Page 3 of Dangerous Passion

Rutskoi felt adrenaline course through his veins as he leaned closer to the screen to get a good look at the photographs. After examining each one, he hit print and examined the photographs carefully.

Grace Larsen was an unusually attractive woman, of medium height, slender without being bony like so many women in Manhattan. Wavy auburn hair, refined features, pearly white skin. She had an old-fashioned kind of beauty. She was undoubtedly why Drake was buying all her work and why he stood outside a window in a dark alley every other Tuesday afternoon.

To see her.

Though, granted, it was weird to think of Drake … what would be the American word?Pining. Drake was not a man to pine, after anything. Whatever he wanted, he obtained, by whatever means necessary. There was nothing he couldn’t have. If he wanted the woman, all he had to do was buy her. Why wait outside in an alley, exposed, for a couple of hours a month just to see her?

She didn’t appear to wear makeup and her clothes were ordinary, but on such a woman, makeup was almost superfluous and she didn’t need clothes to emphasize her beauty.

She looked utterly natural, quietly beautiful, serious, unpainted and un-enhanced. Not Drake’s type at all. Though come to think of it, who knew what was Drake’s type? Who knew if he evenhada type?

Drake could afford the best, and though the woman was stunning, she didn’t have ‘mistress’ written all over her, as many women did. Rutskoi had bought enough women to be completely familiar with the type. The kind of woman who looked at a man’s watch and shoes before she looked at his face. The kind of woman who was hooked on Tiffany and Armani the way street thugs were hooked on meth.

This woman didn’t look that way at all. She didn’t look expensive. She didn’t look like she was in the market to be bought.

What was Drake thinking? With his money and power, he could have beautiful women lined up around the block, patiently waiting in line to serve him, in whatever way he wanted. He could have an entire harem, trained to fuck him in every possible position, exactly as he liked. There was nothing sexual he couldn’t have or couldn’t buy.

Standing in the shadows in the cold of a Manhattan winter or the steamy furnace of a Manhattan summer for an hour or two a month, without his bodyguards, without any security whatsoever, for a glimpse of a woman … it was madness.

Everything about the woman was a negative. No known drugs. No sex life that the informant knew of, either with men or women. Was not hooked on clothes or jewelry. There was a one-time credit card payment of $300 to GAP, which any elegant Manhattan matron would have laughed at.

Rutskoi opened the attachments again and stared at her.

Why risk it? Drake was the most security-conscious humanRutskoi had ever seen. More than any of the Mafiya bosses back in Russia. More than Putin.

Why risk being defenseless for several hours a month? What could possibly be worth it? Drake was vulnerable not only while in the alley, but traveling there and back.

For what?Why?

It couldn’t be the paintings and watercolors and drawings themselves. He was scooping them up already. Wherever he had them stored, if he wanted them, he had access to them. No, it was more than the artwork. Itmustbe for the woman.

Drake wanted to be able to observe the woman, unobserved. To risk so much, he must be obsessed. And he couldn’t afford to let that obsession show to his men. They were loyal, it was true, but loyalty in their world was bought. Drake didn’t have friends, he had employees. And employees could become disloyal. Look at the informant. He had just opened a huge hole in the armor plating surrounding Drake for a miserable $250,000.

So here Drake was, obsessed with a beautiful woman who was unaware of his existence, completely defenseless, several hours a month. Grab the woman, force Drake to give up his codes, kill Drake and the woman, become one of the most powerful men on earth, all in one stroke.

This was it.

The decision was made. It was Thursday. He could have everything in place in a few days. This time Tuesday evening, he could be sitting in Drake’s place, king of the world.

Rutskoi picked up his phone. It was time to recruit a partner.

Chapter One

Alleyway outside the Feinstein Art Gallery

Manhattan

November 17

Feelings kill faster than bullets, that old Russian Army saying, raced through Viktor ‘Drake’ Drakovich’s mind when he heard the noise behind him. It was barely audible. The faint sound of metal against leather, fabric against fabric and the softest whisper of a metallic click.

The sound of a gun being pulled from its holster, the safety being switched off. He’d heard a variation of this sound thousands and thousands of times over the years.

He’d known for a year now that this moment would come. It was only a question of when, not if. He’d been barreling towards it, against every instinct in his body, completely out of control, for a full year.

From his boyhood living wild on the streets of Odessa, he’d survived the most brutal conditions possible, over and overagain, by being cautious, by never exposing himself unnecessarily, by being security-conscious, always.

What he’d been doing for the past year was the equivalent of suicide.

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