“I need a shower. I’ll meet you at the club if you want to head out now. I’ll take my bike,” Ivan offered.
“We’ll wait,” Nik said.
“What did you decide to do?” Ivan asked Nik while simultaneously dialing one of his many girls. It was always a clubby—blond, tall, and vapid as hell. I had no idea how he did it.
“Bring a friend you like to play with,” he instructed before hanging up. I rolled my eyes. Typical Ivan, a player, living life to the fullest.
“Fuck off, Blade. But before you do, we have to talk about the new client I had come in today. It’s important, so we’ll meet in the club office first,” Nik said without looking up from his phone.
Knowing me as he did, he finally looked up. “Alek, you need to join us. If we agree to take it on, it’shuge.”
“Fuck, just tell us now,” I grumbled under my breath, leaning against the desk.
“Nope. Plus, you need to get laid. You’re grouchy as hell, Brother. Might as well arrange Alisha for him, Ivan,” Nik suggested. Ivan laughed, taking out his phone.
Like I needed these fuckers to arrange shit for me. I swear it was a good thing I loved them, or I would have shoved them off a cliff by now. Lately, I’d become very particular about where I stuck my dick. These days, I’d been limiting myself mainly to Alisha and to Jenna on rare occasions when Alisha wasn’t available or I needed something different.
But both women knew their place in my life. A quick play session or fuck now and again, and nothing more. I liked it that way. I imagined it was the same reason Nik preferred Jenna, although he wouldn’t say that outright. For tonight, I let it go.
The ride to the club was peaceful, and thankfully, my migraine had mostly dissipated. The three of us made our way through the crowd to the office. It was busy tonight; the music was pumping, the booze flowed, and I could feel all the eyes on us as we walked to the office. My brothers and I made quite a sight when we were all together. We were used to turning heads.
I listened half-heartedly as Nik caught us up on a few existing cases, and then, finally, the fucker told us about his afternoon appointment with Mr. Lenkov. It seemed the Russian hits kept coming, but I could see now why Nikolai was intrigued.
With Anton’s confession about being hired by someone Russian, Nik felt it was crucial for us to consider it. He passed four pictures to me that Mr. Lenkov had given him. The first was a young girl and her dance partner.
“Pavel Lenkov as a child,” Nik provided when I raised my eyes and showed him the picture. I passed it to Ivan, who gave it a quick glance. The next picture was of a beautiful girl.
She seemed clueless that her picture was being taken. She looked peaceful, and there was an aura about her. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I moved to the next two pictures and froze.
What the hell?
Mikhail and Konstantin Romanov. What did they have to do with a possible mistaken identity case, especially here in America? Then it dawned on me.
“Yes, now I see you are catching on, Brother,” Nik said with a grin. Ivan hit my arm and gestured for the recent picture of the girl. I ignored him. My eyes once again flicked to her picture. She radiated innocence and was quite beautiful, with unusual eyes.
“I wanna see,” Ivan grumbled, grabbing the picture. “Damn, she’s pretty. And not even blond.”
I handed him the last two photos of the Romanovs. “Well, fuck,” he mumbled.
“Lenkov thinks she’s Romanov’s granddaughter, and he’s adamant that Konstantin isn’t her father,” Nik concluded, letting the news permeate the room.
“Nikolai, this is big if she ends up being who he thinks she is,” I stated the obvious.
“Yeah, and it gets even stranger because this girl—on the surface, at least—is clean. She’s your picture-perfect all-American girl, born in Tampa Bay, Florida. Her father died before she was born, and her mother died of cancer when she was five. She was raised by her paternal grandfather,” Nik said, summarizing some of the information he’d gathered in his background check.
I snatched the picture of the girl back from Ivan.
“Here’s where we have a bit of wiggle room. Her grandfather, Owen Taylor, was a decorated police officer in Florida. He quit the force, and he and Kinsley—that’s her name, by the way.” Nik grinned at me before continuing. “They moved here to the Pacific Northwest area in 2016. They lived in Skagit County until his death two years ago. Our newest case moved to Woodinville, a quiet suburb outside of Seattle, shortly after and currently works her little ass off.”
“Ournewestcase?” Ivan scoffed. “Just going to unilaterally make that decision, huh?”
“Yes, well, here’s where it gets interesting. How does a man making seventy-five thousand dollars a year afford to pay cash for a 4.1 million-dollar piece of land? And that is only one asset that he owned. Better yet, why hasn’t his granddaughter sold it so she doesn’t have to work so hard? If her bank statements are any indication, she’s living paycheck to paycheck.”
“Did you check to see if—”
Nik grinned, and with a shake of his head, he said, “If the estate is caught up in some type of litigation or being contested? Yeah, I did, and no, it isn’t. The man set her up financially. She’s a very wealthy young lady.”
Ivan’s gaze told me whathewas thinking. Getting involved with the potential granddaughter of someone like Romanov was risky and could prove fatal for all of us. I rubbed my temples. The headache was returning.
