Page 58 of Lethal Torture
“I don’t sleep with clients. Ever.”
I need to respect that boundary, no matter what the fuck is going on in my traitorous bitch of a body. Otherwise this will all go to hell very quickly.
The limo pulls up outside Pigalle Mayfair, finally bringing an end to what feels like the longest day of my fucking life.
I head inside as soon as Luke opens the door, barely glancing at him as I pass.
It’s just safer that way.
14
LUKE
I spendthe next few days shadowing Zinaida, meeting all her staff and suppliers and gradually restructuring the way her clubs work. A team of Mak’s comes in to do the surveillance upgrades, supervised by me this time instead of Zinaida.
Especially in her apartment.
Christ, I think irritably, trying not to snarl my orders at the small army of workmen I brought in to gut the basement.How she’s survived this long is beyond me.
I still get a cold shudder of dread when I imagine her driving into that basement parking garage alone, at night. Clearly her would-be murderer has never done a thorough target assessment, or they’d have lain in wait there and picked her off at their leisure.
I’m still not certain someone wasn’t lying in wait the night I drove her home. Every nerve in my body felt another presence in that garage. I could almost taste them on the air.
Well, they won’t get another chance,I think grimly, staring around in satisfaction at the hive of activity transforming the entire building.
That’s another thing I like about working with the bratva: the lack of red tape. It’s the absolute opposite of the army, where every plan takes a thousand approvals and then has to be done on a shoestring. I can’t imagine who Mak bribed, or how much, to ensure both the compliance of the other residents and the consent of local authorities, but I had the requisite approvals in my hand faster than I could organize the workmen to do the job.
I take the stairs back up to Zinaida’s apartment, where the team is cleaning up after the upgrade. I wait until they’re gone to rectify the small things they overlooked: the exact position of a vase, the order of books on the shelf. Years doing surveillance has given me a forensic eye for detail.
Oh, yeah, Luke. Because you remembering every microscopic detail of Zinaida’s apartment is all about surveillance, huh.
The truth is that from the moment I stepped inside it, I’ve found Zinaida’s home just as intriguing and mysterious as the woman herself.
I stand in the center of her living room, surrounded by peace—and the seductive hint of Zinaida on the air.
I don’t know shit about perfume, but whoever makes hers deserves to be a billionaire. It’s like inhaling a clean desert dune at dawn, when the night’s moisture clings to the surface, heady with some raw power only the earth understands. Or maybe it’s the hint of amber behind it that makes me think of the Middle East. Either way it’s mysterious, dangerous and exciting.
The apartment itself is surprisingly simple, with some earthy touches completely at odds with Zinaida’s sleek, sophisticated siren facade.
The herbs hanging from a rack in the kitchen, for example, and growing on the upstairs terrace.
Food-splattered recipe books, all of which are clearly well used.
Leather-bound classics in three languages, one with a bookmark still in beside a sunny reading nook.
And then there are the oddly touching things. Like the two spare bedrooms, both neatly made up—with completely empty wardrobes and dressers.
As if Zinaida plans to have friends stay one day.
And yet I’d lay all the Mercura in my crypto wallet that those beds have never been slept in, just like I’m almost certain that I’m the first person, aside from tradesmen or Zin herself, who has ever set foot in her private space.
Which means you definitely shouldn’t hang around, asshole.
Trawling her private apartment is even more intrusive, and I know it.
Even if all I want to do is walk into her bedroom and imagine her in it.
If I’d thought that proximity would lessen desire, I was very fucking wrong.
