“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.
“I got a medal,” he said, drawing himself up. I spooned up some fruit. For now, for this moment at least, I thought things were going my way. He was drinking beer and trying to sound big. I thought I’d be able to sit up at the breakfast bar with my fruit and enjoy the view.
He hunched and loomed around the room, keeping near the walls. I took that as a good sign, though I didn’t like it nearly as much as if he’d have just left me alone. While I finished stirring the eggs, I popped bread in the toaster and poured coffee.
I raised the carafe and an eyebrow to him with what I aimed as a motherly look as he pulled on his beer. He shook his head. “I don’t need coffee.” I made as sincere a look of concern as I could.
While I perched on the stool with my breakfast, he finished his beer and got another, and all the while he slunk around, keeping out of my line of sight. The fact that he kept his distance let me think I had an advantage, but I couldn’t figure out what it was or how to use it.
However much I tried to relax and enjoy the hazy view of the city, I couldn’t get comfortable with Bruto lurking around behind me.
I kept my eyes on window as I said, “We’re going to need cash for the helicopter, you know?” I felt that if I could keep him talking, at least I would know where he was without having to keep turning around.
The apartment was feeling very empty without Luka, and Bruto was doing his damndest to make me feel exposed. “Don’t worry about the cash. We’ll get money from the Russians.”
“You don’t think we might have to front some up?”
“What are you worried about?” he growled. Mainly I was worried about keeping him talking and keeping his mind occupied.
“You probably know better than I do,” I said, “but aren’t helicopters fairly expensive? I remember Tony saying that anything more than one or two hundred thou needed preparation.” I hadn’t ever heard Tony talk about money—I was winging it—but I hated the feeling of Bruto hovering and brooding behind me.
Just so that I could hear where he was, I wanted to keep him talking. For that, I would have asked him to read me yesterday’s damned racing results or the Post’s editorial page. It would have been better if I had. I’d misjudged. My question pushed him into financial details where he wasn’t confident.
His big fist slammed on the counter next to me and I jumped. The heat and the acrid, beery taste of his breath were way too close.
“You don’t concern yourself about the money.”
He was very big, and I was shocked by how fast he was. My purse was near and I’d left the zipper open, but I didn’t think that I could get to it quick enough if I needed it. My best guess was that the cool-but-stern superior maternal tone was what had worked on him a moment ago.
It was all that I had. My voice stayed soft and flat, and I took it down a little in pitch. My words were slow. Like I was talking to a schoolchild that needed to be made to understand. His big fists were on the counter, either side of me.
“When we’re ready,” I lifted my chin a little, “I’ll tell Vassily what we need.” Bruto drew a breath and I paused to watch him before I went on. “I’m going to make him pay way more than we do, but we may need to finance ahead.” I gave him a moment. “I need to know that we won’t have a problem with making the payment. If I have doubts, if I’m unsure, Vassily will hear it in my voice.”
He breathed hard, but he backed away a little. Feeling like I was on the right track, I told him, “Vassily could be unpredictable. We’ll be in better shape if we can stay ahead of him.” I was still making it up as I went along, but it all sounded good to me, and it made Bruto retreat. Maybe I had found a way to his insecurity.
From bad days with my father, I knew that tweaking a man’s insecurity while he was drinking might only work for so long. He can reach a tipping point where his frustration will erupt in a show of violence. My purse wasn’t near enough to risk that.
“I want us to be prepared for Vassily,” I said. “Whatever he throws at us, we can be ready.” I looked intently at him. He softened and moved back.
With a resentful curl of his lip, he said, “You and me, we’ve got other business to clear up.”
“Let’s deal with Vassily first,” I said evenly. “Get all of the business done.”
He lunged forward and slammed his fists on the counter again. His nose was almost against mine. “I’ll decide what we do and when,” he snarled. I didn’t dare breathe. I stretched my fingers toward the purse as he glowered into my face. His eyes flickered, and it was like watching his brain tick.
All I could think of was to try and warn him off, give him something to make him stop and think. Something like, You want to tell Luka when he gets back that I stepped off the boat, too? but I didn’t like it. It was too open-ended and too much like a challenge. Too likely to give him an idea, as well. From what I could see of Bruto’s head, it looked like there was a lot of empty space for ideas in there.
He backed off with a scowl. His nostrils flared like a bull’s. Making sure not to move my eyes from his, I saw the heft of the bulge at the front of his pants. With all the calmness I could summon, I let my gaze soften into something that I hoped would have a matronly effect.
He sprang forward and his face jammed back into mine. He hissed, “This ain’t over, bitch,” and he left the room.
The urge to leave while he was out of sight was strong, but I decided I would finish my breakfast. There would be more days like this, I told myself. There was no point hoping it—he—would go away; I would have to cope. Now seemed like the perfect time to begin.
As I finished my breakfast, I lost myself in looking out of the big window at the misty Manhattan view. Big city, millions of people. It seemed like if I could get out of the apartment, I could vanish in seconds.
Then I remembered Tony saying, “If they want to find you, they always find you. Sooner or later, you want to walk down a familiar street, buy an ice cream, or go into a diner. Maybe call someone you were close to. And they’ll be waiting. That’s why they always find you, not because they’re so super-smart, but just because they never forget.”
And what about if there were two of you? I wondered. Would that make your chances better or worse? Would you be easier to track down or harder if you were a team. A pair? My thoughts swerved from the word ‘couple.’ Then that would probably just make it twice as easy. I reasoned that two of you would just be twice as big a target. Twice as many things to mess up.
It was dumb for me to think of Luka in terms of anything serious or longer term and I knew it. Dumb and almost certainly pointless. He was the classic wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am. A hot jock with no thought for anything but the thrill of spreading his seed. The kind of women he dated—what a cute term—they were bound to be beautiful, trim, and just as shallow as he was. The aftertaste of bitterness startled me as that thought drifted by.
The word ‘couple’ still danced and teased at the edge of my thoughts. What I wanted with Luka, I knew I wanted it, was something I could probably never get with him. It seemed unlikely he saw it anywhere in his future. Not with me or with anyone else.
The comfort that I got from having Luka near, from feeling him close, it was a prop and I would be stupid to count on it. Or to count on him for anything beyond what he was paid to do. It shouldn’t have been in my mind at all. Only because I had been so long under Tony’s thumb, now having a friendly face nearby, it made me start to think that maybe things could be better.
That was all right for some comfort and a little reassurance, I told myself, but it was just a prop. It wasn’t anything that I could really count on. While it helped me to feel strong, that was good. However I might have felt about him, there wasn’t any point in my relying on Luka for anything more.
While Bruto was
out of the room, I allowed myself to think that I had the high ground. He couldn’t get out without passing me. I would stay where I was and relax as well as I could. Having endured Tony’s hands, his fists, his belt, and worse, I figured I could deal with Bruto glare.
There would be more than snarling, I knew. Sooner or later. He slammed one hand on the counter the first time, then both hands the next time. After that, his face came close to mine. I could see the pattern. Fortunately he didn’t have the balls to just go for me, but he was definitely working up to it.
Tony never would have spent time working up to anything. Not with me, and as far as I saw, not with anyone else. Deep down, I decided Bruto was a coward. The worst kind of a coward, too—the kind who will do anything to prove that he isn’t.
That would make him irrational and unpredictable.
~~
Luka called. “You okay?”
“Sure,” I said. I did feel better just from hearing his voice. “How’s it going?”
“I can get a helicopter, same spec as the one they asked for. Two-point-six million.”
I told him that sounded good.
“We get the two back if we return it with a full tank and without a scratch.”
“Big deposit,” I said. “Like a high-end hire car.”
“Pretty much.” The sound of his voice made me feel weak and strong at the same time. Strong that I was coping without him, strong that he would be coming back. Strong that I had protection from a man like Luka. I didn’t want to think about the other side, the ‘weak‘ side of the equation.
I said, “Not the same model they asked for?”
“The model they wrote down is Russian, you wouldn’t get one in the US. Besides, the helicopter I have is the one the Russian chopper was copied from.”
“Do they really do that?”
“Yeah, a lot of aircraft are close copies of US models.”
I crooked the phone on my shoulder. It was nice just chatting. Even if we were talking about military hardware, I liked the sound of our voices winding together.
“We make models based on Russian, Chinese, and other countries’ choppers and planes, too,” Luka continued. “The military do it to learn the weapons capabilities of the other side.” He sounded excited. The energy in his voice was good to hear.
“So, how similar is it?” I didn’t want the talk to stop.
“Same lifting and passenger capacity. Better performance.”
The beginnings of an idea awoke in the back of my mind. I walked over to stand by the tall window. “Does it have weapons?”
“I’m getting a military aircraft that’s being decommissioned, so we could have it loaded. You want machine guns and missiles?”
“Do I want missiles?” I almost giggled. “What sort of a question is that?”
“It’s Vassily we’re getting it for, right?”
“Good point. Can you get a remote control on the weapons? Then we could tell Vassily they’re just for show and they don’t work.” I ran my finger down the cold glass pane.
He paused. Then I was sure I heard a smile in his voice. “What are you planning?”
I turned and leaned against the window, watching to see if Bruto came out. “I’m not. Luka, really, I have no more of an idea what’s going on than you do.” That was more or less the truth, too. “I’m just trying to keep options.”
“I’ll ask about weapons systems, all right?”
I pressed back against the window, not really wanting to hang up. I didn’t want to stop feeling like Luka was there in the apartment with me.
After we did hang up, I called Vassily straightaway on the phone he’d given me.
“I can get your helicopter. Six mil. Give it back in perfect condition and I’ll give you half back.”
I listened to the pause. He said, “How much are you making on this?”
“A little over a hundred percent.”
His voice was smooth, firm, and sure, “Oh, that’s good, Alexa. I think you may have found your calling.”
“You want to get your own helicopter?”
“Not at all. It was genuine admiration, kotyonok.” I tried to remember that so that I could Google it. “You can have the money this afternoon. I’ll give you half now, half after the day’s events. When the show’s over, so to speak.”
I told him, “Half now, half on delivery, Vassily.”
There was a pause. “You’re good, Alexa. I’ll call you.” And we hung up.
Bruto stood in the doorway. From across the room, I could feel his scowl. “You didn’t think to discuss it with me?”
“What did you want to discuss, Bruto?”
“I heard you want to charge him six mil.”
I nodded.
“And what are we paying?”
“Less than three.” His eyebrows went up. Then he relaxed a little.
“Okay. You did all right. You didn’t fuck that up.”
The urge to snap back at him was strong, but I held my tongue. In that split second of restraint, I thought I maybe learned something about Bruto, and that was better.
It seemed to me like he wouldn’t give credit to anyone because he couldn’t see any value in himself. Was that true? I would have to watch and see. And in that thought, I realized that I was having to double-think the guy on my team much harder than I was with Vassily.
Luka called back. As soon as I picked up and he heard my voice, he said, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Naturally,” I said.
He said, “Bruto’s in the room.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll be right back.”
“That would be great.”
Something else was bothering me. It would be another ten days before I could find out for sure. Although I felt sure.
As I stepped back into the apartment, Bruto was telling her, “I’ll go and collect the money from Vassily.” He looked up and glared at me coming back in. The fading aromas of coffee and bacon made me hungry.
Alexa was perched at the counter on a stool, with her back to the big window. Her voice was cool when she said, “You sure Vassily will give the money to you? When he calls, I can ask him, if you like.”
Her eyes flicked up to mine as she reached across the counter for the phone that she’d gotten from Vassily. “Maybe I should call him now.” The warm glow that her look gave me was unexpected and I worked hard to keep from showing a reaction to it.
There was a reaction in my pants that I couldn’t prevent, but I didn’t think Bruto’s attention would be focused there. He was already on hot coals about everything to do with her. And especially about everything to do with her and me.
“Wait for him to call,” Bruto growled, “and we’ll all go together.”
Without knowing what had happened while I was away, I could see that Alexa was handling Bruto a whole lot better than I feared she would. Better than I remembered a lot of SEALs dealing with him.
We all sat around and I tried to keep my eyes off of her. She didn’t make any effort to avoid looking at me.
~~
When the phone rang, she got up and paced around with it. Silhouetted by the window, the strength of a woman. Nothing like the kind of women that I wasted most of my nights with. Remembering the hot scent of her in the parking garage almost made me moan.
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.
Luka: Perfectly Damaged – a Bad Boy Mafia Romance Page 14
