The short entranceway opens up into a humble eating area with six tables all covered in the same checkered cloth. Salt, pepper, and chili flakes stand proudly at the center of each table while I weave through them toward the voices in the back of the restaurant.
I’d recognize the sexy gravel of Maxim’s deep voice anywhere. It’s replayed in my dreams often enough.
Raising both hands, I push through the red double doors into the kitchen with a small smile fixed on my face and Maxim’s name on my lips. But just as the doors slip from my raised fingertips, a deafening bang rings out in the kitchen and I jump out of my skin.
Frozen in place, I’m just there to watch as the severely beaten, bruised, and bloody body of a man flops to the ground like a dead fish and lies there with wide, unseeing eyes fixed upon me.
Above him stands Maxim holding a smoking gun in his right hand.
I’ve spent two months searching the city for Maxim.
And he’s just murdered a man in front of me.
2
MAXIM
An ear-piercing shriek fills the kitchen as blood spreads out in a circular pattern from the body at my feet. For the first few seconds, I gaze at the body, unsure how he could be making such a noise with a bullet between his eyes, but as shoes squeak on the kitchen tiles around me, it clicks.
The body isn’t screaming.
Someone else is.
Turning on my heel, I glimpse a woman with her face warped by terror and her mouth open in an almost perfect O shape. Then she whirls around and flees from the kitchen in a flurry of deep crimson hair.
I don’t need to speak. My guards lunge after her in an instant and vanish through the same door she’s just fled.
“Who is she?” I lock eyes with my head of security, Rex, and frown. “You told me this place was on lockdown.
“It was—it is,” Rex corrects himself. “No one has been in or out of here except me since we closed.” He shakes his hand once andflexes his fingers, fighting to ease the throb there from the last two punches he delivered to our captive.
“Clearly not.”
“I’ll deal with it.” Rex takes a step forward, but I stop him with a raised hand.
“No. I will.”
Beyond the double doors, furniture clatters, wood splinters, glass salt shakers smash, and the woman’s screams of terror mingle with the alarmed grunts of my men. One woman can’t be that difficult to subdue, surely?
My answer comes a second later when Toto and Stu drag the woman, kicking and screaming, back through the doors. Toto has his arms around her middle and has lifted her from the floor, but her arms and legs flail out in all directions. She thrashes so hard that her crimson hair covers her face. Her fingers are like clawed hooks, seeking out contact with anything that will save her while her feet jerk and thrust in all directions to keep everyone away. Stu surges forward and grunts in pain as her foot collides with his stomach. Toto wrenches her around to one side and leans over just as Stu’s hand snaps back.
Before I can stop him, his open palm collides with her face with such force that her head snaps to the side like the crack of a whip, and she instantly goes limp while the echo of impact rings around the room.
“Stop.” Anger rises in me like the ignition of a furnace, and Stu barely contains the second strike. Our eyes meet, and he glares at me for a second while massaging his stomach.
“You said get her.”
“I did. I didn’t sayhurther, did I?”
“Kind of implied, Boss,” Stu mutters. “She’s violent.”
“She’sscared,” I correct sharply. “If that wasn’t clear, then perhaps you’re losing your edge.” A thinly veiled threat exists within my words. Those who lose their edge are not welcome around me. I need everyone on top of their game, not just for my survival but for their own. The trust that exists between all four of us is fragile, given how often this world shifts on a dime. An extra dollar in the wrong person’s pocket can spell the end of a dynasty.
Stu’s jaw flexes back and forth as if he’s wrestling with something he doesn’t dare say, then his shoulders slump. “Sorry.”
Toto blows out a loud breath to free himself from some of the woman’s red strands of hair caught in his stubble from her struggles. “What you wanna do with her, Boss?”
“Take her to the office.”
