Vassily seemed like a hunter. A man who would get so close to his prey, learn so much about the one he was stalking, that it might look almost exactly like love. Was that what he was doing with me, or was he just trying to stay ahead of the game in the operation that was coming up?
It could have been a whole lot easier if I knew what the hell the damned deal was, and I was sure that Vassily knew I didn’t have a clue. Maybe there would be a way that I could ask him without seeming like a total idiot.
No, I decided there wasn’t. Even though we both knew the truth, if I allowed it to show that I didn’t know what was going on, I’d have abandoned any strength or authority in my position. Then I’d be lost. Bruto would see me as a traitor and Vassily would have no use for me.
It drove me mad that the twinkle in Vassily’s eye seemed to tell me exactly that, and to take pleasure in watching my discomfort.
He said, “Are you going to try and pick off all of my soldiers and captains one by one, or are you going to deal straight with me?” He was toying with me. Kidding around. That was the hardest part of the act for me: trying to look natural while Vassily joked.
Tony had not planned for a minute to deal straight with the Russians, that much I was sure of. He had never dealt straight with anyone that I’d seen, and there was no reason for this to be an exception.
Given the fact that Tony was no longer here and Bruto obviously had more than a little to do with his disappearance, it made me think that Bruto’s plan was probably even more treacherous than Tony’s. Somehow I needed to get my mind to stay focused on something else so that I didn’t speculate too much about what lay in the future.
What I thought of was the thickness and strength of Luka’s cock. That kept me detached and gave me something hard to hold onto in my head. It penetrated and filled my mind and distracted me enough that I felt bigger, stronger, and too much engaged to be afraid.
With it came the memory of that tiny, blinding lightning spark. Somewhere a deep corner of my mind, I was sure that I knew exactly what it was, but my conscious brain wasn’t ready for me to start dealing with it or processing it yet.
At breakneck pace, I was learning to trust my instincts, even though I longed to know more of what was actually going on. The feeling said that it was something good. Something unbelievably good. I felt sure about that, yet at the same time, I knew it had a potential that could be truly terrifying.
“Do you trust me enough now to have only the knife for protection?”
“You could pull a gun on me, Vassily.”
“It’s true.” He didn’t move. “Of course, you could have a gun of your own. You weren’t searched.” He looked at my little purse beside me on the desk.
I said, “But I will take your word in good faith, Vassily. It’s the only way that we’ll make progress and get business done. In fairness, you didn’t search me, as you say.”
“It’s true.”
“I could have a small gun concealed.”
“You could.”
I thought about telling him that I did, but I decided he could either work it out, or he could stay guessing. There was no point in showing my hand when I had no need to. Vassily wouldn’t respect that.
In the last few days, I had become a very fast learner. Over my shoulder I told Luka to wait outside for me. My eyes stayed on Vassily as I heard Luka open the door, step outside, and close it again behind him. A knot tightened in my stomach. A knot that said unmistakably, This is where it could all go horribly wrong.
When Vassily and I were alone, he said, “On the day, you will have a team, essentially as observers. You can bring a dozen or so men. I’ll arrange for them to share security detail with my people so you’ll have eyes on all of what’s going on.”
“I’ll see what you show me that way, Vassily. I’ll need some details of the area and of what will be expected to arrive and leave. I can’t do this in total darkness, you know.”
He studied me for a moment. “You realize that there’s another party involved in this transaction.” I nodded.
Whatever was going to be happening, I had worked out that it was all going to be for an exchange of some kind. Almost certainly some kind of contraband. Something extremely valuable. And in the other direction, there would be a very large quantity of money.
My instinct was that the Russians, Vassily’s crew, were going to be the buyers. Bruto was going to have to tell me about the sellers and the merchandise, although he probably thought he didn’t.
Vassily said, “That brings me to another thing. We need a helicopter. Can you furnish it?”
Not something I’d ever been asked before. I had no idea whether I showed him a reaction or not, although it came as such a surprise that I doubt I registered anything.
“I expect so, Vassily,” I said it like he had asked me to source him a scotch and Coke, “but they aren’t cheap.”
He smiled as he passed me a piece of paper. “Of course. I wasn’t expecting you to make a gift.” On the paper was a picture of a helicopter with a model name and “or similar” neatly handwritten.
I nodded as I folded the paper and slipped it in my purse, next to the Beretta which I hoped he didn’t see. The safest thing was probably to assume that he did, though.
I said, “Anything else?” as I pulled the purse zipper about halfway closed.
He reached into his jacket and I tensed. His eyes softened. “It’s okay,” he said, “I want to give you something.” He held his jacket open by the lapel and slowly, with the thumb and forefinger of his other hand, he took out a slim, black phone.
“This is for the operation. There’s a number programmed in. Or you can just say my name.”
“It has a tracker activated, of course.”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t, but you’ve no reason to believe me. You can just read the number from the phone’s contacts and use another phone to call me, if it makes you feel better, but you’ll have to find a way to show me that it’s really you.” His eyes sparkled, “Otherwise I’ll just never pick up.” He smiled.
“You can use that for the operation.” He said, “You could use it if you wanted to talk, too. Perhaps you’ll never want to do that. But I can imagine that you might find that you wanted a direct line.”
He said, “What we’re going to do, maybe Tony or Bruto has told you something, or perhaps you don’t know anything about it. Let me tell you this: it’s not a small deal. It is a dangerous undertaking. Any time you want to know something, just ask me,” and he held my eyes with his, “okay?”
One small nod seemed enough. He said, softly, “If there’s anything that you want, Alexa. Anything at all...” A tingle trickled down my spine. “...you tell me, okay?”
Moistening my lips, I nodded again. What he meant, I was certain of. How that could square with us being in separate camps, I couldn’t see, unless he viewed it as part of a takeover. He must have had that in mind, I thought, but was that all?
His eyes seemed to show some real feeling. The feelings that it stirred in me were not appropriate in any way, and I kept them sealed inside.
As the three of us left the building, I told Bruto, “He wants a helicopter.” Bruto’s face colored and he ran his hand over his head. He took a long breath in through his nose.
Luka just said, “What kind?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I HADN’T FLOWN a helicopter—hadn’t even been inside one—since the operation that got me a dishonorable discharge. More than once I’d been disciplined for flying the choppers too low, but I did it for the safety of the men I was taking in or bringing out.
When there’s tree cover on the ground, the lower the aircraft flies, the less time the enemy has to see it and the less chance he has of getting a shot on target. We knew there were heat-seeking and infrared guided missiles on the ground, so my judgment was, over that terrain, that flying lower was safer for the evacuees.
The Special Forces group that I was going in to pick up knew that I
was coming, but the enemy didn’t. By the time I was near enough to present a target, I was too close and moving too fast for the hostiles to direct fire against the chopper. As soon as I had the passengers, I rose as fast and as high as the turbines would take us. That was where it all went to hell.
This evacuation had a black shadow on it from the start. Bruto wasn’t even supposed to be in the chopper. The tribunal said it was a good thing he was, but I never did quite make my mind up on that.
Bad intel gave us the wrong location of the hostiles on the ground, as well as their numbers and armaments. I got us in to the pickup zone fast enough, and, against my better judgment, I flew way up at the regulation height.
The away team was slow getting to the clearing, and I couldn’t see a reason why, but at the earliest second, as soon as the last man had his boots aboard, we were off the ground and rising. Then the aircraft wouldn’t climb fast enough and I couldn’t work out why. It had flown fine all the way in.
As I banked, we took fire from the ground on the opposite side of where I’d been briefed the enemy were located. It wasn’t even missile fire, just low-caliber machine guns.
However hard I fought and wrestled with the controls, the aircraft wallowed, sluggish, and it was still climbing too damned slow. Before I could gain any height, a strip of the fuselage tore open and bolts of fire flashed in through the rips.
Maybe it was the ammo box, maybe it was a fuel tank, but something ignited. Flame sloshed around the cabin as we tumbled and clattered through the branches and smashed nose-down into the dirt. I was able to pull everyone out from the fire, and I heaved them all to the cabin door.
Bruto helped me carry the men to the ground, although he was still preoccupied with the damned ammo box. I thought for sure it would blow and I told him to leave it, but he kept on dicking around with the damn thing.
The fire didn’t do me any lasting damage, but I was unconscious before the backup helicopter arrived to pull us out. My navigator, Carlo, and two of the Marines were too badly injured. They didn’t make it.
I woke up in a field hospital with two guards by my bedside and Bruto whispering, “You’re going to be dishonorably discharged. Let me take the medals.” Only SEAL I ever knew to give a fuck about a medal.
Since that day, I hadn’t had my ass in the seat of a chopper. Not a front seat or even a back seat. Naturally, I was certain that I’d be absolutely fine, that I wouldn’t have a problem. The SEALs don’t train too many modest mouses.
Up until now, though, flying choppers seemed like a thing that I didn’t need to be seriously concerned over. It was almost certainly never going to happen again.
Right?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
LUKA SPOKE QUIETLY to me. “I’ve made a couple of calls and I’ll need to go out for a while. I don’t like to leave you alone.” I watched his eyes. I liked the way they seemed to flick over all of my face. I also liked how he didn’t ignore my body.
“She doesn’t need protection while she’s in the apartment,” Bruto growled from across the room. Luka shot a look back at him. Bruto sat up. Luka continued to look him in the eye.
Bruto said, “You want to get into this? I can see you’re stewing on something. You want to get into it now?”
Luka was still. Quietly, he said, “I’m good. Whenever suits you.”
Bruto’s face darkened. “Go and do your shopping for toys, Luka. We can talk when you get back if you’re still all fired up.”
Luka said, “Maybe you’d like to get a helicopter. You want to make a call and do that?”
Bruto glowered, but he didn’t say anything. Luka held his gaze for a moment. Then he looked back at me. “You want to come with me?”
I touched his hand and told him, “I’ll be fine.” I wanted to go with him—of course I did—but I didn’t want Bruto to think that he could scare me. Because he could. Easily. Also, I didn’t want him to get too much of an idea of there being anything going on between Luka and me. Not now. Not yet.
Especially not before I knew what it was. It was something, I didn’t have any doubt about that, but I couldn’t say exactly what. My experience with men hadn’t exactly left me with a solid relationship manual.
All I had was a very thick book of what not to do and what not to let anyone do to you. So whatever it was that was happening between Luka and me, I had no map for it. I couldn’t read him too well, either. Maybe this, what had happened between us, would just be another of his “one and done” experiences.
For all that I knew, we could already be a “one and done.” It could be all over for him. But if that were the case, he wouldn’t be acting so protective toward me. Then again, protecting me was his job, so maybe he didn’t have much choice.
The tenderness that I saw in his eyes, I could just be reading him wrong. The stakes were pretty high and I couldn’t afford to take too many risks. Then, on his way out the door after he got his jacket, he stood close and asked me, “You sure you’ll be okay?”
His voice was soft and gentle and intimate. Really, I very much didn’t want him to go without me. A couple of hours alone with Bruto was something I’d rather have avoided at almost any cost.
It was something that I would have to deal with, though, and the sooner I got the hang of it, the better. Putting it off wouldn’t make it any easier. There were ten days before the deal went down with Vassily and, if a change was going to come, it likely wouldn’t be before then.
My throat clogged and I couldn’t trust myself to speak. I just nodded with my lips pressed together and blinked. My eyes stung a little. My jaw clenched as I turned away. I wanted to watch Luka leave, but I knew that I had to spend some time in Bruto’s company and I needed to let him know I wasn’t afraid of him.
Allowing myself to fear Bruto could cloud my judgement. In the ten days before the operation—whatever the hell it was—we’d be occupying close quarters, and I needed a clear head. I needed to show Bruto that he wasn’t going to frighten me or intimidate me. I had no idea how I was going to do it.
All I could do was tell myself that I had to do it and that I would do it, and work on getting an idea of what the deal was that Tony had set up to do with the Russians.
With an effort of will I made myself believe that I could handle him. And in case I couldn’t, I kept my clutch purse close.
Bruto went to get a beer from the fridge. “You want something?”
“No. I might make some breakfast. Eggs, bacon, some waffles maybe. You want some?” My tone was as bored as I could make it.
“No, I’m fine with a beer.” Good, I thought, you drink all you like. “That Luka,” he said as I moved past him to the fridge, “he’s not all that you think he is.”
Putting butter in a pan for scrambled eggs I said, “Oh? What do I think he is?” While Bruto thought about it, I laid some bacon on a skillet. There were berries in the fridge, and then I had the idea that it could be fun while we chatted to slice a banana. It would go well with the berries.
In the drawer I found an unnecessarily large knife.
He said, “We were SEALs together, Luka and me. I was his commanding officer.”
“Were you?” I didn’t look up as I split the peeled banana along the center.
“He was thrown out. Dishonorable discharge.”
As I turned the banana to slice it again the other way, I glanced up briefly. It was okay with me if he wanted to go on. I didn’t want to say or do anything he could mistake for interest. I stirred the eggs before I quickly chopped the banana into tiny little pieces.
“Was a mission we were on together. Lost some men,” he said while I scooped the banana into a dish with some berries. I turned the bacon and stirred the eggs some more, and then I put yogurt and a little honey on the fruit.
Perfectly Damaged: Luka : A bad boy mafia romance Page 13
