Page 45 of Dressed to Kill
"Shut up."
"Bit late to start playing hard to get." He winced and rolled off me to lie beside me in the bed. “Fuck. D’ye think Gregori heard?”
I gritted my teeth. “If he did, he’d better keep his fucking mouth shut.”
Fin laughed at that, but I didn’t think it was particularly funny. “Oh, Aleksi, ye mad, beautiful vor,” he said, throwing an arm over his eyes. “The only way this day could get any better would be with a nice hot bubble bath and a proper gin.”
“Well,” I said, “I hate to break it to you, but the hot water heater at this address hasn’t worked in four years. If you want a bubble bath, it’ll be a cold one.”
"This is a shite safehouse."
I shrugged and put an arm behind my head. "If you don’t like it, don't shower."
"I'm filthy and covered in cum, ye animal." He cracked an eye open. "Whose fault's that."
I didn't answer. I was looking at the ceiling and thinking about everything I’d been putting off. Pavel dead. Mr. K in the wind. Nikita still hadn't called, and that was worrying me. I'd hung up on him and then shot one of our own men on Greek turf. There was a version of my future that ended with me six feet deep andFin… Well, I didn’t want to think about what they’d do with him if I were gone.
"Stop it," Fin said.
"Stop what?"
"Whatever yer doing up there." He flicked my temple. "Ye've gone away. I can hear it."
"It's not nothing, Fin. What happened today? There's going to be —"
"Aye, I know. Tomorrow." He shifted, got an elbow under himself, and looked down at me with his hair wrecked and his lip swollen where I'd bitten it. "There's always going to be a tomorrow with men like you. Bills and bosses and somebody wanting somebody dead. I've been awake for it. I'm no daft." He put his hand flat on my chest, over the scar, the bullet one. "But it's no tomorrow yet. It's now. And right now ye're going to shut up and let me have ten minutes before the world starts again. Can ye do that?"
My phone picked the absolute worst second to start ringing.
“Fuck.” I started to sit up, but Fin pushed me down.
“Leave it,” he said, almost pleading.
I frowned at him. Then I put my hand on his wrist and shoved him away. “I have to get it, Fin.”
He sighed, and somehow that seemed to make him smaller. I didn’t understand what was happening, why he was suddenly so upset with me. What the fuck did he think this was? Some Hallmark movie? I was a vory. I’d always be a vory. That meant I had to choose work over him, over me, over God if I’d been the religious type. The organization was all I’d ever had, and it’d be all I had once he moved on too.
The thought made something ugly twist in my gut.
I fished my phone out of my pants to answer it before I could examine that too deeply. “Aleksi here.”
“What thefuckdid you do?” Nikita growled in my ear.
I winced. “Nikita, I can explain—”
“Pavel is dead. The Greeks have his body, plus two Italians, and they’re saying it was you. Please tell me this wasn’t you, Aleksi.”
“If you’d just listen to me—”
“Not over the phone,” he barked. “Be at the office downtown in an hour. And bring the Scotsman.”
Something cold slithered down my spine. “Fin?”
“What other Scotsman could I mean? Yes, Finlay.” He hesitated. “And Aleksi, whatever proof you bring me when you walk into that office had better be iron-fucking-clad. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir. As crystal.”
He hung up without saying goodbye.
