Ivan: A Dark Mafia Romance (Underworld Book 1)

I stay a few days more in my hotel suite, then return to my safe house in the Frunzensky District, close to the Obvodny Canal.

I had planned to work a couple weeks longer at Raketa, so there would be no connection between Yozhin dying and me quitting directly afterward. But I’m thoroughly sick of the pole dances and the leering men, and I don’t want to be at the club if the man in the black suit returns to look for his flash drive.

I don’t want to give him another look at my face, or another chance to get me alone in a room with him.

I always stay at a hotel during jobs, to make sure no one is tracking me. I don’t want to risk anybody following me home. I know all too well that if someone can find you, they can kill you. We all have to sleep sometimes.

It’s a great relief to get home to my apartment at last. As soon as I unlock the door, I can smell the familiar scents of my favorite mint tea, my Moroccan oil shampoo, and the succulent in my kitchen that can stand the neglect of a long absence.

My security system is still armed, just as I left it. I review the surveillance tapes anyway, to be sure that I didn’t suffer any unwanted visitors while I was gone.

My apartment is sparse, clean, almost empty to most people’s eyes. But it’s exactly how I like it. Everything in it is for me alone. I never bring anyone here.

I have one chair at the table in the kitchen, one larger, overstuffed armchair in the living room. My bedroom contains a bed and a desk with a custom computer rig I built myself.

That’s where I head first, to check the recordings, and then to close the file on this most recent assignment.

I already received the second half of my payment, wired immediately upon confirmation of the kill.

Now I go through my files, scrubbing all trace of Yozhin: his picture, his profile, the meticulous notes I took on his workplace, his connections, his habits. I delete it all. None of it matters now that he’s dead.

Then I message Zima, my broker. He’s the one who brings me all my jobs. He’s my point of contact with my clients. I never speak to them directly; I never even know who they are. They talk to Zima and he talks to me.

It’s a layer of protection for all of us. And it helps keep things impersonal. I don’t want to know why the hits are ordered, or by whom. There can’t be any judgement or emotion in my job.

My rule for Zima is that I only kill professionals. Businessmen and women, politicians, criminals. People who have inserted themselves into the jungle, into the endless struggle for power and domination. They choose to play the game, and so they deserve their fate.

I have no interest in killing some housewife whose husband is tired of her, or some old man whose family wants an inheritance.

Zima knows this, and he only sends me jobs that fit my parameters.

I like to think I’ve built quite the reputation for myself over the last five years. Of course, no one knows my real name. I doubt they even know I’m a woman. But they might suspect it—Zima says I’ve been given the nickname ‘The Angel of Death’.

I don’t mind it. I’ve been called worse.

My father’s the one who taught me, trained me. At first, he was trying to protect me, in case any of the skeletons in his closet came crawling out, looking for revenge.

But after a certain point, he must have known he was creating a weapon. All those countless hours of study, of drills, of him repeating his endless lists of rules . . . what did he expect me to do with it all? Did he think I’d become a schoolteacher after all that?

“Every action, no matter how small, has a consequence.”

He said that.

So, he knew what he was doing. He knew what he was making.

He made a killer.

And I’m very good at it.

I’ve never missed a target.

If I ever do, it will probably be my last. The one you miss is the one that kills you.

Usually, when I finish a job, I take a break. Rest and recuperate. Do some reading. Travel somewhere new.

This time I’m thinking Asia, maybe Japan. I have to get out of the snow—I can’t stand a whole winter in St. Petersburg.

I send a quick message to Zima:

Job done. Payment received. Minus your cut, of course.

I don’t expect him to respond. He’s a night owl, hardly ever awake before 5:00 p.m. At first, I thought that meant he lived on the other side of the world, but after some digging, I realized he’s right here in the city with me, just living some sort of vampiric schedule. No wife or kids to keep him in the land of the living.

To my surprise, I see a reply coming through almost immediately. It takes a minute to run through the decoding software, and then I read:

I have another job for you.

I stare at the message in surprise, then quickly type back:

I just got home. No thanks.

I fish in my pocket, feeling for the flash drive I stole out of Yozhin’s suit pocket. I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet, not having access to a proper computer at the hotel.

I pull out the drive, examining the flat black rectangle.

There’s no mark on the metal casing, no indication of where it came from or what it contains.

I hear the chime of another message coming through from Zima. It says:

You’re going to want to take a look at this one. It’s a big payday.

I hesitate, twisting the flash drive between my thumb and index finger.

I don’t like doing back-to-back jobs. Exhaustion makes you sloppy. And I like to let the dust settle. The closer the hits, the more likely that someone might draw connections between them. You start leaving patterns, trails of breadcrumbs for someone to follow . . .

How big? I type.

$500K.

Huh. That is big. Five times my usual fee.

Which means the target is going to be a bitch to execute.

Who is it? I ask.

A pause, and then Zima says, Sending the file over now.

I wait for it to load, tapping the flash drive gently against my desk.

Because of all the layers of code Zima and I use, all the remote servers the information has to bounce back and forth between, it takes forever to download anything.

But finally, the progress bar fills and the documents begin to pop up on my screen.

Before I get a schedule or map or even a name, I see a large black and white photograph. Though it looks as if it were taken from a distance, using a telephoto lens, the man is staring directly at the camera. He’s more than staring at it—he’s glaring as if he wants to tear it to pieces.

His eyes are dark, set beneath thick black brows with a slight peak to their shape, giving him a permanently scowling expression. He has a long, straight, aristocratic nose and a broad jaw. His thick black hair comes almost to the collar of his suit. Unusual for a Russian, he has a slight olive cast to his skin, or at least that’s how it appears in the picture—it’s hard to tell since it isn’t in color. The stubble along his jaw and above his upper lip straddles the line between a five o’clock shadow and an actual beard.

There’s something very intimidating about this man. Confidence and power radiate from his expression, and something else . . .

Anger. Even rage.

I’m not surprised in the slightest when the rest of the file loads and I see the name and title:

Ivan Petrov, head of the Petrov Bratva.

I’ve killed one or two Bratva before, but never the head of a family.

And never one who looked like this.

I don’t even need to read the file to know that this man will be tactically trained, experienced, well-protected.

This is a dangerous job. Nothing like slipping a pill into the drink of a pudgy politician.

I should tell Zima I’m not interested.

But $500K . . . it’s half a million dollars. I could take a break after that. A very long break.

I could leave St. Petersburg for good. Set myself up somewhere sunny—Portugal, or Spain.

I never should have stayed here so long to begin with.

I stare at the picture a while longer, wondering how much nerve I’ve got when it comes down to it.

My father would tell me to forget it.

Don’t be stupid.

Don’t pick a fight you can’t win.

Well, fuck my dad. He’s not here to give advice anymore.

I place my fingers on the keys and type:

I’m in.

There’s a long pause, long enough that I wonder if Zima is going to withdraw the contract. Then he types:

Good. I’ll send over the rest of the file.

I let out a sigh. Once I have it all on my computer that’s it, I’m committed.

I’ve got to be out of my mind to take this job.

But I’ve been feeling reckless lately. It was reckless to steal the flash drive, too.

While I’m waiting for Petrov’s file to download, I insert the flash drive into my computer to take a look at what secrets it’s holding.

It’s full of several large files. My computer makes steady clicking and whirring sounds, trying to download the information. But almost at once, I see that the files are encrypted. And not in any way I recognize.

I consider myself a pretty handy little hacker. I take a poke at the files, trying to crack the encryption. After twenty or thirty minutes of trying the various tricks I know, I’ve gotten precisely nowhere. I have no idea what the information is and no clue how to unlock it.

It’s going to take a real professional.

That’s a project for another day, however.

I eject the flash drive and close it up in a little fireproof box, hiding it behind a brick in my fireplace.

Then I turn back to Ivan Petrov’s file.

If I’m going to kill this guy, I need to learn absolutely everything about him.