Chapter 12
12
TOMASZ
T he Georgian sun bores down on us the entire drive to the coast. It’s never this hot in September, and as we drive up the curving hillside road, the cooler air does nothing. The ruins of an old watchtower rise ahead of us, breaking up the green and blue of the surroundings.
“Watch your back,” Anton, my driver and bodyguard, tells me when we get out of the car. “The Sarapovs will have their cars on the other side.”
“Where are the men?” Pushing my rolled sleeves up to my elbows, I inspect our surroundings.
It’s quiet with only the distant hum of the ocean and rustle of the trees peppered towards the shade of the crumbling stones. Shaking out my wrist, I rotate my watch before checking the time again.
“Mikheil is late.”
“I told you,” he bites out quietly while opening his suit jacket to inspect his holstered weapon is at the ready. “I don’t trust the Georgian cunts to stick to their word.”
“In that case, I hope your men are good to go.”
Tapping a message out on his phone, he nods at my remark. Today is the beginning of discussions to a truce. We allow the Sarapovs to move their product through our port, and they aid us in moving ours through theirs. Moving artillery to the Middle East through them is a lot more economic than having to bribe every fucking politician and their friends. It also diverts our shipments away from the Romanian bastards to avoid starting an unnecessary war. One we would crush them with, but that would put us right in the middle of the Interpol operation that’s vying for them. Another reason to divert our route of business.
This is a favour for a favour that could make both our clan and the Sarapovs greater. More money and more power that would make the Vassily name more than just a feared whisper. Although, I still believe that the only way to make it roar is to take the Sarapovs out of the picture completely and take over their operations. If my father hadn’t pinned the next shipment on this deal pulling through, we would be here with very different intentions.
“We’re surrounded,” Anton murmurs under his breath. “Take the gun and be ready.”
“Are you scared?” I pause halfway up to the tower.
Anton gives me that pissed-off look that tells me his SVR hunch is on high alarm. The man is always one step ahead, and it’s one reason I trust him. I wasn’t sure about his history with the Russian secret service when my father appointed him to be my personal detail. Over the last fifteen years, we’ve found ourselves in some precarious situations that I don’t think I would’ve made it out of without him at my side. Anton is one of the very few people that has earned my respect.
“I’ve told you before that caution isn’t the same as fear. Caution prepares you?—”
“Yes, yes…caution saves my life.”
“Take the weapon.” Holding his semi-automatic pistol towards me, Anton side-glances around us.
“Do your job,” I retort, ignoring the proffered gun and starting up the path again, with him following close behind me.
“You remember the easy exit I showed you on the map?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” With a deep breath, he adds, “There’s a boat at the bottom, and the path down the east side is the shortest. It’s also in open view, so we know the Sarapovs are too chickenshit to pursue down that route.”
“Tell my father that,” I laugh over my shoulder at him.
“Tell your father what?”
“That the Suck-a-Cocks are chickenshits.”
“Great.” He rolls his eyes at me. “What are you? Twelve?”
“I wondered why you never gave me a birthday card. Now I know why.”
“Focus, Tomasz, you have enough distractions already. You don’t need the jokes too.” Falling into step with me, he holds my stare. “Keep your head in the game.”
“I’m not your son, Anton.” I think that losing his child is what’s made him as good as he is. The fact that my father gave him a way of getting justice for his loss makes him loyal.
With a nod and deep inhale, he tells me as he gestures down himself, “You’re too old to come from this.”
Although we’re both laughing, it’s hard not to be hyperaware of our surroundings and the reason we’re here.
“Back to business.” He clears his throat, sobering his mirth. “Anything goes down and you follow the east path to the boat. I have men watching it from every angle.”
We reach the top of the hill, scouting every shadow before we stand, overlooking the vista of black sea closest to the east path. The blue is brilliant, and the longer I stare at it, the more I think of her. Red.
The last week has been filled with thoughts of her. Everywhere I look, there’s something to remind me of her eyes or her voice. Even the colour of her skin and the dust of her freckles. She’s fucking everywhere.
The heat of her body still hums on my fingertips, even after all this time. Nine days of forcing myself to focus on nothing but the business, and I can still feel the squeeze of her cunt around my cock. So tight. So hot. Completely overwhelming.
You’re not the first man to fuck me…
Her words refuse to fade as I take a deep breath and focus back on why I’m here right now, allowing the chop of the helicopter drawing closer to pull me from my errant thoughts. When I look at Anton, he tells me, “Every fucking angle.”
* * *
It’s a blatant sign of disrespect to turn up late, but a no-show…well, that’s the shit that completely undermines our power. I’m not sure what game the Sarapovs are playing, and it doesn’t matter, because they’ve ruined any chance of making it out alive now.
“It makes little sense for Mikheil to bail like that. Especially given his men were there,” I tell Anton as he continues flicking through his phone. “It’s his drug shipments that have been hit harder. The Romanian cunts have no use for our weapons.”
They wouldn’t know what to do with them. They’re just making our life harder, seeing as their livestock is losing value to ours. Now that Interpol is looking into them, it’s a lot harder for them to move their girls, and no one in their right mind would want to take a punt on their auctions right now.
“Maybe…” He blows out a breath.
“Am I boring you?”
“No, you’re just ruining my dinner,” Anton groans, picking a fry off the plate in front of him as he continues, focused on his phone. “I’m looking into it, okay? You need to be focusing on the meeting with the English tomorrow and what you’re going to tell him about the girl.”
Throwing back what’s left of my vodka, I pace the front of the fireplace again. There’s too much going on in my head for me to sit back and relax. The more I pace, the hotter my anger burns, licking at my insides with a frustration that I can’t ignore. My muscles tighten until I’m physically shaking, and my vision frays until all I see is red.
Red.
The flicker of the flames has my hands tightening around my empty glass with the memory of her warm flesh buzzing on my fingertips.
“Bring her to me.”
“What?” he laughs, finally looking up from his phone. “It’s the middle of the night, and we’re heading out first thing in the morning.”
“I want the girl, Anton.”
“Unwant her, then.” The look he gives me is grave, not dissimilar to the one he reserves for when shit gets fatally dangerous. “Niko was right—you’re getting attached, and this thing…this road you’re going down is only going to end one way. It’s my job to protect you, Tomasz, and I won’t fail.”
“Good.” I nod at him, pouring another measure of vodka. It’s not as sweet and warm as ours. The sharpness of the alcohol overwhelms the sweetness, and the viscosity is too watery, but it will do for tonight. Taking another sip, I tell him, “Now bring me the girl.”
“If we move her right now, it could complicate things. The child isn’t like the other girls.”
“She’s not a child,” I snap at him, my chest tightening at his remark.
Red is many things that are bad for me, but a child isn’t one of them. She’s young. Younger than my thirty-two years, but her fire more than makes up for that. Everything I know about her makes her an old soul.
“Next to you, thegirl is a baby.”
“One that could probably take out half of your men.”
As though he appreciates my point, he nods his head from side to side in consideration of whatever is going through his head. Eating another fry, he taps something into his phone before he tells me, “If they’re watching out for her movements, you’re risking everything your father has done with the English. You have someone on the inside that can open doors and make life easier…”
“And if or when a door closes, a window opens, Anton.”
“At what cost?”
“If they wanted her back, they would’ve come for her already. Red is disposable to them.”
“She should be disposable to you.”
“So should you, Anton. I might trust you enough to give you freedom of speech and opinion, but you are still part of the payroll. Remember that as you send for her.”
Throwing back the rest of my drink, I head for the bedroom. The thrum of my heart mutes the noise of my thoughts. After I shower, I pull my laptop out and go back to studying her life before me. There’s not much, and the more I dig into her, the more I realise that the reason they sent her for me is that her public profile is low. Apart from event photos, there isn’t anything else on her. No social profiles. Nothing really. She could be a ghost.
They chose her because they could easily brush her under the carpet, and the conclusion makes my blood boil. It’s a fucking insult that they would send a child to take care of their business.
Do they really think that I’d be that easily incapacitated?
But she’s not a child.
No, she’s not , I scoff at my thought because to me, Red is all woman. Smart and cunning, she’s a dangerous beauty that the beast in me can’t resist.
Swiping through the screens, I go back to the photos dated back to the day I took her from the club. Red’s standing on the sidelines of a field watching the polo game. She looks pensive. Her expression seems torn, or maybe even mournful. In a crowd of people, she stands out with her fiery hair, and yet she seems invisible to all of them.
How is it possible?
How can nobody be as transfixed by her as I am now, simply staring at my screen?
Scrolling down the page, I pause at the last photo of her standing in the rain with a punk from the brotherhood. A lord, or so the caption tells me, as I force my eyes to deviate from the way her hand moulds to his face, body pressed to his in her soaked black dress while he kisses her.
Sucking my lip into my mouth, I lick over it until the taste of her sings on my tongue. Nine days and my dick still throbs at the whisper of her tang. My muscles coil tight while my stomach twists. The longer I stare at the photo on the screen, the stronger the urge to bring her to her knees becomes. To rip all that affection that softens her eyes as she looks up at the bastard from her.
Red loves him. The thought is bitter, making my teeth grind together in disgust and aggravation. The girl loves and hopes, pining after another.
That needs to end. As I swipe to the next screen to the photos from her father’s party, I know exactly how to do it. Her spirit might be resilient, but we’ll see how she fares when I obliterate her heart and her love.