Page 38 of Shattered Altar (Makarova Bratva Duet)

Demyan looks at me with haunted eyes. “I can’t let her take my kid, Aleks.”

“Then don’t let her.”

“She’ll hate me.”

“She does already.”

He snorts darkly. “Fuck, ain’t that the truth? To this day, that’s the part that floors me the most.”

“People change.”

“That’s the thing: I didn’t change,” he says. “I told her who I was from the beginning. She told me she loved me and she would deal with the rest. But it doesn’t matter how many promises are made. When it comes to living this lifestyle, it gets to be too much. We’re better off being lone wolves. We need to fuck faceless women and leave when we’re done.”

“I get the point, Demyan,” I say.

He smiles and holds his hands up in surrender. “Lecture over, then. You think that FBI bastard will back off now that you have his sister?”

“He has no choice,” I say. “The Bureau would have dropped the investigation a long time ago if it weren’t for his irritating persistence.”

“Still hung up on his missing woman, eh?”

“Precisely.”

“See?” Demyan says. “No good can come of loving a woman. Look what kind of hot water it’s gotten that poor son of a bitch into.”

I finish off the last of my beer. Demyan does the same and gets to his feet. “Come on,” he says, “we should celebrate the successful conclusion of our mission.”

I know what’s coming before he makes the suggestion. He’s set things up perfectly. If I say no, he’s going to assume it’s because my interests lie elsewhere. So with a grimace, I stand up and nod.

“Fine. Roxy’s it is.”

With a self-satisfied grin, he leads me out into the courtyard where several of my vehicles are waiting for me to choose from. I select the midnight blue Aston Martin.

Demyan hops into the passenger seat and I take the wheel. The car purrs to life beneath us, lethal and gorgeous.

As I peel out with squealing tires, I can’t help but glance up towards the upstairs windows. She’s been locked inside for a few hours now, but there hasn’t been so much as a single peep from her room.

Not my concern, I tell myself as the gates close behind us. She is only a means to an end.

For the most part, I even believe it.

* * *

Roxy’s is only a fifteen-minute drive away. It’s the mecca of strip clubs. A fucking cornucopia of ass and tits. It runs a cool grand to get you into the main area, with two dozen girls at any given time swinging from the poles and rafters and another fifteen or twenty wandering the floor in search of a client. For a normal man, it’s heaven on earth.

We walk straight past it.

Because the second part of the club is hidden away behind black gilded doors. If you have to ask the entry fee, you can’t afford it.

Demyan and I glide towards the entrance. Two bouncers open them without so much as a single question as we approach, their heads bowed in reverence.

It’s quieter in here, classier, although certainly not short on women. They’ve mostly dispensed with clothes altogether in this section. The red lights pirouette throughout the darkness, highlighting curves and temptations everywhere you look.

Demyan and I slide into one of the leather booths. We’ve barely taken a breath before a gaggle of girls descends on us like vultures.

My lieutenant spreads his legs and lets one of his favorite girls plop down not-so-accidentally on his crotch. “Evening, Jemma,” he greets, cupping her ass. “You look delicious tonight.”

“I taste delicious, too,” she says with a demure giggle. She’s wearing a tiny pink bikini top that covers only her nipples and a matching pink skirt that barely covers her ass. It’s a fairly chaste ensemble, compared to the rest of her colleagues.

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