TWENTY

Saturday evening, one week from the day she’d met Lukas, Dale smoothed down her light sweater-style dress and made sure the tops of her thigh-high boots were even before bracing herself and pushing through the staffroom door she’d been breezing into almost every night for the past year. Tonight was different. She was getting married tomorrow, and she was here to follow through on a decision she’d made earlier in the day as she’d sat beside the pool with Kostya, getting to know a man she should be terrified of, but wasn’t.

A round of high-pitched screams assaulted her ears just before she was tackled by a gaggle of four of her co-workers. Erika was the loudest.

They were all talking at once, so Dale made out only bits and pieces.

“…thought he got you,” Erika said into her ear.

“…worried I’ve been, you little shit,” Elaine chastised in her perfect mother voice.

“…scared the pants off us!” the twins cried in unison as they both took a side and hugged Dale until her ribs hurt.

“What are you guys talking about?” she finally managed to say, because, look at her, she was feeling emotional. Couldn’t imagine why. She also feigned ignorance so Lukas wouldn’t or couldn’t be implicated in anything that might befall Garrett Dawson, assuming that was who the girls were going on about.

Erika grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a shake that dislodged all the hands grabbing at her. “You disappeared, Dale! Couldn’t you have called? Where the fuck have you been? You don’t know how scared I’ve been after all that shit with Garrett. I’ve called your cell a billion times. Nagged the hell out of Liam by knocking on his door on the off chance you went back there even though I know you moved out last week. I didn’t have a number or address for your dad’s place, and couldn’t find one online.”

The knot in Dale’s throat grew. “He’s in the phone book.”

Erika gave her a dunce-cap look. “Well, fuck me. I forgot there was such a thing.”

Everyone laughed and moved aside so the other girls who always converged in the back corner of the staffroom could get by and out to the floor; the club would open any minute. Hi, Dale and Glad you’re back, sweetie and Happy you made it in, Dale came flying at her.

This, she thought as she forced herself to take in the greetings and smiles, and, yes, even the rolling eyes and turned up noses some of the bitches gave her. This was why she’d made a decision that was so out of character, and why she was now here to talk to…her friends.

She used the label because that was who these girls were. Her friends. It’s who they’d always been, and she just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it until now.

Over the past few days, watching Lukas with his family and friends, and even his staff that he was so nice to, had opened Dale’s eyes to what she’d been missing. A connection. She’d been behind her walls for so long, refusing to feel or hear or see those reaching out to her, that she’d forgotten the beauty in it. But now that she’d allowed Lukas in, because he was in, she wanted more. More of what he made her feel. For the first time in eight years, she wasn’t lonely, and it was wonderful.

“So? Where were you, you inconsiderate bitch?” Erika asked as she dabbed at her eyes.

Dale laughed and, taking a quick look around to make sure it was just the four of them, she put up her left hand. Four pairs of eyes bugged, and then the screaming started again. This time, there was nothing she recognized as actual words, just reaction to the rock she now wore on her ring finger.

As they hollered and gawked, Dale took another breath. She’d ask. The worst thing that could happen is they would say no. And that would be okay, considering the number of invites of theirs she’d turned down over the past year. Yet they continued to ask her to go shopping, to the movies and out for drinks, to concerts. The least she could do, she’d decided today, was ask them to her wedding.

“Magdalena?”

Peace flooded her at just the sound of his voice. She turned away from her crew and had to strain a little to see the door because they were holding her hand. Butterflies filled her tummy when she saw Lukas standing there in his charcoal suit, looking like the dominant mafia baddie he was. Milan and Yasha were behind him, and Patrik Ilyaev, Dale’s new bodyguard, was next to them. Patrik was more verbose than Lukas’s muscle, and Dale appreciated that since Lukas had told her Patrik would be with her every time she stepped foot outside the compound. She was confident they’d get along after they got to know each other a little better.

“Hey.”

The breathy word filled the room because it had grown silent. The girls were staring just like she was.

“Uh…” She took her hand back. “Do you have a minute to meet my friends?”

Lukas made his way over, but rather than smile and greet the girls, he slid an arm around her waist and kissed her forehead. There was something going on with him, but when she’d asked about it on their way into the city, he’d put her off.

“Sorry. I saw the floor full of uniforms and thought you were done with your girls.”

She shook her head and turned, knowing she now wore the same proud look on her face that Lukas had worn when he’d introduced her to his father. “Lukas, these are my friends, Erika, Elaine—she has a baby boy I’m madly in love with—and our twins, Peyton and Paula. Girls, this is Lukas, my fiancé.”

“Mr. Smells Amazing,” Erika said as she shook Lukas’s hand first. “Sorry. Can’t pretend this isn’t a shock.”

Lukas smiled, and after the others took turns saying hello, came back to claim her hand. That’s when she put her neck on the chopping block of life and hoped for the best.

“Uh, I wanted to ask you girls if you’re busy tomorrow evening. Farah said she’d be willing to rework the schedule, and, um, I was wondering if you might like to come to, uh, well…” Nerves made her laugh. Or maybe it was the sudden anticipation coming from the four stunned beauties in front of her. “Uh, yeah, so, we’re getting married tomorrow night, and I’m going to be the only one without guests. I’d love to share the occasion with all of you. If you can make it.”

Around a chorus of enthusiastic yeses, Lukas kissed the top of her head while murmuring what sounded like more of his quiet praise in Russian.

***

As Dale’s girls filed out to go to work, Lukas wished his gut wasn’t a block of ice, because he would have liked to thoroughly enjoy watching Dale teeter around on her new legs. She’d just put herself out there with her friends, and, even if she hadn’t admitted she was nervous about issuing the invite, he’d have understood what it meant for her.

Too bad there was more important shit going down tonight that made it impossible for him to truly appreciate the moment that had just passed.

His phone buzzed, and he took it out and brought it to his ear just as Samuel and Farah walked in.

“Yeah.”

“He just left his car. Take your brother and get the hell out of there before you fuck everything up.”

Lukas wanted to climb through the connection and throttle the sonofabitch running the show tonight. Maksim had no fucking idea what was at stake here.

Samuel did, though. “That Maks?” His brother looked grey around the gills as he switched to Russian.

Lukas nodded.

“Tell him if anything goes wrong, we’ll be enemies for life. I swear to God.”

“Do you two read from the same script?” Maksim drawled.

“He knows,” Lukas assured Samuel before saying into the phone, “Who’s where?”

With unconcealed impatience, because they’d already gone over this, Maksim told Lukas who he had stationed where in the building to monitor Garrett Dawson as the cocksucker fell into the trap they’d set using Dale and Farah as bait.

When Maks and Vasily had first come to him and Samuel with their idea this morning, Lukas had politely told them to fuck off. But then Vasily had revealed they’d found the first two women who’d been on Dawson’s list. Both had been Samuel’s bartenders. Maks and the crew he and Samuel had put together had found the girls’ remains in a storage unit Dawson had rented under his son’s name. They’d been dead six or seven days. Because Maks had worked out Dawson was zealously OCD, and he wasn’t moving past the next two names on the list to get to the other girls who were in plain sight—but being protected—he was convinced the guy would wait as long as it took to get through his list in the order it had been written. Which meant, their murderer was in hiding until Farah and Dale came back on the scene because they were his number three and four.

“The prick just entered the building,” Maksim growled around the sound of a keyboard being banged on. “You have to move now. Take your muscle, and go into the club proper. Make sure you walk by the main bar. When Dawson sees you and Samuel, he’ll know the girls are alone and he’ll go searching. But you know they’re not really alone,” he added in a long-suffering tone, “because the boys are camped behind every closed door in that fucking hallway, and two of them won’t stop complaining about the stench behind the dumpster in the alley. Come on, Zavrazin. I have them covered.”

The reassurance did nothing to lessen the dread clawing its way up Lukas’s spine. “Why don’t I just take him out when I see him at the bar.”

“I told you earlier, if you do anything in gen pop, you’re going to draw attention. We’re doing this from a distance. Didn’t you hear Gheorghe’s warning before he left?”

Yes. Lukas had heard it. Over a late dinner last night, while Dale had been in the kitchen with Farah, Gheorghe had told Lukas and Samuel that his cousin wasn’t impressed by the spotlight their personal issues had put on the city. Lucian had sent along a message stating that if they did anything to exacerbate the problem, their Bratva would be punished. Getting a warning like that from the Romanian wasn’t a treat, but Lukas understood why it had to be done. In their world, gaining the attention of the authorities, or worse, the press, meant stopping whatever business one was in the middle of until the spotlight moved on and operations could continue with no one the wiser.

Fine. He got it. The takedown would be quiet, and he’d have to trust Vasily’s boy.

“Don’t worry,” Maks drawled. “We’ll lure him into the alley, take him out, and you can be home making babies with your woman within a couple of hours. Vasily said you’re trying for a kid already. Who the fuck talked who into that?”

Lukas hung up. Apparently, his father and Vasily had been chatting.

He went to Dale and took her face between his palms. “Samuel and I need to take care of something. I want you to go out back with Farah and wait for the car.”

“Okay.”

The unconditional trust staring up at him from those emerald eyes nearly brought him to his knees. I love you, Magdalena.

“Come on. We gotta go.”

Samuel looked fucking ill as he stared at his wife from the doorway. It was clear both he and Lukas shared some control issues. Maybe they should have been more insistent when refusing Maksim’s offer—demand—to run this takedown. But, because the Goliath had essentially done most of the legwork himself, pinning down Dawson and all but orchestrating the fucker’s next move, Lukas hadn’t felt it was in their right to insist Maks allow them to take over.

“Are you okay?” Farah went to Samuel, looking concerned as she smoothed his hair back from his forehead. “You look worried.”

“I love you.”

She blinked and smiled. “I love you more.”

“Go wait for the car,” Samuel reiterated for nothing. “I’ll be with you the second it’s over.”

Lukas kissed Dale once more then pushed his brother out into the corridor before Farah could ask any questions. The girl could be relentless when she wanted answers.

***

“Okay. You’re going to figure out soon enough when to be suspicious of these guys,” Farah said as she frowned at the empty doorway.

Dale was doing the same. But whereas Farah didn’t look particularly bothered, Dale’s stomach was in knots because she’d picked up on the anxiety that had increased exponentially during Lukas’s phone call. “You mean like now? What the hell was that about?”

“I don’t know. And we probably never will.” Farah grabbed her purse from the table and followed the path her husband had just taken. “Let’s go. If the car shows and we’re not out there, they’ll get the call and shit will hit the fan.”

As they left the staffroom and headed down the corridor, Dale looked back. “Lukas said Patrik would be on me twenty-four-seven.”

“They must have needed him.”

Dale skipped to catch up. “Why don’t you have a regular guy?”

“I do. He just left with his brother.”

Dale chuckled. “You’re very good at handling this. I feel sick being out in public alone for the first time since all this happened.”

Farah gave her a look. “Hang out with them for seventeen years and you no longer find yourself reacting when they get like that. I used to throw a fit, demanding to know every detail. I soon found out it’s better to be in the dark about certain things. She nudged Dale’s shoulder. “What’s gotten into you—aside from Lukas—since you hooked up with him? You used to be the one handling shit with no trouble. Now you’re, I don’t know, emotional or something. Maybe you’re pregnant.”

Or maybe she was becoming a rational human being who experienced feelings along with the rest of them.

They looked at each other and smiled, sharing the excitement that came with the idea of a baby on the way. While they’d made Oreo cheesecake last night—it was Kostya’s favorite—and the men had closed themselves into the dining room for a business dinner, Farah had admitted she and Samuel were freaking out at the prospect of having a baby in the house. She’d promised Dale to try her hardest not to become a pain-in-the-ass, but only if Dale promised she and Samuel could babysit on date night. Dale had agreed.

“Can you imagine?”

“Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

They spoke at the same time and laughed as they pushed through the steel door to get out to the back alley. It was brightly lit, but otherwise empty.

“It’s too soon any—”

“It takes one time, Dale,” Farah interrupted as she walked around a puddle to look right and left. A light drizzle was falling, making the area around them misty. She frowned as she looked back at the door, and then at the alley again. “Guess we rushed for nothing,” she murmured in a flat voice as she got Dale’s arm in a tight hold and started toward the street that was two hundred yards away. “Fifty bucks says they meet us at the curb.” The quiet mutter sounded annoyed.

They walked at a steady clip while talking about the earliest they’d heard of a woman learning she was carrying. Neither of them looked back when they reached the sidewalk just as Adam brought the Land Rover to a sudden halt in front of them.

***

Lukas pulled his earpiece out and got out of the back of the truck to look beyond Dale and Farah. According to Maksim’s eyes, Dawson had entered the corridor and spotted the girls just as they’d reached the door. Proving it, the slim man in a pressed suit now stepped out of the building into a circle of light—

A burst Lukas knew very well was brain matter blew out from the back of the guy’s head, and he crumpled.

A silent shot from a sniper.

As the girls brushed by Lukas to climb into the back of the truck where Samuel was waiting—Farah didn’t look pleased—a black van zipped past their front end to shoot down the alley. It stopped, two men got out and tossed the body into the back. They slammed the doors, jumped back in, and continued driving to exit the lane at the other end. The light drizzle falling would eventually wash away any fluids left on the ground.

The van disappeared, and as quiet descended once more, Lukas vowed never to doubt Maksim Kirov’s organizational skills again.

He got into the truck and settled beside Dale. She hadn’t seen a thing. Had no idea she and Farah had just been used to draw out a killer who’d done unspeakable things to the women Maksim had found in the freezer in that storage unit.

And she never would, he vowed as he and Samuel exchanged a look so full of relief it choked him up.