Hit Me (The Bailey Boys #2) (13 page)

“You stand, yes?” he said to me.

I nodded, and leaned on his proffered arm as I climbed to my feet and then stood, swaying dizzily, on the verge of blacking out again.

“Inside. We get you fixed up.”

§

They had a doctor of their own, which didn’t surprise me.

An East European, skinny and dark haired, only distinguishable from the hookers working the bar because she was a few years older. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she worked the club, too – if she was doctoring for Markov then he must have some kind of hold over her, and he was the kind of guy to get his money’s worth. She was certainly dressed for it, as her breasts came close to spilling out as she leaned over me.

“Can you save it?” I asked at one point and she glanced up from my mangled arm, surprised, until I added, “The shirt. It cost me a fucking fortune.”

Not even a smile.

The shirt was ruined, the sleeve torn by the bullet, soaked in blood, and then cut away by the doc, but at least the arm was going to be okay. The bullet had passed clean through, leaving a flesh wound in the meat of those hefty muscles I’d built up again in Fearless’s gym. It’d need cleaning up and a few stitches either side, and it was going to hurt, but the muscles would knit together again and I’d only be left with a couple more scars and some misaligned tattoos where the skin had been pulled together.

I winced as the doctor applied something cold and eye-watering to my wound and when I opened my eyes again a few seconds later Hristo Markov was there, studying my face closely.

Again, I wondered if this whole thing had been some kind of set-up, a lesson for me to learn. Gangs have all kinds of initiations, usually acts you have to commit to prove yourself – a robbery, a beating, a shooting; maybe you were nobody to Markov until you’d taken a bullet for him.

As if reading my thoughts, he gave a sharp shake of the head, and said, “We had no idea. Truly. The
mangal
, the punk... we did not know he was connected.”

“Then you need to up your game,” I said, through gritted teeth as the doctor continued to work on me. “That whole thing, it was...”

Sloppy.

Unprofessional.

I bit back on the words: he knew it already, didn’t need me criticizing him in front of his own people.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Just a nick. But I can help you tighten things up, yes? I’m more than just an ugly bastard who can hit people.”

A pause, then a grin split Markov’s face and he laughed.

He came over, clapped me on my good arm, and said, “I like you, Lee. We get on, yes? You get fixed up. You have fun in the club, yes? Girls, boys, whatever it is you like.”

“That kid,” I said. “Who was he? Who were the ones in the car?”

He was clearly not operating alone. My guess was it was a deliberate ploy: send in a kid who looks like he’s fresh off the street, get him to suss the place out, push a few buttons and see how Markov’s crew responded. All the classic signs of a rival gang moving in on Markov’s territory.

Now Markov’s face changed again, as if a dark curtain had been snapped across it.

“I do not know,” he said. “Truly. But believe me, I will find out.”

When Hristo told Imelda the arrogant Englishman had been shot she had to do everything at her command not to react.

Not to let her jaw sag, her eyes widen; to let loose a stream of questions in a rapid-fire, incoherent torrent.

Not to give anything away.

“Who? Shot, you say? How bad is it? Was anyone else hurt? Did–”

He silenced her with a raised hand.

So much for being restrained, biting back on the flood of questions.

Lee... shot!

Killed. Hristo hadn’t said ‘killed’.

“It was nothing,” he said now. “A dispute at El Divino. A drug dealer getting above himself. It will be dealt with.”

“And the Englishman?”

“He takes a bullet well,” said Hristo, and Imelda was surprised at the hint of respect in his voice. “I think we use him. You know Fearless Lloyd, yes? They are friends.”

Hristo’s penthouse apartment at Casa Alto had a tenth floor roof terrace overlooking the harbor at Puerto Libre. Imelda hadn’t been there for weeks, but today the Bulgarian had summoned her.

Now she stood before him, like she was up for auction. Georgi stood over to one side in the shade, and another of Hristo’s men was by the elevator door.

She felt vulnerable.

She didn’t like the way he could make her feel this way. No other man had ever done that for long.

“Look at me.”

Her gaze turned on him, and she didn’t know if that was obedience or defiance.

He was hard to read behind those retro aviator shades he liked to wear.

He was on a sun recliner by the pool, wearing only a pair of long swimmers and those shades. His body was lean, on the borderline between athletic and heroin-chic wiry. At one time she had found that attractive, but now she found the long-buried recollection of that attraction uncomfortable, like waking from a dark dream.

What did he want? What did he know? Could he read the guilt on her face so easily?

“Where have you been, Conchita?” He used the nickname as a term of endearment, but also it meant ‘little cunt’. Hristo liked that kind of thing: talking and acting in ways that meant you never really knew where you stood with him. He could say the cruelest things in the most tender terms and tone.

She couldn’t work out if this question was the reason for her summons, or a lead-in toward something else.

“San Pedro,” she said. The best lies stay closest to the truth, and maybe he knew she had been along the coast for a couple of days. And the best lies also avoid any mistruth – she hadn’t made anything up to explain
why
she was there, or what she had been doing.

Hristo nodded, still impossible to read.

“Have you been fucking someone?”

“No.” And sometimes the best lies have to be blatant and fast, and 180 degrees to the truth.

“If you had I would know.”

And maybe he even believed that, which made it easier for Imelda’s lie to pass. Because she had. She’d been fucking someone. Hard and fast, in his bed and on the beach, and even up against a wall in the center of town if you called that first, urgent and dry encounter through layers of clothing some kind of a fuck.

She had tasted his dick, swallowed his juices, felt his tongue in every hole, given herself up to his strength. Been totally, utterly
had
.

“I know,” she said. “But for all that I know you like me when I act like a whore, I am not. I am a good girl.”

And he believed it.

At least, he always had so far.

“There is a gathering,” he said, dismissing the subject. “On Friday. You will accompany me, yes?”

The way he phrased it sounded almost like a question, but Hristo was never a man to make polite requests. It was an instruction.

“How long must this continue, Hristo?” she asked, surprising herself at her braveness, but still careful to keep her voice low enough that Georgi and the other guy would not be able to hear. “We are over. So over.”

“Seven in the evening. Georgi will pick you up. Wear the black Givenchy.”

“We are over.”

Slowly, Hristo pushed the shades up away from his eyes until they came to lodge on the top of his head.

Imelda looked down at the ground. She couldn’t help it. There was menace in those eyes. Sheer menace.

“And the Gianvito Rossi shoes.”

Meekly, hating herself more than she ever had before, Imelda gave a brief nod.

“Everyone knows you are mine, Conchita.” He loaded so much threat into that single word.
Conchita
.

And what he didn’t say out loud: to let her go would mean losing face, for everyone knew he would never
choose
to give up Imelda.
Reputatsiya
.

And, perhaps most disturbingly of all, she understood he clung on because buried somewhere deep in that cruel heart of his he still had feelings for her that extended beyond a sense of ownership. Whatever emotion he had once had for her that came somewhere close to what a normal person called love still lingered on like a stain or a scar.

Because Hristo Markov was not a man to feel things in the way that normal people did.

“Take your clothes off,” he said now, and it took a few seconds for his words to compute.

What was he thinking? Was this to be some kind of revenge fuck? A marking of territory?

If that skinny dick of his came anywhere near her she would bite it off, regardless of any consequences.

“Undress.”

The cruel smile; the lack of any humor in the eyes.

Hating herself more than she’d thought possible even a few minutes before, Imelda reached for the loop of her halterneck dress, dipped her head to pull it clear, stood there clutching it to her breasts, her heart beating rapidly.

“Let me see.”

She swallowed, let it fall to hang at her waist, her full breasts exposed to the hot sun and Hristo’s cold gaze.

“The rest.”

The zipper at her hip.

Letting the dress fall.

Standing there, dress bunched around her ankles, tiny white thong contrasting sharply with her golden caramel skin.

His eyes crawled over her body like ants. Spiders.

Until finally he flipped the shades back down over his eyes, turning his head away as he reached for the bottle of beer on a nearby table.

“Swim,” he said. “You always liked to swim.”

And so she turned, took a step, another, and then dropped into the pool, a surge of cold after the day’s heat. Taking her, swallowing her whole, and she hoped it might never give her back.

§

And the very worst thing?

That so quickly after Hristo told her Lee had been shot she had moved on to her own petty concerns, put it behind her.

He’d been shot, Hristo had said it was nothing – she would get no more from him, so she compartmentalized it, put it in a box and closed it away while she dealt with her ex-lover.

But afterwards...

When Hristo had gone and she was alone on the roof terrace, still doing lengths of the pool until she was absolutely sure he had gone. When she finally hauled herself out to dry in the sun, naked apart from those tiny white panties, and her chest was heaving, and her stomach was cramping and she thought she must surely be sick, and still she did not know how bad it was.

She crawled on hands and knees to where her clothes and purse had dropped. Fumbled in her phone for the number filed in Contacts as ‘Garachico’ – not because it had anything to do with Lee Bailey but simply that it was a place she loved – and then she hesitated.

He was okay.

She could not call him now. Not from
Hristo
’s apartment! What was she thinking?

She found a towel to dry her hair, ran fingers through it to put it in some kind of order – she’d always been lucky that she could do that and her hair just kind of fell into place – applied some powder, a touch of color to her lips, a pencil and a little color to her eyes. Pulled the dress over her head and smoothed it down. Stepped into her shoes.

And by the time she was ready for the world she was calmer, collected.

He’d been shot but he was okay. Hristo would have made more of a thing of it if Lee was in a bad way.

So why mention it at all?

Instantly, she flipped back into that state of panic. He’d asked if she was seeing anyone. Was he suspicious? Had he somehow made the connection?

It was not unlike him to make casual mention of some incident at one of his clubs, though – a stabbing, a shooting, a raid. This was no different. She must not assume the worst.

Panic would only undermine her.

She had to hold her nerve.

Not call him.

Not give anything away.

Be strong.

Hristo Markov wanted some muscle on show.

I put on another pair of slate gray trousers, a white shirt. My arm was in a sling, but I’d be able to use it if necessary. Pretty soon I realized that it was all about impressions tonight: the tough English minder with his arm in a sling, Markov must be the real thing if he had one of the Bailey Boys in tow.

I started to understand how Imelda must feel: a bit of eye candy, Markov accessorizing with Spanish tail and English brawn.

And indeed, as I discovered when Georgi and I came to a halt outside Markov’s apartment block, the Bulgarian
was
accessorizing with Spanish tail tonight. A few minutes after we pulled up the two of them appeared, Markov and Imelda.

He wore a linen suit that was just casual enough to say he was rich enough not to care, and Imelda... She took my breath away.

Not meeting my look, she folded herself into the back seat of the limo, as Markov went round to the other side. She wore an insubstantial, long black dress that floated like a mountain cloud around her. A hint of sparkle, a deceptive sense that there might not be much to it at all when there clearly was. As she leaned into the car I saw that the dress was backless, cut low to the spread of her ass.

I’d never seen a dress make a woman look more naked than that dress did to Imelda.

The party was in a swanky private complex in Sotogrande, an up-market marina development about fifteen miles along the coast from Puerto Libre, and the four of us sat in silence most of the way.

I kept glancing surreptitiously back, but always Imelda’s gaze was averted.

Georgi, at the wheel, was unreadable. He exchanged occasional words with Markov in Bulgarian until his boss said, “No. We all speak English, yes? We will relax tonight. We will have fun.”

Said in a way that only the man who called all the shots and dictated the fun could ever say.

“Your arm, yes? How is it?”

The question allowed me to turn in my seat, as Markov was directly behind me. My gaze swept across Imelda and I wished it hadn’t, because,
Jesus
, it hurt after several days’ absence... after our last encounter, the sense of finality, of doors closing.

In that instant I think I understood what it meant to be in love. Understood how words could never explain or describe. It was like the mountains and the sea:
there
.