I shut it down. Finished quickly just to get out of the shower. Why was he so receptive and shameless about what we’d done earlier? He’d made no attempt to hide his pleasure; his cries and moans soaked into the fibers of the glass enclosure. He knew our history, yet he had no hesitation about letting me see him fall apart because, for some reason, he wanted me.
Packing was mechanical. Clothes, essentials, laptop—the one I’d stopped using last year when Brad purchased the new one for my birthday. The new one stayed behind with myphone on the nightstand. Sergei could not be around me twenty-four seven, yet he seemed to know exactly where I was and what I did. I didn’t put it past him to have a tracker on me, and those two devices were the ones I carried around with me all the time.
I wasn’t giving him a way to follow. He must never know where I was going.
A cab took me and my one hastily packed suitcase to the airport. During the drive, I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting Sergei to show up, but whatever had called him away seemed to be important because I arrived at the airport unencumbered.
The airport blurred past in a series of motions I didn’t have to think about. I didn’t buy a ticket directly for my destination, but to another city just in case I missed something and he found out where I was heading. I was probably being too cautious, but the people I was up against weren’t ordinary citizens.
I had to wait an hour and fifteen minutes for boarding, which was another moment of torture, checking faces, panicking at everyone who approached too close to me as if I’d be dragged back to Sergei. I killed time by charging my laptop and buying a new phone with cash, which I set up quickly.
By the time I boarded, the shaking had subsided. I slid into my seat in business class and opened my laptop.
The first email I sent out was easy. A request for the immediate leave they’d been forcing on me. I knew the way I was leaving would set the department back. I might even be penalized for it, but I softened the request by referring to my accident last night and how I realized I needed time to get myself together before causing an incident at the hospital.
The second email took longer. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, hesitation creeping in for the first time sinceI’d decided to leave. This one changed everything, and once I sent it, there was no going back.
I swallowed hard and typed anyway, each word chosen with care. On the surface, it might have seemed as if I’d dismissed everything Archibald had told me about Morozov when, in truth, I’d soaked up everything. At the time, I had no idea when—or even if—I would need it, but I never forgot, including the contact information Archibald had slipped me.
When I finished, I read the email twice, committing it to memory like it might disappear if I didn’t. Then I hit send before deleting it and emptying my trash. I shut the laptop immediately, my pulse picking up as I leaned back in my seat and glanced toward the aisle, then the back of the plane, scanning faces without meaning to.
My fingers curled against the armrest as I forced myself to look away.He won’t find you.Not this time.
But the unease lingered, coiled tight in my chest as I closed my eyes and tried to rest.
14
SERGEI
The sound of my fist striking a still-too-warm body lacked the satisfaction I needed. Every grunt fueled my rage into a punch that was twice as hard as the one before. My knuckles were bleeding under the impact, the pain radiating up my wrists and straining the muscles in my arms, but I didn’t regret turning down the gloves Dezi had offered me fifteen minutes ago when I’d started this concert of fist upon flesh. I welcomed the pain from the ache in my chest left there from Leo’s disappearance.
My fist connected with his jaw, and the man fastened to the wooden cross twisted, doubling over—at least he tried to—but the chains that secured his arms and legs made it impossible for him to curl into himself. A tooth flew across the room and pinged off the concrete floor. From my peripheral vision, I saw Nik wince and scratch the back of his head as he eyed the direction the tooth had gone.
“Stop! Please, I can’t take it anymore,” Blu mumbled from swollen lips.
I hadn’t been at all surprised that the asshole was the one who’d spiked the nurse’s drink spitefully after I’d fired him. She wasn’t the only one he’d targeted either, but thankfully, none of the others had been affected the way she had, or we would have had a much bigger problem on our hands. It’d taken scrubbing through hours of footage from our cameras, but we’d seen the exact moment he’d bumped into her and spilled her drink, using it as an excuse to order another.
We’d had our own coroner examine the body, and the results came back definitive for drugs, though it would take longer to identify the exact substance. Whatever had been slipped into her drink was fast acting and unforgiving. The concentration found in her system would have overwhelmed her almost immediately. She hadn’t stood a chance.
It also meant a new unauthorized drug was circulating in our territory. With Vasiliev dead, there was no one to regulate the distribution, so we had a serious issue on our hands. If people started showing up dead in our territory from the same drug, this would attract cops into our area, and then they might discover things they shouldn’t. While cops could be bought, we preferred not to deal with them at all. Since their integrity could be bought, they were loyal to nothing but profit.
This territory had always dealt in drugs outside of the club, long before Maxim handed it over to me, but it wasn’t chaotic, and certainly not this careless. We kept it controlled with a tight distribution, vetted supply, and measured quantities. No cut corners, no unknown product flooding the streets, no desperation deals made in back alleys. Everything that moved through our hands was accounted for.
The profit was there—more than most legitimate businesses would ever see—but in the grand scheme of Morozov Holdings, it was nothing. Maxim tolerated it because it stayed contained and kept his men happy, but the momentthe drug distribution threatened his legitimate business, he wouldn’t hesitate to burn the whole operation to the ground.
I had no personal investment in the drug business, but I was handed the territory, so it was my mess to clean up. If I pulled the plug prematurely, we would face internal opposition, and we couldn’t afford for factions to form when we still had no idea of the extent to which Arkady might be involved. Our areas were close enough that the territory lines had caused conflicts in the past, and the drugs must have slipped in through him.
“You fucked up, man,” Nik said with a sigh, placing his hands akimbo as he casually observed Blu. “Should have just taken your last paycheck and left.”
“I’ve worked for Morozov for five years,” Blu mumbled. “You can’t do this to me.”
I grabbed him by the hair, and the blood on my knuckles smeared the strands. For a second, I froze, words failing me as thoughts flooded my mind. Leo, who would have scolded me about being careless with another person’s bodily fluid instead of wearing gloves. Leo, who had kissed me, then left me. Leo, who could be dead for all I knew since I hadn’t heard from him or had any sign of life in a week.
“Sergei.”
Nik’s voice pulled me back from the deep forest of my mind. I released Blu’s hair and took a step back. I had blood all over me, not just my hands, but my T-shirt and even my sneakers. That tended to happen when your brain insisted on beating the shit out of someone who deserved it because the man you thought was opening up to you left you without a word.
“This is your last chance, Blu.” I nodded at Dezi to hand me the gun he still held. I took it from him, the weight of the barrel in my hand familiar. I’d killed so many men over the years that the act was practically automatic now. That thingpeople said about remembering the face of every life you took? Fucking bullshit. After a while, the faces blurred until they no longer mattered.
