For now? Sometimes when they speak English, it’s confusing for me. But this time it’s not, and I’ve had more than enough. “Stop! Let me up! Please, Alexei,” I say, trying to keep the tremor from my voice.
Alexei’s leg moves so I can slither off his lap. My ass stings and I want to rub it, but I ignore the urge and stand up instead.
An angry tear drips down my face, and I wipe it away ferociously. My dress drops over my wounded backside, and I’m relieved to be covered. My palms rub my sore cheeks for a second because I can’t resist.
“I must wash my face.” My voice is firm and in control, but when I try to turn and walk out, Egorov’s hands grab me. One on my waist, the other on my breast. “Get on your knees.”
My stomach lurches with dread, and my arm swings without thinking. I slap his face hard enough for the sound to echo. His arm swings just as fast, but before it strikes my face, I’m dragged aside by a powerful arm. Alexei’s other hand shoves Egorov back so hard that he falls onto the floor. Alexei stands like a statue, hard as marble and unsmiling. I could kiss him.
Egorov scrambles back to his feet and jerks a gun from somewhere.
Alexei moves me behind him. “If you shoot me, you’d better hope you kill me. Otherwise, you’re a dead man.”
“No, no,” Polasky says. “No gunfire! No one was supposed to be armed. It was agreed.”
“Yes, it was,” another man says with a grim frown.
“I’m going to wash my face,” I mumble.
Alexei’s money clip is poking out of his pocket. I know I shouldn’t, but I’m desperate, so my fingers snag it, enclosing it in my fist.
They’re all distracted and speaking harshly to each other.
This is the chance I need.
I flee the room as quickly as I can. At the front closet, I grab Alexei’s coat and fling it around myself, half expecting hands to grab me. I jerk the door open.
When no one drags me back, I throw myself forward, out into the darkness and the driving rain. It’s horrible weather. But lucky, too. No one will see me as I run.
CHAPTER1
Alexei
Two months later
As I stare at my inbox, a ‘witch’s breath’ tickles the back of my neck, causing the hair on my arms to rise. Witch’s breath is what my mother calls it when a sense of foreboding hits her. She got the expression from her grandmother who used to say, “Baba Yaga’s breath is on my neck.”
Superstition is nonsense, and I glare at the black hair on my forearms, silently ordering it to lie back down.
I’m alone in my home office, but I glance around anyway before I take a swig of unsweetened black tea and look back at my computer screen. There’s an email from Bloodsport, the underground fight club where I once spent a lot of time. My time there has ended, so I usually delete Bloodsport Club emails unopened. Seeing this one though reminds me that it’s been a week since I reached out to Polasky to see if he’d heard anything about the missing girl. He’s denied any knowledge of her since that night in the rented mansion, but he could be lying. His allegiance runs more toward Egorov than me.
My gaze is stuck on the email’s subject line, which reads: BC—Russians Only Night.
A night with only Russians in the club makes me wonder whether the fight will be a death match. I frown, trying not to let my thoughts wander too far down that path. There’s bitter blood on my hands.
The email’s contents are encrypted, but I have my key code because I’m still a member by default. At one time, I was the twenty-five-week undefeated Bloodsport champion. Even though I won every match, the run ended in darkness. Now that I have my own millions and no longer need to fight, I never set foot inside.
People still tell me the standings. Right now a Serb who barely speaks English is twelve weeks undefeated. They say he’s even bigger than me. I’m six-and-a-half feet tall and two hundred and sixty pounds. Bigger than me makes him another monster.
Apparently he enjoys fighting. My fingers flex, and I make a fist. There were moments I enjoyed it too. I can’t deny that. But mostly it was a means to an end, a way to make a lot of cash quickly. I made almost four million dollars from fighting and used it as seed money for other businesses.
Still, it looms large in my memory. Swallowing a thickness in my throat and the quickening of my heart, I shake my head at myself. When the adrenaline hit me in the ring, rage transformed me. I wasn’t a man anymore. I was a beast.
Exhaling, I close my eyes a moment, working on distancing myself from that part of me. Fighting for sport when it could end in death is nothing to enjoy. The only good reason for mortal violence is survival. Or revenge.
Besides, I’m a businessman now, not a beast. If I went to Bloodsport this weekend, it wouldn’t be to strike at another fighter, it would be to crack the jaw of Ivan Egorov who’s become entrenched in club business.
My jaws creak from the way I clench them as I consider the club’s email, then click. After a moment, I’m asked to enter the passcode. I do, and the email’s unencrypted, going from thousands of random characters to a few lines of legible text.
