Russian Hitman's Innocent American (11 page)

Daphne adjusted her grip on the gun. “If he chooses you, he’ll be dead before he hits the bridge. We have people stationed all over this place. Every fifth car that crosses has a gun aimed for the head of your beloved assassin.” A nasty grin spread across her face. “Ivan wants to make sure that he can return to Russia. And believe me, when Dmitri is dead, the payout for me will be enough for me to retire for good.”

Charley stared at her. “So I’m dead either way,” she whispered.

“Oh, sweetheart, you were dead the moment Dmitri stepped into your life. That’s how things work around here. You and your American notions of a happy ending just don’t come true in the world of the Russian mob. The only reason I haven’t shot you yet is for my own preference. I want to see the look on your face when you see his dead body fall from the bridge.”

Dread seeped into Charley’s bones as she stared down the barrel of the gun. She had nothing to say to that, and Daphne seemed to know it. “Of course, Dmitri is a smart man. He’d know that it was a trap. And I doubt someone like you is worth anything to someone like him. I have no doubt that Dmitri will choose to kill Ivan, and he’ll meet his death there as well.” She cocked her head. “You don’t actually think you’re worth something to him, do you?”

Charley tried desperately to hold on to the idea that she meant something to Dmitri. If she was going to die, she wanted to die thinking that some part of him might love her.

Daphne pulled out her phone and glanced at it. A worried look crossed her face.

“Boss didn’t call to check in?” Charley asked dryly. It was nice to know that at least things weren’t going well for Daphne either. She really wanted to see that bitch die.

Her old roommate didn’t say anything as she dialed a number. “What the hell is going on?” she demanded into the phone. As she turned her back, a shadow fell over them. Charley did her best not to shriek as a body moved swiftly down. Dmitri swung down in one powerful movement and landed silently between them. When Daphne turned back around, he already had a gun up.

Daphne’s eye’s rounded, and the phone dropped from her hand. Charley had to suppress the urge to watch its long drop into the water.

“Not possible,” Daphne whispered. “Somebody should have seen you.”

Dmitri merely shrugged. “I’m didn’t go undetected all these years because I was bad at my job.”

“Ivan was so sure that you would choose him.” Daphne backed up, and the gun in her hand waivered. “I don’t want to die.”

“You should have thought of that before agreeing to Ivan’s employment. There is not a single scenario where you get out of this alive,” Dmitri murmured.

Without warning, Daphne pulled the trigger. The shot went wild, and Daphne lost her balance and tumbled from the beam. She wasn’t the only one. Terrified of the shot, Charley lunged toward Dmitri and slipped. She opened her mouth in a silent scream as she realized that she was falling.

A thousand things slipped through her mind. She felt slighted that she’d spent all that time in grad school, and now she wouldn’t even graduate. She felt sorrow that she wouldn’t ever see Veronika again. She thought about her stupid little insignificant life in Russia and all the things that she would never be able to do.

She thought about Dmitri. She thought of all the things she wanted to say to him. Rage. Irritation.

Love.

It didn’t even seem possible for all the thoughts to fly through her mind. As soon as she lost her footing, an arm was circling her waist. “Easy. Don’t panic,” Dmitri whispered in her ear as he righted her.

Charley gasped and circled her arms around him. “Are you shot? Did she shoot you? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Her aim was off. I knew that.” His eyes darkened with intensity as he stared at her. “Did she hurt you?”

“No. She said she wanted me to watch you die,” she muttered as she ran her hands along his chest. Part of her couldn’t even believe that he was here. She had to touch him and prove to herself that it wasn’t a hallucination.

“I don’t plan on dying today,” Dmitri said huskily. He straightened and lifted his head to study to bridge above them. “Getting down was the easy part. With the wind whipping around, the currents in the river are deadly. We’ll have to go back up.”

Charley followed his gaze. “There is no way I’m ever going to get back up there,” she whispered.

Dmitri flashed her a sexy grin and winked. “Trust me, babe. I do this for a living.”

Charley stared at him. “You chose me,” she muttered. In her head, she thought of all the romantic things he might say. He might confess his love or at least confess that he might have feelings for her.

He didn’t say any of those things. Instead he just gave her a small smile. “What makes you think I had to choose?”

***

The guards pulled out their keys and opened the door. Dmitri cast a quick look around before sitting at the table. Ivan, dressed in the prison attire, sat across from him with his arms handcuffed to the table.

It was almost satisfactory to see the man who killed his father utterly defeated.  “They told me that Anton was visiting me,” Ivan whispered. “How could you have adopted your original identity?”

Dmitri smiled. “It was quite easy. After Kazimir went after you and got you arrested, I went to the authorities and explained the situation. I told them that I faked my death at the age of eighteen to get away from my psycho guardian. If they thought it was odd that I bare a striking resemblance to the dead assassin Dmitri, they didn’t say.”

After Dmitri called Ivan, he immediately called Kazimir. Kaz went after Ivan while Dmitri went for Charley. Soon he’d have to actually start calling Kazimir a friend.

“I still win,” Ivan hissed. “I can do great things behind bars.”

Dmitri leaned back against the chair and gave him a chilling smile. “I could have had Kazimir kill you. He offered. For the death of my father, you deserve it. But for what you did to Charley, you deserve so much worse. You’re powerless in here, Ivan. I’ve personally spoken to the warden. I know half the men who share a cell with you. If you so much as attempt to contact the outside world, you’ll be beaten within an inch of your life. But they won’t kill you. I want you to live in this filth for as long as I can.”

His former guardian stared at him in horror. “We were family, Anton.”

“My father was my family. You were the man who turned a child into a killing machine. Into a monster.”

Ivan chuckled. “I gave you the tools. You were the one who was so damn good at it. You don’t actually think you’ll go legit now, do you? You’ve done this your whole life. You know of nothing else. You’ll shed blood until someone finally ends you.”

Dmitri rolled his head as if he was bored. “I’m done with this life, Ivan. I have enough money to retire, and I don’t have a thirst for blood. I’ve found something else now. Something real.”

“The woman?” Ivan asked as his eyes widened. “You almost got her killed. She’ll never take you back.”

That was the first thing Ivan had said that even remotely rang true. Dmitri had no idea if Charley would even consider taking him back. It would probably just be best if he walked away. “It doesn’t matter if we’re together or not,” Dmitri said softly. “What matters is that I know I’m capable of love. She showed me that. She’s my redemption even if I never see her again.”

“You’re a fool. Love makes you weak.”

“Maybe. But I wouldn’t give it up for the world.” He got up and shook his head. “I won’t come back, Ivan. This is the last time you’ll see me. I’ll keep tabs on you, though. I want to make sure you rot in here.”

“I loved you.”

Dmitri froze as he stared at Ivan. The man’s eyes were filled with sadness as he looked at him. “I mourned your death, Anton. It affected me more than you could even imagine. I took you as revenge against your father, but I grew to love you as my own. I sometimes wonder about the man you would have been had you known how much I loved you.”

There was nothing for Dmitri to say, so he simply turned and walked out. Things would have been radically different if he’d been raised with love rather than hatred. Maybe if he had, he would have been able to hold onto love when he had the chance. Maybe Charley would be his.

Chapter Ten

“So you’ve only been in Russia for a week?” Charley asked, trying to force a smile. The petite woman in front of her pushed her thick Coke-bottle lens glasses up her face and nodded. “And before that you were in England?”

Again, the woman nodded meekly. Charley flipped through the pages and sighed. As yet another search began for a new roommate, she was starting to find red flags everywhere. On paper, the woman in front of her seemed perfect. She was in Moscow to study Russian culture, and Charley has Kazimir check every moment of her life. She was clean.

But as the supposedly perfect woman sat in front of her, Charley began to pick her apart. No one wore glasses that thick anymore. Obviously she was trying to hide her identity. Whoever was sitting across from her wasn’t the woman Kazimir had investigated.

“I’m sorry. I just don’t think it’s going to be a great fit,” she said as she stood. It wasn’t the first time she’d mourned the loss of her baseball bat. After her kidnapping and Ivan’s arrest, the authorities descended on the hotel room like a swarm. Everything was taken as evidence, including her baseball bat.

Dmitri, of course, disappeared. He’d been gone for three weeks now, and there was no word on his whereabouts. He’d simply dropped her off at the police station and melted into the shadows.

She’d been interviewed relentlessly, but she had no information to give. Over and over again, she just said that one of Ivan’s enemies had her kidnapped. She had no idea who he was or where he was.

And it was true.

Charley tensed as the woman rose. Here it was. The seemingly harmless English woman was going to attack, and Charley was defenseless.

Instead, the woman whispered a thank you and hurried from the house. A voice inside Charley’s head wondered if maybe she was seeing threats at every turn.

“But it’s not like I don’t have good reason,” Charley snapped at herself.

“Ms. Barns?” Charley whirled around to see the English woman standing in the doorframe. “You have a package out here,” she said quietly before ducking her head and leaving.

A package? There was no mail today. She followed the woman out and glanced down at the box. It wasn’t addressed.

“What the hell is this?” she muttered. With a sigh, she grabbed it and brought it inside.

Cautiously, she opened it. A brand new baseball bat nestled inside the box along with a manila folder. Trembling, she pulled out the folder and opened it.

It was an application for a position as a roommate.

Name: Anton Mankovich

Date of Birth: July 27, 1974

Occupation: Freelance Consultant

Criminal Background: Suspected for multiple crimes, investigated, and cleared.

Marital Status: Depends

Slowly, Charley flipped through the pages. There were pages and pages of background history and references. Without even looking up, she knew that he was watching her.

“You have a nasty habit of following me,” she said softly without looking up.

“I apologize,” Dmitri said formally as he materialized from the corner of her living room. “I was concerned when I discovered you were looking for a new roommate.”

She sat the application on the table and straightened her shoulders. Every nerve in her body was aching to touch him, but she couldn’t. She’d gone three weeks of not hearing a peep. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of jumping into his arms.

“My last roommate failed to pay rent, and her deposit check bounced. Something about her assets being frozen,” Charley said as she crossed her arms.

“I checked out that last woman myself. There was no reason for you to send her away. She has impeccable credit, great references, and she had plenty of money,” Dmitri said quietly.

Charley met his worried gaze with defiance. “I didn’t like her glasses.”

“Her glasses?” he asked with a lift of his eyebrows.

“Yes. They were too thick. It was impossible to see her eyes.”

He stepped closer to her, and she immediately took a step back. His saw the move and stopped. “Charley, you can’t live your life afraid.”

Trying to seem nonchalant, she shrugged. “It looks like I still have an opening. I’ll review your application and get back to you. You can see yourself out, Mr. Mankovich.”

“Charley.”

All it took was one word for her stop. Rage filled her, and she turned on him. “Mankovich. I didn’t even know you had a last name. I though you just went by Dmitri. And since that’s not your legal name, you shouldn’t be putting it on your application.”

“If you look through that file, you’ll find everything you need to know.”

“Like what?” She crossed her arm and stared at him. “What did you put in the file? What do you think I need to know?”

Hesitation flashed in his eyes, and she felt a streak of satisfaction. He was on unstable footing. Good. She wanted him to know how she felt.

 “After Ivan’s arrest, I turned myself in. I explained that I was Anton Mankovich, and that I faked my suicide as a teenager to free myself from my criminal guardian. I’m a freelance consultant, and I’m legally cleared.” He cleared his throat. “I would also like to point out that all of Dmitri’s victims had blood of their own on their hands.”

Charley snorted. He thought the fact that his victims weren’t innocent was the headlining factor here. “A freelance consultant?”

“Up and coming businesses. I’m quite successful at it.”

“So you’re wealthy. Why would a wealthy freelance consultant be interested in living with me?”

“A change of pace would be nice,” he said quietly. “Settling down would be nice, too.”

“Settling down?” Charley scoffed. “As my roommate?”

Just like that, the mask slipped away. Charley saw naked vulnerability in his face. When he spoke, she heard the honesty in his voice. “Help me out here, Charley. Tell me what you want me to say.”

“Are you kidding me?” She stared him. “You disappeared. You dropped me off without so much as a word and left me. You really want to know what I want, Dmitri? I want to know what the hell is going on inside your fucking head!”