Page 36 of Wrath
Wyatt stopped listening and shoved his helmet back on. He paused. Shit, that was rude. He lifted his visor and pointed down the road, just to confirm.
Lilo nodded. “She left literally seconds before you arrived. I don’t know much about the place, except it’s in Little Russia.”
Wyatt gritted his teeth, nodded his thanks to Lilo and started his engine.
“Is everything okay? Misha told us about the fire,” Lilo asked.
He didn’t have time to chat. Revving the engine, he snapped his visor down. With one last look at Lilo and her blue-haired friend, he nodded. Yes, Misha would be okay. Especially if he had anything to say about it.
“Tell her to return my calls!” she shouted as he tore down the street, leaving them behind.
Little Russia. Wyatt tried to ignore the dark insecurities creeping into his mind.She’s hiding things from you. A second job? She’s not who you think…
When he arrived near the station, he slowed and parked so he could surveil without distraction. Catching sight of Misha waiting at the station platform, he couldn’t move. Instead, he waited until she got on the train, then drove to the station near Little Russia and waited across the street, still on his bike, helmet on, visor down.
Inside the quiet, insulated confines of his helmet, suspicions grew louder.
When Misha walked out from the train platform and onto the street, he waited. He watched. Like a creepy stalker, he tracked her as she moved down the street until she got to a large black door with an enormous bouncer manning the stoop. The guy must be on steroids. Muscles barely fit into his suit. Those kind of muscles made a man slow. He’d be no match for Wyatt, not now, not ever.
When Misha disappeared inside, Wyatt finally looked up at the sign over the doorway. The Kremlin Nightclub. With a growing sense of urgency, he took his helmet off and scanned the rest of the street. He was in a seedy end of town. Bars, nightclubs… strip-clubs… dirty streets, unsavory looking people. As Wyatt left Betty parked on the road side, he caught the eyes of two scrawny, toothless men eyeing her off. Fuck no.
Without a second thought, Wyatt strode up to them and hit one in the chest with his palm. The guy fell back onto his ass. Wyatt used two fingers to point at his own eyes, then back at the men, and at Betty.Mess with Betty, and I fuck you up.
“Shit man,” said the man still standing, scrambling to get away. “We ain’t done nuthin’.”
Keep it that way.
Grinding his teeth with pent up frustration, Wyatt went to the bar across the road from the Kremlin, ordered a drink and sat down at a table where he could watch both Betty and the club. As dusk fell, and the bar got rowdier, Wyatt held his position.
What the fuck was that place? Why was Misha working there? Why did she hide it from her family, but not her best friend?
So many questions curdled his mind. He tried to research the place on his cell but the shitty reception wouldn’t allow him to open a browser. Wyatt deeply missed his sister Sloan’s tech hacking skills at that point. He was sure she’d get more information. All he needed to do was call her. But he didn’t.
Wyatt hadn’t touched his drink, but smelled like a brewery. At one point, the bar had gotten so crowded that people stood next to him chatting and shouting at each other, spilling beer all over him. It took all his restraint not to smash the faces of some frat boys who’d come staggering into the bar after being kicked out of the club. They were sneering and mooning drunkenly over the best pair of tits and ass they’d ever seen. Apparently one of them had gotten handsy until a white-robed and masked freak had almost chopped his hands off with a “fucking samurai sword”.
As the night went on, it was clear most of the clientele in the nightclub were men, and that made every nerve in Wyatt pull tight.
Misha hadn’t reappeared.
Still working.
At The Kremlin. Where only men went.
Misha worked in a strip club and, apparently, the Syndicate’s foot soldiers were the bouncers.
After the knowledge hit him, he got stuck. He sat there nursing his beer, watching the club until closing time. He wasn’t done, though, and there was nowhere else to go that he could continue surveillance without drawing attention. It was either go in, or…
Wyatt left a tip on the bar and left. He checked on Betty’s safety and then went down a side alley. Once he was sure no one watched, he skirted a drain pipe and climbed to the roof. The bar was only one story and had a flat roof. There was a sign facing the road. Perfect place to sit under and continue his recon. Fuck, he knew he was skirting stalker territory, but he couldn’t deal with the fact she was in there doing God knew what, under the watchful eye of not only the Bratva but the Syndicate too.
Every alarm in his body sounded.
He hardly knew her. Maybe she had no idea who the Syndicate were. Not many people knew because the Syndicate were all about subterfuge, about knocking the legs from under you without you knowing they’d been there. They’d planted Sara in his life for years and he knew nothing until it was too late. He hadn’t even known she was Syndicate when she died the first time. He’d mourned that fucking bitch like the love of his life. It still hurt to think about. But it hurt more to think that right up until the end, until she took her last breath, he’d hoped she would somehow make things right.
With Sara, there was a duty. What he felt for Misha wasn’t duty. It was raw need. But what if the Syndicate planted her too?
* * *
Every nightfor the next eight days, Wyatt returned to The Kremlin and watched from the roof across the street. Misha arrived like clockwork at four in the afternoon. She left at three in the morning, tired and on her own. She usually wore a jacket leaving, but only her yoga attire arriving. Each night, Wyatt followed her to the train station, making sure she arrived safe—that was what he told himself—because a woman walking on her own in that neighborhood at night wasn’t a good thing. What was she thinking?
