Page 26 of Beautiful Rush
“You won’t lose your job. I’ll make sure of it.”
I was making guarantees now?
She gave me a trusting smile that damn near broke my heart as if I alone had the power to make her world a better place. My sister Abby said I became a cop because I had a savior complex. She thought I wanted to save the whole world. I didn’t want to save everyone. Just a select few. Girls like Angel. Guys like Connor. Good people who needed help getting out from under all the shit before it buried them alive.
Dmitri flashed me a white-toothed smile. “Ask your bitch to pour us a round of shots.”
My bitch. I’d rather be in bed with my tarnished princess who gave me sass and could hold her own. I nudged Angel and tipped my chin at the bottle of vodka in the crystal ice bucket. Beluga Gold Line. The same vodka Keira had been drinking the other night. I knew it by taste.
Angel jumped to do my bidding and filled two shot glasses to the rim, sliding one in front of Dmitri and one in front of me before returning to her seat, a shy smile just for me. I felt like I’d just adopted a stray puppy. Just what I fucking needed.
“Thanks, babe.”
She curled into my side, tucked her arm in mine and drank her Dom Perignon, feeling safer now that she was under my protection. Dmitri and the others wouldn’t fuck with her if they thought she belonged to me. They abided by their own twisted moral code.
I turned my attention to Dmitri, the black knight in his sharp suit. His face looked like it was cut from granite, chiseled and hard, with a mane of thick black hair that reached the collar of his black dress shirt. Women found him attractive, in a dark, sadistic way. He took care of his body, worked out regularly, and unlike the others, he never touched drugs. Dmitri was a businessman and led by intimidation. Except for Leon, the other guys in his crew sucked up to him. It was probably why he liked me. I didn’t pander to him.
“You’re coming to the Hamptons with us,” Dmitri announced.
He held up his shot glass and waited for me to do the same. “Za nashu druzjbu.”
To our friendship.
In his eyes, he’d just bestowed a great honor on me. If I didn’t drink to seal the deal, it would be a sign of disrespect. I downed the vodka and set the empty glass on the table, knowing there would be at least three more shots to follow but I would stop at two and Dmitri wouldn’t say shit about it.
Dmitri considered me a friend. He confided in me. Asked my opinion. Invited me to hang out with him in his steel and glass waterfront penthouse in Long Island City, a stone’s throw from the apartment the field team had rented for me. We watched ballgames, played chess, and boxed at the gym together. For all his money and flashy lifestyle, Dmitri was a lonely man. Now he was inviting me to the Hamptons. Which was the whole reason I’d been cherry-picked for this assignment. To get close to Dmitri so we could bust the drug ring he was running. To gain his trust so he’d give me information, ideally leading us further up the food chain to his suppliers.
“When’s that?” I asked, adopting a relaxed pose, my arm draped across the back of the sofa.
“We’re leaving on Thursday. For a long weekend.”
“Who’s invited?” Sergei asked, shooting me a look as he abandoned the girl and moved closer to our circle, crossing his arms over his chest, on the defensive, always trying to protect his turf. Sergei was on a lower tier of the hierarchy, at the same level as Viktor. They did the grunt work, acted as the lookouts, and were only privy to information on a need to know basis. It pissed him off that Dmitri treated me as a friend, but he knew where his bread was buttered and was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.
Dmitri leveled him with a look. “That’s not your concern. My house, my fucking guest list.”
I knew for a fact that he didn’t own the house in the Hamptons, but he’d paid an obscene amount of cash to rent it.
“Angel, how would you like to come to the Hamptons with Kosta?” Dmitri asked magnanimously. “Cater to his needs?”
Fuck. Just what I didn’t need.
She licked her lips and smiled at me. “Yes, I would like that.”
What a clusterfuck. I’d have to handle her with care.
“Thought you might,” Dmitri said. His ice-blue eyes met mine. “I always look out for my friends.”
10
Deacon
On Thursday afternoon, I sat in my parked car, the black-tinted windows hiding my identity, and thanked the gods in heaven that Atlas Motors’ garage door was open as I watched Keira from across the street. Coveralls weren’t supposed to be sexy, but I could see every curve of her body through the canvas. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her sweet ass within my line of sight. Add to that the fact that she was beating the panels of a sweet as fuck Plymouth ‘Cuda and I was harder than Thor’s hammer.
Tate came into the bay blocking my view of Keira. Move aside, Tate. No such luck. He stayed firmly planted in front of her and instead of the sweet curve of her ass, I got a graying-brown ponytail and grease-stained coveralls with a dirty rag hanging out of the back pocket. I roughed my hand over my face and groaned. When I looked over at the garage again, Tate had disappeared, and Keira was staring directly at me.
She held up her index finger, asking me to wait a minute and I moved my Escalade to a spot down the street that wasn’t visible from the garage. Five minutes later, she sauntered up the street in a tiny pair of shorts, a loose tank top, and black high-tops. I leaned over to push the passenger door open and she slipped inside, closing the door and fastening her seatbelt. She smelled like oranges and told me it was from the hand soap they used at the garage.
“What are you doing, lurking outside the garage?” she asked.
