It’s infuriating.
As soon as we get out to the parking lot, I whip around and glare at him, gritting my teeth.
“What?” he asks, shrugging.
“Oh, like you don’t know,” I sneer. “Come on. Get in the car.”
I point to my little red hatchback and a flicker of amusement plays across his features. “You want me to get into that car,” he says, deadpan.
“Yes. Obviously,” I sigh, tapping my foot.
“In the passenger seat. Of a cherry-red hatchback,” Misha continues.
“Yes! Get in. Now,” I urge him, giving his arm a light nudge.
“I don’t have to do anything you say, you know,” he tells me.
I roll my eyes.
“Right. So, what’s your plan then? To walk home? Where even is your home? Where are you really from?”
Misha smirks, that familiar old flame blazing behind his eyes.
“If I remember correctly, you know where I live. You’ve been there.”
My cheeks start to burn and I smack him on the arm.
“Get in the car!” I shout.
Finally, he relents and gets gingerly into the passenger seat of my car. If I wasn’t so pissed off, I might have laughed. My car is the perfect size for me, but Misha has got to be well over six-foot-five and bulging with muscles. He’s folded up in the passenger seat like an accordion. He looks like he’s in a child’s Barbie car or something.
Serves him right. Maybe he’ll be a little less intimidating like this.
“Where are we headed, captain?” he asks, giving me a sidelong glance.
I start up the engine and start to pull away from the detention center. I keep my eyes on the road, refusing to look at him.
“Come on. Don’t play dumb with me,” I mutter.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Misha says, rather cryptically. “But really, where are we going?”
I glance over at him, frowning.
“You can drop that act now. We’re not at the jail anymore. It’s just you and me. Cut to the damn chase, Chaykovsky.”
“Oh, so we’re back on last-name terms now?” he quips. “I would think by now we’d at least be upgraded to first names. Nicole.”
“Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat,” I tell him firmly. “It was Misty you slept with, not Nicole. And that’s way behind us now. That was a mistake.”
“Well, tell Misty I had a damn good time,” he replies coyly.
I very nearly slam on the brakes, I’m so angry, but I force myself to calm down. I have to remain composed in this situation. My sister’s life is on the line. We ride in silence for a few minutes, then Misha reaches over to lay a huge hand on my arm.
“What are you doing?” I ask, annoyed. I jerk my arm away.
He looks almost hurt.
“I was going to thank you. For getting me out of there.”
“Whatever. I didn’t do it for you,” I retort.
“Either way, you did me a huge favor by destroying that evidence,” he continues. “I will never be able to properly repay you for that.”
I’m so stunned that I have to swerve to avoid a massive crack in the road.
“Excuse me? You think I had anything to do with that?” I shout.
“Well, if not you, then who else?” he asks.
“You did! You and your mafia cronies or whatever! Stop messing around,” I reply.
“I’m serious,” Misha says grimly. “I had nothing to do with that. And I thought… since you lied under oath for me…”
“Shh! Jesus, keep your voice down,” I shoot back instinctively.
“Why? We’re the only ones here. Unless you have reason to believe your tiny little car has been bugged or something,” he jokes.
“Stop. Stop lying. I know you’re behind all this,” I accuse. “I know you somehow got that evidence taken care of and I know you’re the one behind what happened to my sister.”
He’s silent for a moment, taking it all in. Like he’s shocked. Then he says softly, “That’s what you were on the phone about that day.”
“Yes, asshole. Someone took her and they’re holding her for ransom. Yeah. They already called and told me all about it, so you can drop the ignorance game. I know you’re in on this. Hell, you probably orchestrated the whole damn thing just to get back at me for putting you in jail. Well, you’re out now, and you’re going to help me set this shit straight,” I demand.
“You really think I planned this?” Misha asks slowly.
“Of course. Who the hell else would do this? I’m just a low-ranking vice cop. Nobody cares about me. Nobody targets me. No one worth their salt has any reason to hold a grudge against me. Except for you,” I explain.
“Nicole,” he says solemnly. “I am not lying to you. I don’t have anything to do with what happened to your sister. I didn’t get rid of the evidence. I don’t know how this happened. I thought you were the one who disposed of the evidence all this time. You lied in court to get me out, so it all made sense.”
“I-I wouldn’t,” I stammer, suddenly feeling my entire plan unravel. “You didn’t?”
“No. I didn’t,” he assures me.
“Then who the hell did it?” I murmur.
“Someone who wanted me out of jail,” he reasons.
“And you and I… both of us…” I trail off.
“We were pawns in someone else’s game,” Misha says darkly.
“This is bigger than you and me, isn’t it?” I ask softly.
I glance over to see Misha nodding. But just then, there’s a squealing of tires somewhere behind us. I look in the rearview mirror to see a flashy black sports car trailing us. No, not just trailing us.
Chasing us.
“What the hell?” I mutter. The black car speeds up rapidly, its engine roaring.
“Time to see how fast this little toy car can go,” Misha says quickly. “What are you waiting for? Hit the gas! Go, go go!”
I slam my foot down on the gas pedal, my little red car whirring madly as we speed off down the empty highway. Clouds of desert dust kick up in our wake, but I can still see the black car zooming through the puffs.
“Who the hell is that?” I exclaim, my heart racing.
“I don’t know, but we absolutely cannot wait to find out,” Misha growls. “Faster!”
“It’s a four-cylinder, Misha, it’s doing the best it can!” I shout back angrily.
“We have to lose him. He’s gaining on us,” he adds.
“Not helping!” I retort, throwing my car into a higher gear.
“Is there anywhere we can go?” he asks. “We have to shake him off.”
“Oh, god. I don’t know. Uh, let me think,” I answer, wracking my brain. Then, it hits me. I know a place down a dirt road, a random turn off this highway. If I can get our stalker close enough, then take the turn fast enough, he might topple. My little car is so low to the ground and well-centered, I think I can swing it.
I don’t have any other plan. This one will have to do.
We ride along at top speed for several more minutes, as I swerve and jerk the wheel intentionally to kick up more dust, trying to blind the guy following us. Finally, I see the turn coming up. Now or never.
“What’s your plan?” Misha yells over the roar of the engine.
“Hold on!”
“What? That’s not a—”
“I said hold on!”
I slow down just enough to force the guy behind us to slam on his brakes, and at the last second, I jerk the wheel all the way to the right, peeling out and nearly toppling my car over in the process as I turn down the dirt road toward the place I have not visited in years. This act kicks up so much sand and dust that at first we can’t see anything behind us, but when it clears a little, we can see that our assailant’s car has completely flipped over and is sliding down a dusty dune in a heap of screaming metal.
“Holy shit!” I cry out. “It worked! It fucking worked!”
“Amazingly,
yes, it has,” Misha agrees, clearly both concerned and impressed at the same time. I give him an exhilarated smile, before I remember that I’m supposed to be angry at him.
“Now, where are we going?” he asks one more time.
“To a place where nobody will come looking for us,” I reply.
Misha
I step out of the car and look up at the building in front of us, and I furrow my eyebrows before a smile crosses my lips.
“I know this place,” I say simply.
“I’m sure you do,” she says back with irritation in her voice as she marches toward the doors. “Don’t suppose you have your hands around this place too, do you?”
“No,” I admit, admiring the large building as I follow her at a slower pace. “I have no ties to brothels, Officer.”
She rolls her eyes at me and rings the doorbell as I approach.
“I must admit, I’m surprised to hear that you do, though,” I add, quirking an eyebrow at her. She doesn’t look at me, but she frowns, crossing her arm as she’s waits for someone to answer.
I’m mostly surprised because this brothel is outside the Las Vegas metropolitan area, meaning it’s outside her jurisdiction. She seems like she knows this place, but she can’t have been working vice here.
The door finally opens, and the smell of perfume wafts out to overwhelm us both. A middle-aged woman with red hair steps out and recognizes Nicole immediately, her face brightening up and her arms spreading out.
“Oh my god, Nicole, good to see you! Come here, honey,” she gushes, and Nicole meets her in a friendly hug.
“Hey, Krystal,” Nicole replies. “Is Mama Daisy in?”
“Sure is,” she says, holding the door open wider. “Come on in. Who’s your friend?” She looks me up and down apprehensively, then glances between the two of us.
“A friend,” she says curtly, and Krystal just raises her eyebrows, not looking like she wanted to pry further.
We don’t have to look for the house manager very long. Within a few seconds, a tall woman in a fetching white coat appears around the corner of the hallway and seems as happy to see Nicole as Krystal was.
“Nicky, honey!” she says, stepping forward and taking her hands, kissing her on each cheek. “Oh, here I thought I’d seen the last of you.”
“I’m not that easy to shake,” she says with a nervous laugh. “How is everything?”
“Honey, business is booming, but I won’t bore you with the details. What brings you back around these parts?”
As I step in after Nicole and Krystal closes the door behind us, I get a better look at the place. It’s classy, but not too over-the-top ritzy. I’ve never actually been inside. The walls are a dark purple, and the floors are black and shining. Dim red lights glow along the walls, and of course, it wouldn’t be a brothel without erotic paintings lining every bit of free space on those purple walls. The occasional lavish red curtain hangs here and there for dramatic effect, and in the main lobby beyond us, I can see a big chandelier hanging from the ceiling.
“Kind of a long story,” she admits, earning a sympathetic smile from the manager. “I’d love to catch up a little, but first, I was wondering if my friend and I could borrow a room for the night? I’ve got some cash on me, and-”
“Oh, go off with your cash!” Daisy says with a laugh, waving a hand. “Of course you can have a room, no charge. It’s going to be a slow night tonight, it’ll give the girls something to chat about,” she adds with a knowing wink in my direction.
“Thanks,” Nicole says warmly as Krystal hurries to get us a room key and tosses it to Nicole.
“Room 204,” she says briskly. “Come find me when the two of you have had a chance to settle in, hm?”
“Of course, Madame,” I say in a low rumble with a smile, and the manager giggles and winks at Nicole, who looks mortified.
“Come on,” she grumbles at me, and I follow her up the stairs.
“So,” I start once we’re trudging up carpeted wooden stairs to the second floor. The scent of perfume only gets stronger the higher we get, and the colors on the walls and paintings seem to pop all the more. “How does a woman like you get so cozy with a place like this? Do they know…?”
“No,” she says in a low but sharp voice, casting a glance over her shoulder. I meant to ask whether the brothel knows she’s a cop, and she picked up on that. “I knew this place before I took my current job.”
“My my,” I say as we reach the second floor and head toward our room. “You become a more interesting woman each time we speak.”
“Not like that,” she groans, and she sticks the key into the keyhole to get the heavy door open. “My best friend in college, Trish, she started working here for a while. I hated the idea, so I followed her and rented a room for a week to keep an eye on things.”
She cracks the door open, and the interior is everything you would expect. The bed is huge and covered in red sheets, the floors and walls are a richer hue of purple, and the bedframe is painted gold. There’s a sink in the corner of the room, and the place smells like a mixture of an expensive perfume store and a dive bar.
I shut the door behind us, and the solid click tells me it’s soundproof.
“Aw, you played babysitter?” I tease.
“Not exactly,” she says gruffly. “As you can see, I... kind of fell in love with the place. The people here are nice,” she admits with a smile as she crosses the room to the sink and splashes a little water in her face. “I decided that as long as my friend was being safe and sticking to the right people, I’d support her, and I ended up making a lot of friends here.”
“That’s very charitable of you, Officer Burns,” I say with emphasis on the last bit, and she winces.
“Seriously, keep quiet about that here. Please?” she asks, and I chuckle.
“Don’t want to lose your street cred, eh?”
“My friends and family are important to me.”
My teasing smile grows more sincere, and I step closer to her, lowering my voice.
“I meant what I said, by the way. In the car. I had nothing to do with your sister being taken. I was informed about it, though, after it happened.”
She furrows her eyebrows at me, and I take out the envelope I received in jail and spread out the contents on top of the drawers.
“See here,” I say, “these pictures line up to what’s written in the letters. It’s a coded message. I got it not long before the hearing. I assumed some of my men were taking initiative and acting without my orders. I never gave word to make this happen.”
She examines the pictures, narrowing her eyes. “What does it say?”
“It says your little sister has been successfully taken, that she is safe and being treated well, and she is being held for ransom at a secure location. The kidnappers have already made contact with you, and gotten their message across. This is not a ransom for money. It is a ransom for a favor. I thought that favor was to release me. Now... I’m not so sure.”
“That makes sense, but give me a reason to believe you.”
I smile. She never loses her edge.
“Besides admitting weakness and having no reason to lie to you? If I had her taken, I’d have no reason to keep her in hiding after what you did for me. I’m a man who repays his debts.” I smile wolfishly. “You lied on the stand for me. If it were in my power, your sister would be returned to you with a fat stack of cash for her trouble.”
“You’re a devil,” she says, smirking at me and turning to face me. I return it.
“A devil who’s grateful,” I say in a husky tone, and I take a step closer to her. She doesn’t step back, but her shining eyes look up at me meaningfully.
The adrenaline from the car chase is still pumping through our veins, and I know she can feel it in her pounding heart. We’ve both been through a lot the past couple days, and I haven’t had any privacy in jail.
The look on her face says a thousand words that all contradict each other. Part of he
r wants to shoot me, and part of her wants to kiss me.
“I’ve been taken advantage of too,” I say in a deep whisper. “And I don’t appreciate it. Through it all, one person has offered me help: you. The one person who I should hate the most,” I add, taking her chin between my thumb and forefinger.
Her lip curls up, and her eyes get lidded. “Thinking of taking your chance?” she asks. “Take me down right here in a soundproof room, get my gun from me, take the car keys, and rocket off out of state?”
“Not a bad plan,” I admit. “But I have a better one.”
I wrap my hands around her hips and press a kiss into her. She gasps, pressed back against the wardrobe, and I lean into her.
It’s hot and fierce, and as soon as we’re together again, it’s like something dormant comes back to life. The room is silent except for our groaning, but our bodies feel like they’re on fire.
She twists and squirms, and I think she’s trying to get away, but I realize she’s working her shirt off. I help her with the buttons and slide the blouse off, and I waste no time in getting her bra unhooked and tossing it aside as well.
With her breasts free, I pick her up and roughly toss her onto the bed a second before I’m on top of her.
There’s no need to take things slow or pace ourselves. We both know we want each other, and god knows I need the release. My touch on her is rough and animalistic. I grope her breasts as we kiss again, and my tongue invades her mouth. In jail, the touch of a woman is something that makes you long for release more than anything. It consumes your thoughts when you let yourself get idle.
“I thought about you while I was in there,” I growl once our kiss breaks and my mouth goes to her ear. “All that time, you knew you were the last person I was with. You liked that, didn’t you?”
“Maybe I did,” she gasps, a smile forming on that mouth of hers.
“And you call me the devil,” I growl, and I pinch her nipple. She gasps, and I reach around her back and slide my hand down until I feel metal.
Her eyes spring open when she realizes I’m holding her gun.
For a split second, the thought of taking advantage of this situation crosses my mind. She was right, it should be what I do. She took advantage of me in bed last time, so this is only fair payback. We lock eyes for a moment, then I slide the pistol out and set it on the nightstand.
Vegas Boss: A Mafia Hitman Romance Page 10
