The monitor started beeping in a rapid, ear-splitting tone.
“Oh shit! What now?” Elena sounded panicked again.
“Same as before, lever three, nice and slow, but this time you’re going to push it forward,” Roman instructed her.
“Forward. Right. Sure.” She carefully pushed the lever upward, back into its original position.
As soon as lever three clicked into place, the beeping stopped and the monitor quit flashing. The plane made a gentle whirring.
And then, all was still. Roman exhaled and glanced from the front window to the monitor, and then to Elena. She still wore a residual look of panic, but he watched as it faded to uncertainty, and then hesitant relief.
“We did it,” he said gently. “We’re going to get home safe.”
4
Elena
The rest of the flight was tense. She pretended to read for a while. Her eyes scanned the page, but no information dared enter her brain. They had almost died. Or, at least, it felt like they’d almost died.
The incident continued to replay over and over in her head. Every time the plane hit a bump of turbulence, she paled and glanced to the engine temperature monitors. Roman, however, seemed as cool and reserved as ever, even when speaking into his headset to air traffic. On occasion, Elena would look over and scrutinize his face, but every time she did, he seemed focused. Almost relaxed.
When they’d first met at the café with Alexandra, she had flirted with him not only as a distraction, but because he was genuinely attractive. His thick hair fell straight across the eyebrows, falling like slashes across his face. His eyes were the same color as a stormy sky, a captivating deep grey that kept sucking her in at odd moments. And even though he’d worn a nondescript black suit each time Elena had seen him, she could tell from the cut of the suit and the way it moved against his skin that he had a hard, fit body.
Attractiveness aside, however, she also remembered the way he had burst into her apartment and bossed her around when Alexandra had stopped by. Who did that? Who just walked into someone else’s home and told them what to do?
Then, just when she’d thought he couldn’t get any ruder, tonight he’d had the nerve to question her. Not only question her, she realized, but also talk to her with the same even, almost condescending tone, that a parent used on a surly teenager.
Still, he had remained so unshakably calm during the emergency... He’d known just what to say, and how to say it, to give Elena the courage she needed. Maybe chaufferone wasn’t so bad after all.
“How often does that happen?” Elena finally asked, breaking the long silence.
“What, an engine overheating?” Roman glanced to her. “I’ve never had that happen before.”
“Wow. Lucky us.” It was all Elena could think to say. Her heart had continued to race long after the emergency, and she felt almost dizzy now that the adrenaline rush had been left behind.
“Not too lucky. We’re low on fuel.” Roman pointed to a small circular gauge. Elena stared at it, wide-eyed, then turned to stare at him.
“How much further do we have to go? Please don’t tell me I need to pull out the manual again or something,” Elena said, trying to hide her second round of panic for the night. She saw Roman’s mouth twitch. Then, slowly, his lips curled into a tiny, faint smile.
“A few miles. We’re almost ready to land, and we’ve been descending for a long time now. I’m surprised you didn’t notice,” Roman said.
“You bastard!” She swatted at the air next to him in a dramatic gesture. “You’re going to give me a heart attack.”
“Payback, Ms. Popov, for the troubles you have caused me.” Roman’s faint smile widened into a smirk.
“I’m not even going there right now.” Elena rolled her eyes. “But I will remind you, chaufferone, that I saved the day by reading you that manual.” She crossed her arms and scooted deeper into her seat.
“And I will remind you that, without me to guide you and fly the plane, we both would have been eaten by sharks or frozen in the Atlantic Ocean.”
“Just gotta outdo me, don’t you?” Elena snorted. “Ass.”
Despite his mean joke, Roman was right; within minutes, she felt the plane jump and screech as they touched down on the runway. The landing was easy, and knowing they were no longer in the air was bliss to Elena.
When the plane stopped moving and the door opened, Roman gestured for Elena to climb down first. She went to stand, though, and found her muscles weak from the adrenaline. Carefully, she grabbed her suitcase and made her way down one stair at a time. Roman followed.
On the last step, her knees buckled. The suitcase hit the ground and a cry escaped Elena’s lips, but rather than feel the cold sting of concrete, she felt strong arms scooping her up. Roman had caught her, and was holding her tightly. The adrenaline from their harrowing flight was joined by a new surge of excitement when she felt the warmth of his body.
Without thinking, Elena lifted her head and joined their mouths for an intense, spur of the moment kiss. Her knees went weak again with the contact, and this time it had nothing to do with the flight. Roman tasted like mint, and although he seemed startled at first, she felt his lips working against hers, prolonging the kiss.
Then, as quickly as it had happened, it was over.
Elena cleared her throat and tried to walk away as Roman set her down awkwardly, but her knees buckled again even before he let her go. Roman steadied her, and linked their arms to prevent her from stumbling again. He stooped to pick up her luggage with his free hand and then escorted her carefully off the runway.
Yeah. Maybe chaufferone wasn’t so bad after all.
5
Roman
After a long, nerve-racking flight, the last thing Roman wanted to do was get behind the wheel of a car and drive, but he would do what needed to be done. Elena sat in the back of the town car with her suitcase next to her, staring out the window with a pout. He was grateful for the silence—it was far preferable to her sarcasm and eye-rolling—but there was a question that kept plaguing him.
“What was that about?” Roman asked her. He heard her shift her weight in the plush leather seat.
“What was what about?” Elena replied after a pause.
“The kiss.”
“Pshfft. I don’t know. Just glad to be alive after I got off that stupid plane. But it wasn’t all me, you know. You kissed me back.”
Roman wasn’t sure what to say in response, so he remained silent. He couldn’t remember the last time he had shared a kiss. It had been… good. But Elena was still a Popov, a sworn enemy, and so Roman tried to push away the feelings she had stirred in him. Still… Her lips had been warm, her taste sweet, and he hated himself for being unable to forget it.
After weaving through traffic, they finally pulled up the rolling drive of the Sokolov estate. Roman parked, keeping a careful eye on Elena. They entered the mansion to find Viktor and Alexandra waiting for them.
“Elena! I missed you so much!” Alexandra exclaimed as she and Elena rushed toward each other for a long hug. Roman watched their interactions with scrutiny, but ensured that he remained nonchalant, at least in appearance. It would be in poor taste and mean potential trouble for him to question Viktor’s orders. Viktor was Roman’s long-time friend and boss, and he could not bring himself to argue that Elena was not truly a defector. He had no evidence, after all—only a gut feeling.
While Alexandra and Elena chatted a mile a minute, Viktor clapped Roman on the back.
“I heard it was a hell of a flight. If anyone could have done it, it was you,” Viktor said with a smile.
Roman didn’t care to mention Elena’s help; it would only solidify her position as a friend and might work against him if he needed to prove she was, in fact, a foe. He forced a polite smile in response to Viktor’s. “Thank you,” he replied simply.
“I know you just had a ten hour flight and a two hour drive, but I need to ask you for something,” Viktor sa
id solemnly, pulling him off to the side, out of the women’s hearing range. “There is an important shipment that just came in from Kuwait. It’s sitting at a private address, and I need you to pick it up for me.”
Roman’s mouth ran dry. If he was away picking up this package, he wouldn’t be able to supervise Elena. His eyes flickered to her and Alexandra as they continued talking. With any luck, Elena would be as worn out as he was and want to go to bed soon.
But if she didn’t? Who knew what she could get up to? Roman’s mouth tightened and he looked back to Viktor with uncertainty. It seemed he had no choice.
“Absolutely,” Roman finally responded. Viktor seemed relieved, and clapped Roman on the back once again.
“Great! I’ll send the address to your phone. You might want to grab a dolly and take a van, though—some of those boxes might be pretty heavy,” Viktor said.
A lightbulb went off in Roman’s head. He turned toward Elena and Alexandra, clearing his throat.
“Elena. Would you mind helping me?” Roman asked. Elena looked at him with a slight squint.
“Uh. What?” she asked.
Roman felt Viktor’s surprise, but moved forward anyway, stepping toward Elena and waylaying any objection from his boss. “I have some packages to pick up and I’ll need some help keeping the hand truck steady.”
“Wait, you want me to leave with you again?” she asked, her eyes widening.
“Don’t worry, you won’t be doing any heavy lifting. And, consider it your way to repay me for saving our lives up there.” Roman pointed toward the ceiling with a forced smirk.
“As if—I was totally the one who saved the day!” Elena huffed. Her agitation slowly turned to amusement, and Roman could see the gears turning in her head even as Alexandra and Viktor exchanged confused looks. “But, yeah. I guess if you need my help, I can go.”
“Thank you,” Roman said with a deep nod.
This was perfect, he thought. Not only would he be able to keep an eye on Elena, but he’d also have the opportunity to ask her some more questions, more casually with any luck, and gauge her loyalties.
Alexandra and Elena quickly finished their conversation—Roman overheard plans for going back to the café they’d last met at—and Elena followed him out to the garage. Roman loaded a hand truck and some bungee cables into the back of a plain white van, helped Elena into the passenger seat, and then got in and turned the key in the ignition.
“Hopefully, we won’t have any more engine problems,” he said with a smirk.
“Don’t even go there, Roman! Ugh, not after the time we just had,” Elena replied playfully. Roman punched the address Viktor had sent into the GPS on his phone and they pulled back out onto the road. As they drove, Roman listened to Elena talk a mile a minute and found himself enjoying her company. Perhaps he wouldn’t even need to question her further—she would tell him everything, and he’d have the comfort of knowing she couldn’t be pulling any tricks outside of his sight.
The drive was short, and soon they’d arrived at an industrial complex with tall brick buildings, where Roman pulled into the loading area in the back.
“All I need you to do is hold the dolly steady while I stack boxes,” he instructed her as he helped her down from the van, thinking that he should have told her to change her heels. To his pleasant surprise, Elena nodded without complaint or interruption. She followed him with the hand truck and rested her foot against the back to keep it from sliding while he carefully stacked heavy crates onto it.
“Who needs CrossFit?” Elena joked. Roman couldn’t help but smile. He paused for a moment to lean against the wall and catch his breath while he wiped the sweat from his brow. Ever since the engine incident on the plane, Elena hadn’t been grating on his nerves quite so much. In fact, she was downright likeable.
“I thought you were just a driver… bodyguard… kind of guy. But then I saw you fly a plane, and now here we are loading boxes onto a van. Viktor works you hard, huh?” Elena asked.
“Only with jobs which require a high level of competency. And trust,” Roman responded. “He has been my employer for many years now. Saved me from the streets and hired me when I was at the lowest point in my life. For that, my loyalty to him is eternal.”
Elena cocked her head at him with a thoughtful expression. Their eyes met.
“Loyalty should be eternal,” Elena said quietly, holding his gaze. “It is either given entirely and freely when owed, or not at all. There’s no in-between, only loyalty or disloyalty,” Elena said with slow deliberateness. “I’ve also read that loyalty to a cause is the foundation of personal identity. If you are so loyal to Viktor, and so trusted by him, you must have strong character.”
Roman sensed no sarcasm or hostility in Elena’s tone; he kept his eyes on her, seeking any hint of an ulterior motive, but it seemed to him she was speaking from the heart.
“And what causes are you loyal to?” he asked. “What has shaped your personal identity?”
“Hmm…” Elena smiled, looked up in thought, and tapped her chin. “I’m loyal to myself, first and foremost. So many people just say what others want to hear, do what they’re told, but I try to listen to my heart and do what I feel is right instead of just… going with the flow, or whatever.” She paused to consider her next words, and Roman found himself listening with intrigue instead of just waiting to test her. Rather than focusing on his task at hand, he leaned back against the wall at his back and watched her.
“And I’m loyal to those who have earned it,” she continued. “I don’t think you can be loyal to anyone and everyone. Someone has to be worth it.” Elena tried to rest her weight against the dolly and almost fell in doing so. Roman moved to help her, but she caught her footing.
“Alexandra, for instance,” Elena said quickly, playing off her clumsiness and continuing to talk. “Like, she’s been my best friend for forever. We were both the weird Russian kids in school and we stuck up for each other. She’s always been there for me, and I’ve always been there for her. She’s earned my loyalty, and so I work to keep it.”
Roman nodded—this, he had not trouble believing. “I can see that. And I can’t disagree with anything you’ve said, really.” He looked toward the rest of the boxes. “C’mon, let’s get the rest of these packed up so we can go home.”
“Yes, please!” Elena chirped. “I’m dying for a hot shower, a good meal, and a soft bed.”
“Me, too.” Roman answered, offering her a smile as he pulled the first load of boxes off toward the van.
Load by load, they loaded the rest of the boxes into the van. On the way home, Roman decided he would keep testing Elena, but that this didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the time spent with her, as well.
6
Elena
Elena was exhausted when she and Roman returned from picking up the shipment. Initially, she had wanted to tell Roman off when he’d asked her to join him, but at the last minute she’d realized that time spent with him would be time spent winning his trust. That couldn’t hurt. And, in the end, it had seemed to pay off, especially when he’d asked her about loyalty and she’d given him all the right answers.
What she hadn’t told him was that her ultimate loyalty was to her family—more specifically, her father—and that she would do anything for Anatoly Popov. She had been at a young age when she’d learned that, if you weren’t blood, you were an enemy. Alexandra had been the long-running exception to that rule for Elena, but if it came down to Alexandra’s wishes or her father’s, Elena would side with her dad without question. And, in truth, she still saw this mission as being for both of them—nice as the Sokolov mansion was, her friend didn’t deserve to be under the control of Viktor, living in his shadow. She deserved her own life, and happiness. While it was true that Elena had seen a kinder side to Viktor since she’d come to stay at the mansion, she knew that men in power wore masks to their advantage. No matter how happy Alexandra appeared, or how kind it was of Viktor to offer her asylum fr
om her father until he was brought to justice, Elena knew the truth: Viktor was giving her busy work so he could observe her in everything she did. He wanted to see where her ties lay.
Kindness would only take him so far. While he bent over backwards to appear friendly, she would do what she did best—convince him that she was one type of person when she was really another. Her mission was simple: assassinate Viktor to sow discord in the Sokolov household, and then return to Russia until her father had finished solidifying his power. The first part in completing her ultimate goal was to nail down Viktor’s schedule and determine when he would be most vulnerable.
The only problem was Alexandra. Elena had anticipated Alexandra would be suffering here, held captive because of the blame placed on her family after Boris Sokolov’s death. When Elena had first heard that Alexandra was happily wed, and even loved Viktor enough to have renewed their vows, she’d been nothing less than skeptical, assuming it was all for appearances. Now, she was becoming less sure, much as she told herself that what she was doing would also, in the end, be good for her friend.
Yet, sitting down to dinner that night, Elena was able to see just how much Alexandra and Viktor appeared to love each other.
Alexandra and Viktor sat side by side in the dining room, joking and laughing, and even, on occasion, finishing each other’s sentences. Elena put on a good show and made herself pleasant company, but dread slowly began building in the bottom of her stomach as dinner wound on. She didn’t want to face it, but this love she was seeing might be real.
Still… loyalty was loyalty, and even if it hurt her friend, Elena resolved to complete her mission because of her father’s wishes.
Falling for the Mob Soldier: Sokolov Brothers Book Two Page 3
