3:23p.m. Missed call from Vaska
3:34p.m. Missed call from Vaska
3:35p.m. Baby, do I need to remind you about the rules? Pick up your phone.
4:07p.m. Mary, you’re starting to anger me.
4:28p.m. Missed call from Vaska
4:29p.m. Ty moya. Pomni ob etom.
The last text was in Russian. I’m not sure if that meant he’d just slipped into his native tongue accidentally, or that’s what happened when he was really pissed off. I copied the phrase and pasted it into Google translate.
You are mine. Remember that.
Damn. I had to give it to him. That was sexy as hell. I still wasn’t going to answer. Whether it was self-preservation or just sheer stupidity, I had no intention of ever seeing Vaska again. Call me a coward. Call me a fool for passing on the best sex of my life, but I had no choice. Buffy had freaking superpowers, I didn’t.
After getting ready, it took us fifteen minutes to leave the apartment. Fourteen and a half of them were trying to figure out how to arm the security system. Eventually we gave up since we were going to be late.
As we left, Emma pointed out the gold Ferrari parked on the street out front.
“Whose car do you think that is?”
Mine, I almost answered. That had been another fun little surprise from Vaska. Before getting out of his car this morning, he’d pointed to that incredibly over-the-top sports car and told me it was now mine and tried to hand me the keys. I’d thought he was kidding at first. When I learned he was serious, I adamantly refused. That’s when he grabbed me to him, kissed me senseless, and told me as his baby girl I would have to get used to being spoiled.
His baby girl.
Swoon.
Damn him.
I’d stashed the car keys in my underwear drawer with my ill-gotten cash from pawning his cufflinks. I had no intention of ever getting behind the wheel. Imagine me, a poor graduate student and future teacher, rolling up to class in that gold monstrosity? When the timing was right, I would give them both to Dimitri and have him return them to Vaska. Hopefully, Dimitri wouldn’t ask too many questions.
Answering Emma, I said, “Probably some dumb chick who should know a car like that is out of her league and she is way too inexperienced to handle it.”
Emma gave me an odd look. “Or that douchebag who just moved into 4B. The one who practically screams I’m a drug dealer.”
“Yeah, or him,” I agreed lamely. “Let’s grab a cab at the curb.”
Just then my phone vibrated inside my purse like a literal tell-tale heart. I didn’t look. I still felt the fiery brand in my chest from his last text message.
You are mine. Remember that.
Chapter 11
Mary
He’d pulled out a gun.
A gun.
A fucking gun.
I couldn’t smother my shocked gasp.
Dimitri turned on me, eyes narrowed. I froze. He then looked over my shoulder to Mike, my bar back. “You there. Make some fucking noise.”
Mike jumped to do his bidding, shouting at the kitchen staff to bang pots together.
Dimitri turned his gaze back on me. “Step back and cover your ears.”
I obeyed as I cringed against the dingy white subway tile wall of the kitchen.
He aimed at the door handle and fired.
The sound reverberated around my brain, crashing through my emotions, forcing an undeniable truth on my reluctant mind. This was what it was truly like to date a man in the mafia.
The evening had started out boringly normal. Emma and I had shown up at the Last Call Bar, where I worked as a bartender some weekday evenings when needed and most weekends. Since we were short-staffed and had a big group of businesspeople slumming it there for an off-the-books pharma party, David, my boss, was grateful I’d brought Emma to help out. She often picked up a random shift or two. She didn’t know how to bartend, so she usually just helped me behind the bar by clearing glasses, cutting lemons and limes, and fetching liquor from the back.
Everything had been going fine. I mean the customers were rowdy assholes who thought tipping a dollar on a nine-dollar craft beer made them some kind of high tipper and entitled them to a free round of grab ass, but that wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.
Then Dimitri showed up looking like Thor after someone stole his favorite hammer.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
After scanning the bar and asking Mike, we realized she had gone in the back to fetch some rum from the liquor cage but hadn’t returned in some time. I’d been so busy making slippery nipple shots for a bunch of snickering idiots I hadn’t even noticed. Rule number one in bartending is never abandon your bar. Fuck that rule. If I got fired, I got fired. I hated this job anyway. If Emma was in trouble, it was my fault for asking her to work a shift and not paying closer attention.
Motioning for Mike to follow me, we left the bar and raced after a charging Dimitri as he barreled through the crowd, making his way to the small square of fluorescent light from the staff door leading into the kitchen that shone like a beacon through the dense fog of music, vape smoke, and drunken bodies in the dimly lit bar. We caught up to him just as he was rattling the handle of the liquor cage door.
It was locked.
Why was it locked?
That door was never locked during service.
Oh, God, Emma!
After I confirmed that Emma could be locked in there, Dimitri pounded on the door, demanding it be opened. Turning, I raced down the narrow hallway back into the main kitchen and cried out to get the attention of our grill cook. “Phil! Phil! Find David. Tell him it’s an emergency. We need the key to the liquor storage.”
David was probably holed up in the storage room that passed for a manager’s office on the other side of the building. He was the only one with the key we needed. It wasn’t that unusual for someone to lock the liquor room innocently. Usually it was a new employee who thought they were being extra conscientious by securing the booze. The problem was we didn’t have any new staff and Emma still hadn’t reappeared, which meant odds were she was in there. Someone could easily unlock the door from the inside. The fact that she wasn’t opening it must have meant that someone was preventing her from opening it.
We used the word emergency pretty frequently in the hospitality industry. Running out of fries was an emergency. No paper in the credit card machine was an emergency. Having to pee and no one to watch your bar was an emergency. Fortunately, David knew that in the hierarchy of emergencies, running out of liquor when the bar was packed ranked pretty high, so I was certain he would drop everything and haul ass down here to reopen it for us, no questions asked.
I ran back down the hall to tell Dimitri that help was on the way, when I saw him pull out his gun. Before I could do more than gasp, he had fired the handle off the door and kicked it open.
Some piece of shit had Emma pinned against the cage wall. The look of sheer terror on her face brought tears to my eyes. Before any of us could react, Dimitri pulled the man off Emma and shoved the end of his gun into the guy’s mouth. Oh, my God! He was going to blow the man’s head off, right here and now. Right in front of all these witnesses.
Without even looking over his shoulder, he barked a command. “Get her out of here.”
The whole violent scene had me so stunned I didn’t react at first. Dimitri called out again, “I said get her out of here!”