“None at all?”
Their eyes met and held for a long moment. Something fluttered in Madison’s chest that she refused to acknowledge as her heart. Just when she thought anything might happen—especially a scenario where the Russian crossed the room and showed her just how much two people could do with so few available surfaces—Vlad exhaled and turned back to the kitchen counter.
“Well? Any ideas yet?” he asked her, in reference to her earlier play to gain entry.
“A few.” Madison’s eyes traveled down the length of his broad back, watching the way the thin material of his T-shirt hugged the muscles of his shoulders and the indent of his spine every time he moved. “Can I at least hang out here until the movers are finished?”
Vlad gestured to the chair in the living room without looking. “Help yourself. I was just going to make dinner.”
“I was thinking more of helping myself to your liquor cabinet,” Madison admitted. Her eyes fell from admiring Vlad’s incredible physique to take in the fallen soldiers piled by the armchair. “If there’s anything left,” she amended.
“Let’s just say you aren’t my first unexpected visitor this week,” Vlad said, holding a bottle out in invitation with one hand as he continued his preparations in the sink. Madison sauntered into the kitchen to join him, taking the offered vodka and helping herself to the only glass. There was nowhere to sit in the kitchen, so she settled for hopping up onto the counter by the sink and pouring herself a drink sans rocks.
“Oh? What’s her name?” she inquired casually.
“Crafty little lisa,” Vlad commented.
Madison’s heart sank, and she set the bottle aside. “Her name is Lisa?”
“Lisa is the Russian word for ‘fox,’” Vlad corrected as he pushed against her thigh to make room. Madison complied, scooting to allow space for his cutting board. She tipped her head back and tossed the drink down in a valiant effort to fight the burn Vlad’s touch left with the one in her throat.
“So… am I lisa because of my hair, or for a different reason you’d care to illuminate?” she asked dangerously.
Vlad chuckled. “I’m willing to illuminate only one question at a time. If you must know, the last person to visit me was my brother, Maxim. Here,” he said, just as Madison opened her mouth to ask another question. He pushed something smooth and salty past her lips, filling her mouth before she could object. “Kielbasa. You will have to tell me what you think of Russian sausage.”
You’re a trained killer to the core, Karev. Madison’s face burned at the obvious innuendo. Was this dinner, or was this sexual theater? She chewed the sausage link and refused to state out loud how good it was.
Definitely a killer, and don’t you forget it, O’Connor. He’s going to be the death of you if you hang around any longer. What else might he be?
“Oh, that reminds me! I have something of yours!” she said. Vlad raised an eyebrow, as if to silently inquire what precisely it was that had reminded her in the first place, but Madison ignored his look. She hopped down off the counter and exited his apartment to pop into her own place next door. The movers weren’t finished assembling her things yet, but they appeared to be taking a smoke break in the alley outside. Madison sighed with frustration, but didn’t bother hanging her head out the window to shout down to them. At least the dinner jacket was still where she had left it, hanging off the back of her desk chair. Madison plucked it up and was just about to turn and go when a piece of paper fluttered out of one of the pockets.
She paused, scrutinizing the folded note on the floor. It shouldn’t have looked familiar, yet it did somehow. Why hadn’t she noticed it in Vlad’s pocket before? She knelt to retrieve it, peeling it open carefully, her pulse kicking up before she had even consciously recognized the handwriting within.
It was the note from her father—the one she had delivered to Sergey’s office the day before he was murdered, if Vlad was to be believed. And speaking of Vlad…
The room darkened suddenly. Madison wheeled to find the towering blond man standing in the doorway to her apartment, filling the doorway. He hadn’t looked that big inside his own residence. His pale eyes fell to her occupied hands, and a terrible change came over him. Madison backed herself against her desk chair before she understood that she was retreating.
“You.” His expression was thunderous. “You stole it. The note.”
“What?” she asked, perplexed. “What are you talking about? I didn’t steal anything! You gave me your jacket; in case you had forgotten!”
Not that she hadn’t tried to suppress her fair share of memories from that night as well.
“Why do you have this, anyway?” she demanded, tossing the dinner jacket back down and moving into the room as she brandished the note at him. “This was for Sergey’s eyes only! This was a private invitation to meet with my father that he asked me to deliver personally for him! Why do you have it now? Unless…”
She nearly choked on her realization like it was a piece of kielbasa. Vlad’s eyes narrowed, as if he couldn’t decide if she was putting on a show or not.
“You can’t be serious!” Madison exclaimed. “Do you actually think I’m the one who murdered Sergey? Or do you think that I’m complicit somehow? Is that what this was all along to you? A part of your investigation?”
It made sudden, dreadful sense: the chance meeting, the repeat visits to her office, the additional security and cameras. Unbelievable that it had taken her this long to figure out. She had been so taken in by him; by a Karev, the enemy literally at her door. The enemy who now stepped fully into her apartment and closed the door, locking it behind him.
“Do you deny you weren’t doing the same?” Vlad demanded. “Why else would a woman with such clear disdain for the business I run agree to dinner with me?” She saw a wicked glint in his eye and braced herself for impact. “Why else would she agree to open her legs for a Russian thug? The transparency in your own motivations is frankly embarrassing, lisa.”
“Go to hell!” Madison shouted. She hadn’t meant to pitch her voice so loudly, but she also hadn’t expected him to go so low. Then again, the man before her was proving himself to be exactly as described: a Russian thug.
“I don’t need someone like you telling me when and when not to feel embarrassed, and I definitely don’t need him doing so inside my own apartment!” she exclaimed. “Believe me; I regret our date as much as you do!” Her eyes darted across the room once more to the dinner jacket hanging off the chair, and she was struck by a terrible inspiration. “In fact, why don’t I make it up to you? Since I’m such a designing, manipulative whore, it should be my equal responsibility to help you avoid letting your dick lead you into temptation in the future.”
She darted across the room and snatched the dinner jacket up before Vlad could stop her. The window into the main room of her new apartment was already open, and, serendipitously enough, screenless.
Without another thought, she threw Vlad’s jacket out the window. He rushed forward as she stepped aside; she restrained herself from looking, but thought she heard the telltale ‘thump!’ of the expensive article landing in the open dumpster below. There were unforeseen perks to living right above the alley after all.
An ominous silence descended upon the room. The smug smile of victory Madison had been fighting back died on her lips. A siren wailed in the distance to match the one now going off in her head.