Chapter 3
ZINAIDA
On a rainy autumn evening a month later, my limo glides through London’s West and into the notoriously bohemian district of Soho.
My flagship nightclub is located in a theater which had been a ruin for half a century when I found it.
I built upon the theater’s eighteenth-century atmosphere of illicit decadence, creating a seductive haven of members-only power and luxury.
Although women do attend as guests of male members, London’s female power brokers have their own haven in Pigalle Mayfair, our sister club, a mile away.
The three men I’m coming to meet tonight are powerful and wealthy enough to enjoy every luxury my clubs have to offer. They are also three of the most dangerous men I know, which is the reason for this meeting.
It isn’t that I don’t employ dangerous men of my own. But after so many attempts on my life, there’s no hiding from the fact that someone in my organization is trying to kill me.
And Mak, frustratingly, hasn’t responded to any of my objections to his proposed hire.
Luke Macarthur better be as good as Mak says he is, I think grimly.
Because if he isn’t, he’ll be dead before the first week is out.
The limo rounds the corner into a small cul-de-sac. An immaculate red carpet is dimly lit beneath a canopy. Two tuxedoed men stand on either side of the velvet rope, guarding the innocuous black front door.
Macarthur better have a decent tux, or he’ll never even make it inside.
Charlie, my driver, opens the limo door, holding out an umbrella to protect me from the rain. “According to Nadja, it’s a slow night so far,” she says as she walks me to the covered carpet. “And the coppers have already been and gone, so the back rooms are open.”
Londoners say that a Cockney is someone born within the sound of the bells at St Mary-le-Bow Church in the East End. Charlie was born and raised so close to the church she walked past it every day on her way to school. She pronounces the word with as wiv and uses rhyming slang like it’s a religion.
She also holds a black belt in jujitsu and can shoot like James Bond, not to mention drink him under the table.
She’s been driving for me for a decade, and I trust her as much as I do any of my employees.
Which, let’s be honest, isn’t much at all. Especially lately.
I push the unwelcome thoughts from my head with some difficulty.
I don’t trust anyone completely. But up until the past few months, I’d at least considered my inner circle safe.
Lately, however, I find myself looking sideways at every face, wondering if the traitor who wants me dead is hiding behind it.
“Zin.”
The man who opens the door has a blunt-nosed old boxer’s face that is more effective at deterring trouble than a dozen muscle-bound bouncers.
“Anatoly.” I turn so he can take my coat, then turn back, brushing a stray drop of rain from his suit. “Slow night, Charlie tells me.”
He lifts one enormous shoulder. “Is not so bad.” His English is heavily Russian accented, despite his many years in London, and not even his well-cut tuxedo can hide the gangster Anatoly is.
I prefer to hire women for almost every part of my business, but when men are paying for exclusive access to a men-only club, they need to feel like they’re in a man’s world.
They also occasionally need to be beaten into shape by someone bigger than them.
Sometimes bad men need to see one of their own.
Anatoly has run my security teams since I opened my first club. He was at my side when I killed my father. Oleg always overlooked Anatoly, dismissing him as “soft’” because he refused to rape and beat women on command.
Anatoly’s refusal to follow my father’s sick orders is the reason he’s still alive, and working with me.
“Hey.” He scowls at the young trainee by his side, who is openly staring at me. “You keep eyes on street, not on her, you understand?”
Reddening, the kid mumbles an apology and turns back to the street.
Anatoly gives me the ghost of a wink as I pass him.
I bite back a smile.
The trainee is a burly kid Anatoly found in the boxing gym he runs just around the corner from here, who would likely have wound up in prison without a mentor. Anatoly might well terrify the hell out of almost everyone he meets, but he’s an old softy underneath.
He’s also over sixty now. Lately I’ve felt a dark wave of guilt when I see him here in the early hours of the morning, standing out in the cold. The problem is that Anatoly won’t hear of delegating his role to anyone else, particularly since the attacks on me.
Which brings me back to the whole reason for tonight’s meeting: I need to find the leak in my organization.
For all I know, I can’t trust Anatoly either, and the thought makes me feel even more guilty, like it’s me doing the betraying.
“Hey, Zin.” Nadja smiles at me from behind the black marble counter.
I kiss her on both cheeks. “Hi, darling.”
If Anatoly is the muscle I need to terrify my customers, Nadja is the olive-skinned smoky-eyed siren I need to seduce them.
“Hey, Nads.” Charlie leans over the counter to help herself to a mint. “Make anyone cry yet?”
“Sadly, no.” Nadja curves her sheet of dark hair behind one ear and gives Charlie a wink. “But it’s only midnight.”
I look between them with raised eyebrows. Charlie and Nadja are entirely capable of talking all night in movie-line exchanges.
“Ten Things I Hate About You. Paraphrased.” Charlie grins. “Best. Movie. Ever.” She blows Nadja a kiss and wanders off to talk to Anatoly.
In one of life’s strange mysteries, Charlie, despite her blonde crew cut, mannish suits, myriad of tattoos, and brick wall of a body, is not remotely interested in women, while Nadja, who is a complete playboy fantasy, is a fully subscribed member of Club Sapphic.
The thought that either of them might be selling me out is sickening.
It’s like a prickle lodged just under my flesh, a constant, painful irritant that has me perpetually on edge.
I thought I’d left that kind of head fuck in the grave with my father.
After the years I’ve spent carefully building my team, the idea that one of them is betraying me would be heartbreaking, if I still had a heart left to break.
I’ve always had complete faith in my closest people. Now I find myself wondering if I might wake to find one of them holding a gun to my head.
“I seated your VIPs on Tier One.” Nadja gives me a rather sly glance. “If I was straight, I’d be taking that Roman Borovsky straight to the harem room. He is one long drink of fucking water.”
I give her a sly smile. “Been there, done that, long ago. And the engine matches the paintwork, believe me. But since I attended Roman’s wedding several years ago, and happen to actually like Darya, his wife, I definitely won’t be taking him out for another drive.”
It’s true. I did spend one memorable night with Roman Borovsky, back when we were both little more than teenagers. We might have been young, but were also damaged and deadly, and we both knew it.
Oddly, sleeping together removed whatever trace of initial attraction we might have had and left us with a mutual respect which has deepened over the years into a genuine alliance.
“Have Sienna take them a bottle of the good Scotch, with my compliments, and tell them I’m on my way.” I smile at Nadja, but move on rather than trading banter for a while, as I might once have done.
Maintaining my usual lighthearted manner with staff has been a challenge lately.
Joking with people who might be trying to kill you definitely takes the fun out of it.
I move past the marble entrance into a series of interconnected rooms beneath old arches. They were once the foyer of the theater and now serve as Pigalle’s public face. The vaulted ceilings and low lighting allow for both private conversations and a collective sense of muted excitement.
Despite Nadja terming it a slow night, every table is full of suited bankers from the city tipping lavishly for bottle service, their eyes lingering on the beautiful women waiting on them.
Uniforms in Pigalle are cleverly cut to highlight the curve of a breast or length of a leg, creating the sense of a tantalizing banquet that is always just out of reach.
Off to the sides are the private gaming rooms with varying levels of buy-in. The higher the stakes, the more exclusive the game. More politics and business deals are done behind the closed doors of my clubs than ever happen in actual government buildings.
Men in power like to feel powerful.
I inhaled that lesson with every cut of my father’s whip. I train the girls in Pigalle Soho to make the lowliest private secretary feel like he could be the next prime minister, to soothe the wounded ego of a city trader who has lost a fortune on the stock market.
I walk down a side corridor, then punch in a code to open the door to my office and step inside.
The lights are off, leaving the semicircular office dimly lit through the curved wall of glass that overlooks the theater below.
Computer screens line the wall behind me.
Although there is another security office downstairs where Anatoly works, I can access all the camera feeds up here, in my private domain.
I cross to the window and look down at the guests, scanning each face and occasionally zooming my cameras in on one.
Several tiers of seating face the main stage, on which a troupe of girls is currently performing an extremely seductive Aphrodite dance featuring clamshells, carefully placed fans, and little else.
In small private booths carefully shielded from view, dancers give more intimate performances, which my clientele can enjoy while also still viewing the main show.
Private balcony boxes reserved for the sole use of their owners sit higher up, most in complete shadow.
There are other rooms behind the main theater, designed to cater to a variety of fantasies. London’s top call girls vie to work in them, since the tips are astronomical. Those rooms are utterly illegal, of course. While prostitution and gambling are both legal in England, brothels are not.
Fortunately, the last two Commissioners of Police at Scotland Yard have both enjoyed a complimentary membership to the Quartier, along with anyone in the government who actually matters.
There isn’t a powerful man or woman in London who has any interest in shutting down the Quartier. They all know that when it comes to wielding power, it’s the only ticket in town.
I stand in my office for five minutes, until I’ve memorized every face and refreshed my memory of their names.
I’m about to go down to the floor when one face in particular catches my attention.
A face I’ve seen before—in the photograph Mak sent me.
Luke Macarthur.
He’s standing in a balcony box I happen to know is closed tonight, since it’s owned by a member of the royal family and reserved solely for their use.
And yet this fucker has somehow found a way past the codes, security, and secret door and let himself in.
He’s standing in the shadows, so still he might be part of the building itself. If it wasn’t for the fact that I know every curl of wood in the Quartier better than my own body, I might never have noticed him.
I zoom in the security camera and freeze. An odd thrill trickles through my veins.
He’s looking straight at me.
His eyes lock on mine, his mouth quirking slightly at the edges.
He knows I’m watching him.
My security cameras were installed by one of Mak’s companies, using military-grade systems. They’re virtually impossible to detect, an important factor given that my clientele are pathological about guarding their privacy.
But going by the deliberate way Luke Macarthur stares into each lens in turn, he seems to know where every camera is. I’d bet very good money that he knows exactly where I am right now.
I shiver despite myself.
He’s absolutely huge.
The brief statistics in his résumé didn’t come close to describing the immense reality of the man.
His rather shaggy-looking hair almost scrapes the roof of the box.
Even a tuxedo can’t disguise the breadth of his shoulders or the powerful thighs.
Despite his size, his watchful stillness renders him unsettlingly mercurial, just another shadow in a theater full of them.
The way he’s positioned makes him invisible to anyone else in the theater but me.
And he’s watching my office so closely his scrutiny burns every inch of my skin.
Tearing my eyes from the screen with no small effort, I hit the intercom. “Anatoly. Get a team into the royal box, right now. We have a code red.”
Mak’s friend or not, nobody breaks security in my clubs and gets away with it.
“Da.”
One of the many reasons Anatoly is so useful is that he never needs to be told something twice.
But when I look back, Luke is gone.
That’s impossible.
I glanced away for barely seconds.
He can’t have gone far.
I stare around the theater, my eyes almost watering in the effort to make out every minor detail.
Finally I settle on the booth on Tier One, where Roman, Mak, and Dimitry are waiting for me.
Only they aren’t alone anymore.
A fourth figure is seated in their booth, carefully positioned so he can stare directly into the same camera the other men have their backs to.
Lifting his glass of Scotch in my direction, he takes a long swallow.
The gesture, not to mention his unwavering stare into the camera, is too pointed to be anything other than deliberate.
And by the casual manner in which the men are talking and laughing with him, he’s clearly their guest.
Which means that the most lethal men I know consider him a friend.
When he lowers the glass, I’d swear the bastard is almost smiling.
My fingers curl into my palms, every nerve in my body tingling.
Luke Macarthur clearly thinks he can play on the dark side.
Sexual desire is something I’ve long learned to keep on the surface, a simple hunger easily satisfied, preferably with people I barely know and care for even less.
I learned from a young age to disassociate myself from sex, to take what my body needs without losing any part of myself in the process.
But the man’s watchful eyes send a strange frisson through me, like being poised at the top of a roller coaster before the sudden rush of descent.
It’s dangerous.
And it’s a challenge I already know I won’t be able to walk away from.
Welcome to the game, my friend.
The frisson twists into a lick of desire, deep in the base of my belly.
You have no idea what you’ve started.
Because when it comes to playing dark games, I didn’t just write the rule book.
I invented the fucking sport—and I’m in a league of my own.