Knocked Up By the Russian Boss by Bella King
Chapter 9
MAXIM
Damn, this girl is lonely as hell. You’d think that somebody with so much money and influence would be able to choose who they hang out with better.
Ivory has started to nod off in the passenger’s seat, which admittedly is probably not the wisest choice, but it shows me that I’ve instilled some trust in her.
As we pull into the city, I notice how quiet the streets are so late at night. I thought that on a Friday night, there would be a lot more going on, but it feels like Ivory and I are the only two half-awake people here.
As I approach the address that Ivory gave me, my eyes are immediately fixed on a series of flashing red and blue lights surrounding the property. At least four squad cars and three ambulances have gathered near the front of the house. I drive a bit closer, and Ivory is awoken by the blinding police lights.
“What happened?” she asks, more slurry than she was before.
I can only get so close before it becomes clear that I’m casing the property, and I don’t need the cops trailing my ass. Before Ivory can gather herself enough to ask more questions, I speed away in the opposite direction.
“Where are we going?” she asks, a little more desperately this time.
“There’s cops everywhere. You definitely don’t want to go back there. If there was a huge drug bust, you could be considered an accomplice,” I reply.
I’m not wrong, and she’s definitely naïve enough to believe me without much question. If a girl like Ivory was caught in a bust, her dad would be able to buy her innocence within one hour of her capture. Even still, her big eyes and innocent demeanor would rule her out as a guilty party.
Ivory squints at me, both from her blurry vision and my vanishing credibility. “Can I just go to my house then?” she slurs, asking permission to be taken home to her own place of residence. She’s definitely not what I would have imagined her to be like while stoned, but I have to admit that I think it’s pretty damn funny.
“Uh, sure, what’s the address?”
As if I don’t have it memorized.
“It’s 1146 Lakeshore Ave.,” she replies as she starts to fall asleep again. She’s barely able to hold a proper conversation, but at least she knows where she lives.
I begin to drive in that direction, stupidly forgetting to consult my GPS as if I have the entire city mapped out in my brain. Once I realize how obvious and premeditated this must seem, even to a drunken girl, I plug the address into my GPS, jumping at the sudden chime of the machine in the otherwise dead silence of the vehicle.
After we’ve been driving for what seems like two hours in the exhausting daze of post-stakeout exhaustion, I pull up to Ivory’s apartment building without a second thought. Coming here felt so natural to me that I could have found it with my eyes closed from any location in the city.
I glance at the GPS just as I’m about to shake her awake. We’re not at the address that she gave me. At least, not quite. She gave me one a few buildings away, probably still afraid that I’ll turn out to be a stalker.
I curse myself silently for almost making the mistake of giving away that I know where she actually lives. That could’ve gotten me into a lot of trouble.
My heart jumps when I look over at Ivory again and notice that she’s awake. I panic internally, recognizing that somebody as intuitive as Ivory will notice right away that I knew what her address was. I’ve completely blown my cover.
My heart rate is so high that I could probably see my carotid arteries pulsing rhythmically to the beat of my trepidation.
By some miracle, she reaches for the handle of the door without question, completely unaware of my misstep. “Okay, uh, I’ll see you? I guess?” she says, her eyes half-closed and sleepy.
“Yeah, have a good night, Ivory,” I reply, questioning whether or not I should have used her real name in an attempt to pretend I don’t know everything about her.
She waves at me awkwardly, trying not to trip as she stumbles around on her heels.
I pull out of the parking lot, feeling incredibly lucky that she didn’t suspect anything of me. I need to be more careful. There’s no room for fuck-ups like that in my line of work.
