British Bratva Read online

"When we came over from Russia, it was all we could afford. And Papa and I, we decorated it all. He showed me how to put the wall paper up. Taught me never to pay a man for something you could do yourself." He shrugged. "That was my Papa all over."

  "What was his name?"

  "Alexei." Maxim's whole face warmed when he talked about him and his eyes softened in a way I didn't often see. It was an expression I recognized only from when we were alone together.

  I smiled. "I like that name."

  "It's a good Russian name for a good Russian man. He did the best thing for his family. He always made sure to do that. He taught me how to survive. He said that it was best I learned how to fit in, here, in London. In the West."

  "Was it really very different."

  Maxim let out a soft laugh. "Sweetheart, you have no idea. In Russia if you didn't learn to bribe the right people, you starved. Holding onto what we had when someone more important wanted it. It was never going to happen. It's only thanks to the Bratva we got out alive."

  I reached out to trace my fingers over his face, and down to the scarring I knew was on the side of his chest. "This happened when you were a boy."

  It wasn't a question. I knew that for certain now, and I felt a well of sympathy rise in me for the little boy he'd been. Was that why we understood each other so well? We'd faced things in our childhoods that some adults never have.

  "Yes." His frown crumpled his brows together and he shook his head. "It was a long time ago."

  "I know," I said softly, but knowing that didn't stop the protective surge I felt towards the little boy he had been, and the man he was now. Maxim was bigger than me and stronger than me in every way and I had no doubt he would protect me in all the ways that he could for all the days that we were together, but that impulse didn't go one way. He was mine, and I wanted to keep him safe, keep him whole.

  Listening to Maxim talk I got the sense it wasn't something he talked about easily or often and I was touched that he was choosing to share it with me.

  "What happened to your father?" I asked softly, when he came to a stop.

  Maxim blinked like he'd only just realised he had an audience and he was seeing me there for the first time. His eyebrows drew together again, and he shook his head. "He went back to St Petersburg to try and get what was his."

  I drew in a breath, already sensing that it hadn't gone the way he had hoped. "What happened?"

  "He didn't succeed."

  "Did he-?"

  "He never came back. Valentin's father took care of the burial."

  "You've never been to his grave?"

  "No. It wasn't politically viable for me to make the journey."

  "Oh, Maxim." My heart bled for him, and as strong as he was being, as good as he was at making out that none of this touched him, I knew it did. He wouldn't have hung onto this apartment so fiercely if he didn't feel anything at all.

  Elizabeth

  Much later, after he'd stripped me naked and worshipped my body with his mouth. After he'd climbed on top of me and pushed inside me, hips pistoning me into the mattress until all I could do was shout out his name and clamp around him hard, drinking in the waves of cum he released deep inside me. Hours after that, when we were clean and showered and halfway presentable to the world, we went out.

  He took me by the hand as we strolled along Hatton Garden looking in the windows of all the jewellery shops at row upon row of glinting diamond rings.

  But Maxim didn't lead me into one of the shop fronts. Instead he took me along to a doorway rimmed with black stone. Two shiny, impenetrable black doors stopped us from seeing whatever was inside, and above were only the street numbers, in large, gold numerals. 88-90. There was no entryphone, but a security guard was standing outside with the see-through wire of a headset in his ear, and the alert, vigilant pose of a man who used to be in the armed services.

  "I'm here to see Yuri. Maxim Toropov. He's expecting me."

  The security guard nodded and checked in with whoever was on the other end of his walkie talkie in a burble of static.

  My eyes wandered to the twin signs framing the door, the only advertisement for whatever existed inside. Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd.

  Maxim leaned close enough to whisper in my ear. "They fly diamonds in by helicopter sometimes. People hold whatever they want in here."

  The security guard's eyes flicked down to me, and Maxim moved in closer, and his hand settled posessively around my waist.

  Another burble of static came through and the security guard opened the door for us to the buzz and heavy click of the weighty lock being released.

  Inside, the stairs swept down from a marble entrance hall, instead of going up, as I'd expected, given the talk of helicopters and something triggered in my memory. "Isn't this where that robbery happened?"

  Maxim nodded. "£200 million, estimated, never found."

  I looked at him, eyes narrowed. He seemed far too pleased about that.

  "Did you guys have anything to do with it?"

  "Now why would you say that? They caught the men responsible."

  "But they never found what they took."

  Maxim's eyes glinted, and he shrugged. "Maybe they never looked in the right place."

  "Maxim!" The portly, balding man at the bottom of the steps greeted Max with a clasped handshake. "I trust our mutual friend Timoshenko is well."

  There was an East End twang to his accent and a little more flash to his suit than I'd expected from the classical frontage of the building. His eyes grazed over the pair of us slowly, in a very assessing way and I had no doubt this man did more with his time than manage a suite of deposit boxes.

  "I believe so, Yuri. Please, meet Elizabeth. She is doing me the great honour of becoming my wife. I couldn't, in good faith, bring her anywhere but here to choose her ring."

  "Of course you bloody couldn't. Well. Come on, come through. Let's see what we can get for you."

  The man had a large bunch of keys and he flipped through them with the efficiency of a librarian flicking through a row of books as he led us into the narrow entryway to a larger room. From floor to ceiling were locked doors the width of box files, all stacked horizontally one on top of the other, next to other square locker doors that were double the height, and few that were taller than that.

  He opened a few, seemingly at random and inside were dark black lockboxes with handles, waiting to be pulled out.

  Yuri nodded. "Go on then."

  Max took hold of the first box and pulled it out, keeping it flat as he moved it over to a table in the centre where the L-shaped room widened.

  "Deductions from your share, or the company share, today Mr Toropov?"

  "My share, of course."

  "Very good. I'll mark it down, once we've established the value. Is it loose diamonds you're after, or something ready to wear?"

  Maxim shrugged. "Lets see what you've got."

  "Excellent idea." Yuri nodded, and unlocked another couple of doors, pulling down the boxes and setting them out next to the first. "I think these ones should do you nicely."

  I didn't know what I was looking at when he opened the first box. It was full of velvet pouches, lined up in neat rows, filling the inside of the rectangle completely.

  Maxim plucked a bag up at random, and spilled out a trickle of diamonds into his palm.

  "Oh my God." My jaw hinged open as I realised that every single bag in the box was likely to be full of the same.

  "On the board, please Maxim. No funny business."

  "Come now Yuri, I'm not about to steal from you after all this."

  "Better for all of us you handle them right then."

  Maxim snorted softly, but he strewed the dozen or so diamonds out onto the velvet covered board that Yuri had supplied.

  They were a mixture of cuts, all glinting and beautiful, just waiting to be inserted into a ring, and when the light hit them, the rainbow prisms in the sparkle was amazing. I didn't think I'd ever seen anything quite lik
e it.

  "You have the gradings for each stone?"

  "Of course. They have serial numbers. We can match them to the certificates."

  "Getting them set won't be a problem?"

  Yuri smiled. "My friend, I can send you to the right people, you just let your fiance take a seat and have a look at all the options."

  He pulled out a chair I hadn't noticed was tucked into the table, and Maxim stood back out of my way. I felt like some kind of princess picking out her jewels, and it was so surreal it almost felt like it was happening to somebody else.

  "Are these all yours?" I asked Maxim, looking up at him in awe.

  The pair of them smiled at me and Yuri let out a little, muted laugh.

  "You probably don't want to know the full answer to that, Liz. I have a share. That's all that matters."

  A little prickle went up my spine. I understood exactly what he wasn't saying. Somehow, in some capacity, Maxim and Yuri had both helped out with the heist that happened here, and now their cut, along with what I assumed was the Bratva's was stored here, right where it had been stolen from all along.

  I weighed the information, and realized I didn't feel bad. This was thrilling, to be sitting here picking out my engagement ring from a secret stash of jewels lost to the world, because they'd been so cleverly stolen away.

  I rolled one of the diamonds over, under my finger, surprised by the sharpness of the cut. The way it flashed in the harsh artificial light was wonderful. Eye catching.

  I sat up straighter in the chair and pushed the velvet board away. "I want to see the rest. Show me everything."

  There was a range of jewellery, necklaces and brooches, earrings dripping in diamonds and pearls. And then there were the rings.

  Yuri pulled them out on two display boards. "They can all be resized, or reset completely. You have your standard diamond solitaires over here. Princess cut, as large as you like. Safe choice. Double and triple stone rings. These are a favourite, where the two stones twine around each other, or bypass each other. They can have a double snake head worked into the metal. Might not be what you're after. Pave diamonds. Eternity rings. Then into your sapphires and your rubies. Aquamarines."

  Everything was fussy. The stones stood out too high. Glinted too much. I picked up a slim band with a tiny, flat-set stone and slid it onto my finger. I squinted at it, trying to see whether it fit there.

  To me it looked like a child's ring. Maxim must have agreed. He put his hand on my shoulder, fingers squeezing at the tendons that sloped up towards my neck. "It's your wedding ring you don't take off. You're not going to be boxing in it, luv."

  "I know that," I murmured, casting him a glare, even though I was privately glad he'd reminded me.

  This was for show. It was for everything he meant to me and everything we were going to be together.

  I picked out a sapphire and diamond ring where the emerald-cut stone was so deeply blue it was almost black, on each side smaller baguette cut diamonds sloped away from the central stone in a geometric design towards the curve of the band.

  "Very nice. Edwardian. Burmese Sapphire. Platinum."

  "Yuri, you missed your calling. You should have been up there selling this stuff."

  His smile glinted. "Before all this, I was. You lot pay better, for much less risk."

  I slipped it onto my finger, drawing in a surprised breath when in slipped perfectly over my knuckle and nestled in at the base of my finger as though it was always meant to go there.

  I held my hand out in front of me, and the urge to smile was incredible. "It's perfect."

  I looked to Max, already knowing it was the one, and he was smiling too.

  "This one?"

  "Yes. This one."

  Yuri nodded, already sweeping the rest of the things he'd let me pour over back into the dark black boxes.

  "Excellent choice. I'll mark it up in the ledger. Anything else you need to look at while you're here?"

  Max shook his head. "Not today thank you, Yuri. I'm fully equipped with all the firepower I need for the time being."

  "Right then. Whenever you're ready, I'll escort you back to the surface."

  I practically floated my way up to the street. I couldn't stop looking down at the ring on my finger, and then at Maxim, knowing that he was my fiance. That he was going to be my husband, and come what may, I'd get to be with him forever.

  CHAPTER 35

  Elizabeth

  I blinked and two weeks had gone by. Blinked again and it was nearly a month. Or that's what it felt like, anyway.

  Everything was perfect in a way my life hadn't been for years. With Sutherland dead, I had freedom. It was worth the occasional nightmare, where I woke myself up convinced he was still going after me with the paper weight, or that he was wrestling Maxim's gun off me, trying to turn it onto me.

  Every single time I woke, Maxim was there, holding me close until my breathing eased, letting me cling to him. Whether it was tears, or shaking with fear, or shouting at him in anger, Maxim took it all without a word. He never made me talk about it, but I knew he understood and he'd listen when I wanted to. If I ever did. To me it seemed like there was nothing that couldn't be solved with his kisses to soothe it all away.

  I was so glad I hadn't managed to carry out my plans alone. I'd never thought them all the way through, beyond getting ahold of a gun from Ben. I thought I was ready to tough out prison, but I never considered there would be a personal impact when it came to ending the man who'd ruined my life.

  Maxim might have known better, but he never rubbed it in. His observation of me never stopped - as though he'd developed some almost supernatural way of reading me without me having to say a thing, from all that time watching me from across the street, and he pushed me when I needed it, reeled me back in when I went too far.

  We were becoming a real team by the time the summer started warming up, and we fell into a kind of routine. I loved it.

  Maxim would rattle off emails in the early morning, almost before the sun was up. He'd come back to bed and claim me, slow and lazy, while I was still waking up like that time in the hotel in Geneva, and then we'd shower together.

  We'd spend an hour in the room we used as a gym, on the machines or using weights, or more often, with pads and gloves in another sparring session that more often than not would lead to Maxim ripping off my leggings and pounding me into the floor, or up against the wall so I had to cling onto him to hold myself up.

  I couldn't imagine going without sex with Maxim. It was such a huge part of my life with him. His body was all for me, his large, powerful frame always ready to pin me down and drive his gorgeous, huge cock into me. It thrilled me that every time I wanted him, he was throbbing and ready, hard as glass. I was addicted to him, and he was addicted to me and there wasn't a minute that went by that I wasn't thinking about him taking me all over again, or the way he touched me, or kissed me, or did such clever, clever things with his hands and his mouth and his tongue.

  I didn't think it could go on forever, but it showed no signs of stopping and when it came to him, my libido was super powered. I loved his cock inside me. It had to be made to fit me. I got such pleasure from him sliding in slow. And even more when he thrust in hard, hilt deep, making me cry out with the force of the sparks shooting through me.

  I was never going to get enough of him and I couldn't imagine ever letting another man take his place. I knew I was wrecked and ruined. I had to have him forever, so that we could live like this always. I know he wanted that too.

  We'd go out after breakfast and work the day on surveillance or reconnaissance or just gathering intel to send back to Valentin. Sometimes Maxim would have to make an approach and he'd leave me wherever we'd set up our lookout station, watching him through military grade binos.

  Other times, he'd send me for simple handovers, or to get ahold of information that could be wheedled from some security guard with the right kind of smile. He taught me how to turn bumping into someone i
nto planting a tracker. Taught me how to dismantle and reassemble a handgun in under ninety seconds. How to carry a knife. How to use it. And, more importantly, how to disarm someone else who had one, before they could stab me.

  He taught me things that boxing didn't. How to fight dirty and efficiently, how to cause the most amount of pain in a way that left you in control rather than royally pissing your opponent off.

  And then I found myself crouched over the toilet bowl, heaving up my breakfast two mornings in a row.

  The first time, Maxim had been out getting coffee. I assumed something about dinner the night before hadn't agreed with me.

  The second time I only just made it to the bathroom, and he sat next to me on the tiles, holding my hair out of my face, entirely unnecessarily given it was too short to cause a problem. Then he scooped me up and put me straight to bed, setting me up with bottles and bottles of electrolytes and just about anything else I could have wanted before he headed out of the door, full of profuse apologies that he couldn't call off the job.

  I knew he couldn't. The approach was meant to be today and we needed to time it right so he agreed.

  I was glad Maxim left me to it, because just like it had the day before, the sickness faded once I'd drunk enough water and eaten a slice of dry toast.

  I called Cassie, feeling a little panic rise in me as she picked up the phone.

  "Hello Stranger," she greeted me with a smile in her voice.

  "Hi Cass. I've missed you."

  "I bloody hope not. We've been getting on fine without you. How are you doing, pet?"

  "Good. Really good. It's great."

  Cassie let the silence hang between us for a long beat that I didn't know how to fill. "…But?"

  I drew a breath in. She'd always known how to read me. Just like Maxim, thought maybe not as well as he did. "I think I need to take a pregnancy test."

  Saying it out loud brought out a jumble of emotions, and before I knew it, tears had crested and were rolling down my cheeks.

  "Oh, honey. Don't cry. It's okay. You don't know anything yet."

  But I did. I knew bone deep that I had Maxim's child growing inside me. It made perfect sense. We'd been going at it like rabbits since we met and he probably thought I was on the pill or something, but I wasn't and I hadn't cared because I wanted him so badly. And I wanted to be his forever.