Unprotected With the Mob Boss Page 9

  “Oh no, I’m sorry. I hope I wasn’t staring,” I say, shaking his hand. His grasp is soft—not desperate to prove his strength. “I just didn’t expect anyone else to be here.”

  “It’s fine, Miss Harrington. I’m used to people staring. We can all just assume that my ancestors survived by convincing everyone we were so sick that nobody should bother coming close enough to kill us. Or maybe they thought we were vampires. Either way, we made it here, so it can’t be too bad. Why don’t you sit down? We’re just enjoying a small meal. I’d love for you to join us.”

  For the first time, I notice two Styrofoam boxes in front of them. They’re both filled with shish kebabs. The scent lures me into the chair between the two men.

  I take one of kebab sticks out and, in spite of feeling slightly nauseous after being reminded of my ‘engagement,’ I bite into one of the meat chunks. The marinade is perfect, balancing a sweet, salty, and savory flavor. As I chew on it, it occurs to me that Ilya wasn’t surprised to be introduced to Lev’s ‘future wife.’ But he wasn’t congratulatory either.

  As I turn to look at him, I see him exchanging a look with Lev. There’s faint disapproval in Ilya’s eyes, but Lev’s gaze is as remorseless as usual. Ilya catches me looking and smiles at me.

  “How do you like it?”

  “It’s great,” I say. “I haven’t had kebabs in a long time.”

  “They’re actually shashlik,” he says. “They’re a Russian dish.”

  “Oh. You’re Russian too?” I ask.

  “Yes.” Ilya glances over at Lev. He must see the same stiffened demeanor as I do. He mutters something to Lev—it sounds Russian and apologetic. Lev must have heard him, but he doesn’t acknowledge the comment.

  I can’t decode their relationship. Lev is Ilya’s boss, so Ilya would be Lev’s subordinate, but here they are, eating together while joking about something personal and Ilya knows about Lev’s ‘future wife’ without any questions about where I’ve been this whole time or applauding our engagement or anything normal like that.

  Yet, Ilya still seems more than subordinate. He seems subservient.

  “I didn’t mean to pry about your heritage,” I say. “I’m sorry about that. Lev is just weird about it because of something I said earlier. I accused him of being influenced by the Bratva.”

  Ilya’s eyebrows briefly shoot up, but he laughs and relaxes again.

  “The Bratva? I’m certain Lev could lead them quite well,” Ilya says. He reaches forward, touching my hand, before quickly pulling back. “Miss Harrington, I didn’t mean to make you feel like you needed to be apologetic. You don’t need to feel sorry around me. I can take care of myself.”

  His tone is bordering on pleading. He’s not only subservient to Lev. He’s subservient to me, too.

  Why?

  I clear my throat. “So, how did you get here through the rain? It’s coming down pretty hard.”

  “The flooding isn’t quite as bad as it was,” he says. “But I also have a Raptor that Lev bought me, so I’m not worried about it. If you’re worried about the rain, I could take you home if you’d like. It’s safer in my vehicle than yours.”

  I glance at Lev in question. His jaw is clenched and there’s a flicker of disapproval and possessiveness across his face. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t like it.

  I look back at Ilya. “I’d appreciate it so much if you’d do that.”

  The wipers slice across the windshield, but it’s like bailing a boat with a hole in the bucket. The road looks like a river, too, but Ilya seems unperturbed. He might as well be in a car wash.

  “Have you worked for Lev for a long time?” I ask, fiddling with my sweatpants’ drawstrings. When Lev retrieved my clothes for me, they were still warm. He told me to return the next day. It wasn’t a request. That level of arrogance always gets under my skin, but somehow the friction is also addictive.

  “About five years,” he says. “But I’ve known him longer.”

  “How did you two meet?”

  “We had some friends in common,” he says. His tone isn’t harsh, but there’s a tension in the arm that’s gripping the steering wheel.

  I stare out the window, pretending to be lost in thought. I wait until his arm relaxes.

  “You two are close.”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “So, what crime did he commit?”

  He chuckles. “You’re a rather peculiar choice. I always thought Lev preferred the ones who stood still and looked pretty. He’s always found talkative people annoying.”

  “That’s good to know,” I say. “Now I know how to annoy him.”

  “I wouldn’t advise that,” Ilya warns. “Why do you want to know what crime he may or may not have committed?”

  “I don’t trust him.”

  “Miss Harrington, if you don’t trust him, then you don’t trust me,” he says, his tone turning serious. He looks over at me, sending my heartrate racing since he’s not looking at the road. “And if that’s true, there’s no point in me telling you anything.”

  “Okay,” I say quickly, nodding toward the road. He turns back, his body relaxing again.

  “You said the apartment building next to Sylvester’s Liquor, right?” he asks.

  I nod. I could have lived in a better complex. My father offered to pay for a better place. He showed me crime statistics. He showed me photos of crimes that have happened in the area. But it was the place Julia decided on, I could afford it on the money I’d earned as a tutor, and I didn’t want to start my independent life depending on my father’s money. So, now Sylvester is my neighbor on one side. The other side is a vacant warehouse, occupied mostly by rats.

  Ilya pulls into the driveway. It’s a bumpy experience as it’s impossible to miss all of the potholes, especially now that they’re harder to see in the downpour. He drives past the decrepit cars, two of which are missing their tires. The last one in the row has a smashed window. The broken glass floats in a murky puddle beside it.

  “Does Lev know that you live here?” Ilya asks.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew exactly what room I sleep in, where I pee, and what I eat every morning.”

  Ilya snorts. “That’s likely true.”

  He parks in front of the building. The front door is only a few feet away, but the sheets of rain crashing down aren’t inviting.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t have an umbrella,” Ilya says.

  “It’s fine.” I jerk open the door. Rain starts whipping into the truck. “Thanks for the ride, Ilya.”

  I step into a puddle, soaking my sneakers and socks, but I don’t stop running until I’m in the building.

  Once inside, I bound up the stairs, skipping steps. I nearly run into Mrs. Gillium, a widow in her seventies who is, allegedly, a prostitute. When I get to my apartment, I scramble to unlock the door and lock myself inside.

  I stand motionless for several seconds, absorbing the silence of the place, before quickly shucking my soaked clothes and changing into something dry.

  I look around my room. Now what? Home feels weird after Lev’s mansion. What was once cozy is now weirdly confining. Everything looks shabby, second-hand—mostly because that’s exactly what it is, but it never bothered me before. I like my stuff. Or at least, I used to.

  Flopping into bed, I open my constitutional law book. I try to focus on the words, but my brain is in shambles. It’s like driving through that mess of a parking lot outside my building, but instead of hitting potholes, I keep accidentally running into sensations of Lev.

  The sight of him running in front of me, his movements smooth without sacrificing power. A predator, every movement natural and full of purpose.

  Or the way I sometimes caught him looking at me. The way his eyes turned me into his prey.

  The smell of him. Intoxicating. Overwhelming.

  His voice; that deep rumble of unmistakable authority. Power infused in every word.

  And most of all—his touch on my skin, the str
ength in his fingertips, noticeable but restrained, like he was holding back—whether for my benefit or his, I couldn’t say for sure.

  I reread the paragraph from the constitutional law book.

  Civil liberties are the foundation of the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. legal system operates under the unequivocal belief in its supreme law. It is a lawyer’s prerogative to work within these ideals and uphold the country’s deepest principles.

  I sit up, running my fingers through my hair. It’s tangled from being wet. I imagine Lev’s hands in it. Yanking, teasing, owning.

  “Do you think that being nice to the world will make the world be nice to you? Your morals won’t help you down here.”

  Lev’s voice echoes in my mind along with a rattling sound. I look around. Wait, no, the rattling sound isn’t in my mind. I grab my bag, ripping more of it as I unzip it. My phone’s screen is glowing inside it. I pull it out.

  A blocked number has sent a text.

  Remember, we’re meeting up tomorrow morning. 7 a.m. We have to know each other well enough to convince your roommate and everyone at the gala.

  Another text pops up as I finish reading.

  Bring gym clothes this time.

  My fingers start moving before I think about it.

  I text back, no promises.

  I wait to see if he responds, but the tell-tale three dots never appear. I feel my lips twist into a smile despite myself. I lie down, my cell phone resting on my chest. I shouldn’t be happy. He’s blackmailing me. He’s involved in something shady and enough of an asshole that his executive assistant is concerned about upsetting him.

  I close my eyes. I play through a new fantasy, where I notice Lev watching me in Black Glacier. There’s nobody there but us. He pushes me up against the bar, his cock pressed up against my ass. He doesn’t say anything, but when he pushes inside me, there’s a crooning noise coming from my mouth.

  It’s a perfect moment as he starts moving inside me, Lev no longer teasing, just owning me fully, the way I’m desperate to be taken.

  Until I see Jeffrey Douglas’ decaying body on the other side of the bar.

  My eyes snap open, arousal vanishing as swiftly as the steam in Lev’s shower disappeared when I turned it off.

  I have no idea what happened to his body. Lev never mentioned it. Did he get the Bratva to help him? Do they know about me? Do I owe them now?

  I tuck my hands under my head. I can’t close my eyes again. I stare at the wall, hearing the rain drill against the window. I wait for everything to shatter.

  But the rain just keeps beating down.

  8

  Lev

  The next day

  After finishing my shower, I find Allison in the den, her freshly washed hair twisted into a messy bun. She’s playing with a deck of cards. Each card is painted with gold ink, depicting fifty-two “wonders” of the world while the two joker cards depict the galaxy.

  Allison’s legs are tucked underneath the coffee table as she moves one of the cards. I sit down next to her. She’s playing FreeCell.

  “Are you winning?” I ask.

  “I think I’m proving that I’m not good at thinking long-term.” She scoops up all of the cards.

  “You didn’t need to stop your game for my sake,” I say.

  “You were being distracting,” she says. She sticks her tongue out at me. “Besides, we need to keep quizzing each other, don’t we? If anyone is going to see through this scheme, it’s Julia.”

  “How about we do both?” I take the cards from her. “If we played some strip poker, we could learn a lot about each other.”

  I could lie and say I was just trying to get her off guard. It’d be partially true. But I’ve fallen asleep, woken up, and showered wanting to experience her, so all that’s on my mind is getting her closer to that point.

  “I’m sure that would be productive,” she says. There’s a faint pink tint in her cheeks, but overall, she’s less prudish than before. I might break her down yet. “But it might be better if we reveal more of our secrets than our bodies. How about truth poker? Every time one of us loses a hand, they have to truthfully answer a question from the other person.”

  I keep my eyes on her. She wants me to answer her question about what crime I’ve committed. It’d be easy to get around. I’ve committed a smorgasbord of crimes. I could tell her about when I was a child and I stole groceries for my parents. I could tell her that when I was a teenager, I beat a man who grabbed my date between the legs. I could even admit to Black Glacier laundering some Bratva money. It would get her off my back and finally get her on hers.

  I hand the cards to her. “You can shuffle.”

  The first hand is easy. She has nothing. Her lower lip slightly presses up. I can only hope her father won’t be able to read her face as well as I can.

  I flip over my cards. “Top pair.”

  She tosses her cards down. Nothing. “Ask me.”

  “How did you meet Julia?”

  I thought this would be a simple question—some dumb sorority sisters or childhood playmates, but her lower lip presses up again. She takes a deep breath.

  “It’s a long story.”

  I collect the cards on the table, sliding them under the deck. She fidgets with her ear. Time becomes a test as she waits for me to move on and I wait for her to realize I’m not going to.

  “Okay,” she says. “Fair is fair. It was about a year ago in November. I was with three of my friends. It was my sophomore year and I’d been friends with these women since the beginning of my freshman year. Um.”

  She rubs her forehead, avoiding my gaze now. In most people, I’d assume this was a tell, indicating that they were lying, but her eyes are getting glossy. One side of me wants to dig harder into this story, figure out how I can use it to get more control over her father, but the other part of me is uncertain.

  “We went to this frat party. It wasn’t the first time. We’d been to a few. Far more than I should have been going to as the chief’s daughter. And two of my friends were doing drugs. I turned a blind eye to it.”

  She rubs her neck, pressing against her throat for a second.

  “When we got into the car, Lily, my friend … she insisted on driving. She told me she was fine. I believed her. I didn’t want her to see me as this uptight chief’s daughter, and I believed her. Another car swerved out of its lane—turned out that driver was drunk far more than Lily—and her reflexes were so impaired that she didn’t get us out of the way in time. I don’t know if you could have done that even if she’d been stone sober. Either way, we crashed. Lily died. The other driver … he got off on some kind of technicality. That’s one reason I’m pursuing law. So that never happens to anyone again.”

  Her voice breaks, her hands cover her face, and she trembles. I move closer to her, not used to being in this position. Offering comfort is not one of my strengths, to say the least. Awkwardly, I wrap my arm around her shoulders, pulling her toward me. At first, she resists, but then she slowly crumples against me, pressing her face against my chest.

  The den is filled with her sobs. I try to focus on anything else—Mariya’s Revenge, the Bratva, the Colosimos—because I can’t risk letting her emotions affect mine. This is a contract between us. She’s nothing to me but a means to an end and a body to fuck.

  But I don’t let her go.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “I’m so sorry.”

  I’m not certain if she’s talking to me or her friends, but I stroke her hair. When she looks up at me, her eyes are a galaxy of emotions. Her hand clings to my arm as she pulls herself upward. Her eyes close as she kisses me. The way her lips slowly move against mine, it’s the most sensual kiss I’ve ever received. I return it, giving her back what she gave me.

  Her eyes flicker open. That galaxy of emotions is slightly calmer, but now they seem to quiver in uncertainty. I must be looking at her in the same way. I don’t know what the fuck she was just thinking.

  She brea
ks our reverie, looking down at her legs, then sits up a little, moving away from me as she wipes her tears from her face.

  “I’m sorry. I haven’t answered the question,” she says.

  “It’s fine,” I mutter.

  “No, um. I came up with this idea. So … Julia was the EMT. She pulled me out of the car. I—I owe her my life.”

  She covers her hand with her mouth, staring intently at her knee.

  “We should actually start heading to my apartment now. The traffic gets busy around this time and if I don’t get there soon, she’ll start making dinner on her own.”

  “Okay,” I say, though everything seems very fucking far from okay.

  When Allison introduces me to Julia, I expect to see a Florence Nightingale-type—a plain woman, bordering on ugly, the kind of girl whose heart is beautiful, but nothing else.

  But I was wrong. Julia is not ugly. Nobody needs to make false claims about her.

  She doesn’t have the same magnetism as Allison. She’s an America’s sweetheart level of cute. She doesn’t have the strangely angular face of a model or the banality of a prom queen, but she has flowing golden hair and freckles that make her appear more genuine.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Julia,” I say. I shake her hand, placing my other hand over it to convey warmth and investment in the greeting. I glance over at Allison. Her forehead is furrowed as she looks away from our hands.

  There’s no way she thinks I’d choose Julia over her, right?

  “I didn’t know what you had here, but I brought some wine.” I offer it to Julia. I didn’t pay any attention to her while we were shaking hands, but now I see it.

  She hates me.

  This is a new problem. Usually by the time people hate me, I’ve already trapped them in their circumstances. I don’t need them to like me. But right here, right now, I need Julia to like me and I don’t like that. I’m ponying up to the negotiating table in the weak position. Very out of character for me.

  “Wow. This is expensive,” she says, taking the wine from me. “I could probably sell this for someone to pay their medical bill.”