Knocked Up By the Russian Boss by Bella King
Chapter 15
MAXIM
Ivory and I meet at the door, and I’m finally close enough that I can smell the light, fruity scent of her perfume. I wouldn’t doubt that it costs at least $200, maybe more. Either way, it’s completely intoxicating.
“I’ll get that laptop back for you,” I say to her as she opens the door for me.
She looks at me with doubt in her eyes, and I can’t say that I blame her, because it’s not like I’m going to tell her how I plan on getting it back.
“Yeah, okay,” she replies, and she closes the door softly behind me as I leave.
Getting the laptop back won’t be hard for me. I’ve had to steal back plenty of shit from the police department before. This time, I have the motivation of the laptop being my only key back into Ivory’s apartment, at least with any credibility.
Speaking of credibility, I need to make sure I get into one of the lower units in the building to maintain my believability. I really shouldn’t have said that I live here before I got a place here, but I have enough help and enough money that getting into one of these places by the weekend should be totally doable.
Most people don’t have the reach that money and power give, and for that, I pity them. Since I’ve experienced the world as a rich man, I would fight tooth and nail to never, ever be poor again.
I call Sergei, who is hopefully awake now and in a better mood than he was when I saw him two hours ago. “Where did you go?” he asks without saying hello.
“Nowhere. Anyway, I need you to get me into a unit at the Parkside apartment complex on thirteenth street,” I reply. “Make it one of the nicer ones.”
“Goddamn it, is this—this is about the girl again, isn’t it?” he asks. I can hear the exasperation in his voice. I’m almost sorry I asked instead of just going ahead and doing it myself, but Sergei has been living with me in the compound since he came to America.
He works for me. He needs to actually work once in a while. All he does is drink and order takeout. You can freeload off your brother, but occasionally you have to prove you’re worth keeping around.
“Yes, it is about the girl again,” I reply sharply. “Anyway, let me know what progress you make on that front. I’m gonna’ go now, bye,” I say, hanging up before he’s able to protest.
Sergei doesn’t have the same gift for the long game like I do. His frame of mind is too narrow, too myopic. He’s just going to follow orders so that he can get back to lounging around and day-drinking. He’ll leave the careful long-term planning and execution to me.
It might be a little bit tricky to pretend I’ve been living in the same building as Ivory for a long time. She doesn’t seem to get out a whole lot, and the place is fucking huge, but my presence in her life since the bat caves might start to seem a little bit too calculated to be a coincidence.
The bigger issue is with Ivory’s laptop. Since it’s password-protected, the cops will likely have to hand it over to an IT specialist to break into it in order to get what they want. Fortunately for me, the specialist that the cops in this city use is just like any other upper-class hack: showy, narcissistic, and under the impression that he is impervious to bad luck.
I know who he is, too. He works from home, so finding his workplace was as easy as entering his personal info into a search engine. I am exactly the kind of person that should not have access to that kind of technology, yet here I am.
I know I can’t go alone, so I’ll need to enlist the help of Sergei and my other brother Slava. Slava is not a smart man, but he’s tactical in hand-to-hand combat and is built like a motherfucking brick house. This smartass little IT cunt doesn’t stand a chance.
Of course, we don’t have to use brute force right away. I always ask nicely if I have the opportunity. I’m not an animal, but I wouldn’t be disappointed to sink my teeth into a victim either. I have a taste for blood.
I text Slava to meet me at the headquarters. He doesn’t live there like Sergei because he’s got anger issues, and I don’t need that around the carefully selected arsenal that I’ve curated over the years. I can use the anger in situations like these, but being around it on a regular basis just sucks.
Eventually, I’ll have to deal with a confrontation from Sergei, but for now, we need to form a plan of attack. I know that the specialist lives in a gated community, so we’ll have to find our way around that somehow, unless we can just break through it.
Less pressing but still important is the cause of Chad Germaine’s death.
As much as I wish to believe that justice is swift enough to take out assholes like him, something about the circumstances doesn’t seem right. Guys harass girls all the time without consequence, so what could have prompted the rest of the dudes at the party to suddenly band together and attack him?
The case is so high-profile that details will only be released to the public sparingly in small enough doses that people will stay current but won’t ask for more. It’ll become a media circus within a day or so, and that isn’t likely to end anytime soon. So how do I gather more information?
Attending the university myself feels like an absurd thought at first. I’m almost 38, and I’m successful enough financially that no degree on earth would improve my circumstances.
However, rich guys like me really should be using our wealth to gain more knowledge, and everybody at that college is already obscenely rich. Maybe I wouldn’t stick out so bad after all. I could drop in, search for information, and pursue Ivory at the same time.
It’s worth a try.
