Russian Bad Boy's Untouched Love (7 page)

A rustling noise caught Mary’s attention. She crouched low and slipped into the classroom. There was a shadow by her desk. The muted metal clank of her desk drawer was followed by the sound of someone coughing and trying to cover it up.

There was a prowler in her classroom!

Mary ducked behind a bookshelf in the reading center and tried to decide what to do. She couldn’t confront this person. That would be insane. What if she got attacked? It wasn’t like she had a weapon other than her queasy stomach. Was she going to vomit all over someone to send them away?

“I know you’re there.” A low voice drifted through the still air. “I can hear you breathing.”

Mary squeezed her eyes shut, trying to control her fear. “Why are you here? What could you possibly want in this school?”

A low laugh made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. “You have quite the variety of students, don’t you?”

“They’re just kids!” She was powerless to stop the note of panic that entered her voice. “They don’t have anything for you.”

“You’re wrong.” The voice got closer, the owner moving through her classroom on silent feet. “Children with ties to very powerful people have much that I’m interested in.”

Someone grabbed her hair, wrenching her up onto her feet before flinging her across the room. Mary landed with a thud. Her hip slammed into the hard concrete beneath the industrial carpeting and she groaned in pain. Then her head bounced off the floor and she felt herself losing consciousness. Mary fought to stay awake. Her vision curled in at the edges, turning black as she slipped away.

“Stay out of my way and you’ll be safe,” the voice promised. “Get between me and what I want and you will die.”

Then Mary faded out and knew no more.

***

“Ah, Vlad! There you are,” Sokolov remarked. He took a seat at the breakfast table and helped himself to a large portion of the blini left on a platter for his enjoyment. “I noticed you did not come home until quite early this morning.”

Vlad had been perusing the morning paper. He lowered it long enough to frown at his father. “I hardly think my love life or lack of one is more important than the news. Did you see this?” Vlad set the paper down and pointed to a column below the fold on the front page.

“Eh.” His father shrugged dismissively. “They appoint new council members practically every week.”

“This isn’t just a council member. This is an Orsini.” Vlad clenched his teeth, wishing he could impress upon his father that just because they were Sokolovs did not make them untouchable. “The Orsini organization is growing. They have high ranking law enforcement officials and now a council member who heads up a committee that controls imports. This is bad.”

Sokolov waved his fork around. “If they become troublesome, we’ll send some of the men to take them down. Simple.”

“We can’t run around Boston shooting public officials.” Vlad couldn’t believe he actually had to say that out loud.

“You never did have the stomach for this business,” Sokolov said derisively. “From the time you were a little boy you could not stomach the violence.”

“No small child can stomach that sort of violence.” Vlad took a deep breath and struggled with his patience. “I was six. You wanted me to shoot a man. I couldn’t do it. That should not surprise you.”

“Take Sasha over there.” Sokolov waved a hand at the lump of a man standing near the entrance to the dining room. “He would have happily pulled the trigger at age four I bet. No problem.”

Vlad had to admit that his father was probably right. But that was also because Sasha was a very disturbed individual. “Sasha tortured baby squirrels as a child,” Vlad pointed out. “That’s hardly a good example. If you ask him now to administer a beating or do a small task, the victim generally ends up very dead. How is that a good thing?”

“Good or bad wasn’t my point,” his father said airily. “And back to the thing that really matters, how goes the seduction?”

“I prefer not to think of it in those terms,” Vlad said irritably. “She’s a very nice person. Not a piece of meat.”

Sokolov muttered something uncomplimentary in Russian. “I don’t care if you teach her to be a whore! I told you I want that woman seduced to our side and Ioann’s visits to the principal’s office to stop. Is that understood?”

“You’ve made yourself quite clear,” Vlad said, standing up.

Sokolov pointed to Vlad’s seat. “Where do you think you are going? Sit down.”

“I think we’re done discussing the morning’s business, don’t you?” Vlad couldn’t imagine what else they had to talk about.

“Ioann’s class is going on a field trip this coming Monday.” Sokolov shoved a large portion of blini into his mouth. “I want you to chaperone.”

“Okay.” This was not necessarily unusual. Vlad had gone on field trips before to provide security. “Is there something particularly special about this trip?”

“I’m thinking this could be a good time for you to demonstrate to Miss Reilly how Sokolovs interact with the world at large.” His father reached for the paper, smearing food all over the print.

“And how do you see that playing out exactly?” Vlad wanted to know.

“Show her that Ioann gets special treatment, always. And that he is free to do what he pleases no matter how the other children behave.”

“Uh huh,” Vlad said in disgust. He turned and started walking out of the dining room.

“Take today and go play with your teacher!” Sokolov called after him.

Vlad wondered some days if his life wouldn’t be much more pleasant if his father could somehow drop dead of cholesterol poisoning.

Chapter Nine

Mary couldn’t believe that her first phone call after the police had let her leave the school would be to Vlad, but it was. Fortunately Vlad was listed as Iaonn’s emergency contact after his parents in the school’s main database, because the thief had taken Ioann’s file. It took him less that ten minutes to arrive at her apartment and she was so glad to see him.

“Mary.” He walked right in without waiting for an invitation and wrapped his arms around her. He was muttering something in Russian, and then he finally switched to English. “I’m just so glad that you’re all right.”

“I’m fine,” she assured him. “Just a little shaken up.”

She gazed outside at the unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon. Several of her neighbors were outdoors. Children played on the sidewalks, and she could see someone throwing a Frisbee for their dog in the little corner park. It was so incredibly incongruent with what had happened to her just a few hours before.

“Here.” Vlad firmly shut her front door and then led her to the sofa. “Tell me what happened. I want to know everything.”

She perched on the edge of the cushions, feeling shaky and off balance and hating the sensation of being so out of control. She gave Vlad a sassy grin, needing to make light of the situation. “I don’t know if I should tell you or not. You can’t just rush off and pop someone to make it better you know.”

The skin around his dark eyes was tight with tension. He looked ready to pounce. “If I thought I could make this go away by popping someone, I would.”

That sobered Mary fairly quickly. She laid her hand on his arm. “I’m going to be fine. I’m not some china doll that’s going to crack just because of one little incident.”

“Tell me what this person said?” Vlad relaxed back into the sofa and tugged her into his lap.

Mary’s first instinct was to wave away the offer of comfort. She’d never needed it before. Yet it felt so good to cuddle close to Vlad and let him put his arms around her for comfort. He was warm and solid and she felt so incredibly safe with him, which made no sense since he was probably far more dangerous than her assailant.

“Mary.” There was a warning note in his voice. “Please tell me.”

“It was dark in the classroom. The windows there aren’t exactly great. Sometimes I think they don’t want the students staring outside instead of paying attention. Without the lights on I didn’t get a look at the guy.”

“But you know it was a man?”

“Definitely a man.”

“Did he speak with an accent?”

Mary thought that through. “Maybe a hint of something, but it wasn’t Russian. It just sounded like someone from here with a really pronounced Boston accent.”

“And he referenced your students specifically.”

It suddenly made sense why Vlad was so concerned. “You think Ioann could be in danger. Is that why you’re so concerned about this? Because his file was the only one stolen?”

“Ioann is one thing. Using you to get at him is something else entirely.” Vlad was staring off into space and he didn’t look as if he were thinking about anything pleasant.

“The man said that children with ties to very powerful people have much that he’s interested in. Then he told me not to get between him and what he wants.” Mary shivered. “I just can’t imagine why he’d go after little kids. These are second graders! What can they possibly have that he wants?”

“Leverage,” Vlad murmured. “He’s looking for leverage against their parents.” He touched her face. “Did the police seem really concerned? Like they were going to get right on this? Or did they give you the feeling they had better things to do?”

“Funny you should mention that,” Mary mused. “I had to call Principal Johnston up because there had been a break-in on school property. There are a lot of procedures they have to go through. And he was the one who mentioned that it irritated him that the police obviously weren’t taking me seriously.”

“Is that right,” Vlad murmured.

A strange possibility popped into her mind. “You don’t think the police might be in on it, do you?”

“It’s very possible.” Vlad ran his fingers through her hair. He unfastened the tie holding it up on her head and the long mass tumbled around her shoulders.

“I thought stuff like that only happened in movies.” She rubbed her cheek on his arm.

“No. There’s a very powerful family in Boston called the Orsinis. They run a good portion of the action down in Dorchester. A few cops here in South Boston are on their payroll because they also have some really high ranking law enforcement officials in their pockets.”

“That’s all fine and well, but what would the Orsinis want with Ioann?” Mary wondered.

“Like I said, leverage. Leverage against my family.”

“So what do we do?” she demanded.

Vlad placed an affectionate kiss on her forehead. “
We
don’t do anything. I’m going to go check around and see if I can find out why the Orsinins would have involved themselves in our business. You are going to stay here and rest.”

“I don’t want to rest,” Mary argued. “I’m perfectly fine. This was my classroom they violated and my students that are being threatened. I want to help.”

“Mary, if anything happens to you because of all of this I will never forgive myself.” Vlad stroked her cheek. “And I will destroy the city to find whoever hurts you.”

“That seems a little extreme considering we sort of just started seeing each other,” she pointed out.

The way he held her made her feel incredibly precious. She’d never experienced anything so profound with another person. “That might be true, but you’re mine. And I take that very seriously.”

***

Vlad stalked through the Orsinis’ Italian restaurant in Dorchester with an obvious chip on his shoulder. When Mary had observed that the restaurant he ran in Southie was pretty much a mafia cliché, she’d had no idea how right she was.

Being a Saturday afternoon and well before the dinner hour, the place was nearly deserted. In fact there weren’t any actual customers. The only patrons hanging about were Orsinis, both made men and the lower level lackeys that could be found a dime a dozen all over the city.

“Well, well, well,” a familiar voice drawled. “If it isn’t Vladimir Sokolov. And he’s alone too. How arrogant.”

“Giovanni,” Vlad said with a nod. “I can’t imagine why I would need to bring anyone with me given that I am just here to talk.”

“Talk?” Giovanni Orsini raised both bushy black eyebrows. “When has Vlad ever been one to talk first?”

“Since now.”

“Do tell.” Giovanni waved to a chair opposite his at a table near the bar.

Vlad took the seat, making certain to turn his back to a group of Orsini men. It was both a gesture of his lack of bad intentions, and to show he had no fear of them.

Giovanni laughed. “You always were a bold bastard with brass balls to match.”

Vlad grunted. There really wasn’t any point in commenting on that compliment. “I’ve come to ask if you or your men had anything to do with a break-in at an elementary school in South Boston.”

“An elementary school?” Giovanni gestured for one of his bartenders to pour Vlad a drink. “I cannot imagine why we would be interested in anything at a school.”

“My younger brother is a student there,” Vlad explained. “The break-in occurred in his classroom and his school file was the only thing taken.”

“Then I would assume that whoever perpetuated the break-in has a bone to pick with your father,” Giovanni commented in his typically lazy tone of voice.

Many people took Giovanni Orsini to be a foolish or stupid man because he spoke slowly and often seemed to not be paying close attention. Over the last several years Vlad had gained a healthy respect for the man’s razor-sharp mind. Giovanni might want people to think he was slow or unconcerned, but in reality he was anything but.

“The cops showed a decided lack of interest in the case,” Vlad stated calmly.

Giovanni nodded, his expression serious. “So naturally you came to speak with me because all negative things done by the cops in the city are done by my order.”

“You might understand why this is where I chose to begin my investigation, but I’m not accusing you of anything.” Vlad kept his tone bored. “That would be pointless since I hardly have any evidence against you or your organization.”

This little speech earned Vlad a nod of appreciation from Giovanni. He seemed to take a moment or two longer to process what he’d heard. In the meantime Vlad threw back his shot of vodka and nodded his thanks to the bartender.