10. ANDREY

Chapter 10

ANDREY

Three Nights Ago - Andrey's Apartment

After my third shot of vodka, I'm starting to relax, and the anger raging through me has died. I sit behind my desk in my home office and switch on my computer. I need to concentrate on work. Isabella has taken up far too much of my time tonight.

I left the Velvet Lounge early, and Helen, who runs the lounge bar, the wait staff, and is my stand-in manager when I'm not around, is going to close up. I have to go through the shipping records for the Velvet Transport Shipping and Trucking company.

I don't like that a container of painted ladies has landed on our docks, especially when the FBI had already been notified about its arrival. The shipment was supposed to be filled with antique items and some valuable paintings from the deceased estate of an Irish mob boss. It was supposedly going to another crime family who'd claimed it in Ireland.

I start logging into the secure system and pulling up the entry number. I get into the record and frown when I see the customer code that was shipping the container. It's a strange code. Not our normal one. We use seven numbers followed by the first and last letter of the customer's name. The order of the letters is switched around and is in Russian letters.

The code I'm looking at is the old system we haven't used in two years. Our entire system was changed and upgraded two years ago, just after my older brother was killed. I'm not sure how this even got through and accepted unless it's an old client. I click on the client's file beside the name, and it refers to another number I know, which is a ledger entry—also the old style.

I need to call Hannah to get the information on the payment for the transaction. She's one of the only ones in my organization who is privy to it. Hannah also has the journal with her at all times—backups, which are stored in three secure vaults in separate locations.

I pick up my phone to message her and freeze when I hear footsteps in the hallway. I glance at the security monitors, and instant red-hot anger shoots through me.

"Son of a fucking bitch!" I spit, dropping my phone on my desk and pushing my chair back. I fly out of my office and head toward the bedrooms. "This woman just doesn't learn."

My head is now filling up with punishment scenarios, and I ignore my swelling cock and how much her defiance turns me on. I'm even sure that I wanted her to defy me. I reach the room, and Isabella has already entered it. As she hooks her hand around the straps of her purse, I grab her.

Isabella gets so frightened that she shrieks and alerts Ren, who is there in an instant.

"Boss?" Ren looks at me curiously.

I see his eyes slide toward a towel-clad Isabella, and I have to refrain from knocking his head off for looking at her. I step in front of her, shielding her from Ren's gaze.

"Everything's under control, Ren. Leave us," I command.

Ren has the sense not to take another quick look at Isabella, pivots on his heel, and goes back to his position in the lobby. I spin, letting Isabella see the full force of my fury. I yank the purse from her finger. Fuck, the thing is a lot heavier than any purse I've felt.

"Andrey, I…" Isabella shrinks and backs away from her. Her eyes are wide with fear. She's clutching the towel around her like it's a lifeline. "I was just…"

"Disobeying orders?" I snap. "What? Were you going to attempt another with only a towel on your purse?" I shake it. "Is that why it's so fucking heavy? Does it have a parachute in it?"

"I wasn't trying to escape or disobey orders," Isabella clutches the towel tighter. "I just want…"

"What did I tell you to do?" My eyes narrow, and I advance on her, holding her purse in my hand.

Her eyes widen, and she moves back, keeping a healthy distance between us. I've seen this move before, and I'm not falling for it twice. I cover the distance before she has a chance to pull more jujitsu shit on me.

"Answer me!" I grab her hair and force her head back to look at me. "What did I tell you to do?"

"Ha… have a sh… shower and go to bed," Isabella stammers, and her eyes tell me she's terrified. Good, now maybe she'll learn not to defy me. "I… needed…" She swallows.

"You needed to defy me again because you think, what—" I snarl. "This is a game. I'm not your father, Isabella. You don't disobey me and get off with just losing your credit cards for a week."

"Andrey, please!" Isabella begs, wincing against the pain in her scalp. "If you'd give me a chance to explain."

I let go of her hair, and her hand flies to massage her painful scalp. "Drop the towel," I command.

"Andrey, please, I'm tired," Her head droops. "I've had a shitty day…"

"Drop the fucking towel because every time I have to ask, your punishment increases," I warn her.

Her eyes drop, and she nods, her shoulder sagging in defeat. I feel a little alarmed at the sight as it's the first time I've seen the fire actually go out in her eyes. She drops the towel, and I go from hard to fucking rock solid hard at her the sight of her incredible body.

"Hands behind your back and on your knees," I order.

Isabella doesn't lift her bowed head and does what I ask. About fucking time! I feel the triumph but also a little guilty because she is green to all this, and I'm throwing her in the deep end, making her swim against a considerable current.

But I push the guilt aside. I can't back down now or show her mercy. Isabella was given an order and my trust when I left the door unlocked. Both of which she disregarded. Fuck! What if we were under attack, and she wouldn't do as she was told?

Some little nagging dipshit voice at the back of my head whispers but you're not under attack. But I ignore it and step forward. "Did you want my cock so badly that you disobeyed me?" I taunt her.

Isabella's head is bowed, and she mumbles something I can't hear so I take a step close, tilt my head. "Speak up, princess!"

She lifts her head. Her chin is nearly right by my cock, and her eyes raise to mine. I suck in a breath— Oh fuck! Isabella's head swivels, and before I can pull away, she bites into my thigh with all her might and carries on biting.

I howl in pain and drop her purse to the ground, sure Isabella is about to draw blood. I go to grab her head, but she pulls away too fast, then head butts me in the dick bringing me to my knees. My eyes water as pain resounds through my body.

"I said, come closer, and I'll tell you!" Isabella drops her face to mine. Eyes blazing in fury. She picks up her purse. "I came here to get my purse because I have contacts, and I can't sleep in them!"

I don't think I can speak at the moment. All I can do is watch as Isabella swings her heavy purse at me, connecting it with my bicep, and pain rips through the muscle. "My purse is heavy, so I can use it as a weapon to swing at dumb fucks stupid enough to try and attack me."

She hits me with it again. "You're a fucking bastard and I hate you." Her eyes mirror her words, and I try to breathe. "Don't you dare lay a fucking hand on me again." She sticks her forehead against mine. "Just remember you may have the upper hand during the day, but we've all got to sleep sometime."

"You talk about me needing control over my emotions. Temper is an emotion that you don't seem to have one bit of control over." She picks up the towel, puts it back on, grabs her purse, and flounces out of the room. I turn my head when I hear her say to someone, "He's going to need ice and maybe a tetanus shot."

I look up and see Urie gaping at me like a fucking guppie.

"Don't just stand there," I growl. "Help me up."

"Jesus!" Urie says, coming to my side to help me up. "Is that Isabella?"

"How much did you see?" I ask as he helps me onto the bed.

"How much did you want me to see?" Urie asks.

"None of it?" I say.

"Okay, then I didn't you get taken down by a one-hundred-and-twenty-pound slip of a woman." Urie grins and then frowns as his eyes fall on my bicep. "What the fuck is that purse made of?"

I look at my arm. It's already turning blue and has bloody welts on it. "Gold bars, it would seem," I say.

"Thank Christ, she didn't hit you in the head," Urie points out.

"I have no doubt Isabella wanted to," I answer, pushing myself up from the bed. "What are you doing here?"

"I asked Hannah to track the client who sent the container," Urie tells me, doing a shadow dance around me, waiting to see if I need help walking.

"I can walk!" I grumble, limping down the hallway. We pass my bedroom door, and I see it's closed. I stop outside it for a minute.

"Seriously?" Urie looks at me with raised brows. "She's taken you down twice tonight. I wouldn't tempt her with a round three. Isabella looked pretty mad to me when she flounced past me."

Urie's right. But I also know I need to apologize. I was so furious with her that she'd dare defy me or attempt another escape, and I didn't stop to think Isabella may have needed something from her purse.

Fuck! I run my hand through my hair, ignoring the throbbing in my arm where Isabella hit me twice. I step away from the door and look around to see Urie has disappeared. He probably ducked out, thinking I was going to go into the room.

Instead, I walk on toward my office. I'm heading for the bathroom off to the side of it when Urie appears at the door with a tea towel of ice.

"Brought you some ice." Urie holds up the tea towel.

"Who told you about Isabella taking me down the first time?" I stop at the bathroom door.

"I saw it when I was going through the security footage," Urie says. "You know I'm the head of your security as well as your right-hand man." He grins.

"Are you being funny?" I look at him with a blank expression, but it only makes him laugh harder.

"Well, you did take quite a knock to the balls," Urie reminds me. "I just thought it might have affected your brain."

"Fuck you," I say, rolling my eyes and shaking my head. "Give me a minute. I need to check the damage to my thigh."

"Can you take a picture of the bite marks?" Urie calls after me. "Olga wouldn't believe me otherwise."

"Fuck off, Urie." I slam the door in his face.

I can't believe I underestimated the little hellcat twice in one night—shit, the woman is resourceful. I drop my pants and glance down my thigh, where the bite mark is already turning an angry shade of blue.

"Jesus, she really was trying to rip out some flesh." I run my hand over it before pulling my pants back up.

My mind flashes back to how Isabella had tried to explain what she was doing, but I wouldn't listen. And I hate to admit it, but she was right about me losing my temper with her. But it was more than just anger driving me. It was something else, a carnal desire Isabella had sparked in me.

I give myself a mental shake. Stop this shit , I tell myself. Now is not a good time to lose my head over a woman, no matter how infuriating, gorgeous, sexy, or goddamn exciting she is. I need to get to the bottom of who sent a container load of trouble. I'm hoping to get my father or me arrested tonight.

I'm leaving the bathroom when an image of that green-eyed predator that gave Isabella his Tom Ford bomber jacket slips into my head. Alarm bells go off. I knew instantly the man was dangerous, and the look in his eyes told me he knew who I was. His demeanor told him he didn't give a fuck either.

That is a lot of confidence for someone who's either casing the joint or me to make his presence known and in my domain. When my men went to find him, the man had seemingly vanished into thin air.

"I poured you a vodka," Urie tells me, pointing to the glass on my desk. "I thought you could use one to numb the pain a bit."

I glare at him and try my best not to limp over to my office chair. "Did Olaf find out who that man in my club was?"

"When he got outside, the man had vanished, as you know," Urie tells me. "Other than the back of his head, we have no clear shot of his face on the surveillance feeds."

"Not even a CSI thing, you know his face reflecting off the bar mirror, a glass, Isabella's eyes?" I ask, and my stomach clenches when I remember the way the fuckhead had looked at Isabella with such familiarity, and I could've sworn a flash of affection. "Fuck I'm going to rip his head off."

"What did he do?" Urie asks, and I realize I said the last part out loud.

"Looked at Isabella!" I say, my eyes narrowing as I realize if Urie had seen what happened in the bedroom, he'd seen Isabella naked.

"You know I didn't see anything!" Urie picks up on my meaning, as always.

He knows me better than anyone else as we grew up together. Best friends. He is also the only one I'd ever trusted with my life, even before I trusted my parents.

"Only her attacking me," I say.

Urie pulls a face. "I have to say, my friend, you deserved it." Sitting back in his chair. "You were being kind of a dick."

He'd also be the only one who dared speak to me like that.

"You weren't here tonight to witness her daring escape," I tell him.

"I saw it on video," Urie says, grinning. "Goddamn man, what did Marco teach her? Fuck, she was swinging down those balconies like she was hopping downstairs."

"Don't remind me," I growl, taking the ice and putting it against my aching balls.

"You know, with some more training…" Urie starts, and I cut him off.

"I think I need to establish what kind of training Isabella had first," I tell Urie. "It's clear Marco has ensured she can fend for herself. Christ, she got a fucking handbag as a weapon."

"I reckon it's definitely custom-made or has been modified," Urie points out the obvious.

"Can we change the subject now?" It's more an order than a question. "Was Hannah able to get any information for us about the fucking client that sent us a container load of trouble?"

"Yes." Urie nods, and I see by the look on his face that I'm not going to like what he has to say.

"I checked and saw that whoever placed the order used the old codes," I tell him. "I didn't know our clients could still use them."

"They can't," Urie replies. "The order came from an employee code inside Velvet Transport."

I go cold. My brows raise, and I look at him. "Someone inside Velvet Transport has been doing this?" The implications of it hit me between the eyes. "Fuck!" I clench my teeth. "This is going to cause a war because now it looks like it's us who have done this."

"To make matters worse," Urie tells me, "the containers were packed by…" He takes a breath. "Strategic Movers and Packers."

"You're fucking kidding me!" I splutter. "All of them?"

"All seven containers, including the one that hit our docks tonight," Urie tells me.

"How come we've only found this out now?" I'm confused. Strategic is a joint business venture owned by my father and none other than Marco Moretti. I frown. Could Marco have something to do with this?

"The Strategic Systems have been malfunctioning for nearly two months now," Urie informs me. "That's the real reason your father and Marco are in New York."

"Your sister's there as well," I have no idea why I said that.

"Yeah, she's trying to trace the money trail for the son of a bitch that's hacked into the Strategic system." Urie's words make me look at him in astonishment.

"Strategic's systems have been hacked?"

"Yup." Urie nods. "A few weeks before the first shipment landed on the Irish mob's doorstep."

"Why didn't my father tell us about this?" My eyes narrow.

"Only he, Marco, and Hannah knew about it," Urie says. "They wanted to keep it quiet to handle it themselves."

"Look how well that's working out." I take a sip of vodka. "We had a shipment land on our doorstep."

"Remember I told you when we first found it that my father said the Feds have gotten a tip-off?" Urie says, turning his glass on the desk.

"Yes." I nod.

"Turns out there'd been no tip-off to the Feds." Urie pulls a folded piece of paper from his pocket. "Here's my father's phone records. He called and tipped the feds off, but only after we'd discovered it."

"Fucking hell!" I hiss, taking the phone records. "Why would you even look into this?"

"That Fed on our payroll." Urie's eyes flash with anger and disbelief. "He told me that he'd not been alerted, and when he checked, the tip-off had only come after I'd called him."

"Fuck, Urie!" I hiss. "You know what this means, right?" I'm going to have to inform my father, and Sergei won't get off lightly for his actions.

"That's just the thing," Urie continues. "He was told to tip off the FBI by your father."

"What?" I bellow so loud that I'm sure the windows shake. "Who told you this?"

"Hannah," Urie answers. "And I think we both know my sister may be many things, but a liar isn't one of them."

"No, Hannah wouldn't lie about that as she knows it would easily be verified." I sit back, taking the ice pack off my now frozen, numb balls. "If it did come from my father, that means he knew the Feds hadn't been alerted. But how?"

Urie pulls out his phone and scrolls to something. He hands the phone to me. "There's your answer."

I take it and frown at what I see on the screen. "This is a message to my father and Marco?"

Urie nods. "Sent early this…" He looks at his wristwatch. "Yesterday afternoon."

I glance at the clock above the door. Fuck, is it almost three in the morning already?

You know what we want!

"Hannah told me that Strategic's system was hacked, and the hackers have been holding it ransom," Urie says, picking up the glass.

"How much are they asking?" I look at him questioningly.

"That's just it." Urie's brow crumples. "They're not asking for money, but Hannah has no idea what they want because Marco and your father are not saying anything."

"If the hackers don't get what they want?" I ask, but I think I already know the answer.

"They will start a war, and every crime family that has been hit with the container of painted ladies will think it was us." Urie blows out a breath. "Why haven't Marco or my father just given them what they want? Surely nothing can be worth more than starting a country-wide mob war."

"It's worse than just a country-wide mob war." Urie's jaw clamps. "There is a container on the way to Europe that slipped past inspection."

"From our dock?" I look at him. "How the fuck did that happen?"

"The same login that was used to send the containers," Urie explains, "passed the container, and it was gone before we could stop it."

"Who's fucking login was used?" I ask through gritted teeth.

"Your brother's!" Urie tells me, and I spew the sip of vodka I've just taken all over my desk.

"Has it been shut down?" Anger and shock are sparking through me. "To pass the older codes, you'd need top authorization, which would have to come only from my mother for Velvet Transport."

"No." Urie shakes his head. "Not for your brother's or your codes."

"Son of a bitch," I snap. "So you're telling me whoever's using my brother's old login has full access to our systems?" My brow furrows. "How can that be?"

"We've kept it interfaced with the old system to make it easier to log all the non-digital content," Urie explains. "It's easier to add all the manual entries into the older system and then have them converted to the new one. Instead of having a mess of having two sets of codes on the new system."

"You know that tech shit's not my thing," I say. "All I can see is that by keeping two systems running, we've created a vulnerability that someone with iron balls is exploiting." I take another sip. "Did Hannah say if my father and Marco have an idea of who's behind this?"

"All she said is that whoever it is, they have your father and Marco scared shitless," Urie replies.

"Who would dare scare or hack into a system owned by two of the most dangerous men in America?" I say.

"Someone more powerful and dangerous," Urie says. "Your father and Marco only have another five days to give them what they want before a ship full of painted ladies and the Feds arrive on the doorstep of Roman Zhukov in Moscow."

"Fuck, you're kidding!" My heart lurches, and shock waves are now zapping through me. "These fuckers are messing with the most powerful bratva in Europe, if not the world?"

"Now you know why your father and Marco are terrified," Urie says. "Yet they're still not handing over whatever it is these people want."

The man at the club with the green eyes flashes through my mind, and a terrifying thought grips me. "What if it's not a what but a who ?"