3. Lev
LEV
“You’ve never heard of anyone shooting the messenger?” I asked the Hernandez runner again as I approached. Dean walked with me, his shoes adding to the crisp crunch of our shoes on the dirt and stones underfoot.
Coming in from the side like this, I kept the profile of the short woman within my line of sight.
She couldn’t turn and face me or Dean. She was prohibited from angling her head toward us to track who else was joining the scene.
Unless she wanted to risk this Garcia runner shooting her, she had to stay like she was.
Unflinching.
Unmoving.
Perfectly still.
I narrowed my eyes at her, unsure how she could be this calm, this cool and collected under pressure, the heat notwithstanding.
“If anyone’s gonna be shooting anyone,” the Hernandez said smugly, “it looks like it’ll be him shooting her.
” The low chuckle he tacked on to his comment aggravated me.
None of these Cartels were built on much loyalty.
Carina had convinced us that the Garcia Cartel was trustworthy without her brother in charge anymore, but speaking in a general sense, these clubs of smugglers and criminals lacked the close sense of family that we had in the Bratva.
This asshole would just let us kill this woman? And it would mean sparing his life? Yeah, right.
“And she ain’t anyone we can’t replace.” He shrugged.
“Who is she?” I asked, studying her profile.
I tried not to notice the swells of her breasts, the slender curves at her waist, the high cheekbones as she ground her molars and didn’t move or speak.
I saw her for what she was. A sexy-as-fuck woman caught in a bad position, smack in the middle of this handoff that had twisted into a standoff instead.
“No one,” the Hernandez runner repeated, with a scoff this time. “She’s just a runner. A slave Emilio bought a few years ago.”
Slave?
People were trafficked day in and day out in our world. Mostly, it was for sex slaves, but it wasn’t unheard of for children or women to be sold into working for the Cartels.
For someone who was bound to work for the Cartel, she seemed sturdy enough.
Trained well. Strong and not weak despite the heat under the sun, a gun aimed at her face.
As I continued to eye her from a distance, I wondered how she could act this tough.
Was it because she had no choice, forced to try to survive the best that she could as a bought woman?
Or was it because this was how she was made, how she was shaped to behave?
Dean cleared his throat and approached me. Like me, he kept his gun out, holding it down by his side. With his free hand, he indicated for me to glance at his phone. While I looked down, he stayed on the lookout, watching the men stuck in this standoff over the fake money bag.
I skimmed the incoming texts quickly. Another runner who’d come with Dean had driven off to pursue the Hernandezes who’d fled.
He’d caught them, and all three were dead.
I nodded once in acknowledgment. It’d serve us no purpose to continue asking this last Hernandez runner where the others were.
We’d killed them. The news of their death could crawl back to Emilio Hernandez or not.
I didn’t care. It wouldn’t matter. The lives of runners were expendable and fickle like that.
It went with the nature of the job out here in this dangerous land.
Dean slid his phone in his pocket and stepped back, deferring to me and how I’d like to handle this situation.
It wouldn’t take much to wrap this up. Sure, it sucked that the Hernandez Cartel were stiffing the Garcias on a payment, but that was something Jorge, the new boss of the Garcia Cartel, could manage himself.
Dean and our other Bratva runner had only come as backup.
A courtesy. I’d only come as further backup.
No payment would be happening today. Not out here in the desert.
All that was left to do was remove the threat of this cocky Hernandez thug aiming his gun at the Garcia runner.
With three of us here, they were outnumbered.
The Hernandez and this slave with him couldn’t survive a bullet from my gun, Dean’s gun, and the Garcia’s.
Not simultaneously. Someone was dying, and it wasn’t going to be me or the ones on my side.
Yet, as I failed to keep my gaze from the stubborn woman standing tall and straight, eyeing death directly and not breaking her composure, I wasn’t so sure that her death was necessary.
The Hernandez wasn’t leaving here alive. But her? I debated whether it would be a waste to end her life. The life of a fighter. A survivor. Someone clearly brave enough to face the worst odds.
With the hell of Uncle Dmitri slowly dying and the threat of Gregori looming large, I was losing my edge. I was caught up in the stress of too many unknowns. All the unpredictable variables in my life threw me out of control. Witnessing this woman’s defiance spoke to me.
I envied that stalwart stubbornness that kept her from breaking.
I coveted that stone-cold seriousness that suggested she’d either be na?ve or courageous enough to tackle any trouble that she encountered.
Who the hell are you to be this defiant?
What have you gone through to be this strong and resolute?
Further back in my mind, I wanted to question how I could do the same in regard to the storms brewing in my family. How could I strive to be just as defiant? What would it take for me to be bold and not falter?
Dean stayed back as I approached the woman.
Tuning out the rapid-fire exchange of Spanish between the Hernandez smuggler and the Garcia runner, I focused on her, this raw beauty that could shine and sparkle without the grit that was an accessory to her hard life.
This stubborn soul who didn’t whine, cry, or flee.
Placing one foot in front of the other, I closed in on her. Like a predator, I sized her up. Like a stalker, I zeroed in on her such that she had to mark my presence and know that I, too, was a threat on the horizon.
I’d come here under the binding factor of the Volkov Bratva and Garcia Cartel being partners and allies again. If she was an indirect member under the umbrella of the Hernandez outfit, then she had to be the enemy too.
She didn’t look like it, though. She didn’t appear to be attached to this situation. Maybe that was how all slaves and bought runners had to be. Indifferent. Apart.
Every inch that brought me closer to her sharpened my intrigue. And every second that ticked by felt like a loss, like I’d need innumerable minutes to study her and analyze how she could be this sturdy and defiant.
Still, she didn’t move. She didn’t speak.
But as I drew nearer, a slight shift of her eyes proved that she was tracking my closing in on her.
I lifted my hand in the direction of the Garcia runner who argued with the Hernandez.
Even though I wasn’t his boss, I was the boss, the highest-ranking individual here.
I wasn’t a lowly runner. I was under the direct supervision of Adrik as he stood in as Pakhan.
Royalty, if anyone wanted to use such terminology for my crime family.
That simple movement of my hand was all it took for the Garcia to retreat. He wouldn’t dare question my request for space. He wouldn’t disrespect my wishes, not only because of who I was but also because of the recovering friendship between my Bratva and his Cartel.
As he backed up a few steps, he maintained his aim on the woman.
No longer jamming the end of the barrel of his gun against the smooth, tanned skin of her forehead, he kept her in his sights.
Several feet yawned between him and her, but it wasn’t as though he’d shoot with me partly in the way.
He gave me the clearance to approach her so that she’d address the threat I’d offer her. Not him.
She wasn’t free. Not even close. Without that tunnel-vision style of death looming over her, though, she could consider me.
Cool blue eyes narrowed on me as she squinted under the sun’s brightness.
Her pink lips, slightly chapped, remained pressed in a thin line of disapproval.
Of anger? Of wretched hopelessness that she despised?
I couldn’t tell. But as I stood here with her and studied her, I became not the predator but the prey.
I fell prey to the spell of needing to know all there was to learn about her.
About how she could embody such a flawless strength and unwavering defiance.
She didn’t hide. Didn’t cower. Didn’t duck or let her short wavy bob of hair shroud her face.
And it still wasn’t enough.
I had to know her.
Feel her.
Tame her.
And get her to submit to me, just in case that could enable me to experience some semblance of control again.
Dean told the men to shut up. In the sudden silence that followed in this patch of the desert that baked us, I drew in a deep breath and knew that my life was about to change.
For better or worse, I could not walk away from this gorgeous fighter.
“Tell me,” I said to her, keeping my voice kind of quiet so she’d be the only one to hear me. “Would you rather be free in death? Or under my ownership?”
There were two options. She’d either be killed with this cocky asshole behind her, or she’d live and leave this place with me.
Her eyes immediately slitted further. Scowling at me, she refused to answer. That stubbornness wasn’t an act. It was the bedrock of her identity. Mute and not giving me a response, it seemed like she was deferring to my choice on the matter.
“Lev?” Dean asked, stepping one foot toward me.
He would no doubt want to know what the fuck I was doing.
What I was thinking. I wasn’t like Maksim, who he usually worked with on smuggling arrangements and shipping.
My cousin was a problem solver and too strategic in all he did.
I wasn’t like Carina, his wife, either. She was the expert in all things to do with the Cartels.
I was winging this, and if Dean or anyone else were to ask, I wasn’t entirely sure why I was meddling like this at all. I’d been asked to show up as a backup because I was the enforcer. We should’ve killed these two and left ten minutes ago.
But something about the hardened defiance in her eyes haunted me. It thrilled me, too.
“What’s her name?” I asked the Hernandez, raising my voice and facing him.
“The slave?” He huffed. “Her contract said she’s supposed to be Mila. Mila Beckett.”
I tilted my head, sizing him up. “You have her contract on you?”
He furrowed his brow. But then just as quickly, he used his free hand to wipe sweat from his forehead as he nodded. “Yeah. I got it. We gotta carry papers ’round here. Other assholes always trying to steal anything they can from our crews.”
“You wanna talk about stealing?” the Garcia runner exclaimed. “You show up here with no money. You stole from my—”
I cut him off, lifting my hand again. “If you sell her to me, perhaps I’ll spare your life.”
The Hernandez stared at me. For a long second, he seemed to struggle to understand. Then he laughed once, like he couldn’t believe the deal I was suggesting. His eyebrows popped up high and he shrugged. “For real?”
I nodded.
Dean stepped closer. “Lev, what the—”
I shot him a look to shut up and he did.
“Yeah, you can have her. But not just for my life. I want a commission, too.” He sniggered, like he was a genius.
“How much?” I asked without missing a beat.
“You wanna buy her, that’s gonna be…” He rubbed his chin. “Ten thousand.”
I glanced at Dean, giving him the nonverbal order to retrieve cash from the car.
As soon as Dean muttered to himself and turned to go to the car, I indicated for the man to hand over the contract. “Sold to Lev Volkov,” I stated, offering him a pen.
The Hernandez grinned, shaking his head and laughing to himself.
He got the folded-up paper and spread it open so he could strike out the name of his boss and scratch in mine.
His penmanship didn’t matter. All I cared about was that he’d given it to me and hadn’t really considered the semantics of my offer.
He rubbed his hands together, backpedaling as he waited for Dean to bring him cash.
I faced Mila and nodded to my car. “You’re mine now. Let’s go.”
Her jaw slid as she ground her teeth, eyeing me like I was the devil. She stepped toward me. The Garcia frowned and lowered his arm. Then as I spun, I lifted my gun and shot the Hernandez. One shot, right between his eyes. He pitched forward and Mila twisted to face me.
Fear wasn’t blazing in her eyes, but I marked the confusion she couldn’t mask.
“I said perhaps I’d spare his life,” I explained dryly as I put my gun back in its holster and tipped my chin as a silent order for her to get in the car.
Dean furrowed his brow, watching me like he was one step behind and didn’t like it. He didn’t lag for long. He opened the door to the backseat of my car, and Mila climbed in without a word. Once he closed it after her, he asked, “What the hell?”
I had no answer for him. I wasn’t sure why I’d decided to do something like that—buying a slave to bring home like this.
But I had, and I was determined to see how it would go. As I moved to get into my car, I embraced this intrigue about this wordless, stubborn woman. This stranger who might give me a way to stay sane as my uncle died and Gregori taunted us from afar.