Walking The Edge: A Romantic Suspense/Espionage Thriller (Corpus Brides Trilogy Book 1) (28 page)

Until today, when she’d almost gotten burned.

Ash had recognized her down there. For a second, she’d thought her cover blown. Then, she’d taken a deep breath and forced herself to remain in character.
Never panic, always stay in control, breathe and gather your wits
—the first lesson drilled inside the mind of any secret agent. Pulling on a blank face had become one of her fortes, and Ash had bought the act. He thought her to be Irina, clueless twenty-year-old from the dirt-poor suburbs of Moscow who didn’t speak any other language but Russian.

She’d had a few close encounters in the past, but never like this. Rayne and Kali had two separate, compartmentalized lives running parallel. The two should never have touched, because it would end up making a mess of her. She could keep each persona separate as long as she could push Rayne to some dark corner of her mind. Her job taxed her, and she walked the tight line of paranoia every single second while undercover.

But if Rayne came to the front during a mission...

Damn it, she wasn’t a rookie agent on her first mission. Cherries, as the CIA called them. Hell, even during her first undercover operation, she’d had no qualms and no trouble achieving her aim.

Why today, when everything smooth-sailed towards a much-desired goal?

She closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the windowpane, the glass warm against her clammy skin.

She was sweating?

This will not do
. She had to win control again.

She had to forget about Ash, about Rayne, and focus on being Irina, the one who would bring down a notorious criminal. Her agency and the whole world counted on her to take out the piece of scum. She amounted to their last hope, sent in as the trump card after good cops got killed when trying to bring Nikolai to justice.

Someone knocked on the door, and she pulled away from the window. Damn it, she still had a job to do.

Willing confidence to steel her spine on a deep breath, she turned around. She blinked a few times, called forth tears. She was supposed to be a young wife who’d just been hit by her husband, a man she’d left downstairs at the party with a leggy blonde draped all over his side.

The moisture trickled onto her cheek, and she swiped her eyes to smear the kohl and mascara.

There—she should present the desired picture of despair.

“
Da
?” she answered as she stepped towards the door.

The panel opened without a sound. “
Zdrastuyte, Gaspazha Grigorievskaya
.”

Hello, Mrs. Grigorievskaya.
Such formality. Only one man addressed her with such deference and respect—Boris Petrov, Nikolai’s right-hand man.

“
Zdrastuyte, Boris Ivanovich
.” She replied him with the same formal greeting, using his patronymic name to further show her respect, as the custom asked in Russian culture.

Boris represented the least disposable target in the whole operation—the keystone. She had to bring him down, or at least, create a rift between the two men. Everything would crumble afterward. Nikolai wouldn’t have his main pillar of support, and would thus crash down through the pyramidal structure of his operations.

“Are you okay?” he asked as he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

She shrugged, forcing on a small, tremulous smile. Russian wives, she’d learned, tolerated a lot of their husbands’ outbursts. “It’s nothing.”

“You shouldn’t listen to what Mikhail said. He is just jealous that Kolya’s attention is not wholly directed onto him any longer.”

“It does not bother me,” she said in a small voice.

Make a move
, she silently urged him. For her plan to work, Boris had to capitalize on the simmering embers of passion flaring between him and his boss’ wife and that he denied all the time. She’d already lost too much time, and had to start the measles process.

Time to take matters in her own hands.
There’s no other way.

She trained her eyes on him. Boris was a big, burly man in his mid-forties. Anyone could imagine him knocking out a person with just a flick of his thick wrist. Toying with him would be like playing with fire—she could get burnt. But she had no other choice. The time had come. Five months to gain Nikolai’s trust and compliance; two months to insidiously plant the seeds of discord within the criminal’s entourage. She didn’t have much leeway to work at influencing outcomes anymore. No—she had to provoke.

Rayne became Kali and she inhaled, the oxygen filling her lungs and clearing her brain. She forced herself into her character. What would Irina do?

She gasped, and brought her hands to cover her mouth. With rapid steps, she rushed to Boris’ side and reached out with one hand to trail the tips of her fingers along one of his eyes, swollen nearly shut from a blow.

“You shouldn’t have,” she said in a soft whisper, letting tears streak down her cheeks. “Not for me.”

Boris’ swift intake of air was the only sound hissing between them. He closed his eyes under her touch.

Do it
, she urged.

“I am so—” she paused and sobbed, “—so sorry.” Her voice came out small and breathless, heavy with sadness.

Boris settled a heavy, meaty palm on her hand, keeping her fingers unfurled on his cheek. “Forgive me, Irina. I couldn’t let him say those ugly lies about you.”

He is caving.

“Boris, please.” She pleaded with him.

“I will do anything for you.”

“I am a married woman.”

“Why don’t you leave him?”

She gasped. “I cannot. I pledged myself to him.”

“But look how he treats you!”

“Borya...” She used the nickname for Boris, dropping the formal courtesy and showing closeness. “Back in Russia, for every one like me, there are ten other girls, more beautiful, waiting to take my place.”

“There isn’t any woman more beautiful than you in all of Russia.”

She smiled, making sure she displayed sadness and resolution on her features, in her teary eyes.

“You are such a sweet man.” When he wasn’t forcing underage girls into the cargo holds of boats docking out of most major European ports, plying them with drugs before supplying them like meat to brothels and sex perverts.

“Leave him,” Boris said, the words a subtle compulsion.

“I can’t. Where would I go?” She gently tugged her hand from under his and took a step closer to him. “I can’t go back to that life, Borya.”

“Irina, please—”

The sound of the door opening startled them. Nikolai stood on the threshold, his tall, dark form cut out like an intimidating silhouette in the dim doorway.

Kali threw one look at Boris, shook her head softly, and backed away a few steps. The back of her knees hit the edge of the window seat and she stumbled backward into a sitting position on the upholstered ledge.

Nikolai’s narrowed gaze went from Boris to her, and back to his right-hand man.

“Leave us,” he said in a soft tone, the words obviously an order.

Boris nodded and exited the room.

Good—she’d sown the seeds of doubt. Her ‘husband’ would wonder what went on between her and Boris, and Boris would try to get closer to her. She would play on this nearness between them, subtly make people wonder if something was happening behind Nikolai’s back.

At that point, she would move her final chess piece—Nikolai would die at the same time as Boris. For the world, things would look like an altercation gone wrong between a spurned husband and a forbidden lover, with her caught in the crossfire. It’s how she’d ensure her exit from the operation.

Yes, all the pieces of the game would fall into place. She just had to play along.

Nikolai closed the door behind Boris, the click of the latch falling into place sounding louder than it should have.

He turned towards her, pressed his shoulder against the doorframe, and pushed his hands into the pockets of his Gieves and Hawkes champagne-coloured, tailor-made linen trousers.

Her ‘husband’ focused his steely grey eyes on her.

The stare burned into her skull. Still, she refused to look up. Not yet.

After a few moments, he straightened, removed his hands from his pockets.

That’s when she lifted her head in his direction. She ran her gaze from his short silver hair, across the lean, ruggedly handsome face, over the button-down, pale blue Oxford shirt from No.1 Savile Row, down his trouser-clad legs, to the brown Crocket and Jones hand grade shoes from Robert Old, and all the way back to his eyes.

Then she smiled, and his face broke into a grin, too.

She raised both arms, beckoned him to come over. He ambled across the room to take her hands in his.

“You are a better actor than I thought,” she said.

He knelt in front of her, and she brought their clenched hands onto her lap.

“I didn’t hurt you too bad, did I?”

She smiled, freed one hand, and ran her palm against his hair. “No, my pet, you didn’t. I told you to make it convincing.”

He sighed. “I was so worried. Please don’t make me do this again.”

She rubbed the pad of her thumb over his eyebrow. “You know I can’t promise that. We have an image to present here.”

“Can’t we do it without me having to hurt you? I love you, Ira. I cannot stand to see you hurt.”

He really did love his Irina—Ira, as he affectionately called her. Nikolai was the perfect husband. Never mind that he could kill in cold blood without any hint of remorse or a conscience; that he played with the lives of thousands every day through all the drugs he supplied, the firearms he sold, the women he pawned as cheap sex stock. He loved his wife and for him, the world started and ended at her feet.

Sometimes, she wondered how he could reconcile the two different personas so effortlessly. And sometimes, she grew tempted to ask herself if she would ever find a man who could love her as much as Nikolai loved his Ira. Why did the perfect husband have to be the perfect crime lord, too?

Yet, for all his tough, cold, and ruthless image, no one would’ve thought that Nikolai was, in truth, a total pussy in the right woman’s hands. The first time she’d gone to his bed under her cover as a call girl, she’d aimed at becoming a regular mistress—to make sure he asked for her whenever he contacted the escort agency.

But that night, she’d seen an opportunity, and had taken a gamble.

Nikolai Grigorievskiy was sexually submissive—it took just one dominant woman to coerce his control. Within three nights in his bed, she had him bowing to her every command, pushing him to make her his wife barely a couple of weeks later.

Everything worked out to Kali’s advantage. Nikolai adored her, but the fact that he acquiesced to anything she said also represented a double-edged sword. His entourage would come to know she pulled the strings, and she couldn’t have that.

She’d tuned in to the rumours and the gossip, found out no one expected their relationship to last beyond a few months.

Kali had thought out a strategy and acted upon this new plan. Everybody would be suspicious of a controlling wife. But no one would look twice or even think about a beaten, cheated-on wife.

That’s how she subtly tipped the visible part of their relation. Little by little, she appeared with concealed bruises. At her behest, Nikolai also started drinking more, and spending time with other women—she’d convinced him he couldn’t afford to show his commitment to her, or else, no one would take him seriously. Soon, nobody paid any more attention to Irina. She conveniently melted into the background, where she could work her influence in covert ways. Exactly how she wanted it.

“Ira,” Nikolai said in a low murmur as he placed his head in her lap.

She leaned back against the padded panel at the side of the window seat. Nikolai’s head lay against her knee, bare since the skirt of her mini dress had ridden up, and he placed a soft kiss on her flesh. When she didn’t stop him, he crept farther up, trailing his warm lips along the inside of her thigh.

She wore no knickers—in another minute, his mouth would close on her sex. Nikolai loved to orally worship her, her satisfaction being his ultimate goal.

Usually, she’d have no trouble lying back and letting him pleasure her. What else could she do? The man had a gifted tongue.

But not today. Not like this.

Not after seeing Ash.

His lips had reached the crease between her thigh and her sex when she pushed his head away.

“Ira, please.” He begged with his words and his eyes as he looked up at her.

“Not now, Kolya,” she said in a soothing tone. “Our work is not done yet. You need to do one more thing to show me what a good little pet you are.”

“What?”

“Spend the night with Elena.” Elena, the blonde model who’d been all over Nikolai downstairs.

“No,” he said softly.

“Don’t make me have to repeat myself.”

He lowered his head. “Yes, Irina.”

“Good.” She caressed his head, then cradled his jaw. Making him look up, she bent and dropped a light kiss on his mouth. “Go.”