7. Tamara
TAMARA
Leonid is in his office eating hot dogs smothered in ketchup with his two daughters when I arrive at the golf resort.
Anya and Liliya have ketchup around their mouths and on their chins like they played with their momma’s lipstick without a mirror.
There are greasy smears across Leonid’s desk that would’ve sent him into a tailspin once upon a time and had the housekeeper polishing the surface to within an inch of its life.
But I’ve never seen such joy in his eyes.
Gianna and his daughters are his whole world.
Sure, he is still the Pakhan, the man who told me and my sister when we were younger that love was a weakness, a chink in a person’s armor that the enemy would use to its advantage.
But he’s softer now, as though his edges have been buffed smooth, his aura painted pink rather than the aggressive red he used to surround himself with.
“Come in.” He gestures for me to enter when he notices me standing in the doorway.
The two girls turn around in their highchairs to look at me, and I cringe when a dollop of ketchup hits the polished hardwood floor.
“Mara!” Anya says.
“Ana,” says her twin, peering around me to look for my sister.
My stomach clenches with guilt, and I keep my gaze focused on the ketchup on the floor.
My sister is missing, and I was being fucked by Irish instead of out there looking for her.
I pray that these two girls never lose sight of how precious their bond is.
Being a twin is a unique privilege, a love like no other because twins are together inside their mother’s womb from conception.
They grow together, share the same amniotic fluid, the same oxygen, the same food.
Without Ivana, I am only one half of a soul, and I’m not even the better half.
“Do I have permission to return to the docks?”
Leonid wipes his mouth with a pristine white napkin. “What is this about, Tamara?”
My sister lied to me. I met an Irish giant, stole his gun, and today I let him fuck me. His cum is still inside me, and my sister is missing, and I can’t be who you need me to be until I find her and know that she isn’t going to leave me again.
“The Petrovs are operating out of one the landings. Just because I didn’t see them last night, doesn’t mean that they weren’t there.”
He studies me closely. “Is that all?”
“Have you heard from Ivana?” I counter.
His gaze shifts to his daughters who are quiet while they eat, bored with the dull adult conversation. “No. You don’t need my permission to return to the port, Tamara, but I do need to know what your intentions are.”
He knows that I’m not being completely honest, but he’s waiting for me to come to him for help.
“Ivana left last night for a reason.”
“And you think this has something to do with the Petrovs?” His expression gives nothing away.
“Perhaps.” I don’t understand how or why, but she chose to leave last night while I was at the Iroquois Landing, and I need to figure it out so that I know where to look for her. “You taught us never to believe in coincidences.”
He smiles, his gaze instinctively sliding back to his daughters as if this life lesson is one that he could teach them now while they’re still babies.
“I can’t let you go alone.”
I anticipated that this would be his response. “The team is waiting for me.”
He nods then, his attention already moving on from our conversation and back to his daughters. “Stay safe, Tamara. The order still stands: if you see the Petrovs in operation, you are to observe only and report back to me or Andrej.”
No mention of what I’m to do if I find my sister.
I turn around and reach the door before he speaks.
“We will find her. I promise we’ll find her and bring her home safely.”
I acknowledge his comment with a nod and close the door softly behind me. It isn’t his promise to make, it is mine, and even I’m unsure if Ivana wants to come home.
The lie about taking the team with me will buy me a little time to get back to the port and check out another dock.
The lack of information from my first visit is still niggling away at me.
I didn’t miss the Petrovs because I was too busy trying to disarm Irish…
I didn’t miss them because they weren’t there.
And if they weren’t at the Iroquois Landing when Leonid’s sources suggested they would be, then where the fuck were they?
It’s like deja-vu only this time in daylight.
This dock is busier with trucks rolling along the quayside shifting cargo, workers supervising containers being winched on and off the ships, men on board the vessels carrying out maintenance checks before they head back out across the lakes towards the ocean.
It’s easier for me to navigate the vehicles and storage units unnoticed.
I find a discarded hard hat and hi-vis vest on the passenger seat of an empty truck, and smile when I spot the clipboard on the dashboard. Almost like the worker knew I would need them.
Dressed like everyone else on the dock, I’m invisible.
I wander along the quayside, checking out the blank document on my clipboard whenever someone gets too close, and nodding to myself as I move along.
I hear plenty of accents: general American, Hispanic, Asian, British, but none of them are what I’m hoping to find.
Until I watch another ship pull up alongside a smaller vessel already moored up at the landing, the sound of its engine slowing down as it waits to be directed into position by the port authorities.
Clutching the clipboard to my chest so that no one will realize it’s empty, I stare at the men on board the latest ship to arrive, and my pulse accelerates.
They might not be Bratva, but I recognize the hammer and sickle tattoo on the arm of a man standing on the deck.
Our eyes meet briefly, and I don’t look away.
He must accept my hard hat and hi-vis uniform, because his gaze moves onto the storage units behind me, and finally settles on a small group of workers at the far end of the dock.
Head down, I make my way towards them. Four men, all in the same PPE that I’m wearing over black pants and black sweaters, and as I approach, their tattoos come into focus. Serpents, coiling around their necks, the snake’s tongue licking behind their ears.
Yelling from somewhere behind me causes me to turn around and follow the commotion with my eyes.
Three men are running away from a stack of pallets being winched off one of the stationary vessels, while the load swings precariously between the ship and the flat-bed truck waiting to transport it onward.
But it isn’t the cargo that grabs my attention.
It’s the person the three men are chasing along the landing area.
A woman with white-blonde hair wearing gray overalls tucked inside black boots. She’s running in the opposite direction from where I’m headed and is too far away for me to see her face, but whoever she is, I get the sense that she isn’t supposed to be here.
Everyone else on the dock is watching the woman’s flight, including the men with the serpent tattoos, while all work is temporarily halted until she is detained and it’s safe to proceed.
I can’t risk the men noticing me while they’re not watching the ship’s approach, so I make my way slowly to the containers stacked up at the rear of the dock and slip away unnoticed.
I want to find the woman. Those men weren’t chasing her to shake her hand and congratulate her on a job well done; they were trying to stop her from whatever she was doing before she was noticed, and my gut is telling me that I’ll get more information from her than I will from anyone else on this dock.
I’m navigating the containers, checking the padlocks and the names on the sides, when a hand grabs my wrist and spins me around, pinning my body up against the rusty metal container behind me.
My free hand finds my gun and presses the barrel against my assailant’s chest, my finger already on the trigger.
“Whoa, don’t shoot.” I recognize the Irish accent before he backs off, both hands raised in the air in a gesture of surrender. His lazy grin follows, complete with dimples.
“Are you following me?”
“I could ask you the same question, Tamara.”
Fuck! Telling him my name was a big mistake, one that I should never have made.
“I don’t have time for this.” I lower my gun, but I don’t slide it back inside the holster. I don’t want him to think that I’m dropping my guard because we fucked earlier.
“For what?” He lowers his hands but has the sense not to come any closer.
Wanting to kiss him. Wanting to feel him inside me again, filling me up with his cock. Wanting to feel his tongue on my clit. All of the above.
My body has other ideas though. More of his cum oozes out from between my legs and I resist the urge to wipe my thighs.
I don’t want him to know that I’m still carrying part of him around inside me, and I certainly don’t want him to know that I would take my clothes off and ask him to fuck me again right now if there wasn’t a dock buzzing with people behind the containers.
“I should go.” I turn around to walk away, but he stops me in my tracks.
“My name is Finn. Finn Twomey. I work for Aiden—”
“Stop!” I cover my ears with both hands, the gun pointing towards the sky. “I don’t want to know who you are. I don’t want to know anything about you.”
“Why?” He steps closer, and I back away, maintaining the distance between us. “What are you afraid of, Tamara?”
“I’m not doing this. I have to find my sister.”
“I can help you.”
I look at him, and my heart skitters, because I can still feel him inside me, stretching my walls, the slow burn as he slides in and out of me. My pussy is aching for him, and I wish that I could turn it off, this want that I have no control over.
“I don’t want your help.”
“Whether you want it or not, I’m going to help you find her.”
“Why?” I narrow my eyes at him. “Why would you do that? What’s in it for you?”