Page 16 of Locked and Loaded

“Mr. Maric,” the guard said, his expression carefully neutral. “You’re back. Did you need something else?” He stood with his hands relaxed at his sides, but the tension in his shoulders and the way his eyes swept the street told another story. His tone might have been neutral, but his entire body was sending vibes that Dragan wasn’t welcome here. He’d just chalk that up to the shootout in the alley earlier.

“I need to speak with Katya Ivanova.”

The guard’s eyes flicked down to his tablet, then back to Dragan. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

That answer earned him the smallest tightening around the guard’s mouth. “One moment, please.”

Dragan waited while the guard stepped away and murmured into his radio. The word Fassi reached Dragan. The guard was talking to the head of security. It was hard to hear the whole exchange, but it seemed the guard was arguing against letting Dragan inside.

He bit back a sigh as he noticed the camera above the entrance angled directly at him, and the other two guards fanned out so they flanked him. There was even a fourth guard posted farther back beneath the shade of a palm, and a black sedan was parked just inside the gates with a driver who wasn’t reading his phone, wasn’t checking the mirror, and wasn’t doing much of anything except watching. Places like this sold privacy, but privacy was often just a more elegant word for surveillance, which was now heightened thanks to Dragan getting shot at earlier.

A few minutes later, the guard returned. “Miss Ivanova will receive you.” His face remained placid, but his tone said it all. If these guys had to come to get him, he wasn’t coming out unscathed.

The cart carried him along the winding paths between private riads, past fountains and carved doors and gardens that looked as if they’d been watered by old money and guarded by older secrets. The Royal Mansour was not really a hotel. It was a private kingdom with room service, the sort of place designed to make powerful people feel untouchable while ensuring no one outside the walls saw what happened inside them.

The cart stopped outside Katya’s villa, and the door opened before Dragan lifted his hand to knock.

A maid stood on the threshold, dressed in a crisp uniform with her dark hair pulled back, her expression arranged into polite emptiness. Nothing was visibly threatening about her, which was why most people would have overlooked her. Dragan didn’t. He had learned a long time ago that the most dangerous people in a room were not always the ones holding the weapon. Sometimes they were the ones holding the tray, listening while everyone else assumed they were invisible.

“Mr. Maric,” she said. “Please come in.”

He stepped inside, letting his gaze move over the villa without appearing to study it. The foyer was cool and quiet, the air faintly perfumed with orange blossom and expensive soap. A few shopping bags still sat near one of the cream-colored sofas, their tissue paper tucked neatly back inside.

Lennox had been here. He could almost picture her in the room, pretending she belonged, carrying counterfeit dresses into a villa that cost more per night than some people made in a year, all while trying to pry information out of a woman who had every reason to lie and more reasons to be afraid.

The maid moved ahead of him. “Miss Ivanova is on the terrace.”

“Is she alone?” Dragan asked.

The maid did not turn around. “Her husband is with her.”

That was inconvenient. Not unexpected, but inconvenient.

They passed through a sitting room and out toward the rear of the villa, where wide glass doors stood open to a private terrace. Katya Ivanova was seated beneath the shade beside the pool, one bare foot tucked under her and a glass of champagne balanced in her hand. She wore a silk robe over what looked like a barely-there bikini, and at first glance she looked exactly like the kind of woman men paid too much money to keep happy. Beautiful, bored, and spoiled.

At second glance, she looked tired, and underneath that she looked scared.

Nikolai Rostov stood near the pool with his back to the water and his attention fixed entirely on Dragan. He was not the caricature Dragan had half expected. No loud shirt, no enormous watch, no swaggering need to prove his own importance. He was leaner than Dragan imagined, older, perhaps early fifties, with silver threading through dark hair and a face that had settled into hard lines from years of assuming the world would eventually give him what he wanted. His clothes were casual and expensive. His eyes were not casual at all.

“Mr. Maric,” Katya said brightly, but her knuckles whitened where she held the stem of her glass. “How unexpected.”

Nikolai’s gaze moved from Katya to Dragan and back again. “You know this man?”

“We have never been formally introduced,” Dragan said before Katya had to decide whether to make up some kind of lie. He’d told the security guard he wanted to see Katya about her visitor yesterday. He had no idea what Katya had told Rostov.

Nikolai extended his hand. “Nikolai Rostov.”

“Dragan Maric.”

The handshake was firm and controlled, more measurement than greeting. Nikolai held on a fraction too long, the way men did when they wanted to establish dominance without making themselves seem ridiculous. Dragan let him have the extra second because men like Nikolai noticed when they were denied even meaningless victories.

“What brings you to my villa?” Nikolai asked.

“A woman came to see your wife yesterday.”

Katya lifted one shoulder in an exaggerated shrug. “A woman came to show me dresses. Very dramatic, all this concern over fashion.”