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It isn’t a demand.
It’s a gift she’s offering me the chance to give her.
My arms come up, wrapping around her waist, my fingers spanning her hips as I pull her flush against my cheek. I hold her there for a long moment, feeling the heat of her skin through her dress and breathing in the sweet scent of vanilla.
“Stay close to your friends,” I growl softly against her, my grip tightening. “And do not touch a drink that someone else puts in your hand.”
“I promise, Zevran.”
Slowly, agonizingly, I force myself to release her.
“Go,” I say. “Have fun. Come back to me.”
She leans down and presses a kiss to my lips. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
I doubt it. Every second will feel like a thousand years.
Downstairs, Demyan has already pulled the armored SUV out of the garage and is waiting by the open rear passenger door. I stand at the top of the stone steps and watch him gently help Cora inside. She flashes me one final, dazzling smile before the door shuts with a thud.
Ruslan passes me at the door to follow her down, and I reach out, my hand clamping onto his forearm like a vise.
“She is never out of your sight,” I remind him, my voice dropping to a lethal register. “If she gets so much as a scratch, you and Demyan will not survive the night.”
Ruslan doesn’t flinch. He nods sharply. “We will protect Miss Cora with our lives, boss.”
A minute later, the heavy iron gates slide shut behind the car, and the red taillights disappear into the darkness.
I remain standing in the open doorway, surrounded by the silence of a house without her in it.
Alexei’s chop shop occupies a sprawling warehouse on the edge of the port district. From the outside, it looks like a legitimate, grease-stained auto repair business. Inside, it’s something else entirely.
Twenty-odd workers move among high-end cars in various states of dismemberment. Dozens of vehicles of dubious origin sit raised up on hydraulic jacks or with their hoods thrown wide, being stripped, rebuilt, or resprayed in custom colors that bear no resemblance to what they started as. A sleek Porsche Cayenne is missing its doors, revealing a bare cage. A Maserati has its engine pulled completely out and laid across a workbench like a patient opened up on an operating table.
Engine grease, gasoline, and paint fills the air, underscored by the constant clang of metal on metal, the high-pitched whine of an angle grinder throwing orange sparks, and the low rumble of a freshly tuned V8 being turned over.
Alexei moves through the chaos with the grace of a predator in his natural habitat.
When I showed up unannounced and uninvited, he took one look at my face, handed me a socket wrench, and pointed me at a dismantled engine block. I’ve been pulling damaged spark plugs for the past twenty minutes simply because my hands need something to do. The alternative is sitting in my empty house while Cora enjoys her party and going stir-fucking-crazy.
Alexei works beside me, unhurried, breaking down a carburetor with precise movements. He hasn’t asked about Cora or my life or my sudden arrival. He’s just working, outwardly calm, his composure grating on every raw nerve I have left.
“Why do you even run this place?” I grumble, tossing a blackened plug onto the tray. “It’s not like you need the money.”
Alexei made a blood-drenched fortune in arms dealing, expanding his father’s empire into something truly terrifying. He would have pushed it even further if he hadn’t been thrown into a maximum-security prison at the age of twenty-four.
“To give my friends something to keep their hands busy when they’re losing their minds,” he says pointedly.
“Ha-ha. Tell me why you really do this, Alexei.”
Alexei wipes grease from his fingers with an oily rag and takes a long look around the warehouse. “You think men like these can get ordinary jobs?”
Some of the faces around me are familiar. All ex-cons like me and Alexei.
“And I like it. Working here quiets the noise in my head.”
In prison, Alexei was the most restless of us all. The man loathes having nothing to do.
I shake my head in wonder. “If I were you, nothing on earth would quiet the noise of being buried in prison for twenty years for a crime I didn’t commit.”
