Page 44 of Hero Worship

"Quit profiling me." But there was no heat in Xander's voice as he adjusted the knife strapped to his thigh. "I can hear your behavioral analysis brain whirring from here."

I moved behind him, not quite touching. "Can't help it. Twenty years of training doesn't just turn off." My eyes met his in the mirror. "Especially not when the subject is so fascinating."

“Smile for the camera, then.” Xander snapped a quick selfie in the hotel mirror and typed out a caption.

"Mr. West? Mr. Verity?" a thickly accented voice called through the door. "Mr. Dubois requests your presence."

I caught the way Xander's hands froze on his phone screen, the slight hitch in his breathing. "Who's Dubois?" I kept my voice low. Something about that name had shaken my usually unflappable partner.

"The leader of the French bratva," Xander said quietly, his voice tight as he checked his weapons with trembling hands. There was something personal in his reaction, something that went beyond professional concern.

The Bratva? The people who’d hired us through Lucky Losers? Why the hell was our client making direct contact?

Another knock, harder this time. "We have been instructed not to keep Mr. Dubois waiting."

I reached for my shoulder holster, but Xander stopped me with a sharp look. "Won't help. If Nikolai has sent his men, the hotel's already surrounded." His smile was bitter as he applied one final coat of deep red to his lips. "When he sends an invitation, attendance isn't optional."

"You know him." It wasn't a question. The tremor in Xander's hands, the way he'd said Nikolai instead of Dubois… There was history there.

"He’s my cousin." Xander's voice was carefully neutral, but I caught how his fingers tightened on his lipstick.

I wanted to press further, but Xander opened the door before I could, revealing two massive men in expensive suits that barely contained their muscle mass. I recognized the type from my days working in organized crime. Bratva enforcers, the kind who broke things for a living.

"Mr. Dubois sends his regards," the larger one said, his French accent at odds with his Russian features. "His car is waiting."

It wasn't a request. I watched Xander's mask slip fully into place, all deadly grace and designer beauty. "How thoughtful of Nikolai to send an escort." His tone was pure ice. "Though really, Anton, the show of force is unnecessary."

The enforcer—Anton—didn't smile. "Mr. Dubois's orders, Mr. West." The use of Xander's cover name was pointed. "Recent events have made him... particular about security."

I assessed the situation. The enforcers' positioning, the casual display of weapons beneath designer suits, the way they'd breached our security without triggering any alarms. This wasn't just a show of force. This was a power play by someone who knew exactly who we were and didn't care about maintaining appearances.

The walk through the hotel was a masterclass in power dynamics. Anton and his partner had positioned themselves perfectly. They stayed close enough to interfere if we tried anything, but maintained enough distance to avoid drawing attention. Two more men fell into step behind us, cutting off any escape routes while appearing to casual observers like a standard security detail.

A sleek black Mercedes waited at the curb, engine running. The windows were tinted dark enough to be illegal in France. Two more identical vehicles bracketed it, while a third idled at the corner. They were controlling approach vectors while seemingly random in their placement.

"If you please, Mr. Verity," Anton gestured to the open door with exaggerated formality. The contrast between his polite words and the implicit threat in his posture. Everything about this extraction had been choreographed to demonstrate power while maintaining a veneer of civility.

As we slid into the plush leather interior, I kept my hand on Xander's lower back as a reminder that whatever game Dubois was playing, he wasn't facing it alone. The Russian consortium had hired Lucky Losers specifically to maintain deniability. Direct contact from someone this high up in the bratva hierarchy threatened to expose not just our mission, but potentially compromise years of carefully maintained relationships between criminal enterprises.

I squeezed Xander's hand once, quick and reassuring, before schooling my features into professional neutrality. The car pulled away from the curb, our escort vehicles falling into perfect formation. Through the tinted windows, Paris glittered with deceptive beauty, but my focus was entirely on Xander. The careful way he held himself, the fact that his own cousin had sent armed men to collect us… Nothing about this situation sat right.

The weapons we'd so carefully placed during our routine felt inadequate now, but they were all we had.

More concerning was how this development threatened our entire operation. Direct contact from the head of the French bratva wasn't just a breach of protocol. It was the kind of family entanglement that got people killed. I'd seen enough cases go sideways when personal relationships complicated professional hits.

I had claimed him this morning, marked him as mine in every way that mattered. Now his cousin—someone who clearly held enough power to make Xander nervous despite their blood connection—was inserting himself into our mission. The possessive urge I'd been fighting all morning rose up again, butthis time, it wasn't about sex. This was about protecting what was mine, even from his own family.

Xander's fingers tightened around mine as we turned onto a narrow side street, heading deeper into the parts of Paris tourists never saw. The mission brief had mentioned Russian consortium backing, but nothing about the this Russian being Xander's cousin. That kind of critical intelligence shouldn't have been withheld. The growing certainty that we were being drawn into complex family politics made the professional hit we'd prepared for seem almost simple in comparison.

Time to find out exactly why Nikolai Dubois had decided family connections trumped operational security, and what that meant for our mission, and for us.

The restaurant looked likeit had been transplanted directly from Cold War Moscow. It was all dark wood paneling and Soviet-era propaganda posters that somehow managed to seem ironic and threatening at the same time. The familiar scents of cabbage, dill, and cigarette smoke hit hard. For a moment, I was twelve again, standing in the kitchen while Uncle Sacha taught me to make pelmeni, correcting my Russian pronunciation between demonstrations of proper folding technique. But this wasn't Ohio, and these weren't the comforting smells of home.

The dining room buzzed with multiple Slavic languages. Russian dominated, but I caught snippets of Ukrainian, Polish, even some Georgian. This was where the Eastern European diaspora came to remember home while plotting their next moves in the West. Old women in headscarves shared tables with young men sporting designer watches and suspicious bulges under their jackets. A trio of priests from what looked like the Russian Orthodox Church huddled in one corner, their long beards not quite hiding their military bearing. This wasn't just a restaurant. It was an embassy for a shadow kingdom.

Ash's hand stayed on my lower back as we followed our escort through the dimly lit space. Anton moved with the careful grace of someone who broke things for a living, his massive frame somehow avoiding the crowded tables while maintaining perfect positioning to control our movements. The weight of watching eyes pressed in, but Ash's touch kept me grounded, prevented me from descending into paranoia.

A group of younger men at one table caught my attention. They had that hungry look I recognized from Papa’s stories about the new generation of Eastern European criminals. Designer clothes, expensive watches, and eyes that sorted everyone's worth in terms of potential profit. One of them muttered something crude in Russian about my appearance. Without breaking stride, Anton's hand shot out and grabbed the speaker's throat. The movement was so smooth, so casual, that half the room probably missed it.

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