6. Maxim
6
MAXIM
I’ve just confessed to the one woman I love more than anything in the world that I’m a thing from her nightmares.
Avoiding her gaze and her response to my plea—I can’t bear to see condemnation there—I open the encrypted chat group. It’s named the London Maths Club today. There’s an ongoing argument and it’s a toss-up whether it will be the ridiculous nickname because of that time the kingpin of Canary Wharf made everyone pretend they weren’t mafia bosses, or the official name of the London Mafia Syndicate.
Ignoring the threats of death over pizza toppings, I press to make a voice note. It’s quicker. “The little sister of malishka has gone missing. Urgent.”
It automatically sends when I release my thumb.
In only a few seconds there’s a cascade of messages, mostly creative swear words and a question—where?
I answer with the name of a restaurant in central London where the London Mafia Syndicate have met before. It’s around halfway between Richmond and Greenwich, so it’s on the way back to getting Hayley safe. For all his being part of the core of London, Grant Lambeth is alright, and respects me as a fellow South of the river mafia kingpin, so I’m confident he won’t object to my choice of location.
Starting the car, I check that the portion of my men, who weren’t sent to Payton’s university buildings, sorting the repair and protection of the Love girls’ house or ahead to search the meeting venue, are behind me and drive.
When we walk into the hotel I named, the room is already full of familiar faces.
“Thank you for turning up so quickly.” I’m staggered, actually.
“Children do not go missing in a London run by the London Mafia Syndicate,” grits out Westminster. “How long has she been gone?”
“Uh.” I turn to Hayley. Westminster’s eyes bulge in shock when he takes in my blood-covered girl. “It’s okay, it’s someone else’s blood. Specifically, the son of Feliks Rykov. Beckenham,” I add Rykov’s territory, but I can already see Westminster sucking in a breath and calculating how to deal with this. Beckenham isn’t part of the Maths Club.
“Artem—” Westminster might be powerful, but he’s English as they come, and this needs another Russian.
“I don’t know him well,” Artem, the Russian kingpin of Mayfair interrupts tensely. “He’s fucking crazy, even for Bratva. And his son?—”
“His son isn’t a direct issue anymore,” I say. Given he’s congealing on the floor of a coffee shop.
“He looks better on your clothes than he did alive,” Mayfair says with a dry nod to Hayley, who blinks and edges closer to me. “What do we think happened?”
“Maybe she was snatched from her class?” Hayley says. “She’s not answering her phone.”
“She has a phone at school?” queries Lina, Artem’s wife.
“She’s twenty-one,” Hayley replies, non-plussed. “She’s not?—”
“What?” Westminster scowls at Hayley.
I move nearer and glare back. No one messes with my secret girl.
“She’s not really a child,” Hayley adds.
“You said class?” Westminster frowns.
“A university class,” Hayley replies, a little nervously.
“She’s a university student? Wouldn’t she be out partying?” Lina checks her watch. The day is getting on, and she’s right that plenty of students will be drinking by now.
“False, not all students party,” Anwyn says from beside her husband, Westminster.
“When did you last see her?” Artem asks Hayley.
“This morning.”
“And when would you expect to see her next?”
“This evening,” she says uncertainly. “She’s always good about checking in because?—”
“So she’s missing in the same way my wife is lost in a bookshop when I’m carrying the baby?” Richmond says from behind me and his disrespect makes me see red.
“This isn’t an interrogation,” I snarl, hovering my hand protectively at Hayley’s back.
“Have you tried…” Artem waves his hand vaguely. “Tok snapping her?”
Lina rolls her eyes at her husband. “He means have you?—”
But just then, a man bursts into our meeting room, green eyes blazing.
“I came as soon as I could,” Dimitri, the Bratva kingpin of Rotherhithe, puffs. “I can’t believe they took a baby!”
“No,” I try to interject.
“Are you the parents?” He gestures between Hayley and me.
“No!” Hayley flushes the colour of a tomato.
“Oh.” He pauses. “Adopting is still parenting, you know. My rescue dog?—”
My heart twists. “We’re not together.”
“And it’s my sister,” Hayley says.
His brows shoot up. “Big gap between children, your parents?—”
“She’s not a baby, oh my god, could you stop trying to save everyone, Dimitri?” Lina says, her tone laced with amusement at her husband’s friend.
Dimitri rounds on me. “You said a baby! Malishka. Look.”
He grabs his phone from his pocket, and taps at it. “Little sister baby girl is missing, urgent,” he reads.
And finally, I understand what happened. My hand goes to the back of my neck to massage the strain out.
Fuck. How am I going to explain this?
“The text to speech,” Mayfair says in Russian, a second after I realise.
“It uses AI, and it’s not very fucking intelligent.” In fact, it has caused quite an awkward situation, as it has missed a couple of the words I said, “helpfully” translated one, and mushed them all together into an AI equivalent of the Russian meatloaf I had as a child.
Except, kotlety is more edible than this disaster.
“Malishka,” says Mayfair, glancing at his wife, Lina, who smiles back.
“She’s malishka.” I point at Hayley, who looks faintly alarmed.
“Malishka?” she repeats.
I said that the little sister of my baby girl—as in my love—was missing, and AI wrote it up as the stupidest possible interpretation.
Dimitri flicks his gaze between Hayley and me and there’s dawning realisation on his face.
“There was an AI translation mistake, it seems,” Mayfair says with a smirk.
“AI hallucinated the baby bit?” Hayley asks.
“Yeah,” I cut in before anyone can tell her that I call her my baby girl. A pet name for a girlfriend or wife… When she isn’t either.
Yet.
“In Westminster we do not believe that a woman’s worth decreases as she increases with age.” Westminster rallies. “We care about missing people.”
“Fucking hell, Westminster, get off your high horse,” Dimitri grumbles. “We were just trying to establish her general height, and whether to lure her with a trail of board books and milk or sprayed edge romantasy special editions and glasses of wine.”
Did I think these idiots could help? Good thing that my Greenwich men are already searching.
Richmond steps forward, having been at the back of the conversation so far, and gives Westminster a withering look. His slight Italian accent is stronger right now because of his irritation. “This is my search, since she went missing from my territory.”
“How do you know?” demands Westminster. “Do you have proof that she was snatched from Richmond? No,” he answers his own question. “So don’t be greedy, let everyone help.”
Richmond starts to reply as King’s Cross grumbles that this is his remit, and Artem and Dimitri both object.
This is beyond a joke.
“Enough!” I roar.
Every eye swivels to me. “You’re going to listen to her.” I nod towards Hayley. “Then we’re going to find Payton Love.”