Chapter 50 Alison
ALISON
Back at the mansion, the Aristovs and I gathered in the dining room again. I looked at Gennadiy, worried. He’d been silent, driving home. I’d asked a few times if he wanted to talk about Yakov, but he’d shaken his head.
“We don’t have to do this right now,” I whispered. “You just lost a friend.”
Gennadiy frowned and glanced around the table. “We learn to...compartmentalize,” he told me. The men all nodded. Bronwyn and I stared at each other, open-mouthed.
“Grushin must be watching us,” said Gennadiy. “He must have tailed us from here, figured out we were going to the docks, and sent someone ahead of us.”
“I didn’t see anyone following us,” I mumbled.
I thought hard for a moment. “Shit!” Everyone looked at me.
“It’s the FBI,” I groaned. “We put GPS trackers on your cars months ago.” I looked at Gennadiy.
“That’s how I always knew where to find you.
It’s how I knew where the money drop was, even when you thought you’d shaken off your tail.
” I sighed. “And thanks to Grushin’s mole in the FBI, if they know where we are, he does too. ”
Radimir slammed his fist on the table, making everyone jump. “Chertovski FBI!” He glared at me.
Next to me, Gennadiy started to rise in his seat. I grabbed his shoulder. The last thing I wanted was the two of them fighting. “I’m sorry,” I told Radimir solemnly. “I should have thought of it sooner.” Then maybe Yakov would still be alive, I added silently, my stomach twisting in guilt.
Radimir sighed and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s been...a long day.” But I could tell he still didn’t fully trust me.
Gennadiy slowly sat back down. “I’ll reach out to Yakov’s woman in Seattle and…
let her know. And I’ll make sure she and her daughter are looked after.
” The others nodded in agreement. Gennadiy’s face was a mask of pain: he’d lost his best friend, the casino had been shut down, and Grushin was gunning for him and his family.
He hadn’t slept in two days, and it was nearly one in the morning. The poor man was broken.
Now that I was still and safe, what happened in Yakov’s office was starting to sink in. When Gennadiy pushed in front of me, he’d been ready to die for me, without thought, without question.
Something that had been out on the periphery, ever since the strip club, slid into place in my soul and engaged, filling me with a fierce, warm glow.
My breath trembled. I felt protected. I hadn’t realized it, but I’d been searching for that feeling ever since the foster home, ever since my parents died.
I felt myself frown, determined. My man was hurting. And I was going to do whatever it took to help him.
“Putting it all together,” said Bronwyn, “what do we know?” She counted off points on her fingers.
“Grushin faked his own death and came to the US. He set up some sort of business here in Chicago, something that’s making millions every week.
He’s smuggling something in from Russia to Canada and then across Lake Michigan to Chicago, using the information he blackmailed out of Yakov to avoid the Coast Guard patrols. ”
“But we don’t know what he’s smuggling,” said Radimir. “It can’t be drugs, not unless he’s bringing them in by the ton, and we would have noticed that, street prices would have plummeted.”
“Guns?” asked Valentin.
“Still wouldn’t make that sort of money,” said Gennadiy. “Not unless it’s top-secret military stuff. We know it’s something bad. Something the public will demand is stopped if we expose it.”
“We only know when one shipment is coming in,” said Bronwyn. “Midnight, tomorrow night. That’s our only chance to find out what’s going on. And we’ve got no idea where the boat’s delivering to. There are, what, twenty, thirty miles of shoreline? How do we find it?”
I could feel the worry from all of them.
Grushin was threatening their entire empire, as well as their lives.
And the more they worried, the more pressure it piled on Gennadiy.
At the heart of all this was whatever illegal operation Grushin was running on the Aristov’s territory, and that meant, however much the other Aristovs helped, Gennadiy felt this whole thing was his responsibility.
It was too much pressure for one person, especially when he was grieving.
I looked around the room. The Aristovs were all silent, despondent. Out of their depth. Mysteries weren’t their world.
They were mine.
I stood up. Five heads turned towards me. “I know how to find it,” I told them. “We’ll stop Grushin the same way I was going to stop you. Police work.” Then I looked at Gennadiy. “I’ll start first thing. But right now...it’s time to sleep.”
The words didn’t sound right, coming out of my mouth. Me? Put something off until tomorrow?
But for the first time, there was something more important than solving the mystery. I had someone to take care of.
I took Gennadiy’s hand and stepped back from the table. He stared at me, then looked at his family, then back to me. His eyes flared with frustration. “You sleep. I need to work.”
He turned away from me, and my stomach lurched. Am I doing the wrong thing? I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of his Pakhan. But then I saw Bronwyn giving me a big, approving nod, and I tugged his hand. “No. Gennadiy Aristov, you need to sleep.”
He turned to me again, and this time his eyes went wide in shock, and just a bit of arrogant horror. How dare she? He glared, just like he had so many times when we were enemies...and I glared right back at him.
He softened...and melted. Just like I’d seen Radimir do with Bronwyn. He rose from the table and allowed me to tow him out of the room.
“What are you…where are we going?” he muttered in the hallway, cranky and confused and resigned, all at the same time.
“To the kitchen,” I told him, and marched in there. I opened the pantry and rooted around for the bottle I’d seen in there, keeping hold of him with my other hand to make sure he didn’t escape. “Okay! Now upstairs!”
He sighed, staring down at me. I was comically small, next to him, and I knew I couldn’t drag him if he decided to stay put. But I lifted my chin, defiant...and he nodded and fell into step beside me.
I led him up to the top floor, to his bedroom.
I turned on just a single light by the bed, so the room was mostly shadow.
Without words, I pushed his suit jacket off his shoulders and began unbuttoning his shirt.
His breathing became husky. When he was topless, I knelt in front of him and helped him slip off his shoes and socks, then unbuckled his belt.
I heard him inhale tightly, and I saw his cock twitch through his pants.
I shoved them down, along with his boxers, and now he growled.
I looked up at him. “Don’t get excited,” I said dryly. “That isn’t what I’ve got in mind.”
He frowned down at me, his cock half hard and rising.
But I stood and pushed at him, guiding him into his bathroom and then into the walk-in shower.
I turned on the spray and pushed him in.
Then I stripped off my own clothes and followed him.
When he realized I was naked, too, he tried to grab me, but I slipped out of his hands and started washing him, instead, slicking my hands over his shoulders, his back, his chest, working my way down his body.
His cock rose more every time my body brushed against his, but eventually I got him to stand still and be tended to.
When I turned off the water, he looked..
.maybe five percent more relaxed than he had been. Well, it’s a start.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked me as I toweled him dry.
“Because you’re under unbelievable pressure, you just lost a friend, and you haven’t slept in two days. Because I know what it’s like to think you can solve everything by working harder. Sometimes you need someone to tell you to stop.”
“You know this because you had someone like that?”
“No,” I said. “Because I didn’t.”
He looked down at me and scowled, and I felt his protective anger lift me like a wave. I nearly melted right there, but I had a job to do. I pointed. “Lie down on the bed, on your front.”
He reluctantly lay down. I pulled on a bathrobe so I didn’t keep distracting him with my nakedness, grabbed the bottle of almond oil I’d taken from the kitchen, and climbed onto the bed next to him.
I was used to him towering over me when we were standing up, but he wasn’t any smaller lying down.
As I shuffled over and straddled him, I felt like a bird hopping around on the back of a rhino.
My eyes roved over the contours of his back, with its twisting, dark tattoos, then down over the ass I’d admired so many times as I’d followed him around, hard and loaded with power.
Lower down, on his right calf, I saw something I hadn’t noticed before, a raised scar, maybe from a bullet. So that’s why he favors his other leg.
I put my hands on his shoulders and then poured a little almond oil over the back of my hand: a little trick to help heat the oil before it touched his skin.
I smoothed the oil over the globes of his shoulders until they shone, then started massaging him.
He cocked his head curiously, then closed his eyes.
His muscles were like tire rubber, barely giving at all.
I went to work, pressing my thumbs deep as I pulled with my fingers, kneading him like dough.
As I dug deeper, I started to find the knots and work each one free.
The room went quiet except for our breathing.
He’d tense under me, then grunt as I bore down on the knot, then sigh as the hard fibers melted to taffy.
“Blyat’. Ty obuchen koldovstvu, zhenshchina. ” he muttered at last.
“What does that mean?”
“You’re schooled in witchcraft, woman.”
I continued all the way down his back, helping work the tension out of him. “Now roll over on your back,” I told him.
He rolled over, and I started on the fronts of his shoulders.
Now we were staring into each other’s eyes, and it was intimate.
..but not sexual, even if his eyes did keep dropping to the neck of my robe.
This was about helping him, healing him.
I moved down to his pecs, smoothing my hands over the wide slabs of his muscles and working the tension loose.
I could feel his body changing, like a coiled spring slowly unwinding.
His breathing slowed and eased, becoming deeper and more regular.
He was relaxing, letting go. And then I started to hear a hitch in his breathing, a judder where there’d been smoothness. Things were coming to the surface.
I kept going, kneading the big knots and then the small knots and then the tiny ones, breaking down the walls all his tension had put up. And then…
“Yakov always remembered my birthday,” he said. “Even though I never remembered his. He bought me these dumb fucking gifts. A hat that holds beer cans. A backscratcher.”
I didn’t say anything, just kept going. My job was just to help him get it out.
“Before I opened the casino, I had to do research.” His voice was rough with pain.
“Yakov and I took a car, and we drove all the way to Vegas. Three days in a car with him, and then back again! And a week of getting drunk every night and losing all our money. I fell in the pool and ruined my suit.” He paused. “Best week of my life.”
I was just smoothing my hands over him, now, calming him as the enormity of the loss hit him.
“He was always pleased to see me, you know?” Gennadiy whispered. “He was always—”
He closed his eyes, and I threw my arms around his neck and pressed myself close. I held him like that for a long time, his head on my shoulder.
“Thank you,” he managed.
I nodded. I knew it wasn’t over: he’d be grieving for a long time. But at least I’d helped him start.
Even now, though, I could feel that he hadn’t let go all the way. Touching him like this, I felt so close to him, so entirely in tune with him, that I could feel the anger, rushing like a river, just under the surface.
I knew what it was like to feel that non-stop.
To have it driving you, demanding that you keep working, keep pushing.
The difference was, I’d found something to stop mine: him.
I hadn’t been aware of it until now, but my anger had dropped away when I’d felt the warmth of his protection.
I’d been angry at the world for taking my parents and leaving me alone, but I wasn’t alone anymore.
Gennadiy’s anger was still there, and still building every day.
“Why do you carry all this...rage?” I whispered.
Any other time, I think he would have pushed the question away or changed the subject. But right then, with us staring at each other in that safe, silent room, it was impossible to lie. “Because it protects me from something worse,” he said softly.
I stared down into his eyes, feeling my heart cracking. He wanted to tell me. He just couldn’t.
I lay down, putting my head on his chest, and cuddled in beside him. I could already hear his breathing changing. He would sleep, now, and that was good.
But—my stomach knotted—unless he let me help him, I wasn’t sure I could save him.