He reached over the front seat and grabbed a dark amber bottle. It looked like a beer bottle, except for the stopper and wick at the top. “Highly flammable liquid that explodes in a fire ball when lit,” he said. “Cheap and very deadly.”
Her heart momentarily seized as she imagined this monster lighting her gorgeous son on fire. She had already seen the kind of carnage the man wreaked with his perilously sharp blade. She could scarcely contemplate what he might do with a blunt weapon designed for maximum destruction.
“Troika will burn to a crisp. I’ll put it out of business for weeks. Maybe months.” He seemed to relish torturing her with a clear picture of the violence he planned.
She could no longer control her breathing. Fear choked her until her breath came in almost sobbing gasps.
Dato touched her cheek. His brown eyes glowed with a demonic light. Then he mocked her. “And here I thought you were an ice queen. Nothing and no one touches you.”
His hand trailed down her neck and over her collarbone. She forced herself to endure his touch, knowing she had to if she hoped to survive, but she shriveled inside with each stroke of his fingers.
He wrapped his hand around her throat and applied the gentlest of pressure, deliberately letting her know that he could choke her or snap her neck…or kiss her. Armed with his knives and firebombs, holding her prisoner, he could do whatever he liked, and she would be forced to bear witness to the destruction or suffer it herself as it pleased him.
Her soul cried out for Artur.
In this, her darkest moment, she doubted he would come for her. She doubted he would care. An icy wave of fear crashed over her and threatened to pull her under.
Artur didn’t know her or see her. He would never imagine that she was here in danger. Needing him in a way she never had before, she hated him more than ever, feeling the biting double edge of her unrequited love.
The car turned onto Brighton Beach Avenue. It moved at a leisurely pace under the overhead train tracks, stopping at the lights. The windshield wipers swished softly, pushing away the clinging bits of drizzle that blew onto the glass. There seemed to be no hurry, but she found no solace in the slow progress toward Troika. She had no way to warn Aleksei of the impending threat.
The car pulled to a stop, double parking along the curb outside the nightclub, along with two similar vehicles with tinted windows. Dato cupped the back of her head with his palm and forcibly turned her head. He pressed her face to the window. “You will watch.”
A man got out of the car behind them and strolled to the double glass doors of the club. No one on the street seemed to take any notice of him. Once she lost sight of him, Dato pressed on the back of her head. He shifted her so that she was forced to view the large picture window at the front of the restaurant. As Dato’s driver rolled down his window, she spotted Victor at one of the tables in front.
The damp night air and the familiar smells of the street might have been soothing, but she could hardly breathe them in.
Another man got out of the car in front of them and hurled a brick at the glass window. She flinched as the glass broke with a loud crack and fell away in large chunks. Behind her, Dato laughed at her reflex, likely enjoying her distress.
Inside, patrons jumped way from the window and ducked for cover—for all the good it would do them.
She heard the click of a lighter. Then Dato’s driver hurled a burning bottle through the broken window. People screamed. A man caught fire and transformed into a moving fireball.
Flames exploded everywhere. The man who’d thrown the brick lobbed a second Molotov cocktail into the frenzied crowd. The heat of the fire and the rising smoke made her eyes water. She prayed Aleksei was nowhere near the club at this moment.
She couldn’t tell what was happening inside. She imagined Victor, survivor that he was, trampling people to get to the exit, but no one emerged.
Finally, Dato’s man appeared at the door alone.
She became aware of the sounds of her breath, small panicked huffs. Behind her, Dato pinched her neck, almost lovingly, and chuckled. “Ah, Mrs. Koslovsky, I couldn’t ask for a better companion this evening. And the night is still so young.”
SVETLANA
THERE WAS A loud crack. Shattered glass. Svetlana spun around as the front tables near the window burst into flame.
Outside, three black SUVs idled in front of the club. A hand reached out from one of the drivers’ windows and lobbed a flaming bottle through the decimated pane.
People started screaming and running toward the door, the grabby man and his wife at the front of the pack. Someone blocked the exit and threw down another flaming bottle. The two caught the brunt. They lit up, engulfed by fire, human torches.
Behind her, someone screamed. A waiter burst from the back hallway, a fireball at his back.
Svetlana grabbed the fire extinguisher and vaulted over the bar. Her stiletto heel cracked as she landed. Grabbing Anya, she limped away from the bar with its collection of flammable bottles. She pulled her toward the fires near the front door, the most likely route to safety.
Before them, the flames rose higher, feeding off of the accelerant from the bottles, creating a wall of fire between them and the exit. The heat licked at her. The air took on a wavy quality, as if reality were melting.
Determined to open an exit for them, Svetlana pulled the pin on the extinguisher and sprayed the worst of the flames. Through the raging fire, she watched the fire bomber, eyes intent on the bar, reach into his trench coat. How she wished for her gun!
He pulled out yet another Molotov cocktail and flicked his lighter. If the fire hit the liquor, the whole place would go up like a bomb had hit. Everything seemed to move in slow motion as he raised his lighter to the Molotov cocktail.
Svetlana didn’t have a gun. The only thing she had on hand was the fire extinguisher. The foreign patron from the bar stood behind her. She couldn’t waste time wondering whether he had a gun and would use it. She needed to act.
With all of her strength, she hurled the extinguisher at the bomber. The red projectile caught him square in the chest. His eyes flashed with surprise as he stumbled backward and dropped the bottle.
The Molotov cocktail rolled toward the fire. Accelerant leaked out and fed the flames fanning all around them while the bomber scrambled to his feet and then raced for the door.
Now what? The small opening Svetlana had managed to create closed with flame. There was no exit this way. They were trapped.
She heard a hissing sound. The sprinklers! The fire hissed and spat as the spray from the ceiling doused the fire.
The mob in the bar pushed forward toward the door with Svetlana now at the lead, limping in her broken shoe.
Her foot slipped in the wetness on the floor. Her ankle turned painfully, and she flailed as she fell. She had a fleeting image of what would inevitably happen next: the panicked crowd would trample her.
Strong arms caught her, righted her, lifted her. The patron who earlier hadn’t deigned to glance in her direction swept her into his arms, one hand at her back, the other under her knees, as if she were the heroine in a tawdry romance novel.
She wasn’t too proud to accept his help. With grudging respect, she noticed that he didn’t seem to lose stride with the horde, despite how heavy she must be.
He crossed the threshold where the door used to be. The evening air was raw and wet with a steady drizzle. She couldn’t suppress a shiver.
He dumped her unceremoniously on the sidewalk. Leaving her hopping on one foot, he strode away as if he couldn’t put distance between them fast enough. She hadn’t even had the chance to thank him.
Sirens surrounded them. Fire trucks and police cars crowded in front of the club.
Svetlana scanned the throng for Anya.
“She is there. With her friends,” an accented voice said. She turned to see the patron, returning to her, a full-length sable coat in his hands. He draped the fur over her shoulders like a cape.
“A coat,” he said. His full lips twitched with humor.
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
The heavy coat held her like a hug, folding her in immediate warmth. The satin lining stuck to her wet skin.
“What’s your name?” he asked as he came to face her.
“Svetlana.”
“Svetlana. Krasivaya. I’m Gennady.” The syllables rolled off his tongue with a melodic cadence. He straightened the collar on the coat and fastened the clasp at the neck. The scent of expensive cologne tickled her nose. Was the coat his?
Gennady regarded her steadily, his blue eyes almost hypnotic. The sudden solicitousness and the naked interest in his eyes contradicted his earlier dismissive attitude toward her.
Had she given herself away? Was that the reason for his sudden intense interest in her? Brighton Beach wouldn’t be a safe place for her if someone here figured out her true identity.
She wouldn’t second-guess herself. The sight of those human torches would haunt her for a long time. What if it had been Anya or one of the girls or Jack? A few more minutes, and it could have been any of them, all of them. She had done the right thing by springing into action at the bar.
He smoothed the wet hair out of her face. His brief touch sent a wave of heat through her body. “You saved everyone in the bar.”
“No. I didn’t…” She began to protest, but he pressed his finger to her lips and said, “You saved me.”
Ah, so that was it. He felt grateful. She almost sighed with relief and disappointment. Gratitude wouldn’t bust her cover. It also wasn’t the same as interest in her. Not by a mile.
The last thing she needed right now was any kind of personal entanglement. Someone had tried to blow up the club. She should be focused on that, on solving this latest puzzle and how it related to the Koslovskys and her scheme with Vlad.
Yet, standing in the shadow of death, all she could think about for the moment was how it would feel to drop the subterfuge and gnawing worry, grab onto life with both hands, and kiss Gennady with his cold good looks and warm skin.
Even if all he felt was gratitude.
GENNADY
IF ONLY GENNADY had understood the depth of Victor’s incompetence last night at the meeting at Secretnaya Banya, he could have been more proactive and averted this crisis.
He silently cursed Victor as the police made their rounds through the survivors of the fire bombing and tried to keep people from fleeing the scene. With an inbred wariness of authority, the Russians at the nightclub weren’t eager to stick around and answer questions.
Gennady debated sneaking away, too. Attention was precisely what he didn’t want. For himself. For this operation.
Svetlana, the bartender, stood before him, draped in the fur he had rescued from the coat check. “Go if you want to,” she said, far too perceptive for her own good.
“Come with me.” He needed to find out what she might know. She had been watching him far too intently at the bar.
“I can’t. I have to stay here. The cops will know I was working the bar and will want to talk to me.”
The ambulance-chasing news crews from the local stations jockeyed into position, putting their camera eyes everywhere. Gennady might attract more unwanted attention if someone caught him leaving the scene.
“I’ll stay with you,” he said.
“Suit yourself.”
Despite the nonchalance of her words, she stared at him, her lips parted, an unspoken invitation shimmering in the charged air between them, one he accepted without hesitation.
He tugged on the fur he had wrapped her in, pulling her into his arms, and dragged his lips over hers.
The kiss had barely gotten started when they were interrupted.
“I need to ask you a few questions.” A fresh-faced cop cleared his throat.
Gennady glared at him, but the timing couldn’t have possibly been better. He now had an excuse for giving surly and miserly responses, and he could let Svetlana do the talking for both of them.
Indeed, she offered her name and address with no prodding and then launched into her account of the evening’s events. “Three cars pulled up in front. Cadillac Escalades.”
“How did you notice that?” Gennady asked. “I don’t remember seeing any cars.” A lie, but he couldn’t have her suspecting him more than she already might.
“It’s what my ex drives,” she said with just the right amount of bitterness. A plausible explanation, and she sounded so convincing, but he wasn’t fooled. “The difference was that these had gold rims.”
The young cop in front of them scribbled furiously on his notepad as Svetlana relayed her observations, including a detailed description of the bomber who had entered the club.
“How did you remember all of that about him?” Gennady pretended to be impressed, but he would have been disappointed if she had recalled any less detail. “You were busy pouring drinks.”
“I watch everyone,” she said. “It pays to know who’s likely to tip and who isn’t. Who might cause trouble or try to rob the place. You get used to keeping your eyes open.”
Another plausible explanation for how observant she was, but he recognized the signs of special training like his.
He had noticed the way her eyes constantly scanned the nightclub. Her active awareness of her surroundings had been his first clue.
When Victor had passed over his questions about her, dismissing her interest in him, Gennady hadn’t needed any more evidence that the man was a complete and total idiot, unqualified to perform the job that had been given him. How often had Victor blundered into conducting sensitive business under such watchful eyes?
Gennady’s second clue had come when Svetlana had reacted so swiftly to the threat from the firebombs, reacting the way only a person who had been specially trained would.
While the civilians had run and screamed, she had acted. She had jumped over the bar with the grace of a gymnast and the fierceness of a battle-hardened warrior, a Valkyrie in stilettos. Armed only with a fire extinguisher, she had taken out the attacker in the restaurant, buying all of them time until the sprinklers could put out the fire.
She had to be the American agent his sources had warned him was in the field.
Svetlana finished her account. The young cop looked at Gennady expectantly. “I have nothing to add,” Gennady said. “I hope we’re finished. This lovely lady needs medical attention and has been too polite to request it.”
“The medics are busy with the burn victims,” she said.
“That’s no reason for you to suffer. Perhaps we can leave now and at least get some ice?” He appealed to the officer.
In exchange for a few details about himself, namely the information on his passport and the hotel where he was staying, they got permission to leave. He hadn’t had to reveal anything even remotely sensitive. Still, he would have preferred to stay off of the American’s radar entirely.
“I’ll take you home,” he said. Perhaps, if he could appear to be besotted with Troika’s bartender, no one would suspect him of being a high-ranking Russian spy.
“That’s not necessary.”
“No? How will you get there? You can’t plan to walk.” He gestured to her ruined shoes and her swelling ankle. “Do you think it’s broken?”
“Just sprained,” she said. “But I’ll take a taxi. I don’t live far.”
“Nonsense. I have a limo at my command. You will ride in style.”
She opened her mouth as if she would argue, and he pressed a finger to her lips to silence her.
He would treat her like a queen, trail her like a love-starved stray, seduce her into revealing her secrets. “A woman like you should be draped in furs and ride in limos.”
“Like me?” She cocked her head as if he had tripped her bullshit detector. The bright spark of intelligence in her brown eyes was inconvenient, but he welcomed the challenge. Who was she? CIA? FBI?
“
You are magnificent,” he said.
She squared her shoulders. “You didn’t seem to think so before. When you were sitting at the bar.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“You wouldn’t look at me.”
“You were watching me.” He puffed his chest like a proud peacock. Did she suspect who he was? Or had she merely felt an attraction to him?
“I watch everyone,” she huffed.
He threaded his fingers into her cropped hair and cupped her head, and she stayed exactly where she was, more affected by him than she would admit.
“I was blind to what was in front of me,” he said, his face only inches from hers.
“And now you see?” Her question came out satisfyingly husky and inviting.
“Now I will always see.”
He swept her into his arms and finished the kiss he had started earlier. Her mouth was soft but aggressively responsive, the chemistry between them the kind that couldn’t be faked. Perfect.
He would enjoy using her.
In twenty-five years as an operative in America, Artur had not been caught or come under suspicion from the American authorities, despite generating substantial revenue for the Directorate and then laundering the money to a clinical grade of cleanliness.
Unfortunately, the trail from Troika was likely to lead to Artur, unless Gennady intervened. The Directorate couldn’t afford to lose the man now.
While Gennady couldn’t control whether Artur fell under investigation, he could ensure that the American authorities learned only what he wanted them to learn.
He would stay close to Svetlana, pretend he was in love with her, and then he would provide her with a trail of bread crumbs.
What she learned would undoubtedly trickle to the right ears. Misinformation could be a potent weapon, and the lovely Svetlana—if that was indeed her real name—would be a valuable asset in this war.
ALEKSEI
STAN LIVED LESS than half a mile away from Troika. Aleksei parked his silver Ferrari a couple of blocks away and then ran the rest of the way there. He slowed when he got to Stan’s driveway. He glanced around him. Was anyone watching? Would they remember he was here?
Kings of Brighton Beach Bundle Page 24
