Chapter Five
S hit, that had taken longer than she’d hoped. After leaving the compound and driving the forty minutes to the official offices of VIP Medical from which she worked, she’d spent far too long trying to figure out the clusterfuck her business partner—and less notably ex-boyfriend—Dr. Lyle Pace had made of their monthly expenses. She’d told him to hire an accredited accountant to do the books, but he’d been adamant about doing them himself, even though the man hadn’t a lick of finance experience. But she couldn’t complain. Because Lyle handled the admin of the clinic and the walk-in patients, that left her free to do the call out and concierge side of the business, which was much more flexible. She needed flexibility with a young child depending on her. It took another hour of dealing with that mess and getting nowhere before she gave up for the night, and headed to pick up Erika. That took another hour because Dolly was in a chatty mood—sharing the more interesting bits of gossip she’d pulled from other parents who picked up their kids before Liz.
It had taken another fifty minutes to get the pizza and breadsticks from the only pizza place in town worthy of the title, Gino’s—she refused to get pizza anywhere else and was willing to wait the long line for the privilege. Not only was the line out the door, but the phone was ringing off the hook. The place was old school, which meant no fancy online ordering or even delivery, and forget out apps like DoorDash or UberEats. If you wanted a Gino’s mushroom, olive, and pepperoni pie, you had to call in or come and get it your damn self. But, Lord, it was worth it.
The scents wafting from the boxes were making her mouth water, and she couldn’t wait to dig in, especially since she hadn’t taken time to eat lunch. Or breakfast, for that matter. Not that her ass or hips or thighs showed any signs of all the missed meals. Before she’d gotten pregnant with Erika, she’d been a slightly chubby size 12, but after Erika, she’d “blossomed” into a size 16 and hadn’t lost a pound sense—which was damn awful in the summer when the heat ratcheted up, and she got the worst cases of humidititties and thigh rub rash ever. Being a big girl in Vegas was a nightmare.
Liz tossed her keys in the basket on the foyer table and hurried into the kitchen to put the steaming pizza boxes on the granite island. Swearing under her breath at the ridiculous heat from the cardboard, she shook her hand to alleviate some of the pain.
“Mama, can I have two pieces? I’m really hungry,” Erika asked, her hopeful little face making Liz grin. God…she looked so much like her daddy. Same beautiful green eyes, same gold blonde hair, same smile—complete with dimples. If she hadn’t been there to push Erika out, she could swear someone else birthed her because there wasn’t a drop of Liz in Erika’s features. She didn’t mind, not really, because her daughter was beautiful—even if she was a constant, painful reminder of the man who’d fathered her.
The man she named their little girl after.
If you’d asked her what possessed her to name her daughter after the man who broke her heart, she’d tell you she was out of her mind on pain meds and post-birth euphoria. But the truth was…no matter how hard she’d tried, she’d still loved the man. Still wanted a part of him in their lives. And back then, she’d determined that, when Erika was old enough to ask about her dad, Liz would share with her about him. All the good things about him. His intelligence, his sense of humor, his smile, his ability to laugh about anything, that Texas twang that had often turned her panties to mush…not that she’d tell Erika that part.
Then there were all the bad parts…. The precious girl would never know what a piece of shit her sire was. Though, Liz had to admit, she’d had a moment where she’d told Erika her father was…trouble. In her defense, she’d been drinking a little too much wine that night, trying to drown her anxiety about her future with a box of cheap red. It was the day after that wine-fueled incident that she’d agreed to quit Summerlin and partner with her colleague, Dr. Lyle Pace. Her ex-boyfriend. They’d dated for a year before she’d realized there was nothing there, no spark, to interest in moving things forward. Nothing. They’d gone their separate ways but agreed to remain professional friends.
He’d fallen into some money from a dead relative and wanted to use that money to open a medical clinic for the rich and famous in Vegas. At first, she’d been skeptical, but when he’d told her she would be in the on-staff concierge doctor and could set her own schedule, she’d jumped at the chance. She’d been working like a grinding cog in a wheel for years, missing out on too much time with her daughter. Leaving Summerlin, taking on the role as business partner with Lyle…well, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, though, she wondered if she’d made a mistake, her thoughts jumping back to the pile of indecipherable invoices and expenditures on her desk.
What the hell was Lyle doing?
Shaking off thoughts that had nothing to do with spending the night with her daughter, she smiled down at her.
“Sure, baby, you can have two pieces, but I need to change first—and so do you. Go put on your jammies. We’ll have a sleepover party in front of the TV, just the two of us, yeah?”
It was like she’d just told the girl there was a unicorn out in the backyard waiting for her.
“Yes!” Erika squealed then took off for her bedroom in a burst of energy only a nine-year-old could do.
Ten minutes later, dressed in sweatpants and a worn, comfortable T-shirt, she settled onto the couch with a plate of pizza. Erika, dressed in her Trolls pajama set, curled up next to her.
Together, they ate, laughed at the antics of monsters in a Transylvanian hotel, and just enjoyed one another.
This. This was why she took that job with Lyle. For nights like this. Where she wasn’t ten hours into her sixteen-hour shift, missing days upon days with her precious child. Yes, she had some issues she needed to address with the way Lyle was running the business, but that—
A solid, loud knock at the front door made her lurch from her seat on the couch, knocking Erika to the floor. Shocked at her reaction, Liz bent to help a giggling Erika to her feet.
“Mama, you—”
Another loud knock sounded, making both girls look toward the door.
The smile dropped from her daughter’s face.
“Mama?”
Through the frosted glass along the right side of the door, she could see the large silhouettes of two men.
Tension and menace thrummed through the air, and every hair on Liz’s skin stood on end.
Something wasn’t right.
Bending low, she whispered into her daughter’s suddenly pale face.
“Erika, baby, I need you to do something for me, okay?”
“Mama?” Her large green eyes were wider than Liz had ever seen. Something tore at her insides; she’d never wanted her child to know the taste of such fear, not like she had when she was Erika’s age.
“Erika, I need you to do something important for me, can you do that?” she repeated, desperate for her daughter’s cooperation.
The girl pinched her lips shut and nodded.
“I want you to run to your closet and close the door. Hide in there until I come and get you—but don’t come out, no matter what you hear, okay?”
Erika nodded again.
Oh, my brave girl.
“Here is my phone,” she said, unlocking the device and handing it to her terrified daughter, who took it with tiny, shaking hands. “If I don’t come and get you in ten minutes, you call Odin. Okay? You call him and tell him what happened. He will take care of us, okay?” She did not know why the idea to call Odin popped into her head, nor why she wouldn’t just have Erika call the police. She just knew that, in that moment, Odin provided a measure of safety she needed for whatever was coming. He might not be her favorite person, but she knew he would be there if she called—no hesitation. No questions.
“O-okay, Mama,” she murmured, her voice small and filled with fear. Her bottom lip wobbled, but her brave, beautiful girl didn’t cry.
“Go!” she choked out, her throat suddenly thick with dread.
Erika hurried away, disappearing up the stairs.
God, please…please…let this just be me being paranoid.
Swallowing her anxiety, she moved toward the door, her heart racing. The silhouettes shifted in the glass, drawing Liz’s gaze. She only saw two, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more. And what were two men doing on her doorstep at eight o’clock at night? She might live in a somewhat affluent area, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been break-ins and other crimes in the area. She’d upgraded the security on the condo before she’d moved in, but it was not high tech enough to tell her why there were men on her porch.
She made it to the door and peered out through the peephole. She was right. Two men. Two men dressed like wealthy thugs. Designer suits that fit tight, showing off their massive bodies. And the tattoos on their necks….
Shit, shit, shit!
She could just ignore them and hope they went away, but her car was parked right out front.
She’d just have to brave it out and hope they were looking for donations for something.
Planting her “bedside manner” smile on her face, she opened the door.
Menace. The menace oozing from the men before her hit her in the face, full force.
Not looking for donations.
“Gentlemen, how can I help you?”
“Dr. Simpson. My name is Danil Oblek, and I believe we have a…colleague in common.”
“Oh? No offense, but I don’t think we run in the same circles.” There had to be some misunderstanding—there was no way she knew anyone who…well…. She knew the look of the two men. Their suits. Their neck tattoos…and hand tattoos. Their menace. The coldness in their dark eyes.
Mafia.
Bratva.
There were two Bratva goons on the porch of her house, her daughter only a few dozen feet away. And they could only be Bratva. During her rotation in the ER at University Medical Center, she’d seen more than one person come through the swinging doors with a GSW. And a few of them sported the same look. Vegas was rife with mafia types, and they were living cliches—just like in the dark romance novels she devoured.
But this wasn’t a romance novel. It wasn’t even fiction—it was happening in real life. Her life!
“Oh, you’d be surprised by my circles, Dr. Simpson,” he replied, smirking, his lips curling in a manner not unlike a wolf catching sight of a rabbit. “I would like to discuss this further with you, doctor, but I must insist we do that inside.”
He didn’t even bother asking to enter her home before the thug on the right pushed his way in.
She wanted to demand they leave, to get the hell out, but the cold, calculating look on Danil Oblek’s face told her that there was no way she was going to get them to do anything. And if she tried, he’d enjoy reminding her how powerless she was.
Which meant she had to get through whatever the hell he wanted to discuss, then she needed to get them the hell out of there.
She had no idea how much time had passed, but she could guess it was encroaching on five minutes, and if she knew her daughter, there would be a call to Odin the second the ten minutes were up.
God, what a mess it would be to have Odin in the same room with the Bratva. She couldn’t fathom the amount of carnage that would make, but it was better to have him there if she needed him…and it looked like she might.
Danil’s gaze drifted over the living room, his eyes seeming to miss nothing. They stopped dead at the second plate on the coffee table.
Erika’s Trolls plate.
Oh. Oh no. Oh God.
Panic surged, tearing through her like a fire of anguish. She couldn’t let anything happen to her baby girl! She had to get them out of there before they decided that she and her daughter were fair game.
“What was it you wanted to discuss?” she asked, crossing her trembling arms over her chest, not surprised that her voice shook, too. She caught the movement of the second thug, who was slowly drifting around the living room, touching something here, staring at something there. When he passed in front of the TV, which was still playing that stupid Dracula movie, she prayed he didn’t decide to venture up the stairs.
God, please, keep my baby safe!
Danil’s goon turned back to her, a predatory smile curling up the sides of his mouth.
“You see, your colleague Dr. Pace and I are…business partners. We met during a conference in Baltimore three years ago, and we realized we had…similar interests. He and I decided to go into business together.”
Oh, Lyle, what the fuck did you do!
“And my business is very important to me, Dr. Simpson, which is why I am troubled by the fact that Dr. Pace seems to have gone missing.” Liz didn’t miss the way Danil Oblek’s eyes seemed to watch her, like he wanted to see every emotion, then devour them whole. He was a predator, through and through, and she and Erika were trapped in her house with him.
Wait—
Missing? Lyle was missing? The earth seemed to shift beneath her feet. What the hell did that mean for her? She hadn’t seen him in a few days, but that wasn’t uncommon. They worked two different sides of the same practice, and they never communicated personally, not after they’d broken up three years ago.
“If you’re looking for him, I don’t know where he is.”
“That is unfortunate, Dr. Simpson… Liz , because Dr. Pace is in possession of something that belongs to me, and I would like to get it back.”
“What does he have?”
“Five million dollars.”
She gasped.
“I-I have nothing to do with that, I swear.” Liz could barely drag air into her constricted lungs. What the hell did Lyle do? Why would he steal five million dollars from the goddamn Russian mob?
“Once again, that is unfortunate. However, I believe you can be of some help to me, Liz .”
“H-how? I don’t know where he is, I know nothing about your money!”
“You will carry a message for me.”
“A message?”
The sneer on his face and the flick of his gaze to a place just over her shoulder was her only warning before a blast of pain radiated from her kidneys. She grunted in pain, twisting to move away from the second swing from a massive fist. But she wasn’t quick enough. The second blow hit her cheek. The force of the hit sending her to the floor. The third her nose. She stopped counting at ten. She stopped thinking at fifteen, but those final thoughts were flooded with terror for her baby girl.