Alexei (Her Russian Protector #8) (3 page)

As I headed for I-10, I kept checking my rearview mirror and expected to see that truck following me but it never appeared. Where were they? I didn’t believe for one second that they weren’t keeping an eye on me. Those men had come to my house to rattle me—and they had succeeded. I suspected they expected me to head straight for Shannon but the joke was on them. I was going straight to work, just as planned.

What had Shannon done to gain their attention? My thoughts rolled back to her parting words to me. Yeah, things were changing all right but not for the better. I thought of all the little scams she used to run with Ruben when I was still in high school. Stolen credit cards, fake lotteries, fake collection calls…

“Jesus, Shannon,” I murmured as panic rolled through me again. “What have you done now?”

When I arrived in the small parking lot outside the commercial cleaning company where I had worked since graduating high school, I called my sister one more time and sent her a series of texts in all caps.

CALL ME. NOW. 911!

She probably had her cell phone on silent or shoved down in the bottom of her handbag. I could practically hear her response once she did see my missed calls. She would probably laugh and tell me I was overreacting. She would insist that Ruben would fix it.

“You had better fix this, Ruben,” I muttered while gathering up my things and leaving my car. By now, the sun had fully set and the early November chill had me shivering even with my jacket. I scurried inside the small, unremarkable building that served as the headquarters for CleanRite and quickly shut the heavy door behind me.

Even before I reached the main room that served as a meeting and locker room, I could hear the brassy wail and growling
ba-da-ba-dum
of
banda
music. When I walked into the room, I spotted a dozen or so of my fellow coworkers grabbing their assignment sheets from the night manager and co-owner Juan.

Pushing aside my concern for Shannon, I smiled and waved at the friendly faces that greeted me. I was just about to swipe my ID to clock in when Juan stopped me with a gentle tap on my shoulder and a confused expression. “Shay?”

“Hey, Juan.”

“Hey,” he replied and started flipping through the sheets of paper on his clipboard. “You’re not on the schedule tonight, Shay.”

“I’m covering for Shannon.” I held my ID ready to swipe but didn’t finish the motion. Something in his voice made me nervous.

His eyebrows arched toward his forehead. “Shannon? She was fired yesterday. She doesn’t work here anymore.”

Now I was the one frowning with confusion. “She told me that she gave notice that she was going to quit.”

Juan’s expression turned stony. “I’m sure she tells you all sorts of things,
mi’ja
. That doesn’t mean that they’re true.” He shook his head. “After I split you two up and put you on different crews, there were too many complaints from our clients—and not just about her lax cleaning standards.”

“What do you mean?”

He shot me an exasperated look. “What do you think I mean?”

There were all sorts of things I was thinking but I didn’t want to believe any of them, especially not about my sister. Worried about my own position with the company that I had faithfully served for years, I asked, “Do I need to start looking for a new job, Juan?”

He seemed surprised by the question. “You’re one of my best employees. If I didn’t know about your plans to start your own business, I would push you into managerial training. No,” he said emphatically. “Your job here is yours until you don’t want it anymore.”

Relief rushed through me. “Thank you, Juan.”

He waved away my gratitude and tapped his fingers on his clipboard. “Since you’re here, would you like a few hours of overtime? I’m having hell filling a last minute cleaning call because of that concert tonight. No one is answering their phones.”

You have no idea
, I thought crossly while thinking of the way Shannon was dodging my calls.

“Sure, I’ll take it.” Happy for some extra cash on my paycheck, I swiped my ID and clocked in for work. “Where am I going?”

“Sarnov Luxury Autos.”

The mere mention of the high-end dealership that sold outrageously expensive cars to Houston’s movers and shakers sent a zip of delight down my spine. An excited, tingling feeling settled in my lower belly. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to see
him
again.

Him.

Alexei Sarnov.

Last Christmas, the dangerously sexy and overwhelmingly alpha businessman had rescued me from a run-in with Houston’s most notorious drug dealer, Lalo Contreras. Alexei had faced off with Ruben, his crew and my sister to save me from what had promised to be a forced double-date from hell. He had offered me his protection that night and a promise of safe harbor.

If you ever need anything, Shay, you come to me first. I'll take care of you.

His gruff, deep voice echoed in my ears, even all these months later. Since that cold, wet night, we had developed an odd sort of friendship. We never interacted outside of his car dealership and my weekly cleaning visits, but I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if I asked for his help, Alexei would come through on that promise he had made to me.

“Hey, girl!” Kylee, my best friend, greeted me by bumping her hip against mine. She flashed me one of her bubbly, sweet smiles while gathering her honey blonde hair into a high ponytail. “You want to borrow some perfume and makeup from my kit? Because I know you want to look good for that sexy Russian fox you like to make eyes at,” she mercilessly teased.

“Hush!” I laughed it off but my cheeks were burning hot. “I do
not
make eyes at him.”

“Girl, please.” She rolled her eyes at me. “You’re over there blinking all pretty at him, and he’s standing there brooding and staring at you like he wants to just eat you right up.”

I squeezed my thighs together at the images her words evoked. Sometimes I let myself imagine that maybe, just maybe, Alexei was as infatuated with me as I had become with him. But those hopes died quickly when I considered how rich and powerful he was compared to me. He lived in a world that I would never understand. There was nothing good to come from crushing on a man who would never notice me.

“Do you want to come over tomorrow and see the new dresses I’ve designed?” Kylee adjusted her employee lanyard. “I’m trying to decide which two or three I’m going to include in my end of year portfolio. I could use your help choosing.”

“Sure.”

“And maybe you could loan me some of your purses and accessories for the photos?”

“I still owe you big time for loaning me the outfits for my graduation project earlier this year so consider it done. You can have whatever you want.”

“What I want is for us to finally scrape together enough money to open our own boutique,” she said before giving me a rib-cracking hug. “Because I’ve had it up to here with scrubbing urinals and mopping floors!”

“Two more years,” I reminded her. “We need two more years to save our capital, Kylee.”

She made a face but didn’t argue. Like me, she was conservative with money and terrified of debt. After watching her parents go through a humiliating and painful bankruptcy, foreclosure and an SEC investigation that had driven her father to take his own life, she pinched her pennies so hard that poor ol’ Abe Lincoln begged for mercy.

“Kylee! Let’s go!” Judy, one of the shift supervisors, stood in the doorway and waved her hand. “We’ve got a lot of stops to make before sunrise.”

“I’ll see you around, chica.” Kylee playfully tugged my ponytail. “Make sure you bat those thick eyelashes of yours when you tell that Russian fox
do svedaniya.”

She was too quick for me to whack as she scampered toward the door, her giggling lighting up the room. I stuck my tongue out at her back. There was no way in the world I was going to flirt with Alexei. The odds of embarrassing myself were too high, and I valued our friendship too much.

But as I climbed into the front seat of the work van Manny was driving, I wondered if tonight was the night I would finally break down and ask Alexei for help.

Chapter Two

Alexei Sarnov blew out a noisy breath of frustration and flopped back in his desk chair. He wiped his hands down his face and rubbed at his tired eyes. His irritated gaze landed on the computer screens on his desk. His stomach swirled like a pit of black despair as he took in the evidence of what he was beginning to fear might be an attempt at full-blown theft of his clients’ financial information.

All that money he had spent hiring Kostya’s little hacker to set up his computer system seemed to finally be paying off for him. He hadn’t been sure that investing in that blue-haired tattooed pixie was a good idea but now he thanked his lucky fucking stars he had taken Kostya’s advice. The former spy could be overly paranoid at times, but he had been right about this.

But who would be stupid enough to try to steal from me?

That question perplexed him the most. Although he had left Nikolai Kalasnikov’s mafia family and created a new, clean life for himself, Alexei still had a reputation as a brutal street enforcer and a businessman willing to cut his rivals off at the knees. When he discovered the identities of the people who had tried to compromise his clients and ruin his business? He was going to make them hurt.

For now, though, he was reassured that no client information had been stolen from the finance department. And thank God for that! He had built a solid name for himself among Houston’s elite and moneyed crowd as
the
go-to guy for high-end luxury vehicles. If people lost their trust in him, he would lose everything. Thinking of all the hard work he had put into growing his business empire, he experienced a wave of nausea.

He refused to lose
anything
. He had fought and clawed his way off the streets of Solntsevo and into the Prokhorov crime family. He had proven his loyalty and his worth and earned a spot on Nikolai’s hand-picked crew.

Later, he has used his fists and cunning to buy his way into a better life here in Houston. From one dealership, he had grown to a string of them up and down I-45 as well a trucking company, a couple of automotive parts stores and a small fleet of tow trucks and tire service shops. He had built something
real
and successful. He would fight to the last breath to protect that.

Still seething with fury that some stupid bastard had dared to steal from him, Alexei ignored the soft knock at his closed office door. More than an hour after closing, there were only a handful of employees remaining and he had given them explicit instructions to leave him alone. When the knock grew louder and more insistent, he shoved out of his chair and stormed across his office with forceful strides. He jerked open the door and shouted, “What?”

He instantly regretted his snarled outburst when he spotted Shay Sandoval standing in the hallway. The discovery that he had just yelled at the sweet soft-spoken beauty hit him like a punch to the gut. Those dark eyes of hers, the ones that tormented his dreams, were now wide with fear. Her luscious pout wasn’t curved with its usual smile either.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered out quickly. Seemingly shocked by his angry greeting, she shrank back and quickly retreated from his doorway. She gulped as if suddenly nervous and tightly gripped the small plastic tote packed with cleaning supplies and a microfiber duster. “I’m really sorry.”

Her gaze dropped to the gang tattoos visible on his forearms and hands. Not expecting to be bothered for the rest of the night, he had rolled up his sleeves. The inked evidence of his history in the Russian mafia were now on full display, and he was painfully aware of her reaction to them. Remembering what he knew of the men who had knocked her around when she was a little girl, he felt instantly shamed at scaring her.

“
Blin
,” he muttered under his breath and took a careful step forward. Thankfully, she didn’t flinch when he touched her shoulder. It was the first time he had dared to touch her so intimately. A quicksilver spark of need burned his fingertips, and he had to fight down the urge to slide his hand toward the sleek curve of her neck where he could stroke her silky brown skin. “I’m sorry, Shay. I didn’t realize it was you.”

“It’s fine.” Her voice was quiet and tense. “I shouldn’t have bothered you while you were working.”

“It’s not fine, and you are not bothering me. I enjoy your company. Always,” he said, the dark intensity of his voice drawing her attention. A curious expression played upon her gorgeous face. For the briefest of moments, he considered finally being honest with her and telling her the truth about the feelings that had been tormenting him since last Christmas.

How would she react if he told her that he purposely stayed late on Wednesday evenings just because he wanted an excuse to talk to her? What would she say if he told her that his heart was thumping against his ribcage right now because he was getting to see her a second time in the same week? Because he was close enough that he could breathe in the tantalizing scent of that barely-there hint of beach and sunshine from the perfume she wore?

Clearing his throat and abandoning
that
line of thought, he asked, “Why is your crew here again?”