5. Hayley
5
HAYLEY
Everything is clouded by disbelief. The tears are drying, a little tight from the salt, on my cheeks.
My kind, gentle giant of a boss just shot five men in cold blood.
For me.
He pulls the car he’s put me into—even clipping my seatbelt—onto the road and I blink.
“I have to go to Payton.” That much is clear, despite everything. I have to check up on my baby sister.
“Absolutely not,” glancing over, he levels a hard, glittering look at me that’s as utterly unfamiliar as him taking a gun and using it with the ease of a man who has used it many times. And he seems unconcerned by killing.
At all. That should scare me, but instead, my crazy body thrills.
“Please.”
Maxim’s brows lower and he just shakes his head, “I’ll send?—”
“She’s my little sister!” Desperation unclogs my brain, sharp and violent. “I’ll go alone if I have to.”
He doesn’t reply.
Logically, I know that the person who is the greatest threat to Payton is lying on the floor of the café. But why couldn’t he find her? He’s her boyfriend, it makes no sense? She would either be at uni, or at home. Sometimes out with her friends at a pub for a couple of hours, but she never goes off without telling me where she is and when she expects to be home. Not after how Taylor went missing.
I grab for the door handle and a big hand shoots out and slaps me down.
Maxim’s tattooed, hair-dusted knuckles are white as he grips my forearm.
“Fine.” Maxim lets out the grumble of a pained animal as he slowly releases me. “I’ll take you.”
“Our house.” I reel off the address, and Maxim nods, taking a turn like he’s a cab driver who knows his way to every street in London.
Maybe he does.
Seconds later, he’s accelerating so hard that I’m drawn back into my seat and speaking in rapid-fire Russian. It takes me a moment to realise that he’s on the phone to someone.
I’m still processing everything that’s happened when we pull up outside the tiny Victorian red brick house that I share with Payton. It’s an old worker’s cottage, just a kitchen and a living room downstairs, and two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, and a little courtyard garden at the back.
It’s a quiet residential street, lined with parked cars down each side and one lane down the middle. I don’t usually take any note of the vehicles since neither Payton nor I drive—we couldn’t afford to even if we wanted—but there’s something off.
Maxim doesn’t bother with the lack of parking space, and when another large black car pulls up behind us, and a third comes down and stops bumper to bumper with us. And then I notice that down the road there are a dozen more black SUVs.
“Do you have your house key?” He holds out his hand.
I shake my head. “I left it…”
My tummy drops.
Shit.
“The café! We didn’t lock up!”
“Doesn’t matter,” he says abruptly. “Stay here.”
Without waiting to hear my stuttering reply, he gets out and slams the door. Around us, the black cars all have their doors open, and Maxim, my sweet bear of a boss, rattles off orders in Russian while striding towards my house.
Wait. No. That’s my home. I tug at the door handle, but it immediately smacks into a solid object. A man.
I look up at a man in a suit.
“Hi, sorry…” I call to him.
“Nyet,” he says simply, and firmly pushes the door closed again. I gulp.
This is crazy. The blood that covered me earlier is beginning to dry and go a bit crispy, but just as a freak-out is rising in my throat from noticing that, a bang comes from my little house, and suit-clad men stream in, guns raised.
Into a house with my sister potentially inside!
I glance around, thinking of sliding over the centre console and getting out of the driver’s side, but there’s a man there too.
It’s only then that I remember I have my phone in my pocket. I grab it out, and smash the dial button for Payton as I look out of the window.
The house is silent, though there are a lot of curtains twitching at the neighbours’ windows. I sink down in the seat. Crap. We’re going to have to move, because my landlord—the estate company of the kingpin of Richmond, no less—will be furious about the broken door.
It rings, and rings. And when it times out, I call her again.
Nothing.
I tap in a message, just saying “Where are you?” but it doesn’t even flag as delivered. And that’s when my chest really tightens with fear, and the weight of all my responsibilities.
More harsh words in Russian make me look up, and Maxim slips back into the driver’s seat. “She’s not there, and I don’t think anyone else was in there before us. My men will fix your door.” He spots my phone in my hand. “Find anything?”
I shake my head.
What does he mean by “his men”?
“Okay, we’ll meet some people who can help.”
“Shouldn’t we go back and lock the café?” I put my life on the line saving that money, and then left it open to be robbed. I’m a twit.
“I don’t care.” He shakes his head, and the black cars around us start up, one by one, except the one parked closest to my house. Two men remain standing outside, as though on guard.
“It does to me.” I’m the café manager, and this is negligence. I rub my palm over my face. Will I have to pay back everything that’s been stolen? What about the damage?
I know this is a displacement worry. Something I can control when my sister has gone missing.
My second sister. My stomach lurches uncomfortably.
I should go to the police, right now. But then I remember the five dead men in the café, and flick my gaze across to my boss.
“Why are you so worried about the café’s takings?” He shakes his head, baffled. “And come to think of it, why didn’t you immediately give them the cash? They could have killed you over money . That was stupid, Hayley.”
The insult stings. “I was looking out for your business interests,” I say in a small voice. And because if I can’t look after my family, at least I can try to be a good café manager. “Because I know the café isn’t profitable.”
And I don’t want to be unemployed because the café I manage gets closed down. Then I wouldn’t see Maxim again.
“Oh no.” He sighs. “No malishka. You have it totally wrong.”
“Can we go and lock up?” I insist.
He levels a flat look at me as he plucks out his phone. It’s answered immediately. “I need you to shut a Greenwich café for me, the one near—da, that one—and do the daily accounts while you’re at it. And clean the floor.”
This is all very odd.
“Yeah. I know no one would dare go in. Just do it. Now.” Hanging up, he says. “One of my men is coming to sort everything.”
“Thank you,” I reply in a small voice. That makes me feel slightly less out of control.
“What on earth makes you think that?” he grits out.
“What?”
“That a billionaire needs the…” He waves one hand. “Whatever the amount is the café takes every day.”
Another wave of shock rolls through me. A billionaire?
“The café isn’t making money,” I say. “Some days I think it only just breaks even.”
Maxim shoots me a wry look. “It consistently makes a loss.”
As I thought. “It’s really nice of you to run a café that serves good food at such a low price, but?—”
“It’s a front for my mafia work to launder money and collect intelligence.”
It’s another blow of surprise. “What?”
“I’m the mafia boss of Greenwich. This is what we do.”
My jaw hangs open. My boss is a billionaire kingpin.
That… Makes a lot of things make sense.
“So you don’t need the money,” I whisper.
“Not in the slightest.”
“That’s why you take cash and discourage using cards?”
His head tilts patiently. “There’s software that increases the value of every transaction for tax purposes, but retains the same amount that’s paid by the customer.”
“I didn’t know,” I say stupidly. I genuinely had no idea.
“Evidently.”
“Sorry.” Behind us there’s a scuffle over the fact we’re still blocking the road, as though Maxim owns it. Which I suppose, as a Bratva boss, he does, even though we’re in a rival territory.
“Just promise me,” he says softly.
“What?” I have to restrain myself from replying, “Anything”. Because I’m apparently as observant as a custard pie, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind to the fact I should be scared of this man. Even though I’m not.
“Never put yourself at risk again.” His silver eyes have an intensity I haven’t seen before.
Maxim Zaitsev is not the sweet bear he has seemed since we first met. He’s a Russian Bratva boss. He’s a killer.
“Never, ever over money,” he continues, his voice low and earnest. “You need money? Protection? Help? Anything. You come to me .”
This man is a monster.
What does it say about me that I still adore him? Maybe even more.