CHAPTER THREE
Rush
Age 19
“I ’m not playing poker with you, Rush.”
I hoist myself onto the Peloton’s saddle as Nikolai uses the free weights in our gym.
“Too good for you, Niko—” I catch his dark look. “Nikolai?”
He’s Niko, Nikolai, and fuck face—the first I rarely use and the last one I wouldn’t ever utter aloud, because I love my balls right where they are. They’ve got years left of use.
Dude and man slip out on occasion, but he’s a man who wants his name in full, the fuck face.
“Why does that fucking expression on your ugly face make me want to kill you?” he asks.
I grin at him. “You need glasses.”
“Eagle sharp, Rush. I’m not playing poker because you have no concept of a fucking poker face. You always lose.”
I snort. “Only because you never let me win.”
“Why are you here?”
I shift. Nikolai’s always rough and sharp-edged, but it hides his soft, lovable center. I can say what I want about him, but anyone else? They’re fighting words.
“Bored?” I shrug. “There’s chess?”
“I have to make you play chess. Yeah, you’re fucking bored.” He sets the dumbbells down. “You want to break some kneecaps, that it?”
“Maybe.” I love riding with the guys, taking care of business. Some business, I amend. Not the real hardcore, not the stuff Nikolai loves. He likes to keep his hand in the game.
Other bosses, the ones who haven’t aligned with him over the years, don’t. They only travel in entourages and have their goons do most of their business.
Tony would prefer Nikolai to act more like that, but Nikolai is out to prove a point, when he isn’t sleeping with the hottest women I’ve ever seen. Even in that, he’s no player. Everything he does has a reason, a place.
Me? I love to fuck, and don’t get me wrong, the girls I get are hot. It’s just…I want a taste of the caliber Nikolai pulls.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Rush. I really don’t need first row fucking seats to your sex thought processes.”
Heat bites. “Who said I’m thinking of sex?”
“That.” Nikolai waves a hand at me. “Trust me, I’ve seen it on you plenty. Maybe don’t be so…thirsty.”
“Thirsty?” I squeak the word and throw his towel at him. “I get plenty of sweet pussy.”
He smacks me up the back of the head for reasons I can’t fathom. He’s said worse, much worse. “What was that for?”
“Bragging.”
“And you don’t?”
“No. What I say is never bragging.” He checks his watch. “I need to get ready.”
I perk up. “Can I come?”
“It’s boring.”
So’s chess, but though I’d never tell him, I like it okay. I think I’d like whatever he’s up to more, though.
I follow him up the stairs and hang about in his room as he showers, glaring at his stupid suits that are all the same. When he comes out, he’s dressed in trousers and a shirt, his tie around his neck.
“Fuck, you really are bored. You can come to Fanny’s if you want. It’s nothing exciting.”
I grin. “Two words: strip club.”
“Here’s three more. We’re. Fucking. Working.”
I sit on the sofa and set my feet on his coffee table, breathing out an exaggerated sigh when he gives them and then the floor a look. I drop them down.
“Niko—”
“Nikolai.”
I practically stick out my lip. “C’mon, dude.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Fine, Nikolai, man.” I’m pushing it, but he’s not mad. I smooth my fingers over the edge of the sofa arm. “I want…I want to be involved more.”
He nods. “How?”
“Your right-hand man? Share it with Tony? More frontline action?”
He sits on the armchair and crosses his legs. “That’s a job you have to earn, Rush, and I’m not sure Tony’s inclined to share. He’ll teach you. I need a few trustworthy men. Inner secrets men. But the frontline? C’mon.”
I huff, crossing my arms over my chest. “I’m not sixteen anymore.”
“Rush.” He levels his gaze on me. “It’s not that. This is yours, always and forever, but some people have a conscience, and inside, under all the blood lust, you have that. You’re reckless, but I can use that edge.”
“So—”
“We’re not at war. This frontline isn’t for heroes, and it isn’t for you. There’s more behind that level of full-on violence and death.”
Now he’s pissing me off, and I go still. “I’ve killed, more than once.”
“And each one steals something. Difference between you and me is, you’re not a monster. I think one monster per family is enough.”
I breathe out, looking down and studying my Docs. “So, I’m weak like my father?”
I’m pinned to the floor so fast, the wind is knocked out of me, Nikolai’s hand is around my throat. He squeezes– hard . “Your father wasn’t fucking weak.”
Then, he releases me and stands. I lay there, trying to breathe after the sudden move. We don’t fight, not physically—apart from the occasional light slap over the back of the head. I want to, but I’d lose. Nikolai fights dirty, and he kills with unnerving focus.
“My dad got himself and my mom killed—”
Again, he interrupts me. “Because he wasn’t cut out for dealing with a creature like Finnegan. That’s not weakness. Naivety, perhaps, decency, but not weakness.”
A hand appears, and I stare at it. Finally, I take it, and he hauls me up.
He moves off to pull on his waistcoat and do up the tie. “Your father was good, maybe too good for this shit. Finnegan’s dirty and weak and never upholds a deal when he thinks he can get away with it.”
“So, he murdered them?”
There’s hesitation in his voice. “Yes.”
“Nikolai?”
“I don’t lie. He murdered them.”
I ask it. The question. The big one. “How?”
“Dead is dead,” he says. “How isn’t important.”
I’m not going to fight that battle, because there’s something in his voice that says I don’t want to know, and he wouldn’t tell me even if I pushed. Whatever happened, it was bad. “And you’re gonna end him? When?”
“The wife and the daughter. I’ll murder them and then Derek. I’ll take everything, and I’ll probably piss on his fucking mutilated body.”
“Nikolai...”
He stares at me. “When a man tells you they’re a fucking monster, you listen. Always listen.”
“What if they tell you they’re good?”
“Watch and listen to the cadence of their words. People give everything away.” He looks at me. “Get ready, if you’re coming.”
I t’s still all on my mind four months later when I walk into Nikolai’s office. I think I’ve found my niche. I work with Tony. I’m not right-hand man material, but I’ve made my way up to this position. That was my idea–I wanted to go from security to earning my right to be privy to plans, to being an indispensable cog.
I don’t want to be Nikolai.
He’ll never admit it, but it weighs on him in ways I don’t think he sees or notices. Instead, I listen. I watch. I hear the weight of words, and when men tell me they’re rotten or untrustworthy, I listen.
I just…I wish Nikolai could ease on the brakes. We’re beyond rich. We’re a powerhouse and we’re respected, so respected that Finnegan wouldn’t dare touch us.
Still, the search for the wife and kid, one that had been a backburner, long plan situation, has suddenly come to the fore.
Whatever Derek Finnegan did to my parents is something horrific, and I’ve pieced together little bits. I…
Nikolai is right.
Knowing doesn’t make it better.
“Hey…” Whatever I’m going to say vanishes as I see his face, the concentration, the dark, cold, vengeful smile. “What’s up?”
He leans back and looks at me. “Wanna go on a trip, Rush?”
Oh man, he’s got the sweetest fucking car, a vintage black Stingray corvette he almost never lets me breathe on, let alone touch. “Can I drive your car?”
“Not on your life and not that kind of trip.”
I quirk up a brow. “Then what?”
“Beauty pageant.”
“Have you lost your mind?” I ask slowly. “Or are you hard up for women?”
“I’ve found her. I think I’ve found her.”
“Who?” I frown.
“Thorne Finnegan. Derek’s daughter.”
I swallow. “Nikolai?”
“I’m going to confirm it’s her. And when I do, I’m going to take her, then use her to destroy her family. When I’m done, when I have every single thing Finnegan has, I’m killing her, too.”