Page 42
“Not. A. Word.”
Alexei’s grip tightens on the wheel as I slide into the passenger seat. His hands are liberally decorated with prison tattoos. So are his forearms below his rolled sleeves, and the skin visible above his open collar. Beneath the shirt, the twin stars of a vor v zakone sit over his heart, same as mine.
I keep my eyes fixed ahead. Seven years of friendship means I already know the sharp angles of his face, carved by decades of institutional food and confinement. Hard eyes. Hard body. If he ever had any softness, it’s long since been stripped away. A silver chain glints at his throat, and he wears a heavy signet ring. The shirt is designer, the trousers tailored. Not out of indulgence or vanity. Alexei came out of twenty years on the inside needing no luxury, but he understands that presence is its own currency.
Besides, at six-foot-five with his massive frame, nothing off the rack was ever going to fit him anyway.
The weight of his silence is prickling against my skin. He deserves an explanation after I dragged him from his bed in the dead of night to come pick my stranded ass up from buttfuck nowhere, but right now I don’t feel like talking.
We cruise down the highway in silence, the Rolls-Royce Cullinan cutting effortlessly through the darkness. It’s a luxurious SUV, large enough to fit Alexei’s body, with soft leather seats and a polished wood dashboard, but I’m not in the frame of mind to appreciate any of it. I keep seeing Viktoriya’s eyes in the rearview mirror as she gunned my car out of the gas station and away from me. They weren’t glinting in triumph or laughing at me. They were desperate.
What the hell am I meant to do with that?
Alexei lets the silence sit for another mile.
“So.” He relaxes back in his seat and allows his deep voice to fill the Cullinan. “Where is she? Your asset.”
When I called him for a ride, I didn’t give him a single detail about why I needed him. I just gave him the coordinates. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“So there was an asset.”
Outside, the dark fields slide past.
Alexei taps the wheel thoughtfully, and I can feel him turning my words over with the patience of a man who’s had all the time in the world to let his thoughts breathe.
“How did you get all the way out here without a car?”
My car. My teeth grind together as I think about someone else behind the wheel of my car. That Mercedes-AMG is my baby. She cost a fortune, and if she gets even one scratch on her—
“Or,” he says slowly, “you did have a car. But it was stolen.” A short pause. “Huh. That’s not like you. What made you careless?”
I shift in my seat and say nothing.
“The asset made you careless.” It isn’t a question. “She was in a bad way? Hurt, traumatized? Needed a lot of managing?”
The words shut the fuck up, Alexei are sitting right behind my clenched teeth, but gratitude for the ride and seven years of friendship make me hold my tongue. He didn’t need to pick me up personally. There are a dozen soldiers he could have sent instead.
“No,” Alexei says, reconsidering. “You’re angry. You wouldn’t be this angry over a crying woman.” Another pause, and then a dark, rumbling chuckle rolls through the vehicle. “Blyat. She stole your car? Now I’ve heard everything.”
“Did I say you were right?” I snap.
“Am I wrong? And can you not track your car with GPS in the app?”
My hands tighten into fists on my thighs. “I turned off the tracker. I find people. I don’t like to be found.”
Alexei is silent for another stretch, and I know him well enough to know he’s nowhere near done. He’s just arranging his conclusions. “Why did she want to get away from you?”
“She didn’t want to be rescued,” I grit out.
“Why not?”
“I don’t fucking know!”
“Did you not have handcuffs?”
“Of course I had handcuffs.” They’re part of my standard kit. If I go into a place and the asset isn’t there, I need to take a prisoner and get to work on him so I can find out where she is.
“But?”
