Owned by the mob boss, p.22
Owned by the Mob Boss, page 22
part #1 of Ivanovich Bratva Series
I laugh at myself as I stand up and walk into my study.
I stand at the window looking out into the pitch-black night, and then at my reflection. There was a time, not so long ago, when I saw a man with ultimate control in the mirror. But now everything seems to be crumbling.
I am not even surprised when the SWAT team crashes through the door just after two.
“What is the meaning of this?” Adrian roars from the hallway.
I stand at the staircase bannister, watching as my butler tries to stand in their way, arms spread wide.
“You have no shame!” he cries. “What sort of men are you? What sort of—”
The lead man—in full body armor, a police helmet on his head and brandishing an assault rifle—shoves Adrian with his shoulder. He falls and then another man is on him. He flips him around and slaps cuffs on him, grabbing his shirt collar and dragging him outside.
“Freeze!” another man roars, aiming his rifle at me.
“Would you care to tell me what this is about, officers?”
I walk down the stairs with my hands raised.
“I said freeze!” he yells.
I stop a few paces short.
“You are in no danger here. I keep a peaceful home.”
McCauley pushes through the crowded soldiers, muttering orders. He smiles sideways at me as though this is all just a big joke, though there is a deadly glint to his eye.
“Where’s the hostage, Ivanovich?” he snaps.
“Hostage?” I ask.
“Don’t play games with me.”
Men spill around him, stampeding through the house. I hear Ashley yelling from upstairs. I force myself to remain still, knowing how trigger-itchy the police can get in these sorts of situations, just like the Bratva. There really is a fine line there.
“Well?” McCauley gestures with his pistol. “This’ll go a helluva lot easier if you cooperate.”
“I am afraid you have been misinformed, detective. There is nobody here who does not want to be here. I can assure you of that.”
“Cuff the bastard and take him to the living room.”
I turn around with a smile, offering my hands.
“You, of course, have my full cooperation.”
“Shut it,” the SWAT member barks in my ear.
I let them lead me into the living room and sit down slowly, smiling at the SWAT team, aware of how completely calm I feel. It is not that I was expecting this precise scenario, but something like this was bound to happen sooner or later.
There is no use crying over spilled blood.
A while later, I hear McCauley shouting at somebody on his cell phone in the hallway.
“We need a search warrant right fucking now! No—not yet. Yes, sir. I understand. Take all the time you need. I’ve got all night.”
“You will be speaking with my lawyers,” I tell him when he swaggers into the living room. “I do not appreciate my staff being harassed.”
He nods angrily at the heavily armed tactical team and they leave, closing the door behind them. McCauley pulls up a chair and spins it around, sitting on it backwards.
“I thought they only did that in your Hollywood movies,” I remark. “The tough cop ones.”
“Shut it, Ivanovich.” He glances at the door apprehensively, making me wonder if this is a setup. But it’s a lot of effort to go through for something that will not bear fruit. “Where’s the girl—Camille? Where’s your fucking housekeeper?”
“You will not get your search warrant,” I say. “We both know that.”
“I said shut it!”
“Should I shut it, or answer your questions, Detective?”
“You’re a real smartass, aren’t you?” He sighs through gritted teeth. “We got a call that there was a hostage here and she—fucking she—needed help right away. Don’t bullshit me.”
My mind leaps to Camille.
Did she make the call? But why would she? It does not make any sense and, I realize, I trust her too much to believe that. So perhaps it was Fyodor, but this is a stupid move, even for him. Whatever else is true about that snake, surely he would not involve the police.
“You better start talking,” McCauley says, but he sounds deflated, a man with few options.
“I will wait for your warrant,” I say. “Or you can apologize now. Whichever works best for you.”
“Now listen here—”
“Sir.” A SWAT member pokes his head around the door. “We’ve got Judge Underwood on the line.”
“Please, Detective, don’t let me keep you.”
He glares like his life depends on it, and then leaps up with a growl and marches to the door. I admire the artwork on the walls: the subtle coloring of the galloping horse, the sunlight in the background blending into the rider’s blonde hair.
A few minutes later Ashley, escorted by two guards, walks into the room.
“Fyodor is outside,” she says. “They can’t keep him out, legally, but I didn’t know if you’d want him here.”
I consider it. Then I shake my head.
“Send him away.”
If this was orchestrated by my second—a prospect I cannot rule out—this might be part of the ploy. I return to studying the artwork, using it to keep myself composed.
Finally, McCauley marches back in, but not with the sour expression I expected. Instead he grabs me by the front of the shirt and tugs forcefully.
“Would you like me to stand?” I ask with a smile.
“We’re taking you to the station.”
“On what charges?” I say, rising to my feet.
“For questioning!” he exclaims. “Get him out of here. I’m tired of looking at his fucking face.”
“I’m disappointed, Detective.” I shake my head mournfully. “That is no way to treat your dinner host.”
22
Camille
When somebody knocks heavily on the door, I find myself rushing to answer it, certain it’s Erik.
Last night, I woke up entangled in my bed covers, convinced that we were holding each other. When I realized it was just a dream, the disappointment hit me like a punch to the gut. I never expected to go all googly-eyed over a man—the word ‘smitten’ has always disgusted me—but this is something else entirely. It’s more like waking up with a dry mouth to discover there’s nothing to drink.
But when I open the door, Ashley is standing there with a casserole dish in hand.
“Hey,” she says, beaming. Her smile drops when she studies my face. “I’m sorry. I should have called ahead first!”
“No, no,” I hurry to say. “Please, come in.”
She hands me the casserole dish as we walk into the living room.
“That is for you and your mother. Is she around? I was hoping to say hello.”
“She’s resting at the moment,” I say, wondering if this is strange. Or maybe this is normal with girlfriends and my lack of normal experience is shining through. “Would you like something to drink?”
“I’ll take a soda if you’ve got one.”
She has an eerie expression on her face when I return to the living room, almost as though she can’t keep up this small-talk façade anymore.
“What is it?” I ask, belly dropping. “It’s Erik, isn’t it? Oh, Jesus, is he …”
“He’s safe!” she says, eyes narrowed. Like she’s a lab tech and I’m under the microscope. She’s analyzing me, I realize. But for what? “He is in police custody, though. They took him to the station last night.”
I’m glad there’s a chair behind me. Otherwise I would plummet like an asteroid. The impact is the same, a crater opening in my chest.
“I’m okay,” I say when Ashley offers me her hand. “I just need a sec.”
I shake it off, nurse-style, reminding myself worse things are bound to happen on the ward.
“On what charges?” I ask.
“For questioning,” she mutters bitterly. “They found a bloody shirt, they claim. These officers are animals. They are trying to charge him for murders he did not commit.” She narrows her eyes like she’s the detective now. She might as well have ‘good cop’ scrawled across her forehead. “Doesn’t that sound crazy?”
I say nothing, feeling like a mouse with a cat’s paw clawing at me. I don’t like feeling like a mouse. In fact, it pisses me off big time.
“Erik thinks somebody set him up,” she goes on. Okay, here it is. She’s dealt her hand. The real truth is coming. “But only a fool would do something that dumb. Erik doesn’t forget, and he sure as hell doesn’t forgive.”
There’s a boxing match happening in my chest right now.
In one corner, my feelings for Erik are pounding their gloves together, getting ready for war. On the other side stands this huge pissed-off sucker ready to be done with Ashley and Erik and the whole lot of them.
Erik is buried in an avalanche of legal troubles, but he still finds the time to send his little spy over here.
Ashley rests her muscular forearms on her knees, as if to imply that dough isn’t all she could pummel into submission if she had a mind to.
“What do you think about that?”
“About what?” I snap.
“All of it.”
My smile is a razor and my words come out cutting. Screw tact.
“Listen, Ashley, I don’t know what the fuck’s going on with you and Erik, but I hope you know this is next-level fucked up. Why would I set Erik up? Oh, let me think: he’s the only person keeping my mom out of the damn hospital. What’s the next logical step? Yeah, that’d be a real genius move.”
“Wait a second—”
“Are you in love with him?” I hiss.
“What?” she laughs, tossing her hands up in an I-can’t-believe-we’re-having-this-conversation way. “I’m just concerned, Camille.”
“So he sent you?” I challenge.
“No …”
“So then why are you here?” Now it’s my turn to play the detective. If only I had a notebook or a pen or, hell, a pistol to gesture with. “I find it difficult believe that his chef really cares about him that much.”
“Just like how it’s difficult to believe how dedicated his ‘housekeeper’ is?” she counters.
“You’re avoiding the question,” I snap.
“Erik is my half brother. That is why I am here.”
For the second time since Ashley walked in, I sit back in the chair like she’s just whacked me with her rolling pin.
How tangled is this web I’ve walked into? Is the butler his fucking brother, too?
But then, it could easily be part of the deceit.
“Did Erik tell you to say that? Soften up my defenses?”
“No.”
She stares at me with complete openness. If I’ve got an internal lie detector, the needle doesn’t move an inch.
“I keep it secret because I don’t want Adrian and the other staff treating me differently. I had my own restaurant, once, but a drunk driver and I met one night and I came out the worse.”
Her eyes glass over for a moment, as though reliving it.
“I’m still having surgeries and physical therapy. I can show you the scar, if you like.”
“No, no,” I mutter.
But she’s already lifting her shirt. They crisscross all across her belly, a faded pink landscape with newer, deeper scars overlaid on top of those.
“That’s awful.” I touch her hand. I can’t help it. Maternal instinct: one. Anger: zero. “I’m so sorry.”
“What is done is done,” she says, lowering her shirt. “Camille, sweetie, I do not think you turned Erik in. But I do think you are too hard on him. You think he overreacted to your lie about the detective, but you have to understand, he has been lied to by a woman before, recently, and it almost cost him his life.”
“I do understand that,” I reply. “But everybody has a past. It doesn’t make everyone act like jerks.”
“Do you think Erik is a bad man?”
I look away. In the reflection of the new TV I seem small, distorted, as if I am becoming somebody new.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” I say after a long pause, even though I had no trouble answering when Mom asked me earlier if he was a good man. Then I didn’t even think about it. So what’s the difference? My head hurts when I try to parse it all.
“Think of it like this. He is a good man … to those he cares about.”
She stands up, wincing slightly. I wonder how severe her pain is and why I’ve never noticed it before. Too in-my-own-head, I guess, or trying to claw into Erik’s. I’ve been so selfish.
“The casserole just needs to be heated up,” she tells me as she walks to the door. “Twenty minutes at 330 degrees should do it. And, Camille, please do not be so hard on him.”
She is gone before I can reply, leaving me with a writhing mass of worry and guilt and resentment and longing so fierce it might as well be physical: a balloon of want getting bigger and bigger until I feel like I’m pressed flat against the wall with no room to think.
I should have helped him more.
I can’t raise this baby without him. No, that’s not right. I could do it, if I had to.
But I want our child to have a dad, one who’ll stick around and play catch and do all the regular, wholesome, good-ol’-American stuff that my father never stuck around for.
I’m going to have a Bratva boss’ baby, and that scares me so bad I can’t even imagine the future, a mental block bigger than a rhino charging through my mind.
Around and around all these possibilities go until I feel stifled.
I need some fresh air.
The second I open the door, the guard is on me. He walks up the lane with his hands raised like I’m a nervous animal that might bolt any second.
But nervous animals can bite, too. This asshole needs to be careful.
“I can’t even have five minutes outside?”
“It is for your own safety,” he says, a tattoo of an engraved dagger on his neck shifting with the words. “Please, madam.”
“What if I refuse?”
He makes a tut-tut sound that seems bizarre coming from such a large man. “That would not be a good idea.”
I think about fighting, but I don’t have the energy. Thinking about Erik in that cell, plus all these roughhousing desires and possibilities and—ugh, I just feel zapped. Drained of battery.
When I walk back into the living room—the guard closing the door behind me for good measure—Rob glances up from the TV.
A baseball game is on, but he’s slouched in the chair, barely watching it, so I know he hasn’t placed a bet. His eyes are red, but the bleary red of a man who just woke up, not the amped-up, bloodshot, junkie red.
“You all right, sis? You don’t look so good.”
Who else do I have to confide in? Not Mom, because I don’t want to stress her out. Not Bethany, because she was a paper cutout of a real friend.
At the end of the day, I have only my family.
I tell Rob about the arrest.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” he says when I’m done, giving my hand a squeeze. “Now you get the cash, and you don’t gotta deal with all the bullshit. Win-win.”
But ‘all the bullshit’ is the part I’m confused about. ‘All the bullshit’ includes love.
“Listen, why don’t I make us some nachos? My special recipe. You remember. Extra fucking cheese and extra fucking jalapeños. They’ll scorch your mouth so bad you won’t have time to feel sorry for yourself. Sound like a plan?”
I smooth his greasy hair from his eyes. “That sounds nice.”
We watch The Lion King as we eat, as though we’ve slipped back in time.
Rob is doing his Man of the House routine. He’d throw on this personality like a sweater at seemingly random intervals when we were growing up, like he could, just for a little bit, forget about Dad walking out the day after he was born and just be my brother instead.
I rest my head on his shoulder the same way I did when he was ten and I was eleven, when he was five inches shorter, but seemed so much bigger than that, puffed up, full of promise for the future.
“I could be a king,” he’d say when Simba launched into “I Just Can’t Wait.”
“I bet you could,” I’d reply, truly believing him for a few sweet hours.
That feels like so, so long ago.
23
Erik
There is little else for a man to do in a jail cell but think.
In here, even two short days can seem like a lifetime.
I see my father walking like a drunken sailor down the hallway, stumbling into the wall, limping awkwardly because he had failed to take off one of his shoes properly. I see Mother standing at the door, screaming, and remember what I thought as clearly as if it is spoken.
“I will not be like him,” I whisper aloud, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling.
I see Camille lying facedown with a blossom of blood spreading all around her, her fingers gripping a blue pacifier, some shadowy nameless man standing over her with a knife that is dripping and slick.
Can I truly do this to her?
If she was just a purchase, as I planned, I would be able to stomach the risk. But Camille deserves better than to live in the constant fear and paranoia that would plague us.
When the police finally release me, I have made up my mind. I will visit Camille one last time.
I will set her free.
“You will be hearing from my lawyers,” I smile when McCauley comes to say his goodbyes.
“You got lucky, that’s all.” He rubs at his knuckles the way a man does when he is eager for a fight. “Just because that blood didn’t belong to Alena or Radovan, don’t think I can’t see you for what you are.”
