“It seems Jetmir was leaving me a message.” Mishca chanced a glance at her, wondering how she was processing this, but her face was a careful mask of blankness.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Right now we’re trying to repair the damage. From there, I don’t know.”
She reached across the seat for his hand, holding it between both of hers, rubbing her thumbs across his knuckles. “What do you need from me?”
It relieved him, knowing she was willing to do what he wanted without hesitation. Before, she would have questioned him, but she knew the dangers as much as he did.
“You’re staying with me for now. We have no idea where Jetmir is and I don’t want to worry that he’s gotten to you while I work on this.”
They rode along in silence for a while, nearly until they reached the cluster of news vans outside of the restaurant. There were enough people outside the police tape to man a small army.
“Can I have my
gun back then?”
With a smile, Mishca opened his door. “Not a chance. I might take a while, but call me if you need me.”
It took some negotiating before Mishca was allowed under the tape and into the restaurant. At first glance, it was just as bad as it was described to be, except, the bodies were no longer on display, all in black body bags on the floor. For every one, there was nearly two uniformed officers taking notes, though all of them looked out of their element.
A detective extracted himself from the crowd, making his way towards Mishca. He obviously didn’t know who he was, or his approach would’ve been far different.
“Who the hell let you in here?”
Sighing, Mishca ignored him, looking towards the back of the room where a bloody message was smeared onto the wall. He quickly read the words, twice over, then turned to the detective.
“I was cleared, obviously.”
“Listen, boy—”
“Volkov,” Mishca said looking the man over. “I believe that’s the name you’re looking for, no?”
Ah, and there it was, the recognition. The detective glanced over his shoulder to where Mishca had been looking seconds ago. That’s when the questions started. They were the usual, and Mishca answered them diligently, but he was waiting for the detective to get to the questions about what had happened here, that way, he could glean information from them.
“Have you any idea what that means?”
The Final Hour Is Coming…
He had a pretty good idea what they meant. “Not in the slightest.”
With the number of bodies present, Mishca was surprised—
“We’ll take it from here, detective.”
Keeping his irritation off his face, Mishca turned to face Agent Green. The detective couldn’t mask his as well, shuffling off, no doubt in search of his superior.
“This is turning into more than a coincidence, Volkov,” she said with a gesture around them.
“Or an unhealthy obsession. Tell me, how much does the FBI pay you to stalk me?”
Wisely ignoring that, Agent Green walked over to the three bags on the center stage, expecting Mishca to follow her without question. Glancing down at his watch, he decided he had a few minutes to spare—since Luka still hadn’t made his appearance yet—he watched her unzip each bag one by one, revealing the faces inside.
The Final Hour Page 23
