Victor turned toward her. He hadn’t pulled his overcoat on; he stood in the freezing downpour wearing only his charcoal waistcoat and white dress shirt, his sleeves rolled up to reveal thick, corded forearms covered in old, faded knife scars.
He took three slow, measured steps toward her, his black leather oxfords splashing through the red-tinted water on the pavement.
He stopped two feet away. He reached out, his bare fingers gently cupping the side of her soaked jaw.
Aliyah’s knees gave way.
The adrenaline that had held her upright evaporated all at once, leaving her limbs feeling like lead weights. She began to slide down the wet brick wall, her coat scraping against the rough mortar, but Victor caught her before she could touch the pavement.
His arms locked beneath her knees and behind her shoulders, lifting her against his chest as if she had no weight at all.
“Put me down,” she gasped, her hands instinctively clutching his wet shirt for balance. Her fingers brushed against the rigid, muscular contours of his chest, feeling the terrifying, slow thrum of his heartbeat. “There are two dead men in that alley! You… you just killed two people!”
“I eliminated two rabid animals,” Victor replied calmly, walking out of the alley onto the empty sidewalk.
A sleek black Mercedes Maybach pulled silently to the curb, its tinted windows reflecting the glistening asphalt. Lev held the rear door open, his scarred face completely unfazed by the sight of his boss carrying a dripping-wet waitress in his arms.
“Get in,” Victor ordered softly, leaning down to slide her onto the heated leather interior.
“No! I’m going home!” Aliyah scrambled to push herself back toward the door, but Victor slid into the cabin beside her, shutting the heavy armored door with a dull, vacuum-sealed thud. The locks engaged with a quiet click.
The car glided into the Boston traffic before Aliyah could even reach for the handle.
“You do not have a home to return to tonight, Miss Brooks,” Victor said, pulling a dry cashmere blanket from a console compartment and draping it over her shivering shoulders.
“What are you talking about?” she demanded, clutching the blanket around her neck, her hazel eyes blazing with anger and panic. “I live on Tremont Street! My brother is waiting for me!”
Victor did not flinch at her raised voice. He unscrewed a crystal flask, poured two fingers of amber liquid into a tumbler, and pressed it into her good hand. “Drink.”
“I don’t want your liquor! I want answers!”
“Your brother, Leo Brooks,” Victor said evenly, resting his chin on his steepled fingers. “Sixteen years old. Diagnosed with aplastic anemia fourteen months ago. He undergoes immunosuppressive therapy at Boston Children’s Hospital twice a week, funded entirely by two jobs you work while maintaining a 3.9 GPA at Northeastern University School of Nursing.”
The breath left Aliyah’s lungs as if she’d been struck with a baseball bat.
The heated leather seat suddenly felt freezing beneath her thighs. She stared at him, the amber glass trembling violently in her fingers.
“You investigated me,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Between the pub and the alley? How could you possibly know all of that?”
“I have known who you are for three weeks, Aliyah,” Victor answered quietly.
His gaze dropped to the linen handkerchief still binding her right hand. The blue E was dark with dried blood, resting against her knee.
“My intelligence network monitors every individual who enters my regular establishments,” Victor continued, his pale gray eyes locking onto hers with an intensity that made her pulse flutter frantically. “When you took over table nine three weeks ago, my men ran your background. They found an exhausted girl who studies pathology flashcards behind the bar, steals leftover bread from the kitchen to feed her brother, and refuses tips larger than twenty dollars because she considers them charity.”
Aliyah’s cheeks burned with a sudden, humiliating heat. “I don’t need your pity, Mr. Malenkov.”
“I do not offer pity,” he said, his tone dropping into a low, gravelly register that raised the hairs on her arms. “Pity is an insult to survival. I respect strength. And you have carried a burden meant for three grown men without breaking.”
He reached across the space between them. His fingers were long, sculpted, and unhurried as he touched the edge of the blanket around her shoulders.
“The men in the alley were scouts for Connor O’Sullivan,” Victor said, the cold kingpin returning to his voice. “They saw you fall into my arms. They saw me clear the tavern for you. In our world, weakness is measured by what a man protects. Tonight, Connor O’Sullivan believes he found my throat.”
Aliyah shook her head, terrified by the sheer scale of the nightmare unfolding around her. “I am not your weakness! I am a stranger who spilled soup on your lap!”
“To them, you are leverage,” Victor countered ruthlessly. “If you step foot inside your apartment on Tremont Street tonight, you will find four men waiting to drag you to a warehouse in South Boston. They will carve the names of my shipping routes into your skin to make me negotiate.”
