Gilded Cage: A Russian Mafia Romance (Kovalyov Bratva Book 1) Nicole Fox (people reading books TXT) 📖

Artem says, “you don’t understand what’s happening. You’re not safe here. You’re not safe alone. You need me.”

I laugh at that. Right in his smug fucking face.

Does he really think that line is going to flip a switch and persuade me to run into his arms?

I need him?

No. Hell no. I absolutely do not.

“Get your fucking hands off of me.”

His eyes narrow viciously. That familiar burst of anger that has come to be so familiar to me burns in his eyes.

He’s about to say something, but I’m done talking and I don’t want his explanations clouding my already clouded brain.

So I do what Cesar told me to do an eternity ago—back when I was still naïve enough to believe there was such a thing as heroes.

I swing my knee up hard, straight into Artem’s crotch. He could have avoided the hit easily if he had been prepared for it.

But for once, I succeed in taking him off guard.

He grunts, more in shock than in pain, but it distracts him enough that he releases his hold on me.

I don’t hesitate—I turn tail and run as fast as I can.

“Esme!” he yells after me in a pained roar.

It amazes me that even now, after everything I’ve learned about him, I desperately want to turn back. I desperately want to risk one last glance at him.

But I don’t.

I suppress the desire and turn into a bustling L.A. strip mall that allows me to blend into the crowd.

I slip through the crowd as fast as I can, ignoring all the people I elbow or push aside to get around them.

An exit spits me out a few blocks away. When I emerge on the side street, I hail a cab and get into it with cautious relief.

Something occurred to me while I was running.

I have one more place to go.

47

Esme

It takes twenty-five minutes to get to the east side of Los Angeles. I wring my hands nervously as I stare at the meter going up, up, up.

The moment the driver comes to a stop in front of the building, I lean in a little and give him my best smile. It might’ve worked better if I didn’t look so ragged that someone had already mistaken me for a hobo today.

“Umm, so I have only five dollars on me—”

He turns to me, his happy-go-lucky grin dropping like a hot potato. “You fuckin’ kidding me, girl?”

“It’s been a rough day,” I say, by way of explanation. If only you knew the half of it, I want to add. “But I’ll get you the money. My cousin lives in this building.”

The driver peers through his window, examining the building as though it’s my last credible witness. “Seems like a nice building. Even got a doorman.”

“See?” I say. “I swear, I’ll be back with your money.”

He narrows his murky blue eyes at me before pulling out his phone and handing it to me. “Call your cousin and tell her to come out here with the money. I let you go up in there, I ain’t never gonna see you again.”

Relieved that I remember Tamara’s number, I take his phone and dial in her number. She doesn’t answer for the longest time.

I start to panic. If she doesn’t answer, I’ll be stranded somewhere else with a pissed-off cabbie ready to beat my head in.

Just as I’m trying to figure out my back-up plan, she picks up and I sigh inwardly.

“Hello?”

“Tamara! Thank God. Where are you?”

“Oh my God… Esme?”

She sounds shocked to hear from me, and honestly, who can blame her? I haven’t been in contact with her since days before the compound was attacked and destroyed by Artem and the Bratva.

“Where are you?”

“Um… I’m in my apartment. Where are you?”

“Outside your apartment,” I reply without explaining. “I’m in the cab parked outside the building. I need to pay for my ride and I only have five dollars on me.”

“Oh… oh,” she says, sounding shell-shocked.

“Tam? Can you help?”

“Right, right… I’ll be down in two seconds.”

I hang up and hand the phone back to the driver. “She’s coming down.”

He gives me a sheepish smile. “Sorry, but can’t be too careful, ya know,” he says. “I’ve been fooled by a pretty face before.”

“I understand.”

“The prettier the face, the more careful you gotta be,” he continues. “My old man used to say that all the time. And you’ve got one of the prettiest faces I’ve ever seen.”

I give him a tight smile and look out the window just as Tamara rushes out of her building with a couple of dollar bills clutched in her palm.

“There she is,” I say, before jumping out of the cab.

Tamara looks at me like I have a second head sprouting out of my neck before hurrying over and paying the driver. Then she grabs my hand and pulls me back into her building.

The moment we step into the elevator and the doors close, she turns to me.

“What the fuck?!” she breathes.

I shake my head. “Where do I even start?”

“How about you start from the beginning?”

She reaches out and wipes something off my cheek. I turn my head to the side and catch my reflection in the mirrors that hang on either side of the elevator walls.

It’s enough to make me want to scream.

My eyes are huge and bloodshot, my cheeks look like they’ve hollowed in, and my hair is a dirty, matted mess that clings to the side of my face.

I’m half a ghost myself.

The elevator doors open on the sixth floor and I follow Tamara down the broad corridor, around the corner, and into her apartment.

I stop one step over the threshold. Tam realizes I’m frozen in place and turns around to face me.

“Esme?”

I don’t trust my voice. She wants an explanation for why I’m showing up at her doorstep unannounced and broke, looking like hell warmed over. She wants to know what happened. She wants me to start from the beginning.

But what was the beginning?

Was it when Artem had stormed the compound and murdered my entire