Yolanda chewed on her lip for a second, glancing down. “Then...why is your top on inside out?”
14
GENNADIY
“A Lamborghini Huracán in Mantis Green,”said Valentin. “Should fetch around $400,000.” When I didn’t respond, he looked at me over the top of his clipboard. “Gennadiy?”
“Hmm?”
He sighed. “Brother, concentrate!” He walked to the next car, a sleek red wedge. “A 1987 Ferrari Testarossa. Worth about $200,000. We could sell it, but I think we should send it to that senator in LA as a bribe. He’s always wanted one.” He waited. Sighed. “Gennadiy!”
“I was listening.”
“No, you weren’t. Where’s the Ferrari going?”
“...Dubai?” I guessed.
“No! What’s the matter with you? You’ve been distracted all day.” He frowned. “Is it a woman?”
I looked away. “No!”
Valentin crossed his arms and frowned. “It’s ever since you came back from New York.” His face fell. “Tell me you haven’t started something with Konstantin’s girlfriend!”
“No! Of course not!”
Valentin’s eyes went wide. “The Black Cat! You were going to stop in there! Did you get a lap dance from one of Amvrosy’s girls?” Mypoker face must have slipped because he covered his mouth with his hand, half shocked and half delighted. “You did, didn’t you?”
“So what if I did?” I snapped and looked away. “Perk of the job. No big deal.”
Except that it had been a week and I hadn’t been able tostopthinking about it. The soft push of her small breasts against my chest, the way her warmth soaked through my shirt. The silken kiss of her hair, finally released from that tight bun. The way we’d locked eyes as she’d climbed all over me: her body was gorgeous, but the most hypnotic thing had been her eyes, and the battle going on in them.
I caught my breath as I remembered the feel of her soft folds stroking my cock through just a few thin layers of fabric. That feeling was now on a permanent loop in my head, and it had turned me into a pawing, snorting beast bored of anything but sex. Before, I’d wanted her. Now, Ineededher. I needed her on the hood of one of these cars, naked and spread, my cock ramming into her?—
“Gennadiy!”
I looked up. Valentin had moved onto a blue Porsche and was looking at me despairingly.
I sighed. What was it about this woman? I’ve been around plenty of beauties, but I’ve never felt like this. The shirt I’d worn for the lap dance still smelled of her, of her cherry shampoo and the soft, vanilla scent of her skin and... I hadn’t been able to bring myself to throw it in the laundry, yet.
I was...addicted.
Now, whenever I spotted her watching me, I was torn between hating her...and slamming her up against the nearest wall and burying myself in her. Luckily, I’d managed to give her the slip for a few hours. I took a deep breath and forced myself to focus.
We were at what I callthe garage.It’s my second-favorite out of all the businesses we own, after the stables, and it consists of two halves.
The first half of the business is an upmarket restaurant in the center of downtown. It turns a healthy profit, plus the waiting staff overhear insider information from drunk businessmen and pass it on to Radimir, who makes millions from it. But the real moneymaker?That’s the combination of rich customers who drive supercars...and valet parking. While the customers are eating, the valets pass their car keys to a couple of hackers I recruited from the Illinois Institute of Technology, who steal the codes and pass them back. Then, weeks or months later, a team of car thieves steals the car from their driveway in the middle of the night. And we bring it here.
I was standing in the underground parking lot of a half-built apartment building. Radimir used it as a tax write-off: it had been under construction for over five years but never actually completed. That meant no one ever came down to its basement parking level. If they had, they’d have gotten quite a shock.
I turned a slow circle. Eighteen cars gleamed under the cool white lights, and every one of them was the sort of supercar people dream about. Lamborghinis, Ferraris, a Pagani Zonda…there was even a Bugatti Veyron. Some of the cars we sold for cash, but most were used as bribes: some people are rich enough that they’re immune to money, but no one can resist their childhood dream car. The garage had become like my own personal museum. Cars came and went over the months, but the overall collection felt like mine.
I smiled and ran my hand over the flank of a beautiful silver Aston Martin. “What’s our plan for this one?” I asked.
Valentin sighed, relieved that I had my head back in the game. “That’s being shipped to India, to one of Selina Kirk-Hughes’s sales—” he broke off. “Is that…?”
I looked up at the ceiling. I could hear it, too: a police siren, coming closer. “Probably just passing by.”
We waited for the Doppler shift as the siren went by us. But it just kept getting louder, and now I could hear others, a rising chorus. “It can’t be us,” I said. “No one knows we’re down here.” From the outside, the building looked like a dark, disused construction site.
