by Kimber Chin
He should be exhausted due to his early start. Seven in the fuckin' morning, with her asking twenty questions, chipper as anything. He had to get the brat on Vegas time or he'd end up killing her himself.
"Heard from Boris, Boss." Pavel joined him on his aimless walk.
Boris, Tatyana. "They still at the boutique?" He sent her back for casino appropriate clothes.
Something black, sophisticated, expensive, he told her. That should be specific enough.
"They left there." The big man's mouth worked silently as though he didn't know what to say.
"Spit it out." What was the brat up to now?
"They're performing time trials of different routes between here and Sunrise." Sunrise Medical Center was the nearest emergency room.
Time trials in a limo and, by the way Pavel shifted unhappily, that wasn't it. "What else?"
"Before she left this morning, she asked me to demonstrate how to apply the hemostatic agent." He paused. "She asked specifically if it was effective with B negative blood, Boss."
His blood type. "She's serious." About this death curse of hers. Either it was real or she was crazy. Neither option was good.
"It appears so, Boss."
He wouldn't take any chances. "Warn your team the threat may not come from Chan." They were already on high alert. "And tell Boris to bring her home." His head of security turned to carry out his instructions. "When she returns, she's not to leave again, not unless I'm by her side, understand?"
Pavel paused. "She won't like that, Boss."
"Tough." Pavel was right. She wouldn't like that. Not at all. But this was sure to be a clothes shedding confrontation and the activities afterward should tap some of his excess energy.
There were advantages to having a fiancee.
He said to stay in the hotel room until he came up and got her at nine o'clock. The hell with that. Tatyana was ready early. Sitting on the bed as she waited would add wrinkles to her skin-tight black leather skirt. Wrinkles were not sophisticated. Nikky wanted sophisticated, he'd have to deal with the consequences. And that meant she waited for no man.
Heads swung around as she exited the elevator, Boris at her back. She wasn't interested in any of those gawking lechers. She hadn't dressed like this for them. Tatyana scanned the crowd. Where was the arrogant ass? "Boris?" she asked the bodyguard.
"The VIP room, miss." Boris motioned in that direction.
Of course. Nikky wouldn't be amongst mere mortals. She headed there. Her progress was slow, hampered by the long skirt, the six inch heels, and the leering men in her way.
"Cousin Tatyana." A short, thin stick of a man approached her, arms outstretched. A cousin.
She didn't know which one. Tatyana dutifully kissed his cheeks, replying to his insincere comments, before continuing. The man fell in place beside her, yapping incessantly about how honored he was to work with her fiance. No wonder Nikky had a fat head, pandered to as he was.
An average-sized, round man was next to block her path. Another cousin, equally ambitious, equally annoying. By the time she reached the tables, she was surrounded by them, all pleading their cases, yelping at her heels like a pack of dogs.
How Nikky could stand it, she had no idea. She
wanted to scream in frustration, to tell them to grow spines. She didn't. Instead, she treated them politely, firmly, with the coolness she spent all afternoon perfecting.
For him. The ass. Wherever he was.
"Dear cousin." Stepan, king of the slimeballs, kissed her cheeks. "You are stunning." His hand rested on her waist with a familiarity she didn't like. "Nikolay is a fool to let you out of his sights."
"Nikky is no fool." She pressed her bright red lips together to keep from adding 'you two-faced bastard'. "He knows I," she placed extra emphasis on I, "can be trusted."
"A woman a man can trust." A smarmy smile. "You are a rarity." Laughter rippled through the cousins.
She didn't answer. Instead, she gave him her best 'who the hell are you' look and turned to Boris. "Have him meet us." The crowd around her was unmanageable. She wouldn't make the room before losing her temper. "We'll be at the penny slots."
"We'll be at the craps table, cousin," Stepan overruled her, putting a clammy hand on her bare back. She moved forward instinctively to avoid him.
"I never play without Nikky." She rarely played, period, as she always lost. Tatyana kept that to herself. Gambling was their business.
"Then you won't play, little Tatyana." Stepan was so patronizing. "You'll be my good luck charm."
That's what he thought. This would be a costly lesson for her new cousin. She stifled a smile. "Only if I can roll for you."
A half hour later, even the joy of pushing Stepan into the poorhouse taxed Tatyana's patience. She was about to call it a night and head back to the room when the crowd parted and Nikky stepped forward. Her breath caught. He wasn't the tallest man at the table, there were men taller. He wasn't the broadest, his man Pavel having that honor. But he had a presence that demanded attention.
And he had hers. Completely. She swept a possessive eye over his black suit, his white shirt, the hint of shadow on that chiseled chin, until she reached his eyes. He stared at her, eyes hooded, intent, his reaction was all that she had hoped for. A little bit of anger, a little bit of amusement, a whole lot of arousal. Her nipples hardened. By the way his gaze dropped and his face darkened, she suspected they were clearly visible in the leather halter top.
Breathe. She had to breathe. Tatyana rolled the dice, achingly aware of him as he rounded the table toward her. The crowd groaned, background noise. Ace deuce was called. Craps.
Nikky sliced into the space between her and the cousin, sliding a warm hand down her back. She shivered, turned, her chin raised.
"Tatyana." He kissed her, smelling of citrus, lavender, wood, man. "Or should I say SuperBrat?" he whispered into her ear.
He was a clever man, villainess was exactly the look she was trying for. "It took you long enough to find me, AssMan," she murmured against his neck.
His chest shook as though he was holding back a laugh. "I thought I taught you respect."
Last night. Her toes curled. "I seem to have forgotten that lesson."
"Can't have that." Nikky kissed her again. She closed her eyes, savoring the thrust of his tongue into her mouth, the taste of vodka and man, his fingertips on her backbone. The man had skills.
A clearing of a throat scattered the moment. "Miss." The grinning stickman offered her the dice.
"No, thank you." She gave the casino employee a sheepish smile. "We're done here." They needed some privacy so they could kiss undisturbed.
"You can't stop now," Stepan insisted a little too desperately, annoying Tatyana. Though, she should be more sympathetic. Thanks to her, he was down high four figures.
"Can't she?" A hint of steel backed Nikky's velvet voice.
The cousin swallowed. Hard. Tatyana played with her engagement ring to cover her amusement. Her bossy fiance. "She's crapped out every single round, every single round, Nikolay," Stepan said like that was unusual. It wasn't, not for her. "Her luck has to turn."
No, it didn't. "I told you." Not that it mattered. None of them paid her warnings any attention. She looked up at Nikky, not even her handsome fiance. "That Nikky has all of my luck." An admonition when the cousin's hands crept a little too close to her breasts. She would not be pawed by anyone other than Nikky.
Her comment drew a shaky laugh from Stepan. "That's not how luck works, dear cousin."
"Isn't it?" How the hell would he know? She squeezed her bright red lips into a thin line.
"Cousins," she addressed the crowd, "You don't mind if we have a new shooter, do you?"
Not standard play in craps but what was the point of owning a casino if you couldn't make your own rules?
Dark heads bobbed around the table. Annoying little yes men. She took two dice from the stickman. "I didn't think so."
Held them out. "Care to do the
honors, Nikky?" To prove her point.
Nikky's lips twitched. "One roll." Bets were placed. He shook the die in his closed hand.
She leaned over, brushing her breasts against him and blew on his hand. "For luck." He rolled. Seven. A natural.
She pressed her face into Nikky's chest to cover her gloating smile. "Now, can we go?"
No one would mistake his fiancee for a child tonight. Nikky's skin twitched with every ripple of that form fitting leather. Something black, something sophisticated, something expensive. The combination was lethal to his composure.
Tatyana glanced up from where she huddled with the wives, talking rings and weddings and babies. He wished he could watch her all night. He couldn't. "I'll be back," he mouthed to her. She nodded, a small smile curling her bright red lips.
"Don't leave her side," he instructed her bodyguard, reluctantly moving away. "Oh, and Boris?"
"Yes, Boss."
"Thank you for contacting me earlier." When the wolves circled the brat, looking for weaknesses. Not that she had any. She twisted even her bad luck to her advantage.
To their advantage. She may give him hell in private, but in public, she was firmly on his team. Someone at his back.
"She asked me to contact you, Boss."
She asked for him. That pleased him. Nik moved through the casino, determined. He had business to attend to, the business of protecting a fiancee.
He sat down beside Joey Chan's man at the blackjack table and motioned to be dealt in.
Pavel placed his chips on the table, a deliberate show of strength. A couple of regulars stepped away.
A four showing for the dealer. Under seventeen. She would hit. Nik would also, having a Queen, the Queen of Hearts, and a five. Chan's man sat pretty at a pair of tens.
"I hear you're searching for a woman." Nik kept his voice low. "A woman looking remarkably like my fiancee." There'd been recognition in the man's eyes when he spotted the brat. The discovery would be relayed and Joey Chan would know where she was by the end of the night. "Not my fiancee, you understand, but as they look alike." He shrugged his shoulders as though unconcerned. "I don't appreciate the photo being flashed around." He touched his finger to the table and was dealt a card. A six. "It makes me uncomfortable. You wouldn't want me to be uncomfortable, would you?"
Lips pressed together was the man's answer. The only answer he could give, the man Chan's eyes, not his mouth.
"I didn't think so."
The dealer flipped over the hole card. A King of Spades. She dealt herself another card. An eight. Bust. He couldn't ask for a better end to the game.
"Ahhh...see that." Nik slapped the man's back hard. "We both win." He stood, his message delivered, nodded to the dealer and walked away, Pavel handling the chips and dealer tip.
The next move would be Chan's. If he continued to ask questions, he would be dealt with directly. No one messed with Nik's fiancee.
Five
"There are no winners in a war."ȄSergei Kaerta Another early damn morning. Nik stalked through the casino, tired and annoyed. If this was one of Grandfather's chain-jerking power trips and not a legitimate emergency, he'd bust his elderly skull.
"What is it?" he asked as Pavel joined him.
"Chan lost three men last night, Boss."
Shit. That was bad. "Whose orders?" It sure the hell wasn't his.
"We don't know." Not a Kaerta hit. Nik expelled a relieved breath at that news. "All three had been asking about your fiancee."
Set up so Chan would think them responsible. "Gather as much information as possible."
That instruction was unnecessary. Pavel would already be on it. "Openly." He wanted Chan to know they were also investigating.
His head of security smiled, Pavel had as much brains as he did brawn. "Yes, Boss."
Yuri opened the door. Pavel stopped at the threshold. Nik entered. The smoke was thick, a sign of Grandfather's agitation.
"Grandfather."
"Three men." Photos were thrown down, black and white's of dead men. "That is a declaration of war. You do not declare war!"
Although Nik knew that, the restriction irritated him. A damn obedient dog. "It was not my call."
Grandfather narrowed his eyes. "Don't bullshit me,
Nikolay. They were asking about your Tatyana."
Nik sat down one seat away. "I'm not displeased they're dead." Joey Chan had been a pain in his ass for half a decade. "But I can't take the credit." He picked up the photos.
"You're being given the credit." Two rapid puffs on the cigar. "The other families deny involvement."
An unknown entity. Tatyana. A death curse. "And we will do the same." Three clean executions.
"He won't believe us."
He wouldn't. "I'll convince him." Nik would wait until Pavel gathered all the information he could, planting a seed of doubt in Chan's paranoid brain, then he'd pay a visit to ask his own questions. If this was a possible threat to the brat, he wanted to be prepared.
"Carefully," Grandfather warned him. "Chan has always been a hothead and since the incident with his wife..." A shrug. The man was unstable. "We don't want a war, Nikolay.
There are no winners in a war."
A big man slid into the booth next to hers. That was the third person to not-so-casually drop by to talk to her bodyguard.
Something was going on.
She came to that realization with this morning's phone call, with the way an exhausted Nikky threw on yesterday's clothes without showering, the way he stormed out the door.
He knew. Boris knew. No one would tell her. Arrogant asses.
That was why she chose to eat breakfast here, in the coffee shop, instead of in her room.
She wanted to be as prepared as they were.
"Your paper, miss." The waitress set it on her table.
"Thank you, Lucy."
Tatyana dabbed sour cream on her blini, a breakfast she hadn't had since her mother died, and unfolded the newspaper. Out of habit, she turned to the obituaries. She munched on the mini pancakes, reading. No familiar names. That, at least, was reassuring.
She flipped through, noticing that yet another huge man joined Boris in his booth. If only she could hear what they were saying. But, the coffee shop was noisy and they were talking so quietly, she couldn't.
Tatyana focused on the news. The President was in hot water again, the media gunning for him, a train derailed in Oregon, nowhere she'd been recently, protesters at the Global Summit causing a ruckus. Oh, damn. The paper trembled in her hands. There on page three, under the headline 'Nurse Brutally Murdered' was a picture of the admittance nurse, the one who did the paperwork for the pregnant woman.
Tatyana dropped her fork, her appetite gone. She knew what she had to do, her father having drilled the routine into her. She had to leave. To stay here would mean more death, would mean...Nikky's handsome face filled her mind. No, she had to go.
Now. Two dark suited men stood at Boris' booth, blocking his view. She got to her feet and walked slowly and steadily, with no eye-catching rapid movements, out the coffee shop door. She joined a group of noisy tourists as they moved to the bus entrance, her lack of height camouflaging her. The security guard at the door didn't give them a second glance.
A yellow taxi rolled past. She flagged it down, ran to catch up to it, and...
Her mouth was covered, her waist grabbed. As she struggled, she was tossed into a vehicle, face down onto a leather seat. She straightened. An Asian man around Nikky's age, dressed in a dark suit, wearing sunglasses in the darkened limo, his face severely pockmarked, sat across from her.
"You must be Kaerta's Tatyana." Boredom flattened his voice.
She didn't know him. How did he know her? Unless... "You must be Joey Chan," she guessed.
He nodded. Joey Chan, the man Maggy feared would kill her. Had death chosen her at last?
They stared at each other in awkward silence until finally he spoke. "No begging for mercy?"
From
a man who killed his own wife? "Would that help?"
He laughed. "No." She didn't think so. Chan stared at her, tapping his fingers on the side of the car door, intrigue sharpening his face. "You're not as beautiful as I thought you'd be."
What the hell? "Sorry to disappoint you." Ass. Tatyana dismissed him and his insults, turning to look out the window. The doors were locked, quenching her temptation to do a secret agent roll right onto the pavement.
"I didn't say I was disappointed. More like...surprised. I thought..." He must have decided against sharing whatever it was he was going to say, as he stopped talking. The irritating tapping continued. "The baby?"
She swung her head back, meeting his gaze. "Dead." It was likely, by now. Weariness spread over her. Death had found the nurse; the baby would have been next, a life so short, she wouldn't make the news. "Didn't stand a chance."
A flicker of something in his cold eyes. "Boy or girl?"
"A sweet little baby girl."
His shoulders eased down. "That's something, at least." He was relieved, relieved because a precious boy hadn't died. Male chauvinistic ass. "How did you know her?"
"I didn't, or I wouldn't have admitted her under my name." Was that true? She didn't know.
It didn't matter, that decision in the past. "Nikky knew who she was, though." Nikky would also know who took her, as there were cameras positioned around the exterior of the casino. He'd be pissed and take action, putting himself at risk, getting his damn self killed.
It would be all her fault.
The man shifted, tugging down on his pant legs. "Is that why he stepped up security?"
"No. That was something else." Because she told him death was coming and even though he clearly didn't believe her, he didn't take chances.
Chan's chin rose. "Another threat?"
"Yes." Should she be sharing this? Joey Chan was the enemy, wasn't he?
"Another threat," the man mumbled to himself, his short blunt fingers tapping nervously.
He was nervous because he was going to kill her. Or have her killed. Would he do it himself?
Did Nikky do his own killing?
