Page 10 of Bratva's Secret Girl
“Can we go and lock up?” I insist.
He levels a flat look at me as he plucks out his phone. It’s answered immediately. “I need you to shut a Greenwich café for me, the one near—da, that one—and do the daily accounts while you’re at it. And clean the floor.”
This is all very odd.
“Yeah. I know no one would dare go in. Just do it. Now.” Hanging up, he says. “One of my men is coming to sort everything.”
“Thank you,” I reply in a small voice. That makes me feel slightly less out of control.
“What on earth makes you think that?” he grits out.
“What?”
“That a billionaire needs the…” He waves one hand. “Whatever the amount is the café takes every day.”
Another wave of shock rolls through me. A billionaire?
“The café isn’t making money,” I say. “Some days I think it only just breaks even.”
Maxim shoots me a wry look. “It consistently makes a loss.”
As I thought. “It’s really nice of you to run a café that serves good food at such a low price, but?—”
“It’s a front for my mafia work to launder money and collect intelligence.”
It’s another blow of surprise. “What?”
“I’m the mafia boss of Greenwich. This is what we do.”
My jaw hangs open. My boss is a billionaire kingpin.
That… Makes a lot of things make sense.
“So you don’t need the money,” I whisper.
“Not in the slightest.”
“That’s why you take cash and discourage using cards?”
His head tilts patiently. “There’s software that increases the value of every transaction for tax purposes, but retains the same amount that’s paid by the customer.”
“I didn’t know,” I say stupidly. I genuinely had no idea.
“Evidently.”
“Sorry.” Behind us there’s a scuffle over the fact we’re still blocking the road, as though Maxim owns it. Which I suppose, as a Bratva boss, he does, even though we’re in a rival territory.
“Just promise me,” he says softly.
“What?” I have to restrain myself from replying, “Anything”. Because I’m apparently as observant as a custard pie, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind to the fact Ishouldbe scared of this man. Even though I’m not.
“Never put yourself at risk again.” His silver eyes have an intensity I haven’t seen before.
Maxim Zaitsev is not the sweet bear he has seemed since we first met. He’s a Russian Bratva boss. He’s a killer.
“Never,everover money,” he continues, his voice low and earnest. “You need money? Protection? Help? Anything. You come tome.”
This man is a monster.
