Chapter 2 Hailey
HAILEY
NOW
The astringent smell of vodka always makes me think of Melanie. She dropped me as a friend right after my sweet sixteen party. It didn’t matter, though it stung. There was no more money to pay for my private school tuition after Dmitri was arrested and his assets seized.
I shake the metal cocktail mixer and strain the contents into a glass, setting the garnished final product before a woman in a navy sheath dress with a shiny haircut that probably costs more than I’ll earn this entire week.
I school my face into a pleasant, distant mask.
One that discourages casual conversation.
It feels like there’s a wall between my world of struggle and survival and people like hers, who grew up with plans for college and internships and actual careers that cover all your bills.
After Mom and I went into witness protection with new identities, we were right back where we had started.
Cleaning houses and offices to scrape by.
Those months with Dmitri still feel like a dream.
Witness protection is nothing like what you see in the movies.
The Feds gave us new names and told us to go stay with family, but we don’t have any other living relatives, so we just ran.
I still think about that beautiful pink dress. I often disassociate with daydreams of my sweet sixteen party. Definitely the high point of my twenty-one years of life.
Despite everything we learned about my stepfather after his arrest, Mom never really stopped loving Dmitri.
When she died after three grueling years on the run, it was as if the life had already been hollowed out of her.
We were both traumatized by the violent way we’d lost everything.
She never recovered. Before she died, Mom managed to get a divorce.
Something about wives not testifying against their husbands, according to our contact at the FBI.
Rafail vanished. All I have left of him is that silly thumb drive that doesn’t work. A gift. I haven’t lost it. What a good little girl I am, all these years later.
Officially, Rafail is my ex-stepbrother now. Sometimes, I’ll jumpscare myself thinking I glimpsed him across the street or out the window of a store.
He’s never actually there.
Which is fine, honestly. I’ll be dead if I ever do see him again. The Feds told us the bratva think Mom and I turned witnesses for the government, but we never knew anything much about Dmitri’s work, much less Rafail’s.
Doesn’t matter to the Russian mafia. Perceived disloyalty is punishable by death.
“Hey. Miss.” A guy in a blue button-down, open at the collar, holds a twenty between two fingers trying to catch my attention. I ignore him until I run out of other customers to serve. Pricks like him never tip well, anyway. He takes his drink and confirms my suspicions by not tipping at all.
I’ll flirt for tips, but I don’t date.
I keep my head down and mind my business.
I don’t make friends. What’s the point when I might have to run again?
A lull hits. The other girl working the bar tonight taps my shoulder and jerks her head. “Who’s that scary guy?”
“No clue.” I barely glance the way she indicates. We get a problem drinker routinely. Baltimore has some rough characters, despite this being a bar that caters to a relatively upscale crowd.
“He hasn’t stopped staring at you all night,” she says.
I whip my head around for a second look. Subtle of me, I know. I stare at him for a long moment. Time slows. My pulse kicks into overdrive.
It’s him.
Rafail.
He looks the same, apart from slightly longer black hair and a few more tattoos peeking out of his half-unbuttoned shirt. A shiny gold cross hangs below the hollow of his throat. Truly a sacrilege if half of what the FBI told me about him is true.
“Cover me a minute.” I don’t wait for the other bartender to respond. I stride over to the man with tattoos on his knuckles and a strand of longish hair hanging over his sculpted features. I slam a tumbler of ice onto the wood before him and splash two fingers of vodka into it. “Remember me?”
That tiny little smirk I thought was infuriatingly sexy when I was sixteen is the same. It still sends a rush of heat pulsing through my core. I’m not a child anymore. I should really be over the whole bad boy thing, and yet…
“How could I forget?” he says.
“Smooth, Rafail.” I roll my eyes and lift the tumbler to my own lips, downing the contents straight. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t call the Feds on you right now.”
His amber gaze slowly scans my body, taking in the tight black tank top, black pants, and sensible black shoes.
My hair is a little shorter than the last time he saw it, trimmed to my mid-back and held away from my face with an elastic band.
No jewelry except for a pair of tiny gold earrings in my earlobes. Heat radiates through my body.
Suddenly self-conscious, I nervously attempt to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear, only nothing has escaped from the tight ponytail. An empty gesture that he follows with those compelling eyes.
“I warned you to stay away from vodka.” He tsks like a disapproving babushka and ignores my question. I’ve picked up a few Russian words since my stepdad was arrested. Purely out of curiosity.
“Seriously. What are you doing here?” I have so many questions, but this isn’t the time or the place. He isn’t supposed to know where I work, where I live, or my fake identity. Lila Davis only exists on paper, but I’ve inhabited her for the past five years. He could shoot me right now.
Why hasn’t he?
I can’t decide whether I’m flattered or frightened that he sought me out after all this time. Frightened. Definitely. The things I’ve learned about him…Murder. Torture. Arms dealing. Bribery and money laundering. He is a very dangerous man.
“Do you still have the gift I gave you?” he asks bluntly.
I shrug. “Gone. Lost it in a move.”
It’s sitting in my childhood music box with the other handful of mementos from my previous life as Hailey Bennet.
Photographs of my mother and me. Her and Dmitiri’s wedding picture.
A few from my sixteenth birthday party. Every time I look at them, it feels like a dream.
That was the last time I can remember feeling safe and happy.
I had no idea how much danger I was in.
He stares at me for a long moment. Tension stretches taut between us. A crowd comes in, loud and raucous.
“Good talk. I gotta get back to work.” I rap the gleaming wood bar twice and walk away. Already, my mind is whirling. I have to leave. I should call my contact at the FBI and report that my identity has been compromised.
I’m definitely getting rid of that stupid thumb drive he gave me. All this time, I held onto it. He came back for a piece of technology, not me. I’m surprisingly hurt by that. Idiot that I am.
At the register, I check his tab just to see what he ordered. One of the other bartenders already closed it out. Rafail ordered a vodka martini.
“Fucking hypocrite,” I mutter under my breath, thinking of the way he chided me for drinking at my sweet sixteen party. Granted, he’s of age and I was not. He’s still a prick, because he did it again tonight.
“Whoever your visitor is, he can come back any time,” the other girl bartending tonight tells me. “He tipped a hundred bucks on a twenty-dollar tab. Easy on the eyes, too, if you like ’em dangerous.”
That’s because he’s got mafia money, I don’t say.
We close the bar and lock up. A little before two-thirty AM, our male bartender and two barbacks walk me and the other girl to our cars. I reek of cut limes, orange garnish, and spilled beer. Can’t wait to go home and take a shower.
I half-expect to see Rafail in my rearview mirror. I can’t shake the nervous feeling I have about him showing up tonight. It’s been five years, though. There’s no reason for him to be interested in me, except for that silly fob thing he wants back.
I should give it to the Feds. Let my handler know I’ve been contacted by my ex-stepbrother.
But does it even count?
We barely knew one another back then, and he barely said anything to me tonight.
I have the strange feeling that he was checking on me.
Weirdly, that makes me feel a little safer.
I don’t have any family left, and while he isn’t really family anymore, there was a time when he acted like a protective older brother.
Sometimes. One who didn’t seem to like me very much.
Damn my hormones. He’s hotter than ever.
My breasts are heavy and aching just thinking about him.
His black shirt was unbuttoned at the throat and a couple of inches down his chest, revealing more tattoos and a lot of muscle.
There’s a lethal, elegant grace about him that’s only gotten more noticeable since I last saw him.
He would be, what, thirty or thirty-one, now? Around ten years older than me.
I am totally my mother’s daughter, with a weakness for bad boys. Unlike her, I won’t let it ruin my life, though. I have plans. I’m going to keep avoiding men, finish my degree, eventually, as soon as I can save up enough money to re-enroll in college…
The car’s engine light flicks on.
“Shit,” I mutter. Ten seconds later, a grinding sound fills the car.
It loses power. “Goddamn motherfucking…” I keep up a steady stream of cursing as I guide the car into a parking lot, barely snagging the ticket in time to lift the gate as I keep rolling down an incline.
At the bottom of the ramp, I pull sideways into two spots, taking up both, and kill the engine.
“Don’t die on me now, you piece of shit.” I try turning it on again, praying for a miracle. Obviously, I don’t get one. That is not how my life works.
Fine. Guess I’m walking home, at almost three in the morning, with two hundred dollars in cash tips in my purse. An ideal target for mugging. Or, I could spend money I don’t have calling an Uber. Or a tow truck. Never mind paying for repairs on this hunk of junk.
Fuck my life.
I slam out of the aged Honda Civic. I can try calling one of my roommates, but we’re not really what you’d call pals. I rent a room in a four-bedroom apartment. I keep to myself. It’s hard to make friends when you’re living a fake life. Not that I was ever good at it anyway.
Headlights beam at the ceiling, then drop as a car comes down the ramp into the subterranean parking garage. I freeze. Should I run and hide? But why would I do that?
The answer—yes, idiot, you should have run—shrieks through my brain when a sleek black SUV with tinted windows pulls alongside my car.
Rafail steps out, unsmiling.
“Car trouble, printsesa?” he asks softly, but there’s a note of menace in his tone.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” I lie.
“I’ll give you a ride.” He jerks his head at the open door. It’s not an offer. It’s an order. One I have no intention of obeying.
“Thanks, but no thanks. I was just about to call a tow truck—hey!”
Quick as that night he grabbed Melanie’s throat, he rips the phone out of my hand and throws it on the ground. The screen shatters. He brings his heel down, smashing it further. My mouth opens and closes like a fish gasping for air.
“Get in the car, Hailey. Or should I call you Lila now?” he says.
I shake my head. Take one step back and bump into my own stalled car. It’s clear what’s happening, yet my mind can’t quite catch up.
I’m being kidnapped by the mafia. Getting into his SUV means bad shit.
Yet this is Rafail, my overprotective ex-stepbrother.
Fear finally spurs me into action. I make a break for it.
I vault onto the hood of my car and slide down the other side.
“Don’t need a ride, thanks, Rafe!” I shout as I take off at a dead run for the stairway in the corner.
My damn mouth. Footsteps echo on concrete.
Not mine. His. I pump my legs as fast as they’ll go, purse banging against my hip with every stride. Faster. Go.
Escape is futile.
Rafail tackles me against the cement wall. Concrete scrapes my cheek. I register cold against my front and his warmth at my back. I’m too stunned to protest when he yanks my arms behind my back and binds them with something hard plastic. Zip ties.
Finally, I remember to struggle. A ferocious scream tears out of my throat, bouncing off the concrete, a shriek of furious anger and terror. A hand clamps over my mouth with a damp cloth that smells sickly sweet.
Some family reunion this is.