But there were so many ways. That was what he did, after all. He had nothing else to do with his time but hunt me down. The one that got away.
The words seemed to scream up at me from my phone screen, in Jordie’s voice. I could feel his hands gripping the sides of my head and slamming…
“No,” I said out loud, forceful enough to have someone at the table next to me turn my way. Ignoring her, I deleted the message and blocked the number. If I had to, I’d get a new phone number when we returned to LA.
Erina and the girls returned to the table in a smiling, laughing whirlwind, her older daughter asking if I wanted to go to a nearby museum. It had probably been less than five minutes since they left, but it felt like I had relived a year of my life and run a mile on top of it.
Erina noticed my cold sweat and asked if I felt ill. Jumping on the excuse, I told her I thought I might be having an allergic reaction to something, but insisted I only needed to get back to the villa to lie down for a bit.
“Don’t let me ruin the rest of your day,” I said, patting the youngest girl’s head. “I’ll be fine once I get some rest.”
After all the shopping bags I had completely forgotten about were transferred to a taxi she hailed for me, I huddled in the back seat, waving wanly as it drove off. I had worried them for nothing. This had to be nothing.
The traffic seemed unbearable, and we inched our way back to the villa, and I prayed the entire time that Rurik would already be there when I arrived. The one person I felt so safe with, I considered telling him about the message. He had resources. He could hire someone to find out if the message was a fluke or if Jordie had really caught up with me.
By the time I got back, I was much calmer. The message could have been anything, meant for anyone. It might not have been a threat at all, but just someone informing someone else they’d made a mistake. It was silly to fear a message when I was thousands of miles away from my former abuser and stalker, even if he happened to be in LA.
Rurik came out to help me carry in my purchases, seeming utterly delighted that I’d managed to spend so much of his money. He gave me a long kiss, his arms strong and sure around my back as he held me close.
“How did it go?” I asked, desperate to get my mind on what was really important. This deal with the Koboyashis.
“The factory tour was brilliant,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe how efficient everything is.”
That wasn’t exactly an answer about how it went.
“But?” I asked, looking up into his eyes, which clearly told another story. He shook his head, acting like nothing was wrong. Just like I was. “Is it something to do with Konstantin?”
“Don’t worry about that,” he told me much too quickly, even though he very definitely was. “I don’t want you to worry about a thing.”
He hugged me close again, and I rested my head against his chest, smiling at the reassuring sound of his steady heartbeat next to my ear. He was my boss, after all, so why not listen to him? When I was in Rurik’s arms, nothing could hurt me, and the message that had seemed more dangerous than a lion on the loose an hour ago was no longer the least bit frightening.
There was no need to get him all worked up when he was already upset about whatever was going on with his family; at the same time, we were trying to secure a multimillion-dollar partnership.
Chapter 28 - Rurik
The trip to Tokyo wasn’t exactly as relaxing as I hoped, and not nearly like the honeymoon I envisioned. In fact, it was turning out to be even more hectic than dealing with everything that was still going on at home, just on foreign soil.
I was spending way more time with Shin Koboyashi than my wife, for instance, playing more golf in three days than I had in three years, all while Clem was being whisked to museums and art galleries without me. No matter how many times I reminded myself of the millions, possibly even billions, this deal could end up being worth over the next few years, I still missed my wife, damn it.
And suddenly, she was upset about something and trying to hide it. Maybe someone who hadn’t carefully observed her every move since I’d met her might have missed it. She was doing a valiant job of pretending everything was fine, but she wasn’t. She was back to being jumpy, treating her phone like it was a venomous snake about to bite her every time she had to check her messages.
Was I being overly protective, or was she just being run ragged and overwhelmed by keeping up appearances? Clem was the hardest-working person I knew, and now I had Uncle Konstantin in the mix, showing up for dinner unannounced, trying to get me involved in his shady deals there in Tokyo.
Yes, they were shady, even for someone who’d been raised in the Bratva. The man seemed determined to get himself killed, addicted to dangerous situations. I had made up the lie that he was involved with a married woman to keep Clem from asking questions about what we’d really been up to the night hedragged me into his fight with the Yakuza, only to find out he actually was mixed up with some high-level official’s mistress.
There was no way I wanted Clem anywhere near the fallout of whatever might happen with that fucked up situation.
“Let’s just cut the trip short,” I said at breakfast after getting a message from Kon’s daughter, Sofiya.
Aleks told me you were in Tokyo. Have you seen Papa? I’m worried about him.
He’s fine,I answered.Don’t come here after him, though.
I could almost hear her sighing all the way from Moscow.They say kids are supposed to be the ones to give their parents heart attacks, she replied.
“How about it?” I asked Clem. “We can leave tonight.”
“What?” She jumped, setting her juice glass down a little too hard, making it splash onto the table. “Why?”