Page 6 of Wicked Proposal
I barely restrain myself from hurling my phone across the street.
Maksim’s update has been nothing but shitty news: Nikita still hasn’t been found. Not at her apartment, not at her usual haunts, not even at HQ.
Maks is my best friend and second-in-command, but he’s still getting my full wrath right now. Mostly because I have nowhere else to vent.
“Boss—”
“Did I fucking stutter?” I interrupt. “Find her.”
“I’ve got all our men on it,” Maksim sighs. “Did you find out why her GPS signal died in Brownsville?”
“Hey!” someone pipes up down the sidewalk.
I ignore that voice behind me.
“No,” I mutter to Maksim. The truth is, I don’t have a goddamn clue why Nikita’s GPS would lead here at all.
She lives in Manhattan, for fuck’s sake. There’s nothing in this armpit of New York that could have lured her here?—
Unless…
Unless she found a lead.
“Excuse me? Sir?” The voice behind me is closer now. More insistent. “Your car is?—”
“Shh.” I hold up a finger to silence the nagging woman. Whatever she wants with my car, she can wait until I’m done. “Maks, you got anything else?”
“Not really,” he answers. “I just— Wait, hold up. I just got word that the man we captured is awake.”
My hackles rise. “Put him on the line.”
“You’re already running late to the gala, Yul. Let me handle this. I can?—”
“Now,Maks.”
My second gives a frustrated sigh. “Alright, fine. But I’m not driving your ungrateful ass halfway across the city during rush hour.”
“You will if I need it.”
He bites out a curse in Russian. He knows I’m right. He knows he’ll never say no to me, even if I’m the one making myself late for tonight’s event.
Maksim is a lot of things, but disloyal isn’t one of them.
Not when it comes to me.
Which is why I don’t doubt for a second that he’ll do as I say.
There’s a little scuffling at the other end of the line. I walk into an alley and lean against the graffitied wall. It isn’t exactly a private setting to carry out an interrogation by phone, but it’s as private as it’ll get right now.
“No!” a new voice cries out. “I don’t know anything! I don’t?—”
“According to his ID, his name is Boyan,” Maksim informs me. “Just so you two can be on a nice, friendly, first-name basis.”
“Hello, Boyan.” My tone goes as cold as the fucking grave. “I’m going to ask you a few questions now. If you answer them, I’ll ensure that you don’t suffer. If you don’t… Well. There’s only so much I can do.”
“I don’t know anything!” Boyan repeats, panicked. “I never met her! I just?—”
“Maksim,” I cut in, “break one of his fingers.”
