Chapter 2
SERGEI
“What the fuck, man? This ain’t the way to the club.”
Nik twisted in the passenger seat, looking back at the exit we’d just passed as if in all the years he’d known me, I’d never done anything without intent. The neon glow of the turnoff faded in the rearview mirror, swallowed by the dark stretch of road leading toward the hospital district.
“We have to make a stop first,” I said, keeping my eyes forward.
The digital clock on the dashboard read 22:26. Leo’s shift had officially ended at ten, but in the weeks I’d been watching him, he had not once walked out on time. He buried himself in work the way some men buried themselves in alcohol.
The hospital came into view ahead. The emergency entrance flickered red with the ambulances idling in their bays. I pulled into a parking structure across the street before easing into a shadowed corner that gave me a clean line of vision to the staff entrance, then cut the headlights.
It wasn’t by chance that I’d found this spot. I’d scouted the area for the perfect place from where I could see the automatic doors, the security desk beyond the glass, and the stretch of pavement employees crossed to reach their cars.
Nik exhaled slowly beside me. “Look, if I’m going to be an accessory, I’d at least like to know what for. Murder? Kidnapping? And, just so you know, I draw the line at any type of sexual coercion.”
I scowled but didn’t reply, keeping my attention focused on the entrance. Was I too late? I took out my phone and opened the tracking app. His car was still parked at the hospital.
Good.
If Leo knew I’d planted bugs in his home, tapped his phone, and placed a tracker on his car, he would hate my guts more than he already did.
The look he’d given me two days ago in the coffee shop—raw resentment laced with disgust—stayed with me longer than it should have.
Seeing his grief stirred something in me I hadn’t quite managed to name, but whatever it was didn’t change the reality of the situation.
I still had a job to do, and as long as Leo posed a potential threat to Maxim, he was on my radar. Or so I’d told myself. Otherwise, what other reason could I have for stalking the man?
“For fuck’s sake, Sergei, are you still surveilling the doctor? Didn’t Maxim say he shouldn’t be treated as a threat anymore, given he saved Wren’s life?”
“I’ll be the judge of whether he’s in the clear.”
In the dark, I felt Nik shift to face me even though I couldn’t see the expression on his face.
“What’s the poor guy going to do? Take on the Mafia on his own? I know you’re protective of Maxim, Sergei, but come on. You can’t really think we have anything to worry about with that guy? If he wanted to get back at Maxim, all he had to do was misdiagnose Wren, but he didn’t.”
There was some truth to what Nik said, but I wasn’t known as Maxim’s head of security due to carelessness. Nothing slipped by me. No matter how lonely the doc looked… No matter how grief-stricken, I had never let my humanity stand in the way of doing my job.
“Wait a minute.” Nik snapped his finger. “That can’t be right. There’s got to be more to you stalking him.”
“What the fuck are you getting at?”
He fumbled with the ceiling until light flooded the cabin of my truck. I squinted against the glare.
“Darius is now the head of security, which means if something’s suspicious with the doc, he’s the one who should be handling it, so why isn’t he?”
“I’m going off a hunch. When I have something more concrete, I’ll hand it over to Darius.”
“That hunch wouldn’t happen to be inside your pants, would it? Because I think what you really want is to help the doctor through his grief the old-fashioned way.”
“Bullshit,” I spat with as much venom as I could muster.
Nik let out a loud laugh and leaned back in his seat. “No? Then turn this car around and let’s leave. You’re the new brigadier, and you haven’t been to the club yet. That’s your turf. That’s your responsibility, not having impossible dreams about fucking the doctor.”
“Not that I’m interested, but who says it’s impossible? I get my fair share of partners anytime I want.”
“But this is one piece of ass that won’t be settling in your bed, so get it off your mind.
For fuck’s sake, we’re responsible for his husband’s death.
” Nik pointed in the direction of the hospital, and as if somehow summoned, Leo walked through the doors, pushing a rolling briefcase.
“He talked to Archie about how Bradley really died.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Are you listening to yourself?” Nik was all but screeching in my ear while I tracked Leo’s every movement to his car.
“Archie tried to enlist his help to kill Wren in the hospital. Why do you think Archie was confident Leo would help him? He obviously told Leo Maxim forced Bradley to jump off the rooftop.”
My mouth went dry, and I swallowed hard. Nik wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t already mulled over. But if you knew someone was responsible for your husband’s death, you would say something, wouldn’t you?
Leo never mentioned how Bradley died. Not while he helped Maxim get Wren airlifted to another, more secure hospital. Not while he helped us to keep up the pretense that Wren was dead so we could expose Archie. Not all this time I’d had him under surveillance.
“Do you want to call Darius to come get you?” I said.
Nik let out an exasperated sigh. “That won’t do. I’m your bodyguard. You keep forgetting you’re in a different position now. You need someone to watch your back, and I already fucked up once with Wren. I’m not giving Maxim another reason to fire me.”
“Then shut up and let me do what I have to.”
“You’re fucking impossible.” He took out his phone, and I was saved from listening to any more of his truths.
“Hey, you better not say anything about this to Darius.”
“I’m texting Jess.”
“You can’t tell her either. You know she’s a blabber. She tells Wren everything, and then it’ll go back to Maxim.”
“The fuck, you just called my girl a blabber?”
“You saying she isn’t?”
“Okay, maybe a little, but you don’t ever tell her I agreed with you on that.”
Nik huffed and went quiet, thumbs moving across his phone screen while the glow reflected faintly on his face. For a few blessed seconds, the truck filled with silence again, broken only by the low hum of the engine and the distant whoosh of a passing car, driving way too fast.
Leo’s BMW came into view at the exit, lingering for a few seconds as he turned on his blinker and allowed a motorcycle to get ahead of him before rolling out onto the street.
“He’s on the move,” I said under my breath.
Nik glanced up from his phone. “Who? The man who’s going to break your heart?”
I ignored him and counted to five before I merged into traffic two cars behind him. His brake lights flared briefly as he stopped at the intersection, then he turned onto the main road leading out of the hospital district.
Nik leaned his elbow on the window and squinted ahead at Leo’s taillights.
“So, let me get this straight. We’re following a grieving widower home after he’s worked what—another fourteen-hour day?
You really think the guy has the energy left to hold some secret strategy meeting about taking Maxim down? ”
“Shut up,” I gritted out.
“I’m serious,” he said. “If the man so much as drops his keys, are you planning to leap out and catch them for him? Maybe tuck him into bed? Because that’s the only place he’s going after this.”
Leo’s sedan slowed at a light ahead of us. I kept him in focus and tried to drown out Nik’s rant.
“Do you even know what the hours are like for doctors in those hospitals?” he asked.
Of course I did. I knew everything there was to know about Leo. He was an internal medicine attending physician officially scheduled for twelve-hour hospital shifts, seven days straight before he rotated off service. Most physicians left when their shift ended, but Leo didn’t.
He arrived before rounds started and stayed long after the residents signed out. In the last two weeks, he averaged fourteen to fifteen hours a day and had taken exactly two days off—the day of Bradley’s funeral and the one after.
Nik watched the taillights ahead of us for a moment before exhaling through his nose. “All right. I’m done,” he said finally.
I didn’t answer.
He shifted in his seat and rubbed a hand over his jaw. The joking tone he’d carried for the last ten minutes was gone. “Look. I’ll shut up if you really want me to. You know I will.”
I glanced at him briefly before returning my attention to the road.
“But all bullshit aside,” he said quietly, “what the hell is this, Sergei? What are you actually doing?”
For a long moment, the only sound in the truck was the low hum of the engine and the tires rolling over asphalt. I watched Leo’s car move through the next intersection.
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling somewhat ashamed for admitting it.
Nik blinked. “You don’t…what?”
“I have no fucking idea.”
The words hung in the air between us, and for the first time since he realized my intention tonight, he fell silent.
“I heard him crying.” The admission slipped out, and I immediately regretted saying it. The words felt wrong in my mouth, like I’d exposed something that should have stayed locked inside my skull.
“What?”
I exhaled slowly through my nose. “The day of the funeral, I went to his house.”
“To—”
“To search it,” I cut in because he had to know I hadn’t just decided to stalk the man for no good reason.
“His computer. Files. Anything that might tell us if Bradley had been collecting information on Maxim and whether his husband had it in his possession. I needed to know if there was something we missed.”
“Okay. That makes sense.”
“I was in his office when Leo returned home earlier than expected. I didn’t have time to leave, so I prepared myself to kill him if I had to.”