Perfectly Damaged: Luka : A bad boy mafia romance

by Alice May Ball

  It was all I could do to keep my eyes from burning up the front of her t-shirt, the long, soft curve of her neck, and the flex of her ass as she moved. As much as I could, I had to keep it from Bruto, but it was hard. That wasn’t the only thing that was hard, either.

  She came back to the breakfast bar and I caught the sweet scent of her as she put the phone down. “Vassily will give us half this afternoon.”

  “Half?” Bruto said. “Why didn’t you make him give us all of it? Are you fucking stupid?”

  In a rush he moved toward her. Almost by reflex, I stepped in front of him. His fists balled as he looked in my face.

  Alexa was calm and her voice was soft. She said, “Before he hands over all the money, he wants to see an actual helicopter.”

  He had to look around me to ask her, “How do we know he’ll give us the rest?”

  She took her time to answer him. Made him wait. His arm twitched and I knew he thought about trying to barge past me. I looked in his eye and stayed still. If he was dumb enough to get into it now, that was okay with me. Right then I knew that it would have to come, sooner or later.

  From behind me, her voice was patient. Like it was an effort. “He knows that he’ll have to pay the rest if he wants to see the chopper actually fly.”

  Bruto said, “I’m coming with you to collect the money.”

  She laughed. “What, are you afraid we’ll run away with it?”

  Bruto stopped and put his hands on his hips as he looked around me to glare at her. His voice dropped a register. “Who’s this ‘we,’ Alexa?”

  She didn’t miss a beat. “Do you think I’m an idiot?” There was a playful smile in her voice. “You think I would go on the run with that much cash without a bodyguard?”

  My mind raced off with the picture of a wide open road. A leather bag stuffed with a few mil in cash, up front in the Grand Cherokee, in between her and me. That story would have a bad ending, and I knew it. It was a good story as far as it went, though. Until it all went to hell.

  She said, “We collect the money from Vassily at his club at five.”

  Coming back to the present, I cut in and said, “No, that’s bad protocol.” Her eyes turned to me as I told her, “Saying that, he’s testing you. You should meet somewhere neutral. Somewhere public. Call him back and say the timing’s bad.”

  The look in her eye as she looked round to me for advice made me want to grab her. She said, “Should I choose the place?”

  “No, he’s going to be carrying, and that’s where the risk is, so the meeting still belongs to him.” Neither of us even looked at Bruto.

  She nodded and picked up the phone again. Hit a number and waited. She watched me as she said, “Vassily, five’s a bad time for me.”

  She tipped the phone so that Bruto and I could hear. Vassily said, “So sorry, kotyonok. That was inconsiderate of me. What if we met in the bar at Balthazaar, do you know it?”

  “Of course, Vassily.” She smiled like a kitten that had a mouse by the tail. “Five o’clock okay for you?”

  “Perfect.”

  Picking the same time, she’d told him that she knew exactly what he was doing and that she could play the game too. She couldn’t have done it better. There was a scary part to Alexa, the way she took to things like that. Like negotiating with the Russian mob.

  Or maybe she was just keeping up a front. Hell of a front, if she was.

  ~~

  I drove in my Grand Cherokee. Bruto insisted on sitting up front. Said it like it showed he was in charge. I thought, Is your head still in grade school? but I let it go. If he wanted to act like an ass, I’d let him.

  We pulled out of the garage and into the late afternoon sun. In the mirror I watched Alexa stretch out across the seats. She had changed into a beautifully cut suit. She wore it with a tan silk blouse that plunged at the front, framing a necklace of sliver that dripped from her collarbone like mercury.

  She said, “Would you put the A/C up just a little back here please, Bruto?” and I watched the minxy twinkle in her eye as she said it.

  He scowled as he reached for the control. After a moment, she said, “Thanks. But not quite so much.”

  His eyes widened as he adjusted it again. He stayed with his finger on the dial for a moment. His voice was gruff. “That okay for you?”

  She read him perfectly. I had to keep from shaking my head and grinning. Insisting that he sit in the front, he was obviously trying to show some authority as well as keeping the two of us apart, and with no effort at all she’d turned him into a put-upon flunky. Certainly a lot less effort than it took for me not to laugh and clap.

  She was something else.

  As I slugged the Grand Cherokee through the slew of Broadway gridlock, I watched her eyes sparkle in the mirror. Nobody I ever knew was anything like Alexa. None of our troop of SEALs would have ever slighted Bruto in the casual way she did.

  SEALs all treated him like an unstable explosive compound. To be avoided as much as possible, always kept at a maximum distance, and only ever approached in an emergency.

  ~~

  Under big, red awnings, through polished glassed doors, men in immaculate suits and pampered, middle-aged women glowed at the bar and huddled around the tables. Vassily’s hand extended as he came toward us from his group of sleek goons.

  “Good of you to come, thank you.” On the floor beside him were two large Armani bags with a big box in each. “Don’t open them until you get home. I don’t want you to miss the surprise.” He smiled like a shark and put out an arm to guide her to his table.

  Bruto stepped forward to follow.

  “Yeh. It’s good to see you again, Bruto. Get yourself a drink. Anything you like, okay?”

  “I don’t need a drink, Vassily.” Bruto moved again to follow Alexa to the table. Vassily’s goons moved toward Bruto, but Vassily put a hand up to stop them.

  He moved in front of Bruto and smiled as he said, “Let me put it another way for you, Bruto.” He looked in Bruto’s eye. How Bruto didn’t see what Vassily was telling him I just couldn’t understand.

  Bruto made to move around him. Vassily said, “Please. Wait at the bar, okay?”

  The bartender asked if I wanted anything. I asked for a tonic water with a slice of lemon while I waited. He put ice in it, which I could have done without. I told him I wanted it without ice and he smiled and said, “Of course, sir,” and brought me another.

  Bruto shuffled and fidgeted between the red upholstered stools. He demanded a beer and insisted on being given it in the bottle.

  Alexa sat at a table with Vassily and poured her a glass of champagne from a bottle in a silver ice bucket. She clinked glasses with him and smiled as she took a sip. After that, I noticed she picked the glass up a couple of times, but she didn’t drink any more.

  When she got up to leave, she hugged Vassily, kissed him on both cheeks. She leaned over his shoulders, one after the other with a warm, relaxed smile on her face but her body stayed back, away from his in the embrace. I thought, This woman could be a goddamn diplomat. We could use more like her at the U-fucking-N.

  She didn’t stop to pick up the boxes and Bruto looked meaningfully at me to pick them up as we left. Trying to make me look like his bag-carrier. Fucking dickhead. It didn’t matter.

  As soon as I first saw the boxes at the bar, I knew I would have to make certain they were safe before I let her open either of them. Having her a long way away while Bruto opened them both would have been my fist choice, but I didn’t think that was going to happen, so on the way back to the car I looked out for a pole or a long stick. A broom handle, or something.

  Couldn’t find anything, so I figured that I’d have to make do with the long tire iron from the toolbox. In the parking lot, I found a discarded carton a foot or so high. I opened rear door wide and put the first box on the carton on the other side of the door. I waved to usher Alexa away behind the far side of the car.

  Bruto asked where I wanted him to go.
Don’t tempt me, I thought, but I didn’t say anything. Then I kept behind the open car door as I reached around it to raise the lid of the box with the tire iron. If there was a device in there, my shins and feet could have taken the blast, but there was only so much I could do with improvising.

  As slowly as I could I lifted the top off the box. It didn’t go ‘bang.’ The surprise was that the box had a simmering silver dress in tissue, over the top of a bag. The bag with the money. When I was sure the box was safe, I did the same thing with the other box. That one had a black dress.

  Bruto said, “So, the Russians weren’t aiming to blow us up. And Luka’s the big hero. Now can we get to the apartment and get on with our business.”

  The frustration on Bruto’s face made me think that he understood how Vassily planned out his little piece of theater. He’d taken some care over it, too. What he said about the boxes would have to make us careful around them.

  As we got into the car, Bruto said to Alexa, “This is to make me think there’s something that I don’t know about between you and Vassily.”

  She was looking at the black dress. I was imagining her in it. Imagining how it the silky sheen would drape over her stupendous curves. How it would look as it slipped off.

  She looked up at Bruto and said, “Maybe there is something between us, Bruto.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But I don’t think so. Because if there was, he wouldn’t be making a show of it. He’d be too clever for that.”

  I tried not to laugh as I said, “Maybe it’s a double bluff, Bruto.”

  “Who asked you?” His face snapped around, close to mine. “How many times I gotta say it? You ain’t paid to think.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ON THE WAY back, Bruto wanted me to sit up front with Luka. Luka and I both had private smiles about that and we didn’t look at each other to share them. It was a little electric thrill, us both smiling together at the same thing, not looking at each other, not seeing each other do it. Just knowing it. Being near, and knowing it.

  As Luka started up the car, Bruto said, “Don’t go back the way we came.” I think he was trying to sound commanding.

  With careful politeness, I said over my shoulder, “Is the sun in your eyes?” Made it sound just enough like my patience was weary and I was talking to a demanding child who had ragged on all the adults till they were just about ready to put him to bed. I felt his glare on the back of my neck.

  When we got back to the building, Bruto seemed to want to carry the money and neither of us wanted to object.

  Up in the apartment, he hefted the two boxes onto the table. He said to Luka, “That’s all going to have to be counted.”

  Luka lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

  I said, “Since it’s Luka who’s going to take it for the chopper, seems like it could be kind of futile having him count it.” I gave Bruto a patient and reasonable smile. “If there were an extra hundred thou, what would be his motivation to tell you?”

  Bruto’s jaw tensed.

  “Besides,” I said, “Luka has a job.” And I went to the master bedroom to change. I thought about taking the dresses with me. They looked fabulous, but it seemed to me that Bruto was right about their main purpose being to plant uncertainty and to unnerve him.

  Since he was right about so little, I thought it would be a shame to part him from such a ready source of unease. Obviously, Vassily was thinking more about trying to put a wedge between Luka and me. At this point I didn’t know whether a couple of dresses would unsettle him or not.

  Back in denims and a soft cashmere sweater, I returned to the room. Luka was by the sink fixing a pot of coffee. His eyes gave me an approving stroke as I passed him. It was starting to gnaw at me, not knowing what the hell this big deal operation was really all about. I felt that I had try and nail Bruto down about it.

  Bruto stood by the window with his back to the room and a beer in his hand. I got a glass and poured some water from a pitcher in the fridge. Chopped of a slice of lemon and gave it a squeeze before I dropped it in.

  As I went by and left Luka in the kitchen, I didn’t let my eyes spend too long on him. Not nearly as long as I wanted to give the study of his hard bulges, ridges and taut ripples.

  There was barely even time for my gaze to graze on the glistening fuzz of his skin as he propped his frame in the gloom of the corner in the kitchen. He stayed where he was and I tightened my chin as I left him there.

  With the glass in my hand I moved to the couch facing the window.

  Still looking out, facing away, Bruto said, “That money still needs to be counted.”

  “No use asking me,” I told him, “Why do I care how much there is? I would just hand it to Luka.”

  “You trust him that much?”

  “It’s not a matter of trust, Bruto. I don’t care. What difference does it make to me how much is there?”

  “Then you’re an idiot.”

  I took a sip of the water and nodded. “So you wouldn’t want me to be responsible for counting big a pile of money.”

  He turned and leered at me. “You don’t care how all of this goes down? You don’t think your neck is going to be on the line?”

  “Of course I do. But as you’re always telling me,” I managed not to say us, “it’s your operation. Right?”

  I thought about the date Vassily had given me. Thursday the following week. Still without the first solid clue about what it was that we were all going to be involved in, I was heading into the most lethal day of my life, and someone else had set it for the first day of my period.

  After another sip on the water, I said, “It’s not going to be long before Vassily says something or asks me a question, and me not having any idea what this whole damn thing is all about is going to blow up in our faces.”

  Bruto shrugged and didn’t look round. “Handle it.”

  “I will, Bruto, but if it comes to that or if Vassily asks, I’ll have to tell him that I have no notion of what’s going on. Which I think he already knows, or at least suspects. Are you sure that will make you look good? Will that make you look strong in front of the Russians?”

  “Look,” Bruto whirled around, “the Russians are buying from the cartel. They want to do it on our turf, which is why we provide security and take a cut. All right?”

  I let his words hang for a moment. Then softly, I asked him, “Why is that worth their while, Bruto? Why not just make the trade on Staten Island or Jersey City, why not anywhere but here? Why cut us in?”

  Bruto’s face tightened. “I don’t fucking know.” I believed him.

  I said, “They’re giving us a piece of a multi-million dollar deal, and we don’t know why>”

  ”What does it matter why?” he snapped. “It’s what they’re doing. Who cares?”

  “It matters because we’re providing something. Giving them something. It would be in our interests to know what it is that they’re getting from us.”

  “Difference does it make?” He stood closer.

  “How else do we know that we’re getting the right price for what we’re providing?”

  He turned back to the window. “The price is good. Don’t worry about it.”

  “How do you know?” I asked him, gently. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Luka was coming around to get a view. I lifted just my fingers on the back of the couch and hoped he’d get the idea. He did and backed away.

  I didn’t want Bruto feeling too exposed now. It could get explosive too quickly. Plus, I really did want to try and understand.