Jericho (Dance with the Devil 4)
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Newsletter and Social Media Links
About the Author
Other books by Carole Mortimer
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 Carole Mortimer
Cover Design Copyright © Glass Slipper WebDesign
Editor: Linda Ingmanson
Formatter: Glass Slipper WebDesign
ISBN: 978-1-910597-95-8
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved.
Dedication
To my fantastic Team, Jo, Linda, and Josh
Chapter One
“She’s saying ‘help me.’”
Jericho reached out and froze the security disc he’d been studying for longer than he cared to admit, before standing and turning.
He greeted his cousin Killian as the other man stepped fully into the soundproof room where they kept the bank of monitors showing images from the security cameras placed about the whole of the Brunelli estate.
The two men were both aged thirty-six, with a strong family resemblance in their features if not in their hair and eye color. Jericho’s hair was a deep auburn to Killian’s brown, and Jericho had changeable hazel eyes. where Killian’s were a pure deep green.
Their Irish roots were obvious in their soft brogue accents.
“How’s the world of fashion?” Jericho taunted as the two men moved apart after giving and receiving a hug that had ended with a thump on the back for both of them.
Jericho received an extra hard one for attempting to wind his cousin up over the fact Killian was now the business manager of his fashion-designer wife and as such was expected to dress accordingly in fashionable designer-label suits. Natalia also happened to be the daughter of Killian’s previous employer, the same man who was still Jericho’s boss: Leonardo Brunelli, the capo dei capi, not just of the New York Italian mafia, but of the whole world.
As Leon’s head of security, Jericho wore designer label suits too, but his were always black over a light-colored shirt. Tonight’s was a pale green with a darker green silk tie.
The fact Leon had allowed his daughter to marry a previous member of his security team was testament to the man’s love for his daughter. Usually, in organizations such as the Italian Mafia and bratva, daughters were used as a means of forging powerful alliances through marriage.
“Very funny,” Killian now dismissed. “And it’s going very well, thank you for asking. Natalia and I are on our way to the Milan show, but she wanted to stop and have a cuddle with her little brother before we left the country.”
To everyone’s surprise, Leon, having remained single after his wife died giving birth to Natalia twenty years previously, had met and fallen in love a year ago with the feisty Carla. Aged only twenty-five at the time, Carla was eighteen years younger than her new husband. But the two of them were ecstatically happy together, and they now had a month-old baby boy.
Killian’s narrow-eyed attention returned to the frozen image on the largest of the monitors in front of them. “What are you going to do about that?”
Jericho breathed noisily through his nose as his cousin returned, like a heat-seeking missile, to the situation that had been bothering Jericho for the past hour. He had played the same segment over and over again of Sergei and Vasily Federov’s arrival at the estate, and the woman who had unexpectedly accompanied them.
He shrugged. “Not sure I’m going to do anything. Just because it’s possible for us to lip-read what she’s saying is no reason to think she was asking us for help,” he defended in the face of Killian’s challenging stare. “She could be talking to someone off-camera and we’ve only caught half the conversation. Maybe the rest of what she said was ‘help me pick out a dress to wear for dinner this evening.’”
Except Jericho knew the young woman on the security feed hadn’t sat down to dinner in the formal dining room yesterday evening after this scene was recorded, as the rest of Leon’s guests had. Instead, a tray had been prepared for her and collected from the kitchen by one of the hulking bodyguards Sergei Federov, the new head of the Moscow bratva had brought with him, along with his younger brother Vasily. After delivering the tray of food the bodyguard and one of his associates had then taken up position outside the door of the suite.
Jericho was unsure whether they were there to keep the woman inside Federov’s suite or to prevent anyone from going in. It could be both.
Whatever the reason, every meal the woman had eaten since she and the Federov brothers arrived at the estate twenty-four hours ago had been collected by one of their bodyguards. The tray would later be returned to the kitchen with all the food eaten and the small bottles of wine and water empty.
From the time Leon made the decision to hold this meeting to when everyone began to arrive yesterday, it had been a logistical nightmare for Jericho. He’d taken on extra men to act as security for what was, in effect, a meeting of several of the heads of the Russian bratva from around the world, along with some heads of the Italian Mafia and Irish Mob from within the States—thank God Jericho didn’t know any of the latter and they didn’t know him.
All in an effort to see if they could work together now that the viciously ruthless Romanians and Mexican cartels were threatening the balance of power of the criminal underworld these three organizations had ruled for so long.
It was a little like the president holding a summit at Camp David. Except this was the Russian bratva, Italian Mafia, and the Irish Mob, and it was being held at the privacy of the Brunelli estate in New York State.
Because of the nature and intensity of the talks, those heads of the criminal underworld had been instructed that they could bring their second, but not their wives, girlfriends, or children with them.
Sergei Federov, gray haired and aged in his early sixties, had very recently affected a coup by removing Boris Borzikov and those loyal to him, before taking over as head of the bratva in Moscow.
Two days ago, Federov had informed Leon that he would be accepting the invitation to the US and bringing his younger brother Vasily with him as his second.
Jericho had obviously done a security check on the new Pakhan of Moscow, and the information Federov had given them had all checked out. Boris Borzikov was dead, his men along with him, and Sergei Federov was now in control of the bratva in Moscow.
Leon hadn’t been too happy at this turn of events, but Gregori Markovic, head of the bratva in London, confirmed that Moscow was now under Federov’s rule. Markovic had also advised that Federov would be better as an ally than an enemy.
Leon had duly extended an invitation to Federov to come to New York, and received an acceptance.
But Federov senior either hadn’t gotten the complete message, or he had decided the rule didn’t apply to him regarding bringing a woman with him to this important meeting. Nor, as far as Jericho was aware, had the Russian given any explanation or apology to Leon for her presence since his arrival.
She was sharing Sergei’s suite with him, so accommodation was no problem, but Jericho had to juggle some of his team so that he could assign the young woman a personal security guard for the rest of her stay here.
Only for that guard, Jericho’s brother Liam today, to report to him a short time ago that the woman who had arrived with Federov hadn’t left the suite in the twenty-four hours that had passed since her arrival.
Jericho was curious to know if that was voluntarily or through coercion.
Out of consideration for his guests’ privacy, Leon had requested all the security cameras inside the guest rooms be switched off for the duration of this meeting. Meaning Jericho had no actual security feeds available for him to check inside Federov’s suite.
Instead, Jericho had come into the security room to review the security recordings from when the Federov brothers arrived yesterday.
It was in black-and-white, but it showed Sergei as a man aged in his sixties, with iron-gray hair and pale, cold eyes. Vasily appeared to be much younger that his brother, probably in his forties. His hair was dark, but he had equally pale and cold eyes as he stared contemptuously up into the security camera.
The young woman who stepped out of the limousine behind them had kept her head bowed, preventing Jericho from seeing her face. She looked tiny and delicate, even harmless, but that didn’t mean she was.
A dedicated lone assassin, strategically placed, could take out half the world’s heads of organized crime before anyone was even aware they were under attack.
Killian leaned against the ledge in front of the monitors to once again frown at the frozen image. “Is she talking about choosing a dress for dinner?”
The problem with trying to fob Killian off was that his cousin had been head of Leon Brunello’s security at one time too, and not much got past him.
There hadn’t exa
ctly been many career choices open for the four Irishmen after the two of them left Ireland, along with Jericho’s two younger brothers, to escape being drawn into the Irish Mob like their two deceased fathers before them.
Once they arrived in New York, their checks into Leon Brunelli had revealed he wasn’t a despot who had people killed just for someone looking at him the wrong way, but neither did he take any crap from anyone. He’d also been more than happy to employ the four Irishmen as his own personal bodyguards and that of his daughter, Natalia. A good decision, because their loyalty to Leon had been unshakeable and steadfast in the ten years since they took over his security.
Then a year ago, Killian had married Natalia. As Leon’s son-in-law, Killian, much to his displeasure, now had a security detail of his own.
“No, she isn’t.” Jericho confirmed what he knew his cousin already suspected.
“Play the whole of the section after they enter the house again,” Killian now demanded.
Jericho had expected this too. Killian might not be in the protection business anymore, except when it came to his now-pregnant wife, but his cousin’s inborn instinct for knowing something wasn’t right was still firmly in place.
Jericho pressed the necessary buttons to backtrack on the recording before starting it again.
It showed the young woman being escorted down the hallway to Federov’s suite shortly after their arrival from the private airport nearby. The two Russians had been taken straight to Leon’s study to greet their host, but Federov senior had requested the woman go directly to his suite. Two of the Russian’s bodyguards flanked her, with Liam at the front to lead the way.
It was after Liam had unlocked the suite and the two Russian bodyguards had briefly stepped inside to make a security sweep of the rooms that the young woman had turned to look directly into the camera in the corner of the hallway.
She’d only had time to mouth help me before the bodyguards returned and all but dragged her inside the suite and closed the door in Liam’s face.
Liam had reported the incident, of course, but put forward the suggestion the bodyguards could be acting that way because Federov was paranoid over his young and beautiful mistress.
The woman was very young and very beautiful.
Because of the monochrome quality of the security feed, it was only possible to tell her long, straight hair was very dark, possibly raven black, and styled to just below her shoulders. Her complexion looked to be that pale alabaster that very often went with such dark hair. She had pale eyes, possibly blue or green. Her features were delicate in a heart-shaped face: a small straight nose, high cheekbones, and lips that pouted slightly above a pointed chin.
Her figure looked slender in a thin sweater and tailored dark trousers.
She was stunningly lovely.
If Jericho had to guess, he would say she was in her early twenties at most. As Federov was a man in his sixties, Jericho wanted to think she was Sergei’s daughter rather than his mistress, but somehow, he doubted it. Not only was there no resemblance between the two, but neither had there been mention of a daughter in the security check Jericho had done on the Russian. Vasily was younger than Sergei, and a more suitable choice of lover, but the young woman couldn’t be with him because he had been assigned the guest suite next to his brother’s.
Questioning the Russians to confirm her identity wasn’t something Jericho was comfortable doing without Leon’s go-ahead. Once he explained, he was sure Leon would give it, despite the delicacy of the peace summit, but Jericho hadn’t yet had the chance to talk to his employer about his suspicions.
Leon would not be happy to learn a woman might possibly be held against her will inside his home. But questioning the new Pakhan of Moscow on the subject would need to be handled with Leon’s charm rather than Jericho’s brute force. Federov was already tense and challenging in his manner, no doubt because he had so recently removed the previous head of the Moscow bratva so that he could take his place. In this case, removed meant eliminated.
“Go back a couple of images to where she turns and enters the suite,” Killian murmured distractedly. “Stop right there.” He stood up to move closer to the screen. “She has a bruise on the side of her face.” His fingertips lightly outlined a mark on her left cheek.
Jericho grimaced. “I wasn’t sure if it was just a shadow. A trick of the light.” The monochrome image hadn’t helped with discerning that.
Killian’s nostrils flared. “I saw enough bruises my Da left on my Mam to easily recognize this as a bruise given by a clenched fist. Someone recently hit this woman in the face. Hard.”
Jericho’s frustration with this situation deepened.
He had no doubt that Leon would feel the same outrage he and Killian did if it should turn out either of the Federovs were responsible for the bruising on this young woman’s cheek.
Carla would want to personally rip both their arms off if she were to learn Sergei had been mistreating his girlfriend or mistress in their home. Younger than Leon or not, Carla was more than worthy of her place as the wife of the capo dei capi.
Leon was having dinner with his guests right now. Natalia and Carla were no doubt cooing over the baby somewhere else in the house. Which left the coast clear for Jericho to pay a little visit to Federov’s suite. Just to chat with the bodyguards, of course—
“I know that look,” Killian said with relish. “You’re about to go and kick some Russian bodyguard ass.”
“If I have to, yes,” Jericho confirmed grimly, giving up all pretense that he was feeling civilized enough to “chat” with them.
“Can I come and watch?” his cousin pressed.
“Are you missing being amongst the action so much that even a secondhand thrill will do?” Jericho taunted.
Killian immediately shook his head. “I don’t miss the hours of fucking boredom from standing around trying to look inconspicuous. Besides, protecting Natalia is more than enough excitement for one man, and once the baby comes…”
“You love Natalia, and you love your life,” Jericho said knowingly, never having seen Killian as happy as being married to the lovely Natalia made him.
“I do,” the other man confirmed. “But I’d still like to come and watch the martial arts expert in action.”
Jericho had black belts in several martial arts, and he wasn’t afraid to use them.
After watching the security feed several times, Jericho now suspected—and it was confirmed by Killian recognizing the bruise on the woman’s face for exactly what it was, along with the fact she hadn’t left the suite once since she arrived here—whoever the woman was in Federov’s suit, she was being treated more like a prisoner than someone who was here of her own free will.
He wasn’t going to discuss it with Killian, but he’d become totally enthralled by the woman’s light-colored gaze since the moment she’d looked straight into the camera.
Because it had seemed as if she was looking straight at him.
Chapter Two
The moment Marisha stepped foot back on Russian soil, she’d become a prisoner of Sergei and Vasily Federov.
She hadn’t realized that initially, of course, had believed the men waiting for her in the two black SUVs parked outside the airport terminal had been sent by Boris.
The first indication she’d had that something wasn’t right about the situation had been when Toly, as she affectionately called her bodyguard Anatoly, hadn’t followed her into the first SUV as he usually would have, but had instead been taken to the one parked behind it.
Asking the three men in her own vehicle why that was had elicited only grunts in reply. Marisha had decided to wait to ask Boris why he had decided she and Toly, after being together constantly during the three years she’d spent studying in England, should travel in separate vehicles now they were back in Russia.