Chapter 2
LUKE
“I’ve got a job for you, Macarthur.” Makari Tereschenko’s clipped British accent crackles from my phone, sending a familiar thrill through my veins.
“Of course you do.” I lean on my balcony railing, staring at the slow-moving Thames. “I imagine it involves heat, sand, and a lot of fuckers trying to kill me?”
“Actually, no. Not this time. Or at least, not the heat and sand part.” Mak sounds as amused as ever, the prick. I’ve been private contracting for him ever since I left the SAS several years ago, and never once, even when the bullets are flying, have I seen him even mildly ruffled.
“Not the heat and sand part, huh?” I take a mouthful of Scotch, more to calm the sudden, fierce rush of adrenaline than because I actually crave the alcohol.
I know what’s coming.
A bratva contract.
Part of me wants it more than I care to admit, even to myself.
The smarter part is telling me to run a thousand miles in the opposite direction, back to the heat, sand, and wars that everyone understands.
I don’t listen, of course.
I never have.
“When?” I say instead.
He chuckles. “London starting to bore you, is it, Luke?”
“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, Mak.”
“If you’re quoting Samuel Johnson, then you’ve definitely got too much time on your hands.
But since the job in question is actually in London, I’m glad you take his view.
” Mak pauses long enough for me to hear distant gunfire in the background.
“I’ll explain more when I get back to town,” he goes on.
“Just making sure your calendar is clear for the next few months.”
I can’t help but smile. “You’re not going to tell me anything else about the job?”
“Can’t. I don’t have a brief yet.”
My smile widens. “So you’re calling from some desert shithole to make sure I’m free to take a contract that doesn’t even exist?”
“I don’t need a brief to know you’re the best man for the job. You remember that scam farm in Myanmar eighteen months ago?”
My smile vanishes. “Of course I remember.”
I doubt I’ll ever forget the haunted faces of the people we rescued from the heavily guarded compound deep in the Myanmar jungle. Several thousand people—men and women, boys and girls—all severely traumatized after months, sometimes years, of captivity.
That was the second contract I took for Mak which involved working with the Russian bratva. There have been a few more since then. I wish I could say that my experiences with organized crime have deterred me from having any further involvement.
Unfortunately, so far, they’ve been the most satisfying jobs I’ve worked.
Even worse, the men involved have become friends.
Every contract I take with them pulls me further into their shadowy world. I promise myself each time that this contract will be the last.
And yet you keep taking these contracts.
“Didn’t you say this job is in London?” I ignore the inner voice.
“That’s where Zinaida’s organization is based, yes. But you know her from the Myanmar job. By name, at least. She took care of the girls we rescued.”
Zinaida Melikov.
I never actually met her, but her team was on the ground when we went into the Myanmar scam farm, and I know it was Zinaida’s charitable foundation that rehabilitated the women we rescued.
“Is this more of the same work?” I can feel my whole body tense in anticipation. This is why I find these contracts so damned appealing: they involve work I actually care about doing.
The bratva might be the so-called bad guys, but I’ve done more truly good work in their employ than I ever did fighting who the British SAS told me was my enemy.
“Let’s just say I suspect that our client’s activities in places like Myanmar have put a target on her back,” Mak says. “One I’d like to see removed.”
I grimace. “I don’t do personal protection, Mak. You know that. If it’s a bodyguard you need, use one of your own people.”
“I need you, Luke.” His tone is unusually somber. “I know Zinaida. If she’s asking for help, then she doesn’t need dumb muscle. She needs someone to have her back. And in her world, that’s no small ask.”
He pauses, waiting. When I don’t answer, he goes on.
“At least meet her before you say no. I’m catching up with Roman and Dimitry next week.
Come and have a drink at the Quartier, Zinaida’s London club.
It’s a members-only place which officially doesn’t exist, and quite the experience, I assure you.
” There’s just enough amusement in his tone to intrigue me.
Motherfucker.
I grip the phone hard, willing myself to tell him to go to hell.
The problem being, of course, that it’s far too tempting an invitation to turn down. Which Mak, the prick, knows all too well.
A drink with Mak, Roman Borovsky, and Dimitry Volkov?
In a members-only club that officially doesn’t exist?
One described as an experience by Mak, of all people—who is the closest thing to a Regency-era rake the modern world can produce?
At the very least, the night will definitely be what my Irish mate Paddy would call a damn good craic.
“I’m not making any promises, Mak.”
“Of course not, old boy,” he says airily, but I can smell his triumph down the bloody phone line. “You’ll need a tux, Luke. And I don’t mean that store-bought abomination you recycle whenever I make you go to something formal.”
I roll my eyes. “I thought the bratva were criminals, not accountants.”
He chuckles. “When you deal in the kind of money we do, it pays to be both, my friend. I’ll send you the details of my tailor right now.”
“Send me the address of this club while you’re at it. I’d like to get a look at what we’re dealing with.”
“Even better.” Mak sounds positively elated. “I should warn you, however, that I set up the security personally, so good luck getting anywhere near it.”
“Oh, is that right?” I mentally curse my inability to resist his subtle challenge.
“Have fun, Captain Macarthur.”
Smug bastard.
A particularly loud bang goes off in the background on Mak’s end of the call. “I’ll be in touch,” he says, then abruptly cuts the line.
I finish my Scotch and stare at the lights reflecting off the dark water, my heart still electric in my chest.
I should have said no.
My phone buzzes with a link to an encrypted file. I go inside, pour another, very large Scotch, and open the message on my laptop.
Fucking Mak.
The prick hasn’t just sent me an address and the details of his tailor.
He’s sent me a comprehensive client profile.
The brief doesn’t mention anything about the job. But it takes little more than twenty minutes before I know as much about Zinaida Melikov as anyone alive.
And a lot of it doesn’t make for pretty reading.
At the tender age of twelve, Zinaida was already the headline act in her father’s Brixton strip club, a dive notorious for its edgy back-room S&M shows featuring a whip-wielding Oleg Melikov and caged extremely young girls, usually illegal immigrants.
Oleg “the Whip” ran a small bratva clan barely worthy of the name, a few strip clubs and brothels, and a loose affiliation of vicious criminals who specialized in beatings for hire.
When Zinaida was sixteen, the strip club burned to the ground, taking Oleg with it. She is widely believed to have killed him with her own hands before lighting the fire herself.
And not just killed.
According to the file, Zinaida strung Oleg up in his own club, whipped him until he was unrecognizable, then cut off his genitalia and stuffed them in his mouth before using his own whip to strangle him.
A month after she collected the insurance money on the bar, she started her own burlesque club, Pigalle, taking most of her father’s girls with her.
Within two years Zinaida had expanded into elite back-room gambling.
It took her less than five years to make Pigalle the hottest name in town, which was when she bought an abandoned theater in the West End and launched Pigalle Soho, a members-only men’s club with a clientele list that is as eclectic as it is exclusive.
Pigalle Mayfair, her club for women, followed soon after, with commensurate success.
An ex–British prime minister, the chief commissioner of Scotland Yard, and several high-profile entrepreneurs are all rumored to be members.
So secretive most people don’t even know the address, Pigalle Mayfair includes an underground hammam built atop ancient Roman baths, a luxurious day spa, and private dining and gambling rooms.
The real story, however, according to Mak’s brief, is the elite, highly secretive premises known as the Quartier.
And going by the picture he paints, Zinaida might have left her father’s strip club far behind, but it seems she drew an important lesson from those days: those in power will always pay for what they believe is forbidden.
If the Pigalle gaming rooms are for bureaucrats and CEOs, Mak writes, then the Quartier, hidden in the Soho theater behind Pigalle’s facade, is for heads of state and oligarchs.
It’s where the heads of the world’s biggest crime syndicates meet with the presidents of the same countries in which they operate. Where spies talk to diplomats and hedge fund owners bargain with arms dealers. Where women and men are united by money, power, and debauchery.
Inside the Quartier, Mak ends, reputations are made and destroyed overnight, deals brokered which can save an entire country—or take it down.
Coming from a man known for his brevity, such editorializing is an indication of how seriously Mak regards Zinaida’s flagship club. He’s attached a note reminding me that it is the Quartier where we will be meeting Roman and Dimitry for that drink.
Fucker knows me way too well.
He also adds that entry without him will be impossible.
Ha. I smile to myself. We’ll see about that.
According to the file, memberships to the Quartier open up once a year, when select members of Pigalle’s clubs receive a gold-embossed black invitation to the exclusive Winter Masquerade Ball.
The most coveted and exclusive tickets in all of London, they’re rumored to start at over a million pounds per head.
The ball is as famous for those who have not made the invitation list as for those who are rumored to be on it. The next ball is in two months’ time.
Zinaida herself is as secretive and elusive as her client list. She doesn’t do profile pieces or media of any kind, and even paparazzi shots of her are few and far between.
Her fact sheet informs me she’s only five feet, four inches tall and weighs 120 pounds.
She’s tiny.
Curious, I click on the attached photographs.
Oh. Fuck.
I turn the glass of Scotch mindlessly on the table, its contents suddenly forgotten.
She’s a goddamn smokeshow.
White-blonde hair in an immaculate French roll.
Flawless porcelain skin. Slavic cheekbones and carved lips painted vivid scarlet.
She’s nearly always wearing enormous black sunglasses that hide her eyes.
In the few shots without them, her brilliant sapphire-blue eyes stare directly at the camera with a disconcertingly opaque expression.
I’ve seen eyes like that before.
Usually set into the faces of men who’ve seen too much and killed too often.
And to my surprise, given the blood-soaked life I’ve led, I find it oddly unsettling to see them in the face of a woman.
No woman should have to endure the kind of horror that causes eyes like that.
From the distant reaches of my mind comes a snatch of a conversation between a couple of the bratva men back in Myanmar, when they learned it was Zinaida who was waiting in Thailand to take charge of the girls we were going to rescue.
Zinaida Melikov? Bryce had asked. You mean the psychopath?
Some long-forgotten sensation crawls along my spine, one I haven’t felt since I was a teenager standing in front of my sister Liana, facing down our bastard of a stepfather.
“She needs someone to have her back.”
Mak’s words echo uncomfortably in my mind.
I don’t believe Zinaida Melikov is a psychopath.
The same unerring instinct that’s made me a lethal military asset makes me certain that the only psychopath in this story was Oleg, Zinaida’s father.
The man who locked her in that cage, the sadist who whipped his own twelve-year-old daughter for the amusement of other men.
I close the photographic file with an effort, then close my laptop altogether.
Walk the fuck away, Macarthur.
I didn’t earn my reputation for impeccable professionalism by getting personally involved with my clients. Running security is a series of processes, not a sentimental urge to protect and defend.
Then again, my clients aren’t usually five feet, four inches of pure female smokeshow, with eyes I could drown in.
“Fuck sake,” I say aloud, standing up impatiently and refilling my glass. I take it out to the balcony, almost relishing the blast of the frigid October night.
Cancel the drink with Mak.
It’s been months since I took a holiday.
Twenty-four hours from now, I could be back in Australia, surfing somewhere on the Western coast and drinking beers in my beachside shack.
As far away, both mentally and physically, from the Russian bratva and problems like Zinaida Melikov as it’s possible to get.
Except I’m already planning a visit to Soho tomorrow, to start scoping out Pigalle’s security. Already working out how I’ll get around Mak’s supposedly impenetrable systems and break into the Quartier.
Already planning my first meeting with the lovely Miss Melikov.
And besides, I tell myself, until I sign on the dotted line, I’m just a bloke going to have a drink with some friends.
Three extremely deadly friends.
In London’s most risqué club.
Owned by the hottest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.
I swallow the remainder of my drink.
You’re full of shit, Macarthur.