A Dragusha Christmas: Kiro’s Facebook Adventure & The Ski Mask (Yuri’s story) by Annika Martin

Author:Annika Martin [Martin, Annika]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter Seven

Yuri

* * *

It takes me ten minutes to figure out who scares her. A dark-haired man a few years older than her. She tells me by the way she glances at him, so very aware. Even if she didn’t tell me with her glances, I’d know from the way he studies me, sizes me up. I’d know it from his flat eyes.

He’s killed before. One killer always recognizes another. Bennett is high on something, though. He’s a speedball guy—that’s my guess. Speedball has a type. Every drug has a type, just the way crime has a type. Just the way jobs have a type, I suppose, if you live in the regular world.

We are talking to a pair of aunts. They tell me about a cruise upon the Black Sea. They ask me about Russia. I am quite an exotic bird, a Russian here.

“Introduce me to five men in the corner,” I say when they walk off.

She swears under her breath.

I grip her hand and pull her there. She has no choice.

She introduces me first to a man named Winston. He seems attracted to her. He shakes my hand, grip too tight. He asks me what I do.

“Import export.” It’s true. I export arms, drugs, and jewels. I would like to hurt this Winston, but he is not the one.

I turn to the one who scares her.

“This is my brother Bennett Moreland the third,” she says.

Brother?

“Half-brother,” Bennett says.

I give Bianca my phone and put my arms around Bennett and Winston. “Take our picture.”

Everybody is surprised.

Bianca stares at me strangely. “You want a picture of…you three guys?”

“Go ahead, rabbit.” I grin. I’m the crazy Russian here.

She takes the photo. I take back my phone.

My rival Winston talks loudly of investment, always an eye on my Bianca.

Later by the fire, after many more introductions, I pull up the photo. I crop it so that it is just this Bennett. I enlarge his face.

“Oh my God,” she breathes. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Handling your problem.”

“You can’t hurt him.”

I ignore her.

“Yuri, I’m serious. He just needs to know I’m protected, and you’ve done that.”

I run a finger over her lips. She lets me.

She has to.

Here in the bosom of her family, we are pretending at being a couple. I could kiss her and she would have to let me. I watch her breath speed as I bring my finger down her throat. I feel her follow my finger with everything in her body. I remind myself she can never be mine—it’s true what Viktor said—but the feel of her beautiful skin gets me hard as rock. I don’t care if anybody sees.

“Your scar is healed.”

She puts her finger to her cheekbone.

“You were beautiful with it.”

She swallows. Hoarsely, she says, “You can’t hurt people. That’s not why I hired you.”

“You didn’t hire me. You hired the boy I have tied up in a van down the block.” I text both photos to Viktor with a message to get Bennett’s street name. If he’s buying drugs, he has a street name.

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