"But what if those men are out there?" Even her jaw trembles, her teeth almost chattering.
"You're safer with me in a building full of fighters and armed security than you are here, even with me." I take her by the wrist, start walking her to the door. I don't have to check the time to know we don't have much of it left.
"What if they follow us?"
"Let them. They won't make it past the entrance." We get to the door and I open it and she cries harder.
"Kaz, please." Her eyes fill up and the tears spill over and run down her cheeks. "Can't we stay for five minutes? Can we wait until we're sure they're gone?"
"I don't have five minutes." I pull her out the door and shut it behind us, then take her purse, hoping to find her keys and lock up, but she snatches it back from me.
Her hands fumble as she digs her keys out and locks the door, then I put my arm around her tightly and guide her down the stairs. She stumbles a few times, and I wonder what on earth could've gotten her so fucking terrified. Those men really did a number on her, and when these fights are over, I’m going to have Timur pull the close-circuit footage from this building and every building around here to find out who it was and what they wanted.
She barely says a word as I drive. Her arms stay wrapped around her body and she keeps trembling, sniffling every few minutes.
"After the fights I'm sending Timur to your building personally," I tell her, pulling onto the highway. "He'll figure out who it was and what they wanted."
"Thank you, Kaz," she says. Her head drops as she fishes her cell phone out of her pocket.
The rest of the drive, I focus on not getting in an accident because I'm driving well over the speed limit. Zora is busy texting someone, and her thumbs fly over the screen of her phone so fast, it's a blur. Maybe she's telling her brother’s what happened and where she is or maybe a friend. Either way, she's with me and we're on our way to where I'm supposed to be. Hopefully, no one has missed me yet.
But when I pull onto Kominsky Prospect, police cruisers line both sides of the road. Five of them with their lights going, blue and red flashing and blinding me. The crowd is being held back by uniformed officers outside the entrance of the club and I don't see Stepan or Timur anywhere.
I pull to the curb a block away and kill the engine.
"Kaz," Zora says beside me, sitting up straight and staring through the windshield. "What is that?"
But I’m saying, "What the fuck?" at the same time. "I gotta call my uncle," I mumble, fishing my phone out. I see I've missed a few calls from him because I was driving.
Zora's eyes are locked on the scene, wider than they were before, and her hands still haven't stopped trembling. I dial Timur's number as I glance around behind me, hoping there's a way Ican turn the car around before the police see me. We bought this building under a shell corporation so no one can track it back to the Kuzin name, but if this place is blown, we may well have blown the whole organization at this point.
Restarting so many times is taking a huge chunk out of our capital and our bettors will keep losing faith.
"Kaz, where the hell are you! What happened?" He's angry, and rightfully so. Though, my being here would never have stopped any of this from happening. If anything, I'd have been swept up in the raid and arrested. He's lucky he's able to answer his phone.
"I'm here. I'm outside. What the hell is going on?"
"You tell me! You were supposed to be securing this facility, making sure we had no threats." Timur's voice is so loud, I have to hold the phone back from my ear as he shouts.
My mind immediately goes to Fedorov’s call when I was driving to get Zora. He'd heard about a police threat, and I brushed it off instead of taking it seriously. Was there more to that? Did someone set this up too? There's no way this could be random.
"I did secure things. This wasn't on my radar. I don't know what happened…" Then my chest clenches. "Where's Stepan?"
"He's with me… Get to the offices. This is unacceptable." Timur hangs up, and I look at Zora whose bottom lip is trembling as tears stream down her face.
"Can we go home? I'm scared. I don't want to be here." Her hand reaches for mine and I let her hold it.
I can't go in there anyway, and if our high-dollar bettors got scooped up, my career is dead anyway.
"Yeah, baby, I'll take you home now…" I should've just stayed with her at her apartment. Whoever is trying to pick my life apart is doing a damn good job of it. They've got me to the wall with a gun to my head, and all that's left is to pull the trigger.
Roman might just do that for them.
22
ZORA
Kazimir keeps his hand on my back as we climb the stairs to my floor. The entire drive was agonizingly quiet. I could tell by his clenched jaw and flared nostrils that he's afraid of what's going to happen and that fear is coming out as defensiveness and anger. I begged him to walk me up here and now he thinks he's protecting me from the men who tried to break in. He doesn't know those men share my last name.
