Page 3 of Corrupted Heart

“Alicia.”

She turns to me. “Yes?”

“What are we doing?”

She sucks on her teeth, grinning a little. “Just something for Grisha.”

My stomach knots as my eyes drop to the duffel bag.

“Don’t…” Her grin fades as she shakes her head. “Don’t ask. Seriously. But it’s going to be fine. He wouldn’t have asked me to do this for him if it was dangerous.”

Bullshit.

I’ve met Grisha once or twice before when he’s come to pick Alicia up after rehearsal. Calling him a “creep” is like calling Jeffery Dahmer “a guy with strange eating habits”. He’s a dick to Alicia, rude to pretty much everyone he sees, and almost definitely arrives early to pick her up just so he can walk into the dressing room while everyone else is still changing.

Alicia closes the trunk and hefts the duffel bag again. “C’mon, let’s go.”

She starts to walk across the empty parking lot and around the side of the shuttered diner. Irena is right behind her, with me hanging further back.

“Okay, seriously…” I look around nervously as we come around to the back of the diner: an alley with brick walls, a rusted-out dumpster, and only one way in…or out. “Alicia, what are we?—”

“So, Grisha sends his bitches to do his deliveries for him now?”

My heart lurches into my throat. Whirling, my face goes white when I see the two men now standing behind us at the entrance to the alley. They’re both built, with lots of visible tattoos on their necks and hands, and dressed in dark suits with no ties.

One of them is a bit taller than the other and seems to be the one in charge. He elbows the second guy and then nods his chin at us with a grin.

“So, you girls come with the coke or what?”

What the fuck.

My eyes rip sideways to stare at the bag in Alicia’s hand.

Coke? As in cocaine?!

Suddenly, I realize I vastly underestimated the bad juju vibes I got earlier when Irena said we were doing “mayhem” tonight.

This isn’t an adventure.

We’re doing a fucking drug deal for Alicia’s scumbag boyfriend.

For a second, I consider just bolting from this scene and not looking back. But even though I’ve never been at a drug deal before, I do know this world—at least, well enough to realize that running right now would be a very, very bad idea.

Alicia shrugs nonchalantly. “Yep. It’s all here. Seven kilos.”

Holy shit.

I don’t know much about drugs. But I do know seven freaking kilos is a ton of cocaine.

“Grisha said you’d have the money?—”

“You misunderstand.” The taller guy grins salaciously at us. “I didn’t mean did the coke physically arrive with you. I meant do you girls come with the coke.”

His grin widens, and suddenly, my blood turns to ice as he and his buddy pull guns out of their jackets. Alicia’s face turns white. Her lip trembles.

“I…Grisha said?—”

“Grisha’s a fucking idiot,” the shorter of the two guys chuckles. “Put the bag on the ground, sweetheart. And then—all three of you on your fuckin’ knees.”

---