Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Except I couldn’t. We were right in the center of a shopping mall, and I could count at least four security cameras. Not even Conrad the wonder-attorney could get me off if I executed someone on video. But Grushin couldn’t kill me, either. He must have tailed me from the mansion and waited until I was in a public place.
He was here to talk.
I slowly sat down at one of the food court tables. Grushin sat down across from me. He gazed at me with undisguised contempt, like he was still the noble cop the media had portrayed him as, and I was the criminal trash that needed cleaning up. And I glared right back at him, the raw hate boiling up inside me.
It was funny, but when I’d first met Alison, I’d thought I’d hated her. Now I knew what real hate was. This man was everything I’d assumed she was: corrupt and uncaring, part of a broken system. And what he claimed to be, the honest, noble cop? Alison actually was that. Only she’d wound up framed and on the run, and he’d wound up a rich man.
“Gennadiy Aristov.” He spoke in Russian, and he had the tone of a teacher disciplining a pupil. “It was always a regret that you and your brothers fled the country like rats before I could catch you.”
“We didn’t flee,” I said testily. “We came to the land of opportunity.”
Grushin leaned closer. “You were last on my list. Do you know why?” He smiled. “You’ve never been real Bratva. You have no heritage. Your parents, your grandparents, they weren’t in the brotherhood. You’re just three brats who decided you were going to be gangsters. And then you pulled your fool of an uncle in to join you.”
I knew he was using spy tactics, trying to get in my head, but it still stung a little. Once, I’d thought Alison was my nemesis but now I saw that it was Grushin. He was the opposite of me in every way: coldly emotionless where I was angry, solitary where I relied on friends and family.
“Still, I’m willing to offer a deal,” Grushin told me. “I’ll leave the Aristovs alone. You can keep your businesses. I won’t touch you and your brothers. You can keep what you have.” He sat back in his seat. “All you have to do is hand over the woman.”
I felt the anger surge inside me. The woman. He wouldn’t even dignify her with a name. But I was confused, too. Early on, he’d tried to kill her because she was the only one who knew he was alive. But now I knew, and all my brothers. Killing her wouldn’t keep his secret. So why did he want her?
It didn’t matter because the answer was simple. “Go fuck yourself,” I told him.
He put his fingers lightly on my arm, and it was like a spider was walking there. “If you don’t, I will take your empire apart, piece by piece. I’ll smash you like I smashed the gangs in Moscow. Every business, gone. Every deal, undone. And I’ll come for your family, Gennadiy. Everyone you care about. Now give me. The woman.”
And this time, I heard it. He was so masterfully deceptive, that he almost kept it out of his voice…but not quite. There was a trace of stress when he talked about her.
He was scared. Not of our family, with its guns and power and billions. He was scared of her. So scared, he was willing to leave the Aristovs alone, just to get her off his back.
I suddenly understood. The only thing that scares a corrupt cop is an honest one.
I leaned in. “No,” I told him, loudly and clearly.
He frowned and stared. I knew he was analyzing me, picking up on everything from my breathing to my body language, and I didn’t care. “You’re in love with her,” he said with disgust.
Hearing the word was a shock. My mind had been skating around that word for weeks, calling it everything but that. But now it was right there in front of me and…
I scowled at him. I still had no idea how to be in a relationship or how I was going to be close to her without dragging her down with me and getting her killed. But there was one thing I was sure of.
“You’re fucking right, I’m in love with her,” I told Grushin. The rage rolled through my body in trembling waves, and I couldn’t stay sitting anymore. I stood, sending my chair tumbling backwards, and leaned over the table. “You know, you were right about the Aristovs. We’re not Bratva royalty. We don’t come from a long line of criminals. But that means we don’t play by the rules. I’m going to find out what you’re doing in my city. I’m going to stop you. And if you touch my woman, I will take off your head with a fucking fire ax.”