Crash into Me: A BWWM Russian Billionaire Romance

by Cristina Grenier

  Marlowe looked up, eyebrows raised. "No names?" he asked, looking disappointed.

  "I don't need names," Alexei replied. "Everything that man said was true. If you want to catch the people responsible then follow me around for a bit. I'm sure they're just lying in wait."

  “What happens now?” Vera asked as they made their way from the police station.

  Alexei shrugged and sighed, slumping his shoulders and raking a hand down his face. “I have no idea, honestly,” he said. “As much as I hate to say it, I think we’re stuck waiting for them to make another move.”

  Vera wrinkled her nose. “I do not like that idea at all.”

  “I know. It’s not my favorite thing either, but we don’t know where they are or who’s involved, and sitting there trying to pump information out of that guy in there wasn’t going to get us anywhere,” he said, jerking his thumb back in the direction of the building they had just exited. “I’m going to call Emma and tell her to be on her guard, and then I think we should get some lunch.”

  “Eat food. That’s your brilliant solution?”

  Alexei laughed and slung an arm over his sister’s shoulders. “Not a solution, just a necessary pit stop. We’ll figure something out.”

  Instead of driving back to his place, which Alexei honestly didn’t want to deal with, or going to some fancy restaurant, they went to the closest fast food establishment with a drive thru. Vera arched an eyebrow at him like he was crazy, but Alexei ordered her a double cheeseburger anyway.

  He paid and accepted the food and pulled out of the drive thru to head back into traffic when suddenly the car jolted and the sound of metal on metal ripped through the air as another car smashed right into the back of his.

  He had enough time to appreciate the irony of how many car accidents were coloring his life lately before he realized that this was probably no accident.

  His eyes widened, and he pulled into traffic, swearing under his breath.

  “What just happened?” Vera demanded.

  “One guess.”

  Chapter 11: Crashing and Falling

  Vera swore explosively, and Alexei almost slammed on his brakes in surprise. He’d never heard his sister curse like that before, in English or Russian, but there wasn’t time for gawking and being impressed. A quick glance in the rearview mirror proved that they were still being pursued by the vehicle that had crashed into them, and unless something was seriously wrong, the car wasn’t the only one in pursuit. Two SUVs had melted out of the traffic and were flanking them on either side, one in each lane.

  “Well, this is just dandy,” Alexei muttered. The last thing he wanted to do was get into some fight in cars in the middle of a busy highway, but he definitely wasn’t going to lead them back to his place or to Emma’s.

  Thinking about Emma made him remember, and he swore again, using the voice command to have the car phone call her number. As he’d expected, it went to her voicemail since she was working, and he decided that leaving a quick message was just going to have to do.

  “Hey, Emma, it’s Alexei,” he said. “Vera and I went to the police station today and we found out some things that I’ll fill you in on later. I’m mostly calling to let you know that you need to be careful. I don’t think anything’s going to happen, but they know that you’re with me, and if anything happens to you, I’m going to be very upset. Keep your eyes open and call me if you think anything suspicious is going on, alright? I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.”

  When the call disconnected, Vera looked at him. “Not going to mention what just happened?”

  Alexei swerved, taking the exit for what he hoped would be a less densely populated part of the city. “That we’re being chased by some weirdos who probably want to kill us?” he asked, glancing in his mirror again and putting on speed. “No need to worry her, right?”

  “Oh, I’m sure she’ll thank you for sparing her the worry when they dig our remains out of the wreckage,” Vera muttered.

  “Hey. We’re going to be fine,” Alexei insisted. “We will. We just need to get away from areas where other people could get hurt.”

  “So noble.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  Vera visibly sulked. “No, but I’d like not to-” Whatever she was about to say was cut off by one of the SUVs ramming into her side of the car with a horrible scraping sound and the whole thing shuddering.

  “Are you okay?” Alexei asked, and his fingers were white knuckled on the steering wheel. As much as he wanted to reassure his sister that they were going to get out of this, they were running out of options. There were three vehicles at least on them, and if they decided they wanted to run them off the road or smash the car to bits, they probably could.

  Vera looked shaken up but alright, and she nodded, eyes wide. “Alexei-” she started, but he cut her off with a curt nod.

  “I know. Vera, in the glove compartment is a gun. I want you to get it.”

  “What?” She asked, eyes even wider if that was possible. “I can’t-”

  “You have to. I’m not going to let them kill us today. Take the gun and call the police.”

  “Wh-what are you going to do? What’s happening?”

  They were far away enough from the main part of the city that the medians were grass instead of concrete and along the side of the road were stretches of wildflowers and gentle hills. He was willing to bet that if he let Vera out there, none of the people following them would chase her, but if they did, she’d have the gun and an advantage.

  He’d have to slow down enough for her not to hurt herself, but when he relayed the plan to her, determination filled her eyes, and she nodded. “Be careful,” she said, and when the car slowed enough that she wasn’t going to break her neck, she opened the door and leapt out onto the grass and clover, rolling for a bit before she got to her feet and took off running.

  As soon as he saw that she was alright, Alexei gunned the engine and put his foot on the gas, speeding up and letting the momentum slam Vera’s door closed.

  “Okay,” he said. “Now what do I do?”

  Getting his sister out of the car had been his first priority and now that he knew she was more or less alright, he needed to figure out how to either outrun these people or get them to stop chasing him.

  Well. One way to get them to stop chasing was to stop running, and though the idea was absolutely insane, he didn’t really have any other plans. “I hope I live long enough to regret this,” he muttered and brought his car to a screeching halt on a dead end road.

  There were no other cars around, and nothing to see but hills and grass and the highway up above. Alexei hoped that Vera had called the cops because otherwise he was screwed. He got out of the car and went to stand in the grass, getting his bearings for a second.

  It didn’t take long for his assailants to catch up, one right after the other. Luckily, from what he could tell there, were only two people in the SUVs and one person in the car, though that still had him outnumbered five to one.

  The car that had hit his came to a stop in front of his car, and then, in what was clearly a move powered by pure vindictiveness, it rolled forward just enough to hit his car again.

  Alexei glared.

  As it turned out, the car was being driven by a woman, and she got out after a moment, dressed in all black with blonde hair pulled over one shoulder. She didn’t seem any worse for the wear from the collision, and Alexei could feel his neck twinging with pain from where it had snapped forward when she’d rammed her car into his.

  She was tall and pale, and definitely Russian, and Alexei had no doubt that whatever this was, it was something personal between her and his father. She looked like she was around his mother’s age, definitely old enough to have been hurt by his father before Alexei was born or when he was a child and still ignorant to all of this.

  “Ah, Mr. Alexandrov,” she said, voice heavily accented. “So we finally meet.”

  “Mr. Alexandrov was my father,” Alex
ei couldn’t help pointing out. “But, then I’m sure you already knew that judging from all this.”

  Her lovely face twisted into a mask of anger, and Alexei made a mental note to find out what exactly it was his father had done to her.

  “Oskar Alexandrov deserves to burn in hell,” she spat, accent so thick with her anger that Alexei almost couldn’t understand her. “He was a liar and a murderer, and nothing he did deserved to be celebrated. You think you knew your father, boy? You know nothing of your father.”

  “I’m beginning to see that,” Alexei said softly. “Look, whatever your issue was with him, you got your revenge, or someone did. He’s dead now. Don’t you think you could let all of this go?” He wasn’t counting on a positive response to that, but it was worth a shot, right? If nothing else, keeping her ranting and spewing venom at him would hopefully kill time until the police got there. “What did he do to you?”

  “My father was a scientist,” she answered, surprising Alexei immensely. He hadn’t expected her to respond. “He worked hard for everything he had, and your father was young and reckless when he took over the part of your family’s business that dealt with technology and science. The part that has always been responsible for making things to go into space or to be used in crafts. Your father found out that my father knew too much about how business was run. About the bribes and dirty money. And he had him killed.”

  Alexei winced. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? You are sorry?” she asked, sounding incredulous. “Sorry will not bring my father back. Sorry will not make it so my mother didn’t have to cry all night and then sell every nice thing we owned to keep us with food. Your sorry means nothing to me.” She spat on the ground and took a step closer to him, anger simmering in her eyes. “Your father deserved to die, and you deserve to die right alongside him.”

  Suddenly, she was reaching into her pocket and there was a very real gun pointed at his head.

  For the first time since all of this had started, real fear curled in his belly. Alexei had always been aware of how dangerous this all was, especially when they’d started shooting at his apartment, but he hadn’t really realized that he was in a lot of danger. Somehow the thought that they might actually want to kill him had seemed farfetched, but staring down the barrel of a gun definitely put things in perspective.

  She could kill him in less than a second if she wanted to. She could pull that trigger and splatter his brains across the pavement and have the revenge she wanted. And then maybe she’d go after Vera and his mother, as well.

  All Alexei knew was that he didn’t want to die there. He didn’t want to die in the middle of a dead end road before he’d even had a chance to do anything with himself, to make anything of himself.

  And that, much more than any of his mother’s nagging, showed him how serious things were.

  Cautiously, he lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender and peace. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” he said. “You don’t have to do this.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the others getting out of their vehicles, clearly wanting to witness this for themselves, or provide their boss with backup.

  “I do,” she said. “Because as long as there are people like you, people like your father, there will always be suffering. There will always be people who think they’re better than everyone else and who will cause pain to others. You deserve to die.”

  “You don’t even know me,” Alexei said, holding her gaze. “I’m not like my father. I don’t want to do things the same way he did them. I want to make things better.”

  “Better for you! Never for anyone else!” She said, brandishing the gun wildly. “I can end it.”

  His heart slammed in his chest, fear making his blood go cold and his breath stutter. He wasn’t going to beg for his life, but god. His fingers curled into loose fists at his side, and he glanced out of the corner of his eye, looking for somewhere to take shelter.

  Before he found anything other than the hilly drop behind him, two things happened in rapid succession. The first was the sudden wail of sirens splitting the air and getting closer as they approached. The second was the woman firing her gun.

  Alexei had a split second to make his decision, and he ducked, wanting to throw up a bit when the bullet whizzed over his head. The rest of the goons were drawing their guns as well and opening fire, and he knew he was out of options.

  The hill didn’t seem so steep, and even if it was, it was better than taking his chances and getting riddled with bullets, so he threw himself to the side and rolled down the hill fast and hard, rocks cutting into his skin where it was unprotected by his clothes, going faster and picking up speed until he slammed to a halt at the very bottom.

  He was aware of his breath, ragged in his chest, and the fact that he ached all over, and then nothing more.

  The first thing Alexei was aware of when he woke up was the blinding florescent lighting and the way the ceiling he was looking at was perfectly smooth. It took a few minutes for his hazy brain to work out why he was looking at a ceiling in the first place, but once his memories all slotted together, it made sense.

  This place had that antiseptic and forced clean smell of a hospital, and the pain that was registering in his body explained a lot about what had happened.

  The hill he’d taken a fall down had seemed smaller from his car, but the ache in his ankle and leg and side and head proved that maybe it had been bigger than he’d expected.

  He groaned, wondering who had brought him in and what had happened to the people he’d been about to get into a fight with.

  Alexei turned his head, taking in the fact that someone had changed him into a hospital gown and that there was an IV in his arm. When he looked the other way, he saw Vera and relief hit him powerfully. She was sitting in the chair off to the side looking miserable but otherwise alright, a few cuts and scrapes on her arms and face, but no other injuries that Alexei could see.

  “Hey,” he said, clearing his throat when his voice was little more than a croak.

  Vera’s head snapped up and she stared at him for a moment before bursting into a stream of rapid fire Russian, calling him an idiot and thanking god that he was alright. It almost looked like she was crying, but Alexei wasn’t going to say anything either way.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “You were an idiot,” she said, continuing in Russian. “No one followed me because they were all after you. I saw you get out of the car and start running, and you should have had the gun, you absolute-” Vera broke off and took a deep breath. “The police came faster than I thought, and they caught some of them, but some got away. When they didn’t have you, I made them go back and look and you were unconscious at the bottom of the hill.”

  That sounded right. He remembered them threatening him and then gunfire and sirens in the distance. He hadn’t wanted to take his chances with the guns, so he’d jumped down the hill.

  “Well, at least they got some of them,” he said. “Hopefully they’ll get the rest soon.”

  “The police have names and license plate numbers,” Vera pointed out. “They’ll find them. Or I’ll know the reason why.”

  Alexei laughed. “I’m sure they don’t want to mess with you.”

  Vera smiled and then made a face. “Also, I...called Mother.”

  He didn’t know how to feel about that. “And?”

  “And she’s terribly disappointed in us for meddling in things we have no business meddling in,” Vera replied with a sigh. “She’s…”

  “Not coming to wish me well?” Alexei suggested before she could finish. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. She was never going to be on our side, and I knew that from the beginning of this. She doesn’t want to change, and we’re changing too much.”

  It hurt a bit that he was in the hospital and his mother wasn’t coming to see him, but he wasn’t going to let that bring him down. Moping about the way he was treated by his parents was something he’d gotten over years
ago. Or at the very least, something he was always trying to get over more.

  “Actually…” Vera said, making a sheepish face. “She’s on her way down here.”

  Alexei looked shocked. “She is?”

  Vera nodded and sighed. “I wouldn’t expect her to be comforting or anything, though. She’s still Mother.”

  “I never expect that from her,” he said.

  It only took another five minutes for Veronika to show up, and they could tell because they could hear her barking orders to nurses all the way down the hall. Alexei drew in a deep breath, trying to prepare himself for dealing with his mother, but he didn’t think any amount of breathing was going to make this easy.

  The door opened and Veronika came in, an anxious looking nurse behind her. “Ma’am, I’m afraid I-” she said, cringing.

  “It’s okay,” Alexei said, cutting her off. “She’s my mother.”

  The nurse looked relieved and full of sympathy for him at the same time, and she withdrew, closing the door as she left.

  Veronika didn’t say anything for long moments, just taking in the sight of Alexei in the bed and Vera in the chair. “Well,” she said sharply. “I hope you’re pleased with yourselves. I don’t know what possessed you to get involved in this. Your father certainly never went looking for trouble, and he certainly never got involved in some brawl in the street.”

  “It was hardly a brawl, Mother,” Alexei said, rolling his eyes at his mother’s choice of words. “And we didn’t go looking for it. It kept finding us. Well. It kept finding me, at least. What would you have had me do?”

  “Keep yourself safe! Keep your sister safe. Not...not this.” She swept a hand around the hospital room. “Your father-”

  “Mother!” Alexei said loudly, cutting her off. “You do realize I’m not Father, yes? And that no matter what happens I’m never going to be him?” After everything he’d learned about his father over the last few days, the last thing he wanted was to grow up to be like him. He’d never wanted that, even when he was a child, but now he was actively determined to never become Oskar Alexandrov.