Submit (The Underground Book 4) (3 page)

He’d been nothing but courteous and helpful. There had been not one indication he had an ulterior motive.

No. That wasn’t true. He had stared at her chest for long moments in the living room. And then there were the clothes she’d most certainly not been wearing when she went to bed last night. Which meant… Which meant what? Had the man changed her clothes and seen her naked body?

She shivered and snuggled farther under the covers to block out the light and attempt to block her mind for a while.

She just needed a nap…

Belinda stepped into the kitchen at seven o’clock the next morning to find Nikolav leaning against the small island, legs crossed at the ankles, steaming cup of coffee in both hands. “You are a very determined woman.”

She smiled as she shrugged into her jacket. “Don’t you forget it.”

“I don’t see how you have the energy to get dressed, let alone head to the office.” He glanced up and down her frame.

She stood taller, knowing she looked much better today than yesterday. She had blow-dried her hair, put on makeup, and dressed in a navy pencil skirt and white blouse. Her five-foot-four inches came up to about five seven in her heels.

“Is this what you wear every day to the office?”

“Usually, unless I’m on assignment in the field somewhere.” She pointed to the bag she’d dropped at the entrance to the hallway. “I have street clothes in there for tonight.”

“And by tonight you mean you still think you’re going to hit the streets to interview homeless people about disappearances,” he stated.

“Yep.” She stepped past him and grabbed a mug of her own. As she set it under the single-cup coffee maker, she headed for the refrigerator in search of cream cheese. A bagel would get her started. And maybe some orange juice.

Nikolav watched her move around, unnerving her with his intense stare.

Why did the man have to smell so damn good? And where did he get clean clothes and bathroom supplies? He sure didn’t smell like her floral body wash, which meant he’d used the spare bathroom to take a shower and get dressed.

His green polo shirt from yesterday had been sexy as hell. Who knew a simple shirt could be transformed into a supermodel’s attire? But today’s look was even better—white. With his pale skin, the white made him look darker and a bit less like he wanted to suck her blood.

No. That wasn’t true. He still looked like he would devour her given the chance. And that made her panties wet. Again.

If the man ever put his lips on her neck, she would probably faint.

He didn’t comment on her declaration of today’s lineup of events, but his brows lifted as he took another sip of coffee. Was he fighting a smile?

She couldn’t decide if she wanted to smack the man or press her lips against his lush pink ones.

She decided the best course of action to keep her mind off his body and his frustrating way of filling the room with unspoken demands would be to redirect the conversation. “Thanks for fixing me dinner last night and then ensuring I woke up to eat it. I don’t think I’d be in as good of shape this morning without that.”

“You’re welcome. Though I didn’t actually cook anything, you realize. My friend Sergei picked up takeout for me and brought me a bag of clothes and toiletries.”

Ah, so that’s where he got his stuff
.

“Well, that was sweet. And I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I didn’t know there were still men in the world who would drop everything and give up a Sunday to help a stranger.”

“Me and the other fighters are tight. We’d do anything for each other.”

“How many of you are there?” She pulled a bagel from the bag on the counter and proceeded to spread cream cheese on one half.

“Six. We all emigrated from Russia within the same year when we turned eighteen.”

“How old are you now?”

“Thirty.”

“Born in eighty-four?”

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

He smiled. “You don’t look that old.”

“Neither do you. In fact, you look amazing. How long have you been fighting MMA?”

“Pretty much since I arrived in the US. I dabbled in it in Russia, but didn’t get serious until Anton Yenin brought us over here and got us a trainer.”

“Who’s Anton Yenin?”

He opened his mouth and then cocked his head to one side. “How much did Mikhail and Haley tell you last night?”

She shrugged. “She told me she was abducted and held drugged for two weeks. That’s when I realized her abduction was the very story I was assigned at
Chicago Multimedia
—the disappearance of homeless people and their mysterious reappearance in the landfill just south of here.”

“Dead. You do realize they’re dead.” He frowned.

“Yes. Of course I realize that.”

“And that’s where you’re liable to end up if you insist on pursuing this.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m not stupid. I won’t go anywhere alone.” She waved a hand through the air to dismiss his concern and took a bite of her bagel as she shoved the bag toward him.

“Belinda, Anton Yenin is the leader of the Russian Mafia on this side of the country, only to be topped by his own father, Grigory Yenin, on the eastern side of the country. He isn’t a man to be fucked with.”

“And you work for him?”

He narrowed his gaze. “Are you asking out of curiosity or because you’re writing an article?”

She swallowed her bite and met his gaze. “Both, I guess. It’s not really an article. Not like you’re thinking. It’s not something that’s going to appear in the newspaper tomorrow. That’s not who I work for. I’m a journalist for a television show. Eventually this story will be a one-hour special. But not for months.”

“Don’t think I want to be featured on it, Belinda.”

“Duly noted.”

“I don’t mind discussing this with you. You’re eventually going to know everything anyway, but what happens between us has to be off the record for now. I don’t want to feel like I have to filter everything I say over bagels and coffee.” He leaned forward until his face was so much closer to hers that she could smell his clean scent. The soap from his shower. The coffee that covered his toothpaste.

He was right. But honestly, she hadn’t been thinking in her work mind this morning. It wouldn’t do any good to try and convince him, but at the moment she was genuinely interested in his story. As a friend. “I promise I would never quote you without your permission.”

He nodded and righted himself. After a few seconds, he continued, “To answer your question about working for Yenin, I did. But not anymore. None of us do. He brought the six of us over from Russia, trained us to fight, and managed our underground careers for most of the last dozen years. We’ve suspected for a long time he was up to something sinister, but recently it has become clear he’s undoubtedly the mastermind behind the disappearance and subsequent murder of displaced people.”

She flinched. Haley had not gone into such detail.

“Yenin’s home base is Vegas. Or at least it was until recently. That’s where the six of us lived and fought for the last twelve years. Dmitry and Mikhail were the first to move here about a year ago—Dmitry to keep his girlfriend, Lauren, safe and Mikhail to keep his sister, Alena, safe. She’s two years younger than us. She’s been here a year. The rest of us gradually joined them here in Chicago. Ivan and Leo came next. Sergei and I got here two weeks ago.”

“I see. So until then you were working for this Mafia guy?”

“Yes. Though for the last year we’ve been hanging in there to keep an eye on what Yenin was up to. Come to find out, Leo has been working as an informant for the FBI for several years. He brought the rest of us into the fold. Our goal is to take Yenin down.”

“Why don’t the police arrest him?”

“It’s not that simple. They
have
arrested him in the past. Held him for six months last year, in fact. But the cops, and the FBI for that matter, want to put a stop to whatever operation he’s running. And the only way to do that is to catch him in the act. Believe me, I’d love nothing more than to wring the guy’s neck with my bare hands, but that would leave too many unanswered questions.”

“What makes you think this Yenin guy is the one kidnapping homeless people?” Belinda shuffled her feet against the island.

“Haley’s description. He’s doing some sort of research in a lab. It has to do with whatever he drugged Haley with. And it has everything to do with snatching homeless people from the streets and using them as guinea pigs. He mistook Haley for one of them.”

“And she escaped.” Belinda set her bagel down, suddenly losing her appetite.

“Mikhail rescued her. Yes.”

“Jesus.”

“Uh-huh. Now you see why it’s not safe for you to be wandering the streets at night interviewing people for this story. You have several strikes against you.”

“What are those?” She met his gaze, gripping the sides of the island with her fingers to keep from shaking.

“One, there’s no doubt Yenin had men posted at Haley’s apartment two nights ago, and those men saw you leave with an FBI agent, which connected you to Haley immediately. I would never put it past Yenin to kidnap someone to use them as leverage to get to someone else.”

“Who? Do you think he really wants to get Haley back?”

“I’m certain he does. He drugged her with something, and he wasn’t done experimenting.”

Belinda shuddered. “Shit.”

“Uh-huh. In addition, snooping around trying to get a story won’t win you any brownie points with Yenin. Even if you had no connection to Haley or any of us, the man would take you out just for meddling in his business.” He leaned forward across the island from her. “You. Are. Not. Safe.”

She blew out a breath and picked up her bagel again. She needed to eat. Her queasy stomach was gurgling from both inactivity yesterday and this new pile of stressful information. The last thing she wanted to do was to appear weak in front of Nikolav. She was a grown woman with a job to do. Some Mafia asshole was not going to intimidate her into stepping down. She’d look like a fool in front of her boss.

Nikolav pulled a bagel from the bag and slathered cream cheese on it across from her.

“Were the six of you childhood friends?” she asked. Were these guys tied to the story?

He shook his head. “No. We were raised in six different orphanages from around the country. We never met before we got here.”

“And this Yenin guy brought you over just to fight?”

“That was the cover he used. It’s what we believed for twelve years. He set us up with a trainer. We made money. He took a cut. We also learned everything there is to know about construction and worked jobs on the side for extra cash. He kept us seemingly healthy and in good money—until about a year ago when he spent six months in jail and stopped booking enough fights for us. We grew increasingly suspicious of his motives awhile back even before that.”

“And what are those motives, do you think?” She watched as his enormous hands picked up half his bagel and brought it to his mouth. His first bite was over half the bagel. At least now she knew he was part human… She watched him chew, still thinking he looked like a vampire.

He swallowed his bite and shrugged. “Still not sure. But I’m confident we were drugged with something as children in Russia, and that something is tied to Yenin’s drug lab today. The one he’s using to experiment on humans—killing them.” Obviously he intended to point that fact out every chance he got in an effort to get her to back down.

Equally obvious—he didn’t know Belinda Gallo.

She pursued this line of questioning some more. “What caused you to make that connection?” She glanced up and down his frame. “Seems to me like you and Mikhail are the poster children for good health and well-being.”

“Exactly.” He finished off the rest of the bagel in one bite and reached for his coffee.

“Care to elaborate?”

“Something is keeping us healthy. That same something is also keeping Haley healthy. You don’t have it. That’s why you got food poisoning and they didn’t last night.”

She gasped, nearly dropping her mug as she set it on the table. “Seriously? I got sick because all of you have been given some sort of fountain-of-youth drug?”

He pursed his lips for a moment and then spoke again. “Not sure I’d call it a fountain-of-youth drug. That’s probably an exaggeration. It’s more of an immunization of some sort. We must have received it as children under the reign of the USSR.”

“And Haley was kidnapped so this Mafia guy could use her for experimentation?”

“Looks like it.”

“Why did so many people die, then? Why did she live?”

“That’s the million-dollar question.”

»»•««

Nikolav didn’t like it, but he dropped Belinda off at her office downtown and then headed to his apartment to regroup. He’d only been in Chicago two weeks, and he’d spent those two weeks sleeping in Mikhail’s room in the apartment Leo had rented when he first arrived six months ago. Mikhail and Alena had moved in with him after Dmitry and Lauren fled the country to avoid Yenin. Mikhail was now staying with Haley in her tiny apartment nearby.

Ivan had his own place he’d rented when he came from Vegas a few months ago, but he’d moved in with Alena to keep her safe. Even though his apartment was now empty, Nikolav and Sergei were also staying with Ivan and Alena in the three-bedroom apartment. It was safer if they all stuck together, and it made the FBI more relaxed by cutting down on the number of places they needed to keep on detail.

When he walked in the front door, he found everyone was home. Ivan was pacing the floor of the living room, running a hand through his hair.

Nikolav dropped his bag next to the sofa and headed for the counter. He needed more coffee before he could wrap his head around what to do next.

Alena pointed at the table. “Sit. I’ll pour you some coffee.”

Sergei was already sitting at the table, his hands around a steaming mug, his shoulders down, his gaze directed at something that didn’t exist on the surface of the glossy black table.

“This is out of control,” Ivan stated. “What was Mikhail thinking letting Haley have a girlfriend over Saturday night? He might as well have offered her up as a sacrificial lamb to Yenin.” He threw his hands in the air.