Chapter 31 - Clem
There was so much work to be done in the office after our two-week vacation that I didn’t have time for hurt feelings. No time to be tired, either, and a steady stream of coffee and chocolate donuts from the breakroom kept me on my toes.
I barely noticed the sky outside the window growing darker, and was shocked to see how late it was when Rurik finally called. I rubbed my eyes, bleary from checking reports all day, updating schedules, and answering messages.
“Why the hell are you still at the office?” he asked.
The audacity. But he sounded fine, and relief flooded through me. I had been pushing aside the worries that kept popping up throughout the day, without a word from him. Why wouldn’t he be fine, and more importantly, why was I so worried? He certainly didn’t think it was necessary to check in.
His tone turned playful, eager for me to get back and promising me my favorite meal, so I scooted my chair back and took off, the only one left in the office at that hour. My heels clicked against the tile floor, the echo in the dim hallway creeping me out and making me walk faster.
It was completely deserted outside the industrial office building, with the surrounding offices already closed. A lone street lamp cast a circle of light in front of the door, the alley between our buildings in deep shadow.
I peeked down the narrow space, seeing exactly what I expected to see. Two dumpsters and a chain link fence. Nobody was lurking there, waiting to jump out at me, but my skin prickled with unease.
Since Rurik and I drove in together, I had to call a car, and while I waited, I decided to walk down the street to the twenty-four-hour pharmacy instead of wandering alone on the deserted curb.
Now that we were back in LA and I was on my own, the strange message warning me I’d be seeing the sender soon was at the top of my mind.
It was better to be surrounded by people if Jordie had actually found me.
Which he didn’t. He was probably still back on his butt playing video games.
At most, he’d found my number and was tormenting me for some sick fun, but he was too lazy to get on a plane, no matter how deep his obsession with me had become before I broke free.
The brightly lit pharmacy was bustling with people, and I relaxed to the sounds of intermittent announcements of sales over the loudspeaker mixed with bland top forty music. My ride was still several minutes away, so I found myself in the makeup aisle, reaching for perfume samples.
I looked up from sniffing one that smelled of gardenias to find myself face-to-face with my ex.
My brain shorted out, certain for a split second that I was imagining him from spending too much time stressing over the messages.
I blinked, and he was still there. A lot thinner, which only made him look meaner.
The smile he tried to give me was forced, more like a snarl.
“Clementine,” he said. “Oh my darling.”
It was really Jordie. I hated his reference to that old song.
His eyes were bloodshot, and he took a step closer.
My first instinct was to scream and run away.
All the old terror he instilled in me over the years came rushing back, taking over my ability to think.
Stumbling backward, I crashed into the perfume display, rattling all the boxes and bottles.
It was a crowded store. Someone was at the end of the aisle, staring at me right now. I was safe. Edging past Jordie as calmly as I could, I turned to walk away. He grabbed my arm.
“Clem, wait.”
“Let me go or I’ll shout for security.” I nodded toward the curious woman at the end of the aisle. In this case, I was glad to have an audience.
He loosened his grip but didn’t let go. “Please just listen. You made a terrible mistake.”
Oh my God, this again. Of course, he thought me leaving him was a mistake; he was a self-centered monster who thought he owned me.
“That guy you married,” he said, his lip curling in disgust at the word. “He’s not who you think he is.”
Wait. He was talking about Rurik? I wasn’t too shocked that he knew about Rurik and me. It was public record, and Jordie was a world-class stalker.
“I know everything I need to know,” I said. I pressed my lips together against an insult. I finally whipped my arm out from under his grasp. The woman had moved on, bored by our little spat that wasn’t erupting into shouting or anything else exciting. Not yet, anyway.
“Do you know he’s in the mafia?”
That caught me off guard, and I actually laughed. That was a no-no around Jordie when he was trying to prove a point, but instead of looking angry, he huffed out a long breath.
“He’s bad news,” he insisted. “Dangerous.”
“Oh, that’s really funny,” I told him. My phone dinged, letting me know my car had arrived, and I shoved past him.
“Look at this,” he said, stepping in front of me and waving his phone in my face. I flinched, my eyes batting shut. But he wasn’t trying to hit me, he was trying to show me the picture on his screen.
What I saw made me stop and stare. “It’s him,” Jordie said.
“How did you get this?” I asked, no longer thinking about anything except why I was looking at a picture of Rurik, his brother, and one of his cousins entering a building, all of them wielding guns and looking ready to use them.
Guns? Long ones, scary ones, the kind that shot multiple bullets at a time, though any type would have been shocking to see in Rurik’s gentle hands. Well, not so gentle all the time. There were those bruises.
Skeet shooting, I tried to remind myself. Yeah, in a building. With automatic rifles.
“I’ve been following him,” Jordie said. “His whole family is in on it. Some kind of major crime family. He’s been lying to you because I know you’d never marry someone like that.”
“You don’t know me at all,” I hissed, still unable to tear my eyes from the picture. “Or him. You need to go home and leave me alone.”
He shook his head, desperation flaring from his bloodshot eyes. “I love you, I can’t leave if you’re in danger. He’s a freak. Weren’t you supposed to move? And then for some reason there was an emergency, and you were out on the street?”
It wasn’t worth my time to ask him how he knew any of that. I already suspected he’d been following me for some time. But… “What does that have to do with anything?”
“That apartment building is owned by his family. He set it up. He set you up.”
My phone dinged again. I couldn’t let my ride leave and be stuck in the same vicinity as my crazed ex. He had built up some kind of conspiracy in his deranged mind and was trying to convince me I was better off with him.
“Leave me alone,” I told him, loud enough that anyone in the next aisle could hear. “Don’t follow me, and get out of LA.”
“Or what?” he called after me as I hurtled away from him. “Your mafia king husband will put a hit on me?”
His mocking voice almost made me wish it was true, and I flung myself into the waiting car, telling the driver to hurry. I braced myself for Jordie to try to tear open the door and drag me out, but he stayed inside the pharmacy as the car pulled away from the curb.
My heart was pounding hard enough to make it difficult to breathe. The kindly driver told me there was a cooler with drinks on the floor, and I snapped open a bottle of water, chugging it down. My head spun, and my hands shook as Jordie’s words taunted me.
He was off his rocker, but that picture sure did look real. And Rurik sure looked comfortable wielding a gun, with a look of harsh determination on his face that I had never seen before. If I didn’t know him so well, I would have thought he was the one to be frightened of, not Jordie.
Did I really know him? I did think something was fishy about my apartment suddenly being pulled out from under me on the same day all my stuff was moved out of my old place. Moved out by a company that Rurik arranged.
He did that to be nice. So I could focus on the Koboyashi deal.
What had Jordie said about the apartment?
Certain he wasn’t right—praying he wasn’t right, I searched for property records.
It only took a few clicks to find out the apartment building was owned by a company that traced back to the Fokins.
It wasn’t a secret, I just hadn’t known about it.
Thinking back, I tried to remember the timeline. I was sick of my old apartment with its shady drug deals always going down in the courtyard, but there was a waiting list for the other ones I could afford. Then all of a sudden, I got pushed to the top of the list and could move.
After that, the apartment had been destroyed by the previous tenant, but wouldn’t they have already known that when they called me to say I could move in the following week?
None of it made sense, but it could be explained by any number of things. Rurik being in the mafia wasn’t even on the list. Except…
What about those burly men hanging around the old apartment? Always there when I got home from work, always there when I left again in the morning? I thought I was being paranoid due to my experience with Jordie, but what if…
Was it Rurik who sent them? Were they there before I started working at Gavrik Imports or after? Now I couldn’t remember, and when we came to a sudden stop, and the driver laid on his horn at the idiot in front of us who cut him off, I shrieked.
“Sorry,” I said when he gave me an odd look in the rearview mirror. “Long day.”
“Not getting shorter with that pileup,” he said in the long-suffering tone of someone who was used to driving in Los Angeles.
“I’m not in any hurry,” I told him, my mind still reeling and trying to shove puzzle pieces together to make a picture I could understand.
I didn’t trust Jordie as far as I could throw him, but some of the things he said raised questions I didn’t have answers to.
Questions I had been shoving aside because I felt it didn’t have anything to do with me.
Those times Rurik rushed out for late-night emergencies that supposedly had to do with his family’s business. Maybe they did, after all.
But what kind of business involved storming a building with semi-automatic weapons?
Shaking that off, I went back to the timeline. Okay, I was pretty certain the burly dudes didn’t show up outside my apartment until after I started working for Rurik. And the moving mix-up was shady, especially since it seemed so perfectly orchestrated.
But to what end? Why would Rurik need me to be homeless?
I was going to move in with him anyway to keep up the ruse that we were married.
And he didn’t trick me into getting married like Jordie said—okay, sure, the fact it was actually legal was something I didn’t exactly jump for joy over, but that could be explained as well.
We only got married because of the Koboyashi deal.
The car lurched forward as traffic started up again, and it was like the sudden movement jolted a memory free.
That busy day that Rurik had me sign all those papers, making sure I’d never have enough time to read them thoroughly.
Why did he do that before he even knew about the Koboyashis being so conservative?
There was no denying it now, no more pushing those thoughts aside.
The deal was only a bonus; I was the thing he wanted all along.
He’d planned it all out so neatly, trapping me into a relationship I had no hope of getting out of.
Men like him always got what they wanted, no matter what.
And they did what was necessary to keep what they considered theirs.
Oh my God, not Rurik.
Yes, Rurik.
I was on my way home to a man who made my psycho ex look like a choir boy.