by Ruby Laska
In this country, Vlad had learned, it was much harder to get a woman to respect you than it was to get her to sleep with you. If you had a few coins in your pocket, if the bouncers at the nightclubs ushered you past the line, and if the avtoritet called you brother—sure, then they were eager to lift their skirts for you. But make some small mistake that earned the censure of the boss, and you suffered not only the humiliation among the brotherhood but the contempt of the woman you came home to.
As soon as Vlad found someone else, he’d cut ties with Ludmila. Maybe suggest she head back to Novosibirsk, where she might still find someone to marry her now that her green card dreams were growing thin.
But for now, he was content to let her cook for him and perform certain other favors, even if it meant he had to come to this stinking alley whenever he wanted a smoke. Although, she was probably already passed out since they’d been drinking heavily in the club until it shut down in the wee hours of the morning. He himself should be asleep, but the errand he had performed earlier this evening had left him with a certain amount of anxiety.
It was delicate because, despite his assurances to his boss Sergey Tochiev, he wasn’t sure what Chelsea Ryder meant to de Santos. She was the only woman he’d been seen with more than once or twice, and the only one he’d ever taken to any of his own residences, other than hotel rooms.
Vlad was having second thoughts. Maybe he should have just killed this woman. Left her like a scarlet rose in her blood-soaked bed for de Santos to discover. An unambiguous message: come and work for the bratva and receive its full protection, or, at the very least, cut all ties with the Chechens. The assistance Ricardo had been giving the obschina, or Chechen mafia, had proved very damaging to his own organization’s financial health.
Once, not so long ago, the bratva had enjoyed predominance in the Los Angeles cocaine trade. In time-honored tradition, they used stolen art to stake their trades with the Colombians, and millions of dollars flowed like water into the coffers.
Those had been the good old days. A young Vlad had looked forward to the day that, as a shestyorka or associate, he too would have money in his pocket, a flashy car, women on each arm.
Instead, the Colombian market had fallen apart and the cocaine trade moved to Peru. Former suppliers of smuggled art went elsewhere; sources dried up. The Chechens organized and soon started making inroads into the drug trade. They were ruthless, some motivated by ideology, all by greed. By the time Vlad was trying to work his way up the organization, the Chechens had begun acquiring priceless art from European black markets, undercutting the Russians, challenging their territory.
Ricardo de Santos was at the heart of it. He was the axle around which the operation turned, bringing stolen works to the Chechen drug bosses that were then used as collateral in the South American drug trade.
How the Chechens had found de Santos and compelled him to work for them, Vlad did not know. Those discussions took place at higher levels of the organization than Vlad currently occupied. But if he were to carry out this task well, if he could intimidate de Santos into cooperation, then Sergey had indicated that Vlad might be rewarded with the promotion he so desperately wanted.
He couldn’t kill de Santos because de Santos’s connections were the prize the bratva was counting on.
If you couldn’t kill a man, the best way to hurt him was to find out what he held dear—and destroy it.
Vlad dropped his cigarette to the ground and crushed it with the heel of his boot. He had hoped that the note would cause the woman to panic, to call her lover back from his travels. He had been watching the apartment building, but somehow she had eluded him; there must be an exit he hadn’t noticed, because when he went back up to the apartment after midnight she was gone. She had been lucky tonight, but she would not continue to be lucky. Surely de Santos would understand that the bratva would not give up, that the only way to protect those he held dear was to cooperate.
But de Santos had not called. So maybe he didn’t care that much for her after all. It was time to find another way to send the message.
CHAPTER TEN
This was the third time Chelsea had gone to sleep in Ricardo’s arms—but the first time she’d woken up to find him still there.
For a moment, Chelsea lay perfectly still, savoring the feel of his arm resting on her hip, his breath on her shoulder. He wasn’t so much spooning her as enveloping her. Chelsea was tall, but Ricardo had several inches and many pounds on her, and he somehow made her feel…almost delicate. Fragile, in a good way. In the very best way possible.
He shifted slightly, gathering her more closely against him and sighing in his sleep.
He had brought her here, and he had stayed. Was this progress—or only a sign of his exhaustion? Was he still in bed with her because he’d come to her straight from a transatlantic flight, jet-lagged and worn out from his mysterious job? Perhaps from stealing art and killing people?
Chelsea bit her lip, wishing that she could unlearn certain things about Ricardo and believe others. If only he really was simply an art authenticator, theirs could be the affair that would set their entire world on fire. The daughter of one of the twentieth century’s greatest neo-expressionist artists, and a man cultured and connected enough to help bring him acclaim.
But nothing was that simple.
And there was something else that was bothering Chelsea, even after the stunning sexual encounter several hours ago. Could she even really consider him her lover, if he had yet to actually make love to her?
Chelsea felt her face flame at the hypothetical question. Ricardo had certainly fucked her. He’d taken her in every orifice but one, brought her to climax after climax using every trick in the book, made her crave things she hadn’t known existed.
But he had still held himself back.
I did not keep you safe, Ricardo had told her. And so, while I may control you, I have not yet earned the right to claim you.
Well, maybe she wanted to be claimed anyway.
Where had that come from? Chelsea was the original catch-and-release girl, preferring to disappear in the aftermath of every hookup. She was Teflon Tina, as one would-be boyfriend had nicknamed her—never allowing anyone to stick unless he understood the rules. Just fun, no commitments, no one owed anyone anything.
But that was before Ricardo.
Chelsea longed to shift around in his arms, to kiss the rough-stubbled jaw that grazed her shoulder while he slept. She would be more than happy to waken him slowly, using her hands and her mouth to bring him awake fully aroused. And afterward, she could imagine making coffee in the sweet little kitchen, bringing him a steamy mug, wearing his shirt as she got back into bed with him.
But that wasn’t what this night had been about. Memories of the things they’d done—for the love of God, she’d crawled on the floor, she’d let him clip and bruise her most sensitive flesh, she’d practically begged him to use the glass beads…these were not the acts of a little girl’s fairy-tale ending. They were raw and brutal and harsh—and just thinking about them was getting her wet again.
So she was his fuck toy. And he was her…just her Dom, she supposed. No wonder the rules were in place, to keep either of them from forgetting exactly what they were doing. And not doing. Like: falling in love, which was reserved for other, more conventional couples. People who worked in offices and went to see movies and out for ice cream, whose idea of a spicy bout of lovemaking involved an extra five minutes of foreplay.
She untangled herself from Ricardo’s arms slowly, carefully, practically holding her breath. He didn’t wake, and she watched him while she put her clothes back on. She wasn’t sure what to do with the beautiful bra and panties he’d given her; after considering leaving them on the dresser, she simply stuffed them into her purse instead.
She’d thrown on her running sneakers last night—was it really only last night when the note had been left in her apartment, setting off this whole chain of events? Now she slipped them back
on and let herself quietly out the front door, heart pounding until she reassured herself that there was truly no one outside, waiting.
Once she had gone a couple of blocks, staying under the cover of the lush trees and vines and trellised walls that lined the street, she found her rhythm and began to run faster. It felt good, the exertion and fresh air an antidote to the fear she’d been bottling up inside her. In the weak light of dawn, the note she’d received lost some of its power to terrify. It was only an attempt to frighten a gullible woman.
She focused on her breathing, running strong and steady, emptying her mind of the anxiety and fear that had dominated too many of her recent waking moments. The night she’d spent with him had clarified both her desires and her sense of purpose. Two things were clearer to her now than they’d been in the weeks since they first met:
First, Ricardo de Santos wasn’t who he seemed, not even close. He knew plenty about art, possibly even enough to be an authenticator, but it wasn’t a conventional business arrangement that kept him in beautiful clothes, fine wine, and expensive real estate.
And second, she wanted him anyway. Even if most of the things he’d said to her had been lies. Even if he lived his life in the gray area between right and wrong.
But that didn’t mean she shouldn’t learn as much as she could about him.
#
Several hours later, Chelsea emerged from the apartment of one of her fairy godfathers, smelling like grapefruit and gardenia from the shampoo he kept stocked in the shower.
Rufus lived above their thriving salon, and she occasionally stayed over after a long evening of eating, drinking and talking. Luckily, Rufus asked few questions when Chelsea asked if she could stay for a few days, accepting her explanation that the plumbing was on the fritz again. She took a long, invigorating shower and dressed in a pair of jeans and a black jersey top she’d left behind the last time she stayed over.
Chelsea popped into the salon to say goodbye before heading out. Donny caught her eye in the mirror in front of which he was styling his client’s hair and raised an assessing eyebrow. She knew he was trying to resist commenting on her clothes, but fashion critiques were going to have to wait for a while.
“You’ll be home for dinner?” Rufus asked, in nearly the same worried paternal tone he’d adopted when Chelsea first started hanging around the salon more than a decade ago.
“If you don’t mind having me,” she said. “I’ll pick up takeout from Soul Kitchen.”
Back when the men had first taken her in, she’d swept up and done other odd jobs around the salon to try to earn her keep, but the Fairy Godfathers had done far more for her than merely provide her shelter. Now that she was on her own, she liked to try to reciprocate whenever she could.
Rufus’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, could you get some of the brisket? And maybe some cornbread?”
“Of course,” she smiled.
“And maybe you’ll tell us exactly what’s going on,” Donny chimed in. “Why you look like the cat who swallowed the canary.”
Chelsea felt her face flame with embarrassment. It was so tempting; she’d love to be able to tell Donny and Rufus everything, from the threatening note to the fact that the man she was trying hard not to fall for, the one who had disappeared the minute she realized he was something special, had come back into her life as abruptly as he had left it.
But she still had no idea where her affair with Ricardo was heading: if she was just a friend with very….particular benefits, someone he might look up when he was in town, or whether there was the potential for more between them.
And more importantly, she would never endanger the two men who were all the family she had in the world. Unless, she thought worriedly, she already had, simply by coming here. But she’d been so careful, catching the bus at the base of the hills and riding it to a stop several blocks from the salon as dawn broke over the city, then taking a circuitous route through the neighborhood before letting herself in the back door of the shop.
No one had followed her. And since she had texted Naomi, her assistant at the gallery, saying that she wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be coming in today, no one would be looking for her, either.
It was pure foolishness that she hadn’t changed the locks on the door when she lost her purse, the night the paparazzi had startled her at the party Ricardo had taken her to. She would have that done now—just as soon as she returned home. Which would be soon. Very soon.
“Listen, Rufus…”
“Yes, Mei Mei?” Rufus said, using the nickname they’d given her back when their salon was located in Chinatown.
She couldn’t quite meet his frank blue-eyed gaze. “Maybe don’t tell anyone I’m staying here, okay?”
“Why ever not? Are you on the run from some romantic entanglement?”
“It’s not that mysterious gentleman caller, is it?” Donny frowned. “The one you were getting all dressed up for a while back?”
Chelsea forced a laugh. Donny and Rufus had taken great delight in supervising her grooming for a date with Ricardo—then tactfully never mentioned him again when he disappeared. “Of course not! That was over ages ago.”
But from the look the two men exchanged, it was clear that they didn’t believe her.
Time for a quick exit.
Chelsea strode through the morning pedestrian traffic with her sunglasses on and her hood pulled up over her hair, glowering at the street in front of her. She was trying to look fierce and unapproachable, as well as effectively disguised, but she was afraid she simply looked eccentric. Out of the corner of her eye, she scanned passersby, looking for menacing Eastern European faces. Which was ridiculous. Despite what the Soloniks had confided in her, the writer of the note that had been shoved under her door could be anyone at all.
He might not even be a man, Chelsea thought as she arrived at the café and spotted Jade Bliss sitting at a table by the window, applying lipstick as she checked her reflection in a little hand mirror. Jade was wearing overalls with a tiny tank top underneath, leaving acres of tattooed skin exposed. Her hair was platinum blond today and done up in a coy twist.
“Hey,” Chelsea said, sliding into the chair across from Jade after glancing around the café to make sure there wasn’t anyone suspicious nearby. Although she wasn’t sure how she’d know.
Jade slipped her lipstick back into her purse and smiled. “It’s been too long, Chel. I was starting to wonder if I’d offended you.”
Chelsea tried to ignore the pang of guilt that flashed through her. Jade could be a good friend…if Chelsea would just let her in. Jade was a friend, at least in the sense that the two had had several long conversations at various industry events, each ending with promises to get together soon. Earlier in the year, Jade had returned from serving many months in jail on forgery charges, and there were those in the art world who now snubbed her.
Chelsea believed Jade’s vow to do only legitimate work from now on. And maybe she should have said so sooner, but the truth was that she’d been too wrapped up in her own problems to seek out friendships.
“You’re looking great,” she said, promising herself that when things settled down—when she was no longer looking over her shoulder for assassins—she would call Jade up for a real social call.
“So are you. I have to say I’m intrigued—I’m getting a little tired of babysitting cheating spouses.”
“Well, you’ve only been in business for yourself for what, a few months?”
“Technically, since I’m on probation, I’m not really in business yet.” Jade grinned. “As far as my probation officer is concerned, I’m just working at Peabody’s.”
Chelsea knew the venerable old downtown art supply store well. Jade must have been a very loyal customer, for the owners to overlook her record when hiring her.
“Of course,” she said. “Listen, I assure you, I won’t tell anyone we spoke. I, um, wouldn’t even have considered—”
“Don’t worry, honey, I think I know w
ho I can trust around here.” Jade’s smile widened, revealing an adorably crooked gap in her front teeth. “That’s one thing you learn pretty quick in jail. Whatever you want to talk to me about, I can promise you it won’t go any further than this table. And I’m counting on you being equally discreet.”
Chelsea nodded. “I don’t know how much to say. I don’t want to drag you into anything dangerous.”
Jade’s grin morphed into an incredulous scowl. “Seriously? You do know I was incarcerated with actual felons, right? It’s not like we were in there giving each other manicures.”
“Um…”
Jade waved her hand dismissively. “I’ll spare you the details because I’m saving them for my memoir, but how about if you trust me to take care of myself. Deal?”
“Deal.” Chelsea’s anxiety lessened a fraction. It was true that Jade looked tough—but then again, so did Chelsea, and look how well she had handled herself. At the first sign of danger, she’d gone running.
She would outline what she needed in broad strokes. If Jade refused, that would be that. If she was still interested…well, there would be plenty of time to consider the dangers later.
She took a deep breath. “So…I met this man.”
“Yeah? Congratulations,” Jade said, raising her cappuccino for a toast.
“Well, before you congratulate me, maybe I had better tell you a little bit about him.”
She told a carefully edited version of what she knew about Ricardo de Santos: that he was ostensibly an art authenticator, that he had access to undocumented but valuable pieces that were in no catalog or database that Chelsea knew about, that he was involved in some way with members of the Russian mafia. That he owned or leased expensive real estate in several cities, traveled on a private jet, claimed to be the son of a humble tailor from Segovia, Spain, and disappeared for weeks at a time, untraceable by any of the means Chelsea had tried, which, she had to admit, were limited.
