“It’s all there. Just like you asked.” She soothed him with the words she thought he wanted to hear. “I just want you to leave us alone. I want this whole thing to be over.”
Suddenly, two men burst into the kitchen from the back door. Before Stan could react, one of the intruders threw a knife. The long blade arced through the air. It sliced through the back of Stan’s fleshy hand, wedged into the wooden tabletop, and pinned his hand to the table next to his handgun.
Stan howled wildly with pain. Maya sprinted for the hallway and escape.
She flew to the front door and threw the deadbolt. Before she could work the chain, one of the men grabbed her by the arm. He twisted it behind her back. He jabbed her in the back with a blunt, heavy object. A gun, no doubt.
She glanced back at him. He had an eyepatch and a long nasty scar on his cheek. He didn’t speak or threaten. The gun at her back did that well enough. He hustled her back into the kitchen.
“Got her,” he told his associate, and she had her first good look at the man with the knives.
Dressed in a leather overcoat and tall boots, he looked rough and wild. His curly hair hung to his shoulders. He sneered at her, revealing a mouth full of even, gold teeth. He pointed his second long blade at her. “What have we got here?”
She knew who he was by reputation. Dato Dzugashvili, the head of the Georgian mafia in Brighton Beach, a boogeyman whose name her son would only whisper, a man famous for carving his victims to pieces.
His knife glinted in the kitchen’s yellow light as he limped toward her. She could scarcely breathe. He was so much more terrifying than she had credited.
The gunman’s grip on her arm tightened as if he imagined she might bolt, but she couldn’t run, couldn’t move. His hold on her arm was the only thing keeping her upright.
Dato grabbed her chin in his hand. He pressed the cold metal of the knife against her skin and caressed her neck with the flat side. She whimpered—or maybe that was Stan.
She shut her eyes and braced herself for a slash of pain. There was a pause, but the cut didn’t come.
She opened her eyes again to find Dato appraising her. He flicked the knife and cut the strap of her helmet. He pulled it roughly from her head and dropped it to the floor.
“Ah,” he said as her hair tumbled out and fell around her shoulders. “Mrs. Koslovsky. I did not expect to make your acquaintance…here.”
He smiled with malice, and a cold, slithering fear coiled around her. “It’s going to be a good night for vengeance.”
He turned toward Stan and slashed the air with his knife. Stan moaned. A dark, wet splotch spread out across the front of his slacks. The sickly scent of urine wafted from him.
“A very good night,” Dato laughed.
INNA
DEPRESSION SETTLED OVER Inna as she said good-bye to Nick. He pressed his lips together, saying nothing but speaking plenty with his large, soulful eyes. Don’t do this. Give me a chance. He had the restraint, or perhaps the self-respect, not to ask her again. With deliberate care, he negotiated a path past the ornate displays of antique tables with delicate tea sets and figurines. He kept glancing at her over his shoulder, as if he couldn’t get enough of seeing her, as if he were truly interested despite the events of the past few days, as if she might call him back and change her mind.
She was sorely tempted. He seemed genuinely kind and caring, with his gentle manner and his low voice, a “good one”, like Katya had promised. She liked the look of him too, the dark wavy hair and boldly ethnic features, the rangy athlete’s body.
She dared wonder how things might be different if he had been on time for their date, if they had managed to meet and talk, if Vlad weren’t now standing in the front of the store with his hand on his gun.
Vlad locked the door as soon as Nick was through—locking Nick out or locking her in?
Through the shop’s glass door, her gaze lingered on him, on the possibilities she had rejected. Nick’s cashmere coat flapped in the growing wind as he crossed the street, putting distance between himself and her. Run! She wanted to warn him to get as far away from her as fast as possible, to go and not look back.
She wanted to get away herself.
Her father just happened to have an employee—two, if she counted Mikhail—who could be called upon to play bodyguard for her at a moment’s notice. Vlad just happened to be armed and ready with a gun and willing to use it on anyone without hesitation. What kind of business was her father involved in? Was that the reason someone was out to get her?
No. Don’t go there. Don’t even think it.
Paranoid thoughts buzzed through her brain, and she tried to swat them away. She’d listened to those thoughts and been stung on more than one occasion.
The anxiety would subside. She wouldn’t slide into that awful, dark place. She could let the frightened feelings pass, observe the nervous thoughts, and let them go. She shouldn’t credit them, shouldn’t give them any power. Not like she had before.
She leaned heavily on the wooden counter behind the cash register. She pressed herself against the solid surface and hoped it would absorb the nervous tremors that hadn’t stopped surging through her body since she’d awakened this morning.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.
She’d been through an ordeal the last few days. This shaking was perfectly normal for someone in her situation. Right?
Vlad spun around. His face was impassive, but she imagined she could feel the heat in his gaze.
Her heart beat even faster as she observed him. Big and imposing, he bore hardly any resemblance to the sensitive and scrawny man-boy she’d worshipped as a child. He was all man now.
She had definitely noticed. She couldn’t help but notice, much as she tried not to. She’d had such a crush on him when she was a little girl. When he’d suddenly reappeared in Brighton Beach, the small tug on her heart was still there. The feeling had surprised her. She never thought about romance. She had no desire to date or have a boyfriend—not after what had happened to her in college.
But Vlad’s return had awakened a spark she hadn’t known was there. Sometimes she thought she saw the same spark—maybe even more than a spark—of interest in his eyes. But that wasn’t possible.
He had rejected her soundly. He had greeted her invitation to dinner with three little words enunciated in a way that still cut to the core. “Sorry. Not interested.”
Still, the magic had happened. She had feelings she hadn’t expected. Maybe, just maybe, after a long dormancy, she was finally ready to move forward with the next phase of her life. Finding a man. Starting a family.
Nick was supposed to be the answer to that prayer.
“Are you going to see him again?” Vlad asked.
To her ears, he sounded jealous. She doubted her senses. She imagined she felt the flame of his attraction for her. Even now, when she knew it was impossible. Even now, when the tightness of her nerves should have shut off any fantasies of them together.
“Who knows?” Her voice didn’t crack. It sounded strong, not reedy. Emboldened by her acting achievement, she added, “Kind of hard to date when a girl has a bodyguard.”
“I’m not trying to make your life difficult.”
“Didn’t say you were,” she said with pitch-perfect nonchalance.
A tap on the glass startled her. A sense of impending disaster grabbed her by the throat. Something terrible was about to happen. They were about to be attacked.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
The worries weren’t real. None of it was real.
It was a normal, blustery evening in Brighton Beach, nearly dark now. The streetlights fought the glowing gloom. The deliveryman stood under the awning to the shop with a large cardboard box in his hand.
She shouldn’t be so fearful, but her heart pounded now as if she were being pursued.
“You recognize him?” Vlad asked.
For a moment, she considered voicing her fear. But it
made no sense. She couldn’t see Igor’s face under his baseball cap, but she recognized his solid build, his uniform with the black collared shirt, the white truck parked out front behind him. It was the right time. The right day.
She had to let go of her fear. She couldn’t let Vlad see what a wreck she was. Not when Dr. Shiffman was dead and her parents were colluding to send her back to Dr. Kasparov, whose answer to everything was pills that dulled her senses and stole her sense of self.
“You can let him in. That’s Igor. He usually makes deliveries on Sundays.”
Vlad hesitated. Igor shifted from foot to foot as if the box he held were heavy in his arms, but she imagined something was off. Where was the puff of his breath in the cold air? The stooped strain in his shoulders? Why was he standing in the middle of the doorway and not balancing the box against the wall while he waited? Her instinct, which she’d learned not to trust at all, told her the box couldn’t possibly be that heavy.
She’d been so wrong about so many things before. Papa wasn’t a spy.
“Not everyone’s a threat,” she said, scolding herself, even as her anxiety ratcheted up another notch.
Vlad moved with deliberate caution, one hand hovering over his gun, as he opened the door. She waited for Igor’s hearty salute, but it didn’t come.
Why didn’t Igor say anything? Was the package really so heavy this time? He was usually chatty, greeting her warmly and sharing a joke or silly story about one of his kids. She had put aside a bottle of Georgian wine, after learning last time that it was his favorite. She should go and get it for him now.
She clutched the counter, immobilized by her irrational fear. She pressed her eyes closed against the icy wave of doom crashing over her. Breathe in. Breathe out.
There was an unexpected buzzing sound. Her eyes flew open in time to see Igor drop the box and prod Vlad with a small black device.
Vlad’s body jolted.
“Vlad!” she shouted. His body jerked and spasmed. He fell face down on the box, which collapsed beneath his weight.
Empty. The box was empty!
The deliveryman’s hat had been pulled low over his face, but when he looked in her direction, she could see he wasn’t Igor.
She wasn’t paranoid or hallucinating. Not now anyway.
The deliveryman stepped over Vlad’s twitching body and advanced toward her. The tables and displays in the small shop blocked his path and created an obstacle course that bought her a few extra seconds at most.
He held what looked like a cell phone, but Inna had just witnessed the way the small device had dropped a big man like Vlad to the floor.
Trembling, she kicked the panic button under the counter with her foot. How long would it take the police to arrive? Five minutes? Ten?
They’d never had a problem in the store before, but Olga, who worked the floor during the week, believed in caution. She claimed she kept a gun hidden underneath the register. Inna blindly felt her hand along the shelf.
Sweat beaded on her forehead. No amount of anti-anxiety medication would make this latest problem disappear.
Maybe she had never really been paranoid.
Her intruder closed in quickly. She couldn’t let him get close enough to zap her. Where was the damn gun? Olga would have put it somewhere in easy reach. Inna pictured the heavyset woman with her enormous glasses taped together at the bridge and the silver duct-tape handbag she proudly carried everywhere. Olga had a crazy love affair with duct tape, which she claimed could be used to fix or make almost anything. Duct tape!
Inna patted her hand along the wooden shelf and then turned her palm over and skimmed her hand along the underside of the counter. There!
Olga, the duct-tape McGyver, had secured the gun to the counter with a criss-cross of durable sticky stuff. Inna yanked on the gun. The tape reluctantly tore away from the counter. The bands of tape hung from the gun’s barrel, but Inna didn’t strip them away. She had no time. He was too close.
“Stay where you are!” she yelled. She struggled to hold the gun in her unsteady hands. The sight of the gun brought the man up short. He paused only a foot from the counter.
“Put zat down and I von’t hurt you.” He spoke with a heavy Russian accent.
“What do you want?” Keep him talking. Less than a minute had passed since he had disabled Vlad. Four more seemed like an eternity for stalling him. “Where’s Igor?”
She knew nothing about guns. She had touched one, held it in her hand, for the first time two nights ago, when this whole nightmare had started. Until that moment, guns had been part of a different world—crime dramas on TV and action films—that had nothing to do with her real life.
She had never shot anyone, at least not that she remembered. She still didn’t know whether she was responsible for killing the man who had raped her, although Detective Hersh clearly hadn’t thought so.
She didn’t know if the gun was loaded. Or if she could hit a target even if she tried.
“I von’t hurt you,” he said again. “We just go for leettle ride.” He took a step forward.
“Stay where you are!”
By the door, Vlad groaned. Her eyes darted in his direction, and in that moment the intruder rushed toward her. She squeezed the trigger.
A loud explosion shot from the gun, and an antique chandelier over one of the display tables shattered.
The recoil threw her back. The gun pinched her thumb and sent a surprising shock of pain into her hand. She fumbled the pistol and dropped it.
The intruder rushed around the counter.
She scrambled, grabbed the gun, and squeezed the trigger. Her heart beat wildly in her chest. She snapped the trigger again and again in quick succession until a bullet hit his leg and he stumbled and fell down.
His cell-phone stun gun dropped from his hand and skittered across the floor.
“You fucking beetch,” he swore. He cradled his leg, and she kept the gun trained on him.
“Drop gun!” a new voice yelled from the doorway.
Another Russian man, also dressed in a black delivery uniform, entered the shop. This one had a gun. Inna bet he was a much better shot than she.
The second intruder pointed his gun at Vlad’s prone body. Vlad groaned again. She could barely swallow against her fear for him. He was vulnerable, utterly defenseless. She wasn’t a good enough shot to fight both intruders off with whatever bullets were left and save Vlad.
Knowing he had her attention, the man said, “Put down gun and come vit me, or I shoot him dead.”
She believed him.
Hands shaking and cold, she slid her gun onto the counter.
NICK
NICK SAT IN the coffee shop across the street from Koslovsky Imports and struggled to regroup and recover from the tangle of emotions Inna evoked, the deep yearning, the bone-deep conflict.
He didn’t understand the immediate connection he felt with her, a connection he had no business feeling.
Nick’s whole life had been molded by Artur’s betrayal. He had grown up in the shadow of loss, a grieving that never ended for the family he had lost and a childhood crippled by the gnawing fear that Mimi and he would be sent back to Russia if anyone discovered their deception.
He had finally found Artur Gregorovich after all of these years. Justice was in his reach. He would see Artur exposed for the monster he was and brought to justice in the country that had unknowingly embraced the man and his pretty lies, as Nick’s mother had.
But what about Inna? With only one look, she had slipped past all of his defenses and touched his soul.
He couldn’t use her to ruin her own father. He couldn’t walk away from her either.
She had tried, politely, to send him away. Thank you, but … But what? Surely she couldn’t have looked into his eyes and found him wanting. Not when his feelings for her were so strong and overwhelming. Didn’t she feel their connection, too?
Inna had been through a lot in the last few days. A better man would respec
t her wishes, give her space. Yet, his whole heart rebelled at the thought of abandoning her to her evil father and the menacing goon with a gun.
Did Inna have any clue who her father really was or how he ruined innocent lives?
Nick didn’t have to stretch his imagination to think that what had happened to Inna the other night at the nightclub was related to her father’s crimes. She was the latest casualty, another good person hurt in the wake of Gregorovich’s deceit.
I love you, too, Papa, he had heard her say. How could she love such a monster? She couldn’t possibly know the truth. Gregorovich undoubtedly kept her in the dark, deceiving her the way he’d deceived Nick’s mother.
He glanced in the direction of Koslovsky Imports, his thoughts full of Inna and her beautiful dark hair and soulful eyes. And there she was. In the street. In the drizzling rain without a coat. Without her formidable bodyguard.
She was walking to the back of a delivery truck next to a man in a black uniform. He couldn’t see what was happening clearly, but the scene struck him as wrong. He couldn’t say how, but he knew. With every fiber of his being, he knew. Inna was in trouble. Not sparing the time to grab his coat, he dashed for the door.
“Call the police,” he instructed the cashier. Then he sprinted into the street, dodging past cars.
He saw the gun in the man’s hand as he approached.
Nick was fit, but from running, not body building. He had never been a fighter, not physically anyway. The kidnapper outweighed him by a good thirty pounds.
None of that mattered or gave Nick a moment’s pause. There was no room for doubt, only one thought in his head—save her!
He launched himself at the man from behind and jumped onto his back. He wrapped one arm around the man’s neck in a chokehold. Inna tried to pull away from her kidnapper, but the man jerked her arm hard. She gasped as her kidnapper pulled her up against him.
Trying to throw Nick off, the man raised his gun. Nick grabbed the barrel and wrestled for control of the weapon.
Spectators huddled together under the shop awnings on the street. No one rushed to their aid. He supposed that was the way among the Russians. No one had helped his grandparents in their time of need, either.
Kings of Brighton Beach Bundle Page 19
