by Bethany-Kris
Like all leaders.
There was a reason they got to the top.
Claire’s reply to Demyan’s text, her confirmation she had arrived home before him, didn’t come until he was minutes away from their gated community. By then, he’d gotten another text.
From security at the main gates.
Demyan paid a lot of money for the association of their community to look the other way and disregard his guests, along with not keeping a proper log to trace. He left nothing to chance.
“Drive faster,” he demanded of Pavel in the front seat when he read the text from the guard.
A Mr.Yazov has been granted access to the community as your guest.
Demyan filled Pavel in on their new situation as he shot his message a message to Claire right after—Get a gun.
He only knew one Mr. Yazov.
What was Maxim doing now?
*
He found them in the kitchen, but Demyan sensed something was different the moment he’d stepped inside his house. The one thing he hadn’t concerned himself with were his men—they’d known what to do the moment Pavel made a single call.
Claire would be safe until he got home.
That was all he cared about.
He stopped in his tracks at the kitchen door when he saw Maxim Yazov sitting at his kitchen table. He had been almost completely certain Maxim was alive, so much so that he’d been willing to send a number of messengers about such a fact, but Demyan was still taken aback to see the man just ... there.
Claire was making coffee with her back turned to him, but she looked over at Demyan with a sweet smile.
Always perfect, she seemed entirely unconcerned by the scene, or the fact there were men posted just beyond her kitchen door. Of course, the bulls came and went often, but they weren’t so formal.
Not like they currently stood, eyes averted when their boss walked in.
Demyan noted the gun his wife had set on the edge of the island, except it wasn’t one he recognized. Maxim seemed to notice his stare.
“I offered her mine at the door,” his old friend filled in quietly.
Demyan nodded, but said nothing else.
The kitchen was mostly dark, other than a dim light at the counter that helped Claire do her work making coffee.
It took him a moment to speak again; to find the words ...
“You look well for a dead man,” Demyan said.
Maxim immediately broke into a smile.
Claire brought two cups of coffee over to the table and placed it there. The second cup wasn’t for herself, but for her husband. She glanced disapprovingly at Demyan, and he could read her mind with nothing more than a look into her eyes.
She was unhappy. Anger and frustration tugged her lips into a frown.
Her son and husband’s lives were in danger tonight—and the man who was at the core of that was now at her kitchen table. She would be hospitable and polite, but she wasn’t going to be friendly or warm.
Demyan didn’t expect more.
She also retrieved the gun from the island, and placed it right in the middle of the table.
“I’ll be in our room if you need me,” she said before taking her leave from the kitchen. Her job was done. Maxim was Demyan’s responsibility now, and he watched her go in silence.
He waited until Claire’s footsteps had faded, and his men slipped out of the room before he turned back to Maxim.
“Where is your son?”
“Likely still on the freeway—we are trying not to draw attention, hmm?”
Maxim’s brow raised high. “My apologies.”
Demyan didn’t really need the remorse—all the cameras were off, his house was swept daily for bugs at this point, and he had noticed the nondescript black car with tinted windows all the way around that Maxim had arrived in. Without a driver. The keys of that car sat on the table, closer to Demyan than the other man.
They had every reason to believe the agents tasked with watching their house couldn’t actually get close enough to see anything worthy.
As long as Maxim left as quietly as he came, Demyan doubted anyone but the people there at that very moment would even know he’d been there to begin with.
“And I wanted to apologize to her for all the trouble I’ve caused,” Maxim said. “If she’d let me, no?”
Well ...
“I don’t think words are going to be enough to cut it,” Demyan replied. “At this point, if you know what I mean.”
Then he pulled up a chair and sat across from the man everyone thought was dead. The two stared at each other, seconds ticking by far too slowly, before Demyan sighed.
“What the fuck were you thinking,” he muttered.
It wasn’t even a question.
Flatly, Maxim replied only, “I wouldn’t go out like that. By Leonid, while they curled like snakes around my legs. I deserved a better death than that.”
Demyan sat a little straighter in the chair. “You realize the position you’ve put me in, and how it—”
“I’m sorry. What can I say, yeah? Who else would have cared, old friend?”
He didn’t glorify that with a response, even if it was true.
Instead, Demyan asked, “How did you do it?”
“Leonid thought he was coming for me that night, but I was really there for him ... It doesn’t matter, I got my answers.”
“Answers?”
Maxim lifted his broad shoulders, and for the first time, Demyan noticed the man wasn’t as well put together as he normally might be. His shirt wasn’t perfectly pressed. His suit jacket had needed a wash a while ago, by the looks of it. And none of it appeared to bother the man at the other end of the table.
“About my daughters, and his son ... I had to know, Demyan,” Maxim explained, glancing down at his clasped hands.
Demyan didn’t ask details, just like he hadn’t with Roman. And he wouldn’t—unless they offered. It didn’t feel like his business.
Why inflict more trauma?
“But in the end, I didn’t really need to ask Leonid anything,” Maxim added after a moment. “It didn’t matter if he knew or not. All that mattered was he knew what his son was capable of, and that he wanted me dead.”
“How long had he worked on this plan?” Demyan asked.
Maxim shrugged, and finally picked up his coffee to take a swig. Smacking his lips, he said, “I suspect it had always been his plan. He played a long game, Demyan. Snakes have the greatest patience.”
Didn’t Demyan know it?
A man was never ready ...
All the talk was nice and everything, but Demyan figured he should move on to what was most important. What he suspected his son was probably racing there to ask himself.
“Where is Karine, Maxim?”
“I heard about the wedding,” the other man said flatly.
Demyan let out a hard breath, eyeing the gun between them, though he had one in a holster at his back. “He does love her.”
“I know. She wasn’t safe there, you see, if I could find her ... Dima would, too, eventually. Better that’s on her terms, I think. If she sees him coming, maybe—.”
“What do you mean?” Demyan interjected fast.
Maxim didn’t answer, asking instead, “Did you tell her what I asked you to say?”
At first Demyan was confused, but then he remembered the end of that fateful conversation before the fire. When Maxim made him promise he would tell Karine that her father loved her.
“I haven’t had the opportunity,” Demyan admitted. “A lot has happened.”
Maxim nodded and looked away.
“But it doesn’t matter now, you can tell her yourself,” he added. “Why didn’t you?”
“Nyet,” came the strong refusal. “I was never worthy of saying it.”
That was a mindset Demyan couldn’t comprehend.
He knew something about unspoken words and lost promises; he’d saw what life looked like when it didn’t turn out exactly how on
e planned. He remembered that clearly—but also what it was like to feel something real for someone again. To love his children unconditionally.
Except, Demyan suspected Maxim didn’t share the same growth. Somewhere along the lines, the man had been stunted in his grief ... did love start to feel a little dangerous?
Not quite worth the risk?
“I want you to do it for me, Demyan. I want you to promise you’ll tell her someday. Soon,” Maxim pressed as he met Demyan’s gaze. “It’s important ... I just can’t do it.”
Demyan had to nod, although he didn’t understand why. Compelled by the man’s insistence, he agreed.
In the shadows of the kitchen, the two were so quiet that he could hear shuffling of feet somewhere outside the space. The sound gained Maxim’s attention, too, drawing his gaze to the entryway.
“I’ll tell her,” Demyan told Maxim, wanting his stare back on him so that maybe he could get those answers for his son, “but I want you to know that you’ll kill my son if something happens to that girl. Where is she?”
“Exactly where she needs to be.”
Maxim delivered that news with a hollow tone that left Demyan cold right down to his bones. Disbelief washed through him just as fast, but didn’t leave him any warmer.
“What have you done?” Demyan asked.
Because nothing else made sense.
Demyan was still missing something.
Maxim dropped his gaze, saying, “You’ve always been too smart for this business.”
Fuck that.
He wasn’t going in that circle again.
Demyan’s fists hit the table hard. “This is starting to feel like a fucking set up to me—like you’re forcing me to walk into another pile of shit I don’t see. Give me some fucking answers.”
Maxim’s attention fixated on the gun between the two sitting in the middle of the table, although closer to Demyan.
“You’ll have to ... get rid of it,” Maxim said. “And the car outside, too.”
Demyan’s brow sipped low. “What?”
“Your bratva will have to claim the killing of Dima.”
The killing—
“You’re not making any sense.”
“I am,” Maxim returned just as fast, “you’re just not getting all the details.”
And when were they ever important?
Demyan heard what the man didn’t say.
“What are you really here for, Maxim?”
“Chicago will be leaderless. It’s already in ruins. They’ll fear you. They already respect you. Dima’s death with just—”
“You’re insane,” Demyan uttered.
Again, his gaze fell to the gun just an arm’s length away. The fog of confusion and frustration was beginning to clear, and Demyan could see where Maxim was going with this. Even if he didn’t seem to want to outright say it.
He wanted to end his story his own way.
“It’s right there, Demyan,” Maxim said, his voice urging Demyan to met the man’s eyes. “Pick it up, finish the job here ... I’ve already put everything else into place. Make sure they find the body. Claim this death, too.”
“I don’t know that you’ve done anything, actually.”
“This way, we both get what we want.”
“This way?”
“Demyan—”
“You can’t ask me to do this,” Demyan barked.
“I haven’t even properly asked yet. Would it make you feel better if it felt like I forced your hand?”
“How can you joke about this?”
Maxim only smiled. “What good is a friend if he won’t kill you when there’s no other choice?”
That joke fell flat, too.
Demyan was cold all over.
“It’ll work,” Maxim assured quietly.
He couldn’t look away from the gun again.
“You said to claim Dima’s death, but he’s not dead, Maxim.”
“But he will be.”
Demyan reached for the gun, then, the butt smooth against his palm as he felt that substantial weight of metal in his hand. “One last time—where is she?”
“She’ll find you.”
He didn’t bother to ask what that meant.
What good would it do?
“I would rather have you do it than someone else,” Maxim said when Demyan flicked off the safety and racked the gun without a word. Maybe his rambling helped soothe whatever nerves were making themselves known in those last seconds. “I can trust you to make it quick, and clean. I won’t do it myself. Not the ... honorable thing.”
A piece of Demyan understood that ...
“Anything else you want?” Demyan asked.
The man only really came here to die, anyway.
“Tell her what I said, look me in the eye when you do it, and don’t waste time,” Maxim replied. “I’ve wasted enough already. I’m sure everybody would just like to get on with it by now.”
So be it.
Demyan stood up from the chair, and aimed his gun. He didn’t take his eyes off Maxim when he pulled the trigger.
NINETEEN
“You’re still sitting in here—shit, have you even turnt a trick?”
Karine’s head snapped up at the sharp, high-pitch voice of a girl that had made more than one comment since she walked through the door three days before.
Neena, with her long, beachy waves and loud personality was just one of a few girls in the Madame’s stable that kept trying to bring Karine out of her shell. You’d think there’d be more cattiness amongst women who specifically gathered for the sole purpose of selling sex, but actually, they all seemed quite friendly. Like a little crew that constantly came and went through the front doors of Madame Cherie’s Chicago townhouse.
She didn’t think the girls meant any harm, but she was well aware of things they would never know ...
Like someday, she wouldn’t be here.
They were only a means to end.
What was the point in making friends?
“You know, I got two nights before I finally got turned out,” Neena told Karine. “You’ve got an extra one on me. You nervous?”
Why was she still trying to make conversation? Hell, Karine had yet to figure out why she agreed to this plan of her father’s ...
Or if she could see it through.
“I—”
She was saved from having to make conversation with the young woman when Cherie made her presence known in the doorway of the bedroom Karine had been allowed to use. The Madame didn’t knock or even ask if she could enter before she did—and that partly answered a question Karine had about this place, and these women.
They weren’t completely free here, either.
Everybody paid a due.
“I found a wig for you,” Cherie said, striding over with a chunky blonde mane of unruly curls in her hand. Even at six feet tall, the woman still wore towering heels. Her height was as impressive as her cold demeanor could be when she dealt with her girls. “Although, it’ll need some work. Neena—did you have something for me?”
Just like that, Neena was reminded of her place, and made her presence scarce without another word. They didn’t want to make their mom mad, as most called Cherie. Or that’s what Karine noticed. Every woman that came in and out of the house with phones constantly beeping or ringing, never left without putting money on the counter. And they were all well cared for while they did it.
As long as Cherie was happy.
Karine smiled, unable to contain her amusement, while Cherie stood behind her to help her put the wig on. First, Karine’s hair had to be tied up and glued down, the woman explained, but even a good tug wouldn’t bring it off by the time she was done.
“I think we should go with something white,” Cherie told her. “It’s exactly the look Dima would appreciate in the girls. He often asks for it, and I’m sure when he gets back tonight and makes a call for a favorite, he’ll be happy to hear there’s someone new to try.”
Kari
ne couldn’t meet the woman’s gaze in the mirror anymore.
She hadn’t known when it would happen—when all of this would suddenly turn real—but now felt as good as ever.
“So, what’s in it for you, April?” she asked.
Karine didn’t allow herself to get pulled into the rushing current that was her thoughts. Her mind was a dangerous place, and more so, one she wasn’t sure she could currently control. As long as she didn’t go there—
“Are you listening to me?”
April.
Right.
Karine blurted that name when she’d arrived on the madame’s doorstep. “What do you mean?”
“Why are you doing this—why are you working with Maxim Yazov?” Cherie asked. “Anyone who knows anything in this city should be all too aware that it could be risky business at the moment. From the rumors ... well, he shouldn’t even be alive.”
Karine couldn’t take her eyes off herself once her gaze landed back on the mirror. She didn’t like the blonde, and didn’t recognize herself with the hair let down so long.
“Why are you?”
Cherie grinned at the sudden question. On the second day of her arrival, the woman had admitted to Karine that she seemed like just the type.
Her words, not Karine’s.
Already broken, easily manipulated, a perfect girl to make money off men who meant nothing. Karine wasn’t entirely sure what that said about her. Or if it said more about Cherie, and what was really going on with her stable of women at her every beck and call.
Maybe that was why Karine wasn’t entirely surprised to hear Cherie’s barked laugh before she told her, “Well, he’s in the way, and then there’s the money—I couldn’t very well say no.”
*
A good madame always knew her Johns. Cherie was no exception, and she’d been right. Dima sent a dark limousine to the townhouse to pick up his new girl before his flight had even landed. In the air, he’d made arrangements.
It screamed control.
Karine wondered what kind of mood the man must be in to immediately want a woman to either break or enjoy—likely both, in a twisted way—in his bed the very second he arrived back in the city after being in New York.
Not a good mood, she suspected.
Karine wasn’t a liar, but it was all she could do to maintain her calm composure. She even dared to listen to the vicious, victorious whispers of Katina who only had one thing to say.
