THANKS, he wrote, I’LL CHECK IN.
When he would check in was questionable, but it would be enough to keep Tăcut off his back for a while.
He would be back. He already missed the rush of adrenaline when they cracked the code for vaults. The feel of the security boxes popping open and raiding everything inside.
He missed all of it.
But he wasn’t ready, and they were only as strong as their weakest link, so he wouldn’t be the reason they fucked up.
Pocketing his phone, he grabbed his garbage bag full of clothes and tossed it over his shoulder. He had barely stepped out the door before it all came rushing in—the yelling couple who were still fucking going at it about the man’s need to stick his dick in anything that had a pair of breasts, and the blaring television coming from the opened door of the tenant downstairs because, as he’d put it, he needed to keep an eye on things.
Yeah, this was better than silence.
No one paid attention to him as he ventured down the creaking stairs and out the door, bypassing the two boys selling weed on the stoop.
Sweat was already gathering at the small of his back by the time he reached the laundromat and headed inside.
Thankfully, it was empty, and he didn’t have trouble finding a machine to toss his clothes in.
He grabbed his wallet from his pocket and pulled out a few singles, going over to the coin machine in the corner to get change.
As he fed the first dollar in, it came right back out.
Sighing, he tried again.
And again.
And again.
It was like the universe was fucking with him.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Christophe tried one last time, waiting for his change to drop out the bottom, but for the fifth time since he’d been standing there, the damn thing spit the bill back out again.
“Fuck off,” he muttered to the machine, snatching his money and turning away.
He was contemplating heading back to his apartment when he decided he had nothing to lose by asking the girl in the back if she had change.
At the very least, it would save him from having to come back if he got it out of the way now.
She looked familiar, a memory tugging at him, but he couldn’t place her until he got close.
The girl from last night.
She faced away from him; tousled brown hair lightened at the ends falling over her shoulder.
“Yo.”
She startled as he spoke but settled quickly once she was looking at him. In fact, she actually smiled as she tucked strands of hair behind her ear, flashing a hint of the tattoo on her pale wrist.
When was the last time someone smiled at him like this, he wondered. She looked at him like he was normal—most people wore a look of distaste when they saw him, especially when they saw the metal in his mouth.
Or they looked at him as nothing more than one of Nix’s prized assets.
It could have been the tattoos, the way he dressed, or maybe that regular people thought he did bad shit for worse people.
Either way, most gave him a wide berth.
But she didn’t.
“Fang.”
Shit.
He remembered seeing her the night before, sure, but just a vague impression in the back of his mind. For the life of him, though, he couldn’t place her name.
Once she realized this, her cheeks flushed pink. “Mariya—your neighbor.”
“Yeah, I knew that.”
“Just not my name,” she responded dryly, though her lips twitched with a smile.
“I’m shit with names.”
He really wasn’t.
Christophe could remember the name of every man whose life he took—except the one who’d taken Aidra’s life, but that was only because he didn’t want to know it. He even remembered the names of every owner of the safety-deposit boxes they hit.
Yet he’d drawn a blank with her name.
She didn’t have to know that, though.
“Did you need help with something?” she asked, and he finally caught onto the subtleties of her accent.
Russian.
Holding up a few dollars, he asked, “Do you have change?”
“Never try to use those,” she said with a slight tilt of her head in the direction of the machine he’d been trying to use. “They only work half the time.”
She offered him three dollars. “It’s all I have left.”
“Thanks.”
Her gaze flickered up to his as she smiled, her brown eyes framed with long lashes. They might have looked innocent, but the rest of her didn’t in faded denim and a loose olive colored shirt that stopped above her navel.
But why was he noticing that?
Not waiting for a response from her, he went back over to his own clothes and tossed them all in, dumped in the detergent, and shut the door.
Time passed quickly as he waited for the clothes to finish, but in that time, his gaze was immediately drawn to the girl across from him.
She didn’t speak to anyone else, and when she wasn’t tending to her own clothes, she was on her phone, a curious look crossing her face as she read over whatever it was.
Just watching the emotions flit across her face held his attention until he realized he was staring like a fucking creep.
By the time his clothes were finishing in the dryer, he was ready to get out of there and go back to his place to waste away.
As he bagged the clothes, Christophe glanced up, the flicker of something at the edge of his vision catching his attention.
Light hair.
Full lips turned up at the corners in amusement.
Aidra?
It wasn’t fucking possible, but that didn’t stop him from grabbing his bag, not bothering to check if he left anything behind as he raced outside, heart thundering in his chest.
He was running, not even sure what he was running toward, but whatever glimpse he’d had of her was only a figment of his imagination because the woman walking by looked nothing like her.
Great, now she was haunting him.
God, he needed a fucking drink.
He was running, not even sure what he was running toward, but whatever glimpse he’d had of her was only a figment of his imagination because the woman walking by looked nothing like her.
Great, now she was haunting him.
God, he needed a fucking drink.
Chapter 3
July 6-8, 2017
If she could go back in time, Mariya would have left his clothes where he dropped them in his rush out of the laundromat and not thought twice about it.
But at the time, she had only thought he would want them back, so instead of leaving them on the floor, she’d gone over and picked it all up. Once she’d gotten back to her building, though, and went upstairs to drop them off, no one answered when she knocked on his door.
For a moment, she’d considered leaving them in front of his door and letting him get them himself whenever he got back, but stupidly, she’d thought it would probably be best to give them to him in person.
Now, she regretted that decision.
Three days had passed since she’d last seen him, but she had thought she caught a glimpse of him earlier. It was for that reason that she’d ventured upstairs to see him.
She’d barely touched her knuckles to the door before it was swinging open, sending her back a step in surprise.
Not once did she ever think she had seen the physical personification of grief before, but as he stood there in the doorway, wearing nothing but a pair of skintight boxer briefs and smelling as though he bathed in a brewery, she knew only grief brought someone this low.
Mariya thought she looked bad after working doubles, but nothing compared to this.
Her eyes were watering just standing near him.
Funnily enough, he hadn’t seemed to realize he was practically naked as he stared her down. He might have been friendly the other night, but he was obviously not in the moo
d now. She also hadn’t realized what he was hiding beneath his clothes.
He was lean, his muscles deliberate without being overbearing—not an ounce of fat on him. Plenty of tattoos decorated his skin besides the X on his neck.
Like the cross done in thick lines down the length of his forearm.
A Cheshire cat’s grin on his bicep, and the last, a red star on his opposite arm.
They didn’t mesh, his tattoos, and she briefly wondered the significance behind them until she noticed something else.
The scars.
Some crisscrossed across his chest; others were light and flesh-toned. A number of them looked suspiciously like someone had taken a branding iron to his skin.
His body told a story—one of beauty and pain—and she was afraid to read it.
But despite how nice he looked on the outside, it didn’t help his attitude at all, and she wasn’t sure his appearance could make up for the words that came out of his mouth.
“What?”
Her lips parted in surprise as she blinked. It wasn’t just the way he was glaring at her; it was the outright hostility in his tone that caught her off guard.
“What?” he repeated, a little more impatient, as though she were wasting his time.
There was probably a bottle he needed to get back to.
“You left these behind the other day,” she said in a rush, practically thrusting the bag she’d placed his clothes in against his chest. “I tried bringing them to you earlier, but you weren’t here, and I didn’t want to just leave them out here.”
Why was she still talking?
As though this all wasn’t embarrassing enough.
Christophe looked down at the bag in his hands for several seconds before looking back at her. “Yeah, thanks.”
In hindsight, she shouldn’t have continued to just stand there, but for whatever reason, her feet were practically glued to the floor.
“Anything else?”
“Are you always so rude?” she asked, eyes narrowing on him.
He had the nerve to look surprised. “I said thanks.”
She decided at that moment she definitely liked drunk him better.
Not waiting for whatever he thought to say next, she left him standing there. This was her first and last time doing him a favor.
But that was two days ago, and Mariya hadn’t seen him since. Not that she was complaining. She just wished she didn’t feel so stupid.
At the corner of 25th and 19th, Ari’s Grocery lit up like a beacon, even in the daylight; the store’s awning a bright lime green with the name in white across the front of it.
Orange stands and signs depicting the prices of the fruit on display stood in front of the giant windows, obstructing most of the view.
If she’d seen who was inside, Mariya might have reconsidered her late day visit because while she was in desperate need of groceries, she would much rather avoid her bad-tempered neighbor.
She’d still caught glimpses of him when he disappeared upstairs or back down again, but he hadn’t been back to Davie’s since that first night.
She didn’t even want to think about why she knew this.
His abundant rudeness hadn’t stopped her from being curious about him, but curiosity or not, she wasn’t going to make a fool of herself again.
Once was enough.
But it seemed she wasn’t going to be able to avoid him today.
She could have turned around, walked the three blocks back to her apartment, waited until she was sure he’d left to avoid an awkward run-in, and then ventured back out once she was sure he was gone, but who the hell had time for that? Besides, it would be just as easy to pretend he didn’t exist at all.
She could manage that.
Grabbing one of the handheld carts by the sliding doors, she started down the aisle on the opposite side of the store from where Christophe was.
Picking up all the fixings for pirozhki—a food Inna, Mariya’s mother, used to make often when Mariya was a girl—she had nearly finished when she felt someone tap her side.
She knew, before she even turned, who would be standing there—or maybe she had just hoped it would be him—but in the seconds it took her to turn and face him, nerves flared to life.
But as soon as her eyes landed on him, rational thought fled. He was just … he was just nice to look at.
His eyes were clear today, though they still seemed hard, and instead of alcohol, he smelled clean, like fresh linen. His hair that had been a shade too long was shorter now, the sides more tapered.
In all black, he exuded danger, and even as she knew she didn’t need to court it, she couldn’t help herself.
He was still an asshole, just a very nice looking one.
“Fang.”
His lips quirked at the corners, just the barest trace of a smile. “I was rude the last time I saw you.”
Mariya waited, expecting him to say more, but when he didn’t, she answered for him. “You were.”
He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I was having a shit day.”
“So are many others.”
“Prosti, Mariya,” he said with an endearing shrug of his shoulder.
Sorry.
He apologized, but he hadn’t done it in English, rather in Russian, and even that one word was enough to make her feel a little homesick.
Not for Feliks, of course, but she missed her sister, and worse, she hadn’t seen her mother since the night she was rushed to the hospital, and they’d first told them about her comatose state.
She missed her family.
“Don’t worry about it,” she mumbled, stepping to the side to move around him. The last thing she needed was him to see her trying to hold back tears.
But she didn’t get far before his hand was on her side again, his touch almost too hot as the warmth bled through the layers.
She stopped, looking back at him. He had such discerning brown eyes, deep and hypnotic. Wise and pained. She could get lost in them if given the chance.
“I would say I’m not always such a dick, but … I am.”
“At least, you’re honest,” she muttered. Her gaze drifted down to the groceries he carried. “Is that all you’re eating?” she asked with a nod of her head to his basket. For the life of her, she couldn’t understand how men survived on junk food alone. “This could kill you.”
His brows shot up as he held up a single black plum. “I think I’ll manage.”
“That’s not going to help when you have all this.” She plucked a bag from his hands, reading the label. “Pork rinds?”
He shrugged. “I have an addiction.”
“You could get better food at Davie’s.” And that was saying something, considering the food served there consisted of greasy burgers and fries.
He regarded her a moment. “That an invitation?”
“For someone who seems intent on drinking himself into an early grave? Yes.”
“Good thing I’m not trying to die,” he said with a sad shake of his head.
“What are you drinking to then?”
She’d known men who drank simply because they enjoyed it, but Christophe didn’t seem to enjoy it at all.
He scratched his jaw with his thumb, his gaze leaving her for the first time. “Drinking to forget.”
She understood that far too well.
Christophe hated being alone.
He hated the way his thoughts crept up on him, and before he could get a handle on them, they overwhelmed him to the point he started hearing voices in his head. He’d always hated that weakness about himself, and when he was back at the orphanage, the professor had taken advantage of it as often as he could.
For the slightest infractions, he would have Christophe thrown into the isolation room—a padded closet on the vacant end of the school that was off-limits to the boys.
No light filtered into the room, and no matter how often he screamed until his throat was raw, no sound escaped either.
His ow
n personal hell.
The professor had left him inside for hours at a time, sometimes for days, and once when he had dared fight back, he’d spent an entire month in that room.
He’d never been the same after that.
The bruises might have faded, and even the scars decorating his torso didn’t elicit a reaction out of him now, but that room … he never forgot it.
Now, as he lay on his bed staring up at the cracks in the ceiling, he was reminded why he hated his own company.
After waking up with a hangover from hell not even two days ago, Christophe had let the alcohol work its way out of his system until he wasn’t seeing double and didn’t feel like he was seconds from passing out.
But as the vodka had dried up, the dreams had come racing back.
Dreams or memories—they both played on an endless loop when he closed his eyes, but he wasn’t just forced to confront what happened to Aidra, he was also forced to confront his time at the orphanage as well.
He had better control over those—mind over matter—but every so often, one would slip through the cracks and suck him right back into that pit of despair he was desperate to escape.
But he welcomed the dreams over waking up with a splitting headache and feeling like he couldn’t.
You could go home, his conscience suggested.
Instead of coping with liquor, he could throw himself into a new assignment. At least, he wouldn’t feel as though he was losing his mind.
This empty apartment was starting to feel like a prison, and he hated the idea of anything confining him.
Amid his chaotic thoughts, Mariya popped into his head, rooting herself there until she was all he could think about.
She was … nice, despite the way he had acted, but something beyond that grabbed his attention and wouldn’t let go.
He’d never intended to take her up on her suggestion for him to come by Davie’s Tavern, but alone in his apartment, he tried to remember why it wasn’t a good idea.
No, it wasn’t because it was a bad idea he’d forced himself to stay away. He wasn’t thinking about the food.
He was thinking about her and wondering if she would be there.
He hadn’t the slightest idea why, but he didn’t think he would mind her company.
Crooks & Kings: A Wild Bunch Novel Page 4
