Midnight Alpha Read online

  Gregori was barely aware of his sister’s arms around him before he turned and strode from the room and down the stairs, his thoughts all on Gaia.

  On whether or not she was still alive…

  Chapter 17

  “I know exactly what you’re thinking, you know,” Sergei eyed her mockingly.

  Gaia sincerely hoped that wasn’t the case. For the past few minutes she’d been considering ways in which she might possibly rush across the room and knock him off balance. Then maybe she could somehow wrest the gun out of his hand as well as the second one hidden in the waistband at the back of his jeans.

  Before Gregori got here.

  Before Sergei could rape and kill her.

  “It happens in all the bad movies,” Sergei continued in that conversational tone that was really starting to grate on Gaia’s already frayed nerves. “The baddie tells the heroine all that he’s done and how he did it, and then she somehow escapes and tells the cops and it’s all over for him.” He grinned. “Not going to happen this time, sweetheart. The police are the last people Gregori would call in.”

  It was all so far off Gaia’s actual thoughts that for a moment she could only stare at him, her mind blank, before she gave herself a mental shake to clear the last of the effects of the drug from her head. “But I don’t know all that you’ve done yet,” she pointed out softly.

  “What else do you want to know?” He gave one of those not-quite-sane smiles as he settled himself back down in the chair just feet in front of her.

  She swallowed as the gun in his hand once again gleamed beneath the glare of the overhead light bulb. “Who was working with you inside Utopia?” she forced herself to concentrate, to keep this man talking. Even if it was only to hear him boasting how damned clever he thought he was.

  Whoever his insider was at Utopia, they hadn’t just sold and supplied drugs, they also must have told him that Angela knew too much. They probably also reported on Gregori’s movements as well as her own, since there was no way that drive-by shooting had been a coincidence, or a question of her being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone had to have told this man and his men that Gregori had left Utopia that night to follow her, and without his usual bodyguards.

  “You mean you haven’t guessed yet?” Sergei eyed her pityingly. “You’re even less bright than your sister was!”

  Gaia felt her cheeks flush as a wave of anger washed over her, threatening to consume her. And it would have consumed her, if it weren’t for the fact that she knew this man was deliberately baiting her, and that he would welcome any excuse to hurt her. This may not be one of those ‘bad movies’, but before she died she still wanted to know who had betrayed her sister to this madman.

  She gave a shrug. “I know it has to be either Rick or Claude, because they were the only two people in the room with me when I drank the drugged wine.”

  “And what would be your guess as to which of them it was?”

  Gaia had originally assumed Rick, because he had brought her the bottle of wine. But she was positive now that he had drunk some of the wine too, and he wouldn’t have drugged himself. Which only left… “Claude,” she challenged.

  Sergei’s expression turned from taunting to nasty. “Not so stupid, after all, are you?” he snarled.

  Claude.

  The charming French manager of Utopia.

  And Angela’s lover?

  A man Gaia had liked, damn it.

  He had sat with her earlier tonight and talked so excitedly of his plans to return to France and open a nightclub of his own.

  She realized now that he’d probably intended on doing that with the money he earned by selling drugs and supplying information on Gregori to Sergei.

  Blood money.

  Money he continued to earn even after he betrayed Angela and then allowed this man to kill her.

  In the same way he drugged Gaia, also in the knowledge that Sergei intended to kill her. And now Gregori was going to walk into a trap.

  There was a distinct possibility that she may not come out of tonight alive, but she hoped to God Gregori realized the truth before he received Sergei’s note, and that Claude was made to suffer for what he’d done.

  “Although you weren’t quite as clever as you thought you were,” Sergei taunted. “Because you obviously don’t have a clue as to how Claude realized who you were, do you?”

  “He knows I’m Angela’s sister?”

  “Oh yes.” Sergei grinned. “Because of the earrings you’re wearing.”

  One of Gaia’s hands instinctively moved up to touch one of the pearl earrings. Angela’s earrings…

  “Claude gave them to her,” Sergei revealed mockingly. “He recognized them instantly the first night you wore them because they belonged to his mother.”

  Oh God…

  Just a pair of earrings, the last tangible thing Gaia had to remind her of her sister, and they had betrayed who she was to Claude, who in turn then betrayed her to Sergei Orlov.

  What sort of man was Claude? He had obviously cared for Angela, if he’d given her jewelry that once belonged to his mother. He had also protected their relationship, by not allowing their ‘fraternization’, something Gregori didn’t allow between his staff, to become public knowledge. But obviously Claude hadn’t cared enough not to tell Sergei when Angela came to know too much about the drugs he was selling, or to forego the money he was receiving from Sergei for doing so.

  Gaia dropped her hand away from the pearl earrings, knowing that after tonight, the association they now held to Claude and Sergei, she would never be able to wear them again—

  Well of course she wouldn’t be wearing them again after tonight, because she would be dead!

  Gregori didn’t allow himself—couldn’t allow himself to think about what Gaia might have suffered at Sergei’s hands since she had been taken. Instead he concentrated on driving to the address Sergei Orlov had written on that single sheet of notepaper.

  Come alone or she dies.

  So dramatic, like something Sergei had read in a book or seen on television, and yet Gregori knew that the threat was very real, that Sergei was more than capable of carrying it out. If he hadn’t already done so.

  Gregori slapped his hand on the steering wheel in frustrated anger. A fucking ghost. Come back to haunt him. To take Gaia from him—

  No. He wasn’t going to think about that. He had to concentrate, to focus, to find that inner coldness Gaia had been chipping away at each successive day she spent in his house—

  Gaia, Gaia, Gaia.

  No matter where his thoughts might start, they always returned to her.

  Because he remembered every single moment he had spent with her.

  The shapeliness of her bottom sticking out from beneath his desk that first night.

  The way she blatantly lied to him once she emerged, flushed in the face.

  The way he hadn’t been able to stop watching her on the security monitors that same night as she served drinks to the customers of Utopia.

  The second night when he sought her out and then made love to her up against the door in his office.

  The shocked look on her face when that shot grazed her cheek a short time later.

  And later that night when she made love to him in his kitchen.

  The pleasure he’d had in picking out just the right gown for her to wear to accompany him to Utopia.

  Making love to each other in the dining room.

  How beautiful she’d looked in that gown a short time later.

  His jealousy—oh yes, he now recognized the emotion for exactly what it was—when he watched her on the security monitor laughing and talking with Rick and Claude, growling as he wished he had marked her as his. Just as all her laughter and that smart mouth all belonged to him.

  The night she came downstairs because she’d been woken by the sound of music. The wonder and admiration in her eyes when she realized he was the one playing the piano.

  The disappointment o
n her face these past three days and nights, because after that night he had known she was getting too close and so he’d shut her out.

  He shut her out.

  What he wouldn’t give to live those three days and nights over again. To spend them with Gaia, the two of them fighting, laughing and making love.

  God damn it, if Sergei had harmed a single hair on her head—

  Gregori drew in a deep, controlling breath. Calm. He had to remain calm, controlled, focused. He needed that control now more than he ever had before if he was to stand any chance of getting Gaia away from Sergei alive.

  He also kept half an eye on his driving mirror to make sure that he wasn’t being followed: he wouldn’t put it past Dair, along with Nikolai and Lijah, to come after him. Much as he might have appreciated their help, he daren’t risk endangering Gaia by not doing exactly as Sergei instructed.

  Come alone or she dies.

  The house the GPS took him to looked derelict at first glance, the windows boarded up, faded red paint peeling from the front door, the front garden overgrown. But as Gregori stared at the front of that house he could see a very slight chink of light through one of the downstairs windows.

  The room where Sergei held Gaia prisoner?

  God, please let him still be holding Gaia prisoner. Gregori would agree to anything the other man demanded of him if Gaia was still alive.

  He found that the front door of the house was open when he turned the knob. Well of course it was open, Sergei was expecting him, had known he would come. That he had to come. For Gaia.

  He drew in a deep breath when he found the door to the room with the chink of light, his hand trembling as he reached out for the handle and turned it.

  “Well if it isn’t the arrogant Gregori Markovic come to join us!”

  Gaia gave a gasp of dismay at Sergei’s taunt, her face paling as she turned to see Gregori standing alone in the doorway.

  Not the same suave and elegant Gregori that she had watched on the security monitors earlier tonight—his hair was now tousled, as if he had run agitated fingers through it more than once, and his eyes were black and glittering pits of hell, with deep grooves beside his unsmiling mouth. His face was unnaturally pale, his bowtie gone and the top two buttons of his shirt unfastened.

  Those black eyes seemed to eat her alive as Gregori looked at her seated on the couch. “Are you okay?” he prompted huskily.

  “I’m fine.” She tried to give him a reassuring smile but was sure it came out looking more like a nervous tic. “Mr. Orlov has been entertaining me with tales of his adventures from the past five months.”

  “Stay exactly where you are,” Sergei snapped as Gregori stepped forward into the room. Sergei raised the gun in his hand and aimed it directly at Gregori’s chest. “Not so fucking arrogant now, are you, Markovic?” he scorned derisively as Gregori came to an abrupt halt after just two steps.

  He narrowed his gaze on the younger man. “Let her go, Orlov. Your fight is with me, not her.”

  Sergei gave him a mocking smile. “But she’s so beautiful. I’m so going to enjoy fuck—”

  “Just tell me what you want and let her go!” Gregori snarled harshly, eyes blazing with fury, and Gaia could see a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw.

  “I already have what I want,” Sergei assured him hardly. “Right now that’s you and Miss Miller. Later on, who knows?” He shrugged. “Maybe next I’ll go after Katya and that arrogant bastard she’s married to. Kill her as well as the baby she’s now expecting,” he added hardly.

  Gaia knew that Sergei was deliberately baiting Gregori, hoping that the other man would make an angry lunge towards him. She knew that Sergei would enjoy shooting Gregori in the arm or the leg, disabling him, before Sergei turned his attention back to her and made the other man watch.

  She wouldn’t let it happen. She couldn’t.

  This man had already killed her sister, and Gaia wasn’t about to let him kill Gregori, or the pregnant Katya and her husband Dair: they had already suffered enough at this man’s hands.

  She wouldn’t allow Sergei to hurt any of them ever again.

  Gaia eyed the gun in the waistband of Sergei’s jeans, assessing the distance between them and the chances of her reaching him and grabbing the gun before he had a chance to pull the trigger and hurt Gregori.

  Probably not good, she acknowledged self-derisively, but the distraction would hopefully be enough for Gregori to wrest the gun from Sergei’s hand. At this point, she would attempt anything to get out of the situation.

  “No, Gaia!” Gregori cried out harshly as he saw her lunge up from the couch towards Sergei.

  His heart shattered in his chest as the sound of gunfire reverberated loudly around the room.

  They say that at the moment of a person’s death, time slows and their whole life flashes before them.

  The only thing that flashed before Gregori’s eyes was an image of the immediate future—Gaia lying on the floor, those beautiful golden eyes wide as they stared lifelessly up at the ceiling, her life blood blooming and then spreading slowly over the front of her sweater, directly over where the bullet had pierced her heart.

  And at this moment time did stand still. The three of them held forever in a grotesque tableau of death. Gregori with his shattered heart. Gaia with her eyes opened wide in surprise. And Sergei—

  Sergei Orlov dropped to the floor with a perfect bullet hole in the center of his forehead.

  It couldn’t be.

  And yet it was.

  “Thanks for moving out of the way and giving me a clear shot, Gregori,” Nikolai bit out grimly as he strode forcefully into the room, his gun still in his hand as he walked over to look down dispassionately at the dead man.

  “And you might want to catch your woman,” Lijah Smith drawled conversationally as he strolled in behind Nikolai.

  “Preferably before she falls and hurts herself on this hard wooden floor,” Dair added, the last to enter the room.

  Chapter 18

  Music.

  Gaia woke to the sound of music playing.

  Gregori was playing the piano.

  She recognized the composition this time. It was “Midnight”.

  She was back in Gregori’s house and he was downstairs playing that haunting, heart-breaking melody of loneliness and despair.

  She had to go to him. Couldn’t allow him to feel so alone—

  “Careful,” a voice cautioned softly as Gaia sat up to throw back the sheets with the intention of getting out of bed.

  Gaia turned to look at the woman sitting beside the bed, recognizing her instantly from the photograph Gregori kept in his wallet. “Katya?” The woman beside her was slightly older than the one in the photograph, and her dark hair was now shoulder-length rather than short, but there was no mistaking her likeness to Gregori.

  The other woman smiled as she nodded. “Although I prefer to be called Kat nowadays.”

  Gaia moistened her lips before swallowing. “How… Who…” She gave a shake of her head as she realized she must sound like a demented owl. “I have to go to Gregori.” She moved to sit on the side of the bed, still fully dressed in the clothes she had been wearing earlier.

  Earlier…

  What the hell happened? One minute she’d been lunging towards Sergei Orlov, and the next a gun had gone off and he was lying dead at her feet, a perfect hole in the middle of his forehead.

  “Nikolai shot him,” Kat supplied gently. “Gregori was so agitated when he left Utopia that he must have forgotten that all of his cars have a tracking device. Nikolai, Lijah and Dair followed him and Nikolai dispensed justice.”

  Gaia blinked. “Sergei is dead?”

  “Definitely.” Kat’s mouth thinned. “And one can only hope he’s finally in hell where he belongs.”

  “Oh yes,” Gaia sighed in heartfelt agreement. “Claude? Does Gregori know about—”

  “Gregori knows it all. We all do.” Kat put a comforting hand on Gaia’s ar
m. “Once we knew Sergei was alive it was easy to unravel the truth.”

  She blinked. “What will they do with Sergei’s body?”

  “Does it matter?” Kat shrugged. “He’s already believed dead.”

  Gaia moistened her lips. “He told me he killed his father and buried him in his own coffin.”

  “I am sure that he and Ivan are having a conversation about that right now,” the other woman bit out hardly.

  “What’s going to happen to Claude?” As far as Gaia was concerned, Claude was as much responsible for Angela’s death as Sergei Orlov. More so, because he had betrayed her sister to Sergei and done nothing to stop the other man from killing her. Worse yet, he’d then carried on earning his blood money so that he could fulfill him own dreams.

  Kat avoided meeting her gaze. “I have not asked, nor do I intend to.”

  Gaia noticed that Kat’s voice became as clipped as her brother’s when she was angry or upset. In this case Gaia decided the emotion was anger.

  Not that she cared what happened to Claude. He could rot in hell with Sergei as far as she was concerned.

  “There is something I need to say to you before you go down and talk to Gregori…”

  Gaia turned back to look at the other woman, her tone cautious. “Yes?”

  Kat gave her a warm smile. “Don’t look so worried, it’s nothing bad, I assure you. It’s only—Gregori is very much like my husband Dair.” She seemed to be searching for the right words. “They are both larger than life, leaders that others follow, and—perhaps because of that—they are self-sacrificing to a fault. Gregori is…he’s going to resist you, Gaia—may I call you Gaia?”

  “Of course,” she answered distractedly. “What do you mean ‘resist me’?”

  Kat stood up, the bump of her pregnancy very obvious on the otherwise slenderness of her body. “I saw my brother’s face earlier when he received Sergei’s note. It was… Do you care for my brother, Gaia?”