An Obsession with Vengeance (Wanted Men Book 3) (15 page)

“You were a real asshole with her, you know?” Alek commented.

Maks allowed his gaze to drift over, and it made its way up from her low-heeled boots and black jeans. He lingered on her maroon leather jacket. Mainly to keep his attention off her curves. “I know,” he finally said.

“Oh. Well, I guess that makes it okay then. Since you know.”

His lips twitched at the wry tone, until he saw those covered forms being loaded into the coroner’s vehicle. He was glad Sydney had her back to them. “I’m dying to go over there and move this shit along.” He leaned his ass against the hood of the patrol car and crossed his arms.

“I’ll bet you are. But you won’t because you’ll draw attention.”

“That’s why I’m still standing here.”

“I can’t believe Morales started a war with us.”

Maks frowned as something about that sounded off. “I thought he was smarter than that, too, but pride’s a fucker, and his is bruised. I’m thinking my visit to his place with her last night might have pushed him to do this.”

“Or he could have been planning on doing it anyway,” Alek returned.

Which was true. “I think I pushed too hard last night,” he said again, decided.

Alek settled next to him. “How so?”

“Made out with her on the dance floor. Morales was front-row-center.”

“Ah. But it’s not like she’s his, or ever was, according to my uncle.”

“No, she wasn’t and isn’t.”

They were quiet for a stretch. “Also according to my uncle, you’re supposed to do only what it will take to get your message across. This isn’t about rubbing anyone’s nose in it.”

“He had to be convinced she was mine.” He tried to clarify when he heard how that sounded. “I mean, for the sake of this situation. My tongue in her mouth was merely the visual demonstration necessary to paint a clear picture that she belongs to me now.”

“Methinks—”

“Fuck off, Tarasov,” he drawled, cutting off the doth-protest he knew he was guilty of. “Why are you hanging around today anyway? You looking for friends?”

Alek chuckled. “Yeah. I’m lonely.”

Probably meant that. Maks thumped him on the shoulder and straightened when Jeremy and Sydney broke from the detectives and came back. He noticed right away that her right eye looked droopy from the swell that was already coming up from the bottom and her cheekbone was now red and puffy. A dark spot was forming in the outer corner of her eye, proving she’d been hit hard.

Stepping forward, he cupped her turned-down face and lifted it, everything he and Alek had just said flushing as if he’d pushed the handle on a toilet. “What hit you?” he asked curiously. Thing was probably throbbing like a fucker. Taking one in the face was a shock one never got used to.

She shrugged and brought her hands up to cover his. “Um, I don’t remember. It happened so fast.” She patted his knuckles and then rejected his comfort by gently removing his palms from her cheeks and stepping back. She emanated confusion and frustration. Aimed at him or herself? There was also a shroud of sorrow over her eyes that made him want to gather her close and simply hold her until it faded. Such a strange desire coming from him. . .

“Are you through for now?” he asked Jeremy, who nodded.

“I’ll deal with what I can and call if I need anything from either of you. I won’t bother telling you to enjoy your weekend.” With a salute that encompassed them all, the attorney—who had the best suit collection Maks had ever seen—walked away.

“Let’s go through the front and go upstairs so you can get some things.” Maks eyed the door. “It’s a safe house for you from here on out.”

“Uh, no, it most certainly is not.”

He tipped his head and raised a brow, as though tired of having to deal with a child. Waiting until the roar of the fire truck’s engine faded as it drove away, he observed her standing there fiddling with a small buckle at the waist of her jacket. Twirling it and then letting it go. Maks watched closely, curious about the fidget. Scared? In pain? Worried he might share the safe house with her?

He stepped to the side, into her line of vision, and kept his voice low because there were still milling authorities and he was a private guy. “My final word, and Vasily’s, too, if he were here, would be that you’re going to walk through the doors of one of our safe houses in the next hour. Are you going to argue that, Sydney?”

Her slim arms intertwined and settled under her breasts. He was almost positive he heard a harrumph sound come from her throat. Thirty seconds ticked by on the clock before he got his answer.

“No.”

He was tempted to pretend to swipe the spat word off his face but thought better of teasing her when he noticed how pale she’d grown around the darkening bruise on her cheek. “Are you feeling all right? The friend I told you about from Coney Island is the best MD you’ll find. She won’t mind coming to check you out.”

She made a just-licked-a-lemon face and shook her head. Did her jaw just ripple? One of the gestures had her wincing slightly. “Like I need a doctor to tell me I’m going to have a black eye and a headache.” She shrugged. “It’ll go away on its own.” She hiked her purse higher onto her shoulder and took her cell out from where it had been tucked into the waistband of her jeans.

“Who are you calling, lover?”

She gave him an icy look and dialed. “I need someone to come fix my door before a pack of rodents decide to move in.”

He plucked her phone from her fingers and ended the call before it could connect. “They’re on their way.”

“Excuse me? You better mean the rodents.”

“I called my guys earlier.” As he tucked her phone back where she’d gotten it—naturally he had to steal a caress against that firm navel—two men in jeans and jackets that needed washing chose that moment to come sauntering down the alley. They spotted Maks and came right over.

“Mr. Kirov. What did you need?”

Feeling generous because he was getting his way, he gestured to his annoyed-looking Aussie. “Ask the lady. That is, if she’s gotten clearance to go over there . . . ?”

Turning to the men, completely excluding him, Sydney said, “We can go over, but you can’t touch anything yet.”

Off the group went.

“Is the condo in the Upper West Side empty?” he asked Alek.

“Yes.”

“That’s where we’ll take her then.”

“We? I was going home—”

“No,” he said a little too quickly. He cleared his throat and glanced around. “Come with. I think you could use the company.”

Alek gave him a discerning look as he withdrew his phone and hit up a number. As he put the cell to his ear, he muttered, “Pitiful to need a chaperone at your age, don’t you think? Hey, Eva,” he said when his cousin picked up. “Change of plans . . .”

It
was
pitiful. But with the way Maks was feeling, and knowing himself as he did—he was self-indulgent to the core—he could not be alone with Sydney right now. From year fifteen on, he’d become a hedonist. A pleasuremonger. His go-to? Sex. He had it on his terms, in the way he liked, his women under his control with their heads bowed, mouths shut, ears open as they awaited his instruction. He enjoyed them. Took pride in making sure they enjoyed the hell out of him. Said good-bye. End of story. Next. That’s the way it was. No commitment. He didn’t get to know them. There was no drama. No risks. Just the sex and the power of knowing he was in control. He needed the control.

And he needed the sex, he realized, his gaze once more finding Sydney.

But he would not become
that guy
—the untrustworthy one, the disloyal one—just because his determination to honor the vow he’d made to Vasily was beginning to limp.

So a chaperone it was.

Sydney’s request to get some things from the loft had been refused again, both by the police and the two workmen still jotting notes and talking about possible structural damage from the blast. She’d also just been informed that she wasn’t allowed to open the club for at least tonight, if not longer, and she took a few minutes to call some staff members and ask them to spread the word to the others who were on the schedule. After Maksim’s workmen reassured her that they’d get a new door put on right away, she thanked them and went to join the Russians.

Nerves fluttered in her belly. Not because Maksim was now taking her to a safe house but because of what she’d been mulling over in the back of her mind for the last hour.

She had to tell him about Andrew. The realization had come to her when she’d been speaking to the detective and had had to interrupt him a half-dozen times so he didn’t let her and Andrew’s relationship slip out to Jeremy. She was horrified, but she left the lawyer with the impression she was cheating on Maksim. The men had continued to give her odd looks at her insistence that they refer to Andrew as simply “the other person,” but no one had pressed the issue. Maksim would have. She knew it.

She also now knew he wasn’t going to run off in search of her parents and Andrew’s father to see if they might be interested in starting a custody battle with her over her son. That just wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be Maksim. After listening to him, particularly when he spoke of his friends and Vasily, she was coming to see that her Russian lived by a code of honor and loyalty so fitting in his line of work it was almost cliché.

All of that aside, she simply couldn’t hide her son’s existence from him any longer because this entire thing was going much deeper and becoming much larger than the simple warning she’d naively assumed they’d give Luiz. Maksim had to be aware of the stakes. Of what she could have lost today.

She looked back at her car and then to the door of her building, the debris . . . She shuddered.

“Are you all right, Sydney?”

She looked up into Alek’s pale-blue eyes and shook her head, shrugging, because she couldn’t give a rhetorical answer when what she really wanted to do was unload. She wanted to come clean, tell them her real story, admit she’d been supplying half-truths from moment one. She wanted to brag about her beautiful son.

Instead she headed toward the mouth of the alley, not really interested if they followed or not. She’d sit on the curb and wait for them if they weren’t done here. The police had given her clearance to leave, and she wanted to take advantage of that. She also wanted to call Andrew to make sure he was okay, but that would have to wait until she was alone because she’d most likely cry if she heard his voice right then. She didn’t want to do that in front of these men.

She heard their footsteps behind her as she crossed the street to where Maksim had hurriedly—by the looks of it—parked the Hummer. Seeing him reach for the driver’s door handle, and Alek motion for her to go around and take the front passenger seat, Sydney pretended to be blind and hurriedly jumped into the backseat. She didn’t want to sit beside Maksim now. Was too afraid she might give in and crawl across the seat to curl up against him so she could draw from the abundance of power he seemed to have.

She didn’t look when the doors opened and closed to see who sat where. In fact, she closed her eyes and leaned her head against the back of the seat, turning to face the window when the bump on the back of her skull protested. She knew who was beside her, though. Didn’t need to see to know it was Maksim who leaned across to pull her seat belt out of its slot and snap it into the buckle. The scent of rich dark chocolate filled her nose, and the sensations that stirred inside her hammered hard at her weakening resolve to keep her distance.

A short time later they were pulling into the underground parking garage of a high-rise she could never afford to live in. The quiet elevator ride up and her first glimpse into the spacious apartment confirmed it: the Tarasov organization was a big-money operation. But she’d already guessed that. If this was a safe house, she’d bet their actual homes were pretty damned impressive.

Alek entered the apartment ahead of them, traveling a short hallway that widened into an open-concept area that showed stainless-steel appliances in the bright kitchen and a comfortable-looking sectional center stage in the living area. A shadowed corridor across the way had to lead to the bedrooms.

She put her hand out to stop Maksim from walking farther into the unit. “Um, is Alek staying long?” she asked quietly.

That silver gaze remained straight ahead for a split second, blinking once, and then his head swiveled so he could look down at her. One brow went up. “Sorry?”

Heat filled her cheeks at why he thought she was asking, and the backs of her fingers automatically connected with his forearm in a light swat usually reserved for when her son needed to remember she was his mother. “Cut it out.” She flashed a quick smile at Alek when he looked over. “I, er, need to speak with you.” She looked to that hallway and wondered if the bedrooms were far enough away so that a conversation couldn’t be overheard. “And I’d rather we were alone.”

The cross on the front of Maksim’s throat rippled as he swallowed, and then his expression tightened. “Whatever you have to say can be said in front of him. He’s one of the most loyal and trustworthy men I know.”

“I didn’t mean to imply he wasn’t,” she soothed, giving the forearm she’d just smacked an apologetic squeeze. “I would just prefer you and me and no one else.”