Chapter 13 Cartier
CARTIER
In my bedroom back at the apartment I share with Mika, I pull off the cowboy boots and toss them aside, closely followed by the pants and blouse. Then I grab a pair of worn faded jeans from my closet, a pink sweater, and a pair of Converse, and drag them on without stopping to draw a breath.
My heart is performing a crazy Argentine tango inside my chest, making it hard to think about anything else. Which is a blessing under the circumstances. If I allow myself to think, I’ll remember what he told me.
Yuri Asimov.
That Andrej’s family killed my parents.
I pull a weekend bag out from under the bed and stuff clothes inside it.
Underwear. Pants. More sweaters. My phone charger.
My to-be-read pile of books on the nightstand catches my eye, and I pause, chest rising and falling with the effort of keeping it all in.
I never travel anywhere without a book, so it’s testimony to my utter confusion that I pick up a book and then put it down again.
No time.
No bandwidth to focus on a story either.
Zipping up the bag, I hoist it over my shoulder, and head outside, closing the apartment door behind me with a click that reverberates inside my skull. It sounds so final.
It feels so final.
I don’t know where I’m going yet, but I can’t stay here.
Outside, I catch a Lyft to the bus station on West Harrison Street.
I stare out of the passenger window without seeing anything, while Yuri Asimov’s voice plays on repeat inside my head.
The Ivanovs killed your parents.
Andrej Ivanov is my enemy.
They’re Bratva, Cartier. You know what that means.
I don’t know what that means. In the movies, the mobs are portrayed as gun-wielding monsters who deliver bloody horse heads as warnings and sleep with a gun underneath their pillow.
But in the real world, people don’t just go around killing entire families because their history makes them the enemy.
I wish more than ever that I could remember my parents. If I knew who they were, I could’ve shut down the man in the café earlier and laughed about the conversation over a coffee with Mika in our comfortable office.
Mika!
She’ll be furious with me for leaving her again, when Gianna has just given birth, and it’s only the two of us. But I hope that she’ll forgive me when I can explain what’s going on.
At the bus station, I check the timetable. The next bus heading south is traveling to Charlotte, North Carolina. I’ve never been there before. It sounds like a nice place though, the kind of place that the Bratva wouldn’t think of looking for their enemy’s daughter.
I hand over cash for my ticket, and wait to board the bus, keeping my head down and avoiding eye contact with the other passengers.
Whenever shiny black shoes enter my peripheral vision, my body tenses, and my breathing grows shallow. But Andrej doesn’t come to find me.
How would he know where to begin looking?
No one knows that I’m here. Mika is still expecting me back at the shelter. And I haven’t spoken to Gianna since my first date with Andrej.
But my legs feel like rubber when I finally board the bus, stow my bag in the overhead rack, and find a seat next to the window.
Part of me wanted Andrej to stop me from leaving the city.
My romance-brainwashed mind had subconsciously mapped out the whole begging-me-not-to-leave-him scene before I even packed my bag.
I pictured him on one knee, declaring his undying love for me with a dazzling meteor-sized diamond on a gold ring, while simultaneously presenting me with the evidence to prove that Yuri Asimov was a compulsive liar with a split personality.
I don’t even consider what the other part of me wanted. The sane, rational part of me that works in a shelter for abused women, and understands the scars caused by toxic relationships. Andrej might be a lot of things, but he isn’t toxic.
He’s kind, and considerate, and sexy. My pulse races at the vivid memory of him with his face buried between my legs. No one else will ever live up to that image. No one else will ever compare to Andrej Ivanov; what would be the point of looking?
Disappointment settles on my shoulders like bags of cement when the bus fills with people, the door hisses shut, and the driver starts the engine.
The world outside the window blurs through my tears as we hit the road.
Sure, I sensed Andrej’s violent streak the first moment I set eyes on him.
The classic bad boy—he even has the scar to prove it.
But I know that he would never hurt me. I believed him when he said that he would protect me with his life.
The guy from the nightclub has a broken jaw to back up this promise.
Andrej saved a woman from being assaulted for chrissakes.
So, why should I accept the word of a stranger over the man who makes me feel like I deserve the world?
But then, why would Yuri Asimov make up a story like that to destroy Andrej’s family? Unless they’d done something terrible to him.
Round and around, my thoughts keep spinning until I rest my head back against the seat and close my eyes. I allow the hum of the engine, and the muted chatter of the other passengers to wash over me.
If what my ‘uncle’ said was true, why did the Ivanovs kill my parents?
What had they done to deserve being murdered?
What did I do to deserve being orphaned over a Bratva power struggle, because that’s what these killings were all about, weren’t they?
The mobs never learned to get along because they wanted to be the ones on top.
Sharing power was never an option, it was all or nothing.
Lulled into a false sense of comfort by the moving vehicle and the rumble of wheels across asphalt, my mind drifts, and I don’t stop it. I want to fall asleep and wake up in Charlotte with all my problems resolved by my psychedelic dreams.
Has Andrej ever killed a person?
Would he tell me if he had killed someone?
If we’d carried on seeing each other, got to know each other better, reached that stage where we’re comfortable talking about our past, would he have snuggled up in a blanket in his living room and confessed to being a murderer?
And if he did, would it change how I feel about him?
It’s hypothetical, but I can’t let it go.
Could I be with a man who’d taken a life? Could I kiss him? Spread my legs for him? Beg him to fuck me if I knew that someone was dead because of him?
And what about Leonid? He’s the older brother, which makes him the heir to the family business. The Pakhan. I don’t have much idea about the hierarchy, but the eldest son always takes over from his father. It’s the way it has always been.
Has Leonid killed people?
Does Gianna know what her husband is?
I think back to when Mika and I waved goodbye to Gianna at the airport in Montenegro. She was flying back to the States to marry her fiancé. What was his name? Sean? Seamus? Not Leonid. She never mentioned anyone called Leonid in all the time we worked together in Montenegro.
But now that I think about it, she never spoke about her fiancé either. I remember saying that she didn’t look like a woman who was traveling home to get married. She looked like a woman who was resigned to her fate. A woman who’d forgotten why she fell in love to begin with.
Then, the next time we heard from her, she was marrying Leonid, and she wanted us here in Chicago for her wedding.
She said it was love at first sight.
And we believed her.
Because it’s obvious that they’re crazy-in-love with each other.
But we’ve never found out what happened between her boarding that flight and falling in love with a man who wasn’t her fiancé.
Or how she feels about being the Bratva boss’s wife.
She sure kept that quiet.
I wriggle in my seat, trying to get comfortable, as I hear my own voice in my head telling Yuri Asimov that my best friend Gianna is married to Leonid Ivanov.
Shit!
Why did I say that?
Have I put her in danger? Her babies are only a few days old.
My heart races as I slide my cell phone out of my pocket and power it up. I turned it off because I didn’t want Andrej to track my location, but now that my thoughts are a little more lucid, I’m certain that it would make no difference if my phone was on or off.
I need to call Gianna.
Need to let her know where I am. It’s her business that I’ve abandoned while she recovers from childbirth.
I’m such a shit friend. I’m the shittiest friend in the history of time.
I’ve turned my back on Mika and Gianna because a bad boy made me come with his tongue. Repeatedly. In multiple positions, and in various locations around the city. And I’ve barely known him for forty-eight hours.
My phone is taking too long to power up.
All sorts of scenarios are playing out inside my head.
Yuri Asimov breaking into Gianna and Leonid’s house dressed like a ninja with a rifle in his hand; a whole Bratva mob sieging their home and kidnapping the babies; Leonid bleeding from multiple bullet wounds while he singlehandedly protects his family.
And me, sitting on a stiflingly hot bus on my way to North Carolina.
Then, the bus lurches to a stop, tires screeching, and my forehead hits the back of the seat in front of me.
“What’s going on?” I realize that the woman sitting in the next seat is talking to me while she leans into the aisle to get a better view of the driver.
Gripping the headrest of the passenger in the next row, I heave myself out of my seat to peer over the top of heads to the front of the bus.
The door hisses open.
Someone climbs aboard.
I’d recognize the dark eyes and the scar on his top lip from a hundred miles away.
Andrej.
“Cartier?” His eyes scan the bus and settle on me almost instantly like magnets drawn to each other.
I sink back into my seat, my blood gushing in my ears and making it hard to think.
How did he find me?
Then he’s standing right there, and my heart is trying to leap from my rib cage because it knows what it wants, and the world seems to move in slow motion as I peer up at him.
“Come back with me, Cartier.”
He offers me his hand across the woman sitting next to me, and I hear her murmur, “Aw,” like this is that scene in all good romcoms when the male protagonist realizes what is missing from his life, and the audience knows they’re going to get their happy-ever-after.
Only this is real life, and happy-ever-afters don’t work that way.
I can’t move. My heart is screaming at me to jump the fuck out of this seat and kiss the super-hot bad guy. But my head is still hearing gunshots in Gianna and Leonid’s home because of me.
“How did you find me?”
He smiles. “I asked a few questions. Please, Cartier. At least give me a chance to explain.”
“Go and talk to him, love,” my travel companion says.
She must be in her sixties, with gray hair that was once blond styled into a neat bob. She’s wearing tight jeans and a sparkly sweater, a cool grandma who probably devours romance novels in her spare time too.
“I know about Yuri Asimov.” My voice sounds thin and reedy, smothered by the purr of the engine and the air conditioning running through the bus. “I know what you are.”
“What’s going on?” This comes from the rear of the bus. “Is he going to propose?”
Andrej smiles, and every part of my body clenches with anticipation and desire. “I just want to talk to you. Please? Then, if you want to stay on the bus, I won’t stop you.”
“Can’t say fairer than that, love.” The gray-haired woman nudges my arm with her elbow and leans closer. “If it was me, I’d have been yanking open that door before the driver could hit the button.” When I remain silent, she adds, “Go for it, sweetie. Life’s too short for silly arguments.”
If she only knew.
But Andrej’s hand is still waiting for me, and my heart skips a beat when I place my palm against his and stand up.
Then, as in all good romcoms, everyone else on the bus cheers and claps and whoops for the heroine who got her man.