Crooks & Kings: A Wild Bunch Novel Read online

  “I didn’t think I would need another one,” he answered, gesturing for her to come forward.

  She didn’t budge. “But you need one.”

  One eyebrow cocked over the rim of his glasses. “I’ve never crashed.”

  “You can be the best driver in the world, and some idiot can still slam into you.”

  He was quiet for three seconds. “Get on the bike.”

  “That’s not happening.”

  He had the nerve to blow out a breath as though exacerbated. “We’re going three miles up the goddamn road.”

  When she still refused to move, he climbed back off, and walked over to her.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked.

  “It’s not about trusting you”—though she couldn’t say whether he was a good driver or not—“it’s everyone else who might not drive well.”

  He looked at her as though that wasn’t a valid excuse. “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t know why.

  She didn’t know how.

  She just did.

  “Then put this on,” he said, plucking the thing from her hands and working it onto her head, “and let’s get out of here.”

  Having no choice but to follow his direction, she gingerly climbed on behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist, and held tight.

  His bike started with a sharp groan, and within seconds, they were pulling off and heading down the street.

  Wind whistled through the ends of her hair, her kimono whipping behind her as they rode. The experience was both exhilarating and terrifying, but it managed to take her mind off Chicago.

  The diner they arrived at was one of those old-school affairs that looked like it had been plucked from the ’50s and transplanted to the street corner. Neon lights glowed on a sign stretching across the top of the building, and once they were inside, the smell of grease and sugar was heavy in the air.

  Mariya liked it already.

  Chicago was home to a variety of fine dining. She’d spent more time with a napkin in her lap than not, but she’d always loved something about diners.

  Led to a booth in the back of the restaurant, she was surprised when Christophe slid into the booth beside her rather than across from her, his elbow almost touching hers. She didn’t complain, not even a little.

  When was the last time she had been out with a man in public like this?

  Feliks, maybe—before they’d gotten married and she was forced to spend most of her day tending to his house.

  They hadn’t been alone that night—her grandfather and others were there—but one thing was for sure. Christophe wasn’t like a vor—a thief-in-law.

  He might have had the same arrogance and looked dangerous, but something was decidedly different about him.

  He was easy to be around—the kind of man she would have liked even before Feliks had taken everything from her.

  Not knowing what to say, Mariya sat in silence for a while, even as the waitress came to take their orders.

  The silence went on for so long, she worried their entire time here would be like this, but once their food was delivered, Christophe spoke.

  “You’re supposed to celebrate the dead, you know,” he said next to her ear. “At least, that’s what they tell me.”

  Mariya frowned, looking down at her plate. “How do you celebrate losing someone?”

  “You don’t celebrate what you lost, you celebrate what they left behind. So ask yourself, what did your mother leave you?”

  Laughter, she thought instantly. She thought of all the lessons Inna had taught her over the years, from boys to college, and even the future of the Bratva life they were in.

  As soon as the first thought hit her, it felt like the floodgates of her mind cracked open, and dozens of memories hit her at the same time, starting with a childhood spent trailing behind Inna, imitating her every move because once she grew up, she wanted to be just like her.

  Mariya found herself sharing stories, telling him about the neighborhood where she had grown up.

  “I remember the first time I realized my family was different,” she said as she took a sip of her drink. “A party was being held at a neighbor’s house, and though we were all invited, they called at the last minute to uninvite us.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Because, despite the money Temuri donated to charity, and the nice house they lived in, he was still seen as nothing more than a criminal. “My mother, Inna, got into an argument with another one of the wives in the neighborhood.”

  At least that was the ‘unofficial’ story, but after overhearing Inna ranting about them to Temuri, she’d known the truth.

  “I take it this did not end well for the other woman.”

  “She made their lives hell,” Mariya said with a smile. “She refused to back down.”

  “Crooks?” her mother had said with such blatant disgust, Mariya’s eyes had widened. “If they want to play a game of crooks and kings, I’ll happily show them how it’s done.”

  She wasn’t sure, even to this day, what those words had meant, but she did know not one of the housewives ever gave Inna a problem again.

  And though she always received an invitation from then on, Inna always declined.

  Christophe smiled. “I think I would have liked her.”

  “Yeah,” Mariya said with her own smile, but she wasn’t thinking about him liking her; she was thinking about Inna liking Christophe.

  “Go on, then. Tell me more. You know you want to.”

  She happily obliged him, telling him every story she could think of until she had talked herself out, but he’d managed to accomplish what he’d set out to because, by the end of it, she didn’t feel grief at all. She felt happy.

  “Thank you for this,” she said once they were back at her apartment.

  He shrugged. “You don’t have to thank me for this.”

  But she wanted to. He didn’t owe her anything, and they barely knew each other, yet he had gone out of his way for her without wanting anything in return.

  Standing there, his gaze went soft in a way that made her acutely aware of her own femininity. “You know you’re staring again.”

  “Fuck it.”

  She only had a moment to take a breath before his mouth was on hers, his hands on either side of her face. It wasn’t just a soft press of his lips against hers.

  Mariya was only frozen for a split second before she was kissing him back, losing herself in him until he was all she could feel.

  She had always wondered what it would be like to kiss him, whether he was gentle and exploring, or if he was slow and deliberate, but he was neither. He kissed her like he was starving.

  Her back hit her door, but with Christophe pressed against her, she didn’t care. She could feel his heart beating beneath her hands, a strong thumping bass that she could feel down to her bones.

  For endless moments, she learned just how good he was with his mouth, but much too soon, he pulled away, breath leaving him in a rush. “Better?”

  She couldn’t help but nod. “Better.”

  Chapter 6

  July 19, 2017

  As Mariya knocked on his door this time around, there was no fear of him acting like a jerk. In fact, she was giddy.

  Since the last time she’d seen him, she couldn’t get him off her mind. She wasn’t sure what he did when he disappeared for hours at a time, but she did notice he wasn’t hoarding a brown paper bag anymore.

  After that night on the rooftop and the ensuing morning, she had seen far more of him than she’d anticipated.

  He came into the bar more often, sticking close to her, and whenever she was on a break, she found herself drawn to wherever he was sitting.

  “So what’s his deal?” Aubrey had asked three nights ago when Christophe had come in, sparing no one a glance but her.

  “His deal?”

  “What does he do? Where’s he from? How big is his cock? I’m asking important questio
ns here.”

  Mariya could only shrug. “I don’t know.”

  Aubrey had only seemed more confused. “Anything? You don’t know anything?”

  “He was born in Romania,” she’d answered with a helpless sort of smile, but to her other questions, she didn’t have an answer.

  Christophe was still a stranger to her though he didn’t feel like one.

  She knew he spoke at least three languages.

  She knew he drove a motorcycle too fast and laughed when she complained.

  She knew he was caring enough to want to cheer her up knowing her mother had died.

  And more than anything, she knew he didn’t ask questions.

  That should have worried her, that he didn’t care about where she came from, but she enjoyed his company too much to question it.

  The beauty of being with him was that she didn’t have to think about where she had come from and her family name.

  To him, she was just Mariya, the bartender-slash-waitress at the tavern down the street from their apartments.

  And she was perfectly okay with that.

  “What if he’s a serial killer or something?” Aubrey had asked.

  If he was, he wasn’t a very good one. If by chance she went missing, he would be the first person anyone questioned.

  But her question had made Mariya more curious, and it was partially for this reason that she made her way upstairs to his apartment now.

  She wanted to know more about him—she wanted to know all the little details lingering beneath the surface.

  As the door swung wide, Christophe smiled, looking down at the bags she carried. “I thought you were at the bar tonight.”

  “I switched with someone else,” she said, slipping by him.

  His apartment was identical to hers in size, but the similarities ended there. While she had tried to make hers as homey as possible, it didn’t look like he had put forth any effort in decorating his at all.

  The walls were still the same off-white shade she remembered from when she had first moved in, with a mattress on the floor made up with black sheets and a throw blanket.

  An assortment of empty liquor bottles were neatly lined along the side of it, her brows rising at the sheer number of them, but she hadn’t smelled any on him as she walked by, so she figured they must have been old.

  Turning back to him, she smiled as she held up the bag. “I came to say thank you.”

  “For the other day?” He waved his hand. “Don’t thank me for that.”

  “No, I want to. It’s the least I can do.”

  He still stubbornly stood there, and she didn’t think anything could be more endearing. “I was going to make clătitele cu gem—crepes with jam.”

  She was pretty sure she butchered that pronunciation, but when his eyes lit up, she didn’t care.

  “It’s been years since I’ve had it,” he murmured, sounding wistful, and that only made the pleasant feeling churning inside her that much better.

  A simple thank you hadn’t seemed like enough, and if Inna had taught her one thing, it was her love for cooking.

  She wasn’t the greatest cook in the world, and it usually took her a bit of practice to get it right, but Mariya could manage this, if only because she wanted to keep that smile on his face.

  “Do you even own a pan?” she asked, glancing over into his kitchen that was sparse at best. It didn’t even look like he regularly went in there.

  When he looked baffled by the question, she rolled her eyes, pulling her keys out of her pocket. “They’re in the cabinet above the sink.”

  With a laugh, he disappeared out the door as she crossed the room to place her bag of groceries on the counter.

  By the time he’d returned with her largest pan and a number of kitchen utensils in his hands, she was all set up.

  “Put me to work,” he said as she peeled a tangerine.

  “It wouldn’t be a gift if I didn’t do it myself.”

  He plucked the nearly finished one out of her hands. “Nonsense.”

  “Can you even cook?”

  “I make do, but my knife skills are impressive,” he said, a smile tugging at his lips.

  “I’m afraid to ask why,” she mumbled, remembering Aubrey’s comment about him potentially being a serial killer.

  “Don’t worry,” he said setting the fruit down on a plate. “You’re always safe with me.”

  She was starting to realize, as she peeked at him out the corner of her eye, that he was very good at putting her at ease.

  “How long have you lived here?” she asked, setting the pan on the stove and turning on the burner.

  He seemed to think on his answer. “What’s today?”

  Pausing with a spoon in her hand, she pulled out her phone. “The nineteenth.”

  “Almost six months.”

  So about a month longer than she had. “Where were you before here?”

  Something changed about his expression, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

  “California, but that was only for a couple of weeks. Before that, I was here in New York, just not in Brooklyn.”

  “You move around a lot?” she asked.

  “Hazards of the job,” he said; picking up the knife, he did an impressive spin of it between his fingers before cutting the slices of tangerine into smaller pieces. He really was good at that. “We go wherever the boss tells us.”

  “We?”

  “My brothers and I.”

  “You have brothers?” she asked, a bit surprised. She couldn’t recall if he had ever mentioned them before, but then again, he hadn’t mentioned much of anything.

  “Yeah, I have three of them.”

  “Are you the youngest?”

  “Second oldest and no, I never got around to bullying the younger two,” he said with a rueful smile. Before she could ask another question, however, he asked one of his own. “Have you talked to your sister since the other night?”

  It was only fair he ask about her since she was trying to get information from him. “Briefly,” she said, her answer not far from the truth.

  Klara had called, but few words were out of her mouth before she’d had to hang up again. She longed for the days when that was no longer the case.

  “How long has it been since you were in Romania?” she asked, changing the subject.

  His expression soured. “If I went tomorrow, it would be too soon.”

  “Bad memories?”

  He shook his head. “You have no idea.”

  Spooning up some of the batter, she gingerly poured it into the pan, lifting and turning the handle until it made a thin, even layer.

  She didn’t realize Christophe had drawn closer to her until his voice was in her ear. “Did your mother teach you this?”

  Mariya nodded. “Whenever she had the time.”

  The kitchen had been Inna’s happy place, where smiles were genuine, and nothing outside their home could influence the good vibes inside it.

  She wanted to hold onto those memories. The happiness her family had felt during Sunday dinners, and not the broken home they’d become once Temuri was gone.

  Before now, Mariya didn’t think she had ever been more aware of a man’s presence near her. Perhaps Feliks, but that had been different. When he was around, she was always on guard, expecting his worst, but with Christophe, the awareness that consumed her made her achingly conscious to his closeness.

  When he was around, it was easy to forget she was in hiding and that legally, she bore another man’s last name, though she didn’t go by it anymore.

  “My sister, Klara, could draw and sketch things—she was amazing, but me, I was horrible at everything until my mama taught me how to make pancakes. I didn’t eat anything else for weeks after I’d learned because I was so proud.” Mariya laughed, remembering how much Klara had hated when she was forced to eat them each morning. “Anyway, since I was good at that, I stuck with cooking.”

  “Did you ever want to t
ake it further? Go to a school or something?”

  “No, just at home.” It had proven to be something of a comfort after everything that had happened. “It’s just something personal.”

  He put a hand flat against his chest, right over his heart. “And you’re sharing it with me? I feel special.”

  You are special, she wanted to tell him, but she held the words back.

  It didn’t take long for the crepes to finish, and after she had them on plates and spread the jam over the surface, he placed the slices of fruit on top and folded them over.

  She hadn’t been sure, at first, if this would be good enough for him, for everything he had done for her, but as she saw the boyish smile on his face, she knew she’d picked right.

  “My ma, she used to make these every other Sunday.” His smile turned a little wistful as he took a bite and chewed. “As good as I’d hoped.”

  Could he have given her a better compliment? “I’m glad you like it. I think that’s the first thing you’ve ever told me about yourself.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “This feels more personal, though. You don’t talk about yourself.”

  “‘Cause I’m not interesting.”

  “I doubt that,” she said, repeating his words.

  “Then ask me something,” he said, eating the last bit of crepe on his plate.

  “What do your tattoos mean?”

  He tilted his head up a fraction, and only hesitated a moment. “One for each of my brothers. This one”—he pointed at the X—“is for Invictus and Thanatos. When you meet them, you’ll understand why. This one,” he said, lifting his forearm to show her the cross, “is also for Invictus.”

  She tried not to let the when as opposed to if make her smile. In their time together, she had tried living in the present rather than thinking of a future. Some days, she felt like this could be more than just a casual relationship between them, but then other days, she was reminded Feliks was still out there.

  With him in the world, she doubted a future for her with anyone would be possible.

  “I take it he’s religious?” she asked.