then, she got to see the worst humanity had to offer in this den of iniquity.
The next two weeks couldn’t pass fast enough for her. When they talked later, she would ask Ashe to move up the timetable of the FBI raid...or whatever it was he’d arranged with his girlfriend on the phone last night.
She’d been startled by the surge of jealousy that had swept through her when she’d realized that was a woman he’d been flirting with so comfortably on the phone. She’d give anything to have a man like him flirt with her like that. Maybe someday when this nightmare passed.
Assuming she survived it.
The bartender plunked a glass down in front of her and poured a sloppy shot of vodka into it. “For your boyfriend,” he announced.
She snapped back, “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“He’s watching you like he is. Guy’s warning off every dude in the room with his glare.”
Was that why no one had been groping or swatting her tonight? Except, of course, Vitaly. Crud. Ashe wasn’t helping matters by protecting her. He had to ignore her...or at least just treat her like one of the other girls. He mustn’t give any sign that she was anything special to him. Vitaly saw everything that went on around here. The man was like a spider sitting in his web.
The other waitresses whispered that Vitaly had secret cameras in the club and spied on them. Hank had even seen him sitting at his desk from time to time, studying his computer screen intently. But any time she’d had an excuse to go into his office, he’d turned off his monitor before she could glimpse whatever had been on it.
Hence her need for caution now. She ignored Ashe’s whiskey on the bar and instead delivered a tray of drinks to a table full of regulars. They were Russians, but just customers who came in for the good vodka Vitaly stocked.
“Hey, Hank,” Vitaly called from the doorway of his office. “Your boyfriend is waiting for his drink. Go serve him...and be nice to him.”
She winced. Drat. He’d seen her skip giving Ashe his drink. She’d hoped another one of the waitresses would want to flirt with the hunk in the corner and take his vodka to him in her place. No such luck.
She nodded in Vitaly’s direction without making eye contact with her boss and swerved toward Ashe’s table. He took the shot glass directly out of her hand. Their fingertips brushed, and she gasped as her pulse jumped. Lord, he had a crazy effect on her.
“Can I get you another drink?” she asked him mechanically as he handed the empty shot glass back to her.
“Do you carry Kauffman Vintage Vodka?”
She stared at him in surprise. “You know premium vodkas?”
“I like to think so.”
“I don’t know if we carry that. I’ll ask the bartender.”
“If not, I’ll take a shot of Russian Standard or the best the house has got.”
She headed for the bar and got raised eyebrows from the bartender at the request for Kauffman. He commented, “That stuff runs over two hundred bucks a bottle. Maybe Vitaly has some in his special stock. You’ll have to ask him.”
Hank poked her head into her boss’s office. “The guy from last night is asking for some vodka called Kauffman. The bartender told me to come ask you for it.”
“Kauffman, eh? Perhaps I should meet your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she retorted in exasperation she didn’t have to fake.
“You a lesbian or something?” Vitaly asked.
She bit back a snappy reply and merely mumbled, “Nah. He’s just not my boyfriend.” Sometimes it was a struggle to keep up her charade of not being the brightest bulb in the box.
Vitaly got up from his desk and moved to a tall locked wooden cabinet in the corner. She moved a little to have a sight line into the cabinet and was stunned to see several big honking weapons standing in the case. They looked like machine guns. Holy cow—
“Here we go.” Vitaly pulled out a fat spherical bottle with a big silver cap that reminded her of a parrot’s beak. Clear liquid filled the round belly of the bottle. She shifted back to her original position and pasted a look of dull disinterest on her face as he locked the case and turned to face her.
“Bring us two of the good vodka shot glasses in a bowl of ice,” he ordered as he herded her out of the office and headed for Ashe’s table. Planning on checking out the new patron personally, was he? Sheesh, Vitaly was paranoid.
She dutifully brought the men a deep bowl with two crystal shot glasses nestled in crushed ice. She set the bowl on the table and Vitaly ordered her brusquely, “Go away. My new friend and I want private conversation.”
Every now and then, Vitaly’s flawless American accent slipped a little and took on a faint Russian tinge like it just had. But that usually happened only when he was furious or under stress. Alarmed, she glanced between the two men. Dammit, there was no way to warn Ashe that Vitaly was on high alert.
She made brief eye contact with Ashe, who merely looked vaguely irritated that she was still hanging around. Frustrated, she retreated to the bar. “What’s Kauffman, anyway?” she asked the barkeep, even though she knew full well what it was. Her brother used to drink it from time to time.
“One of the best Russian vodkas on earth. They only make it in years when the wheat crop is of especially high quality.”
She sniffed. “Sounds snooty to me.”
“It’s not the stuff regular guys order, that’s for sure. Who’s that dude Vitaly’s sitting with?”
“No idea. Just some customer.”
“Isn’t he the one who broke up the fight last night?”
Crap, crap, crap. Ashe had called attention to himself—and now to her—by coming back tonight. “I dunno. I guess so.”
“Looks like he and the boss are hitting it off.”
Great. Ashe was horning in on her investigation. She’d kill him if he messed it all up. What could Ashe and Vitaly be talking about so intently anyway?
“He hot for you or something?” The bartender’s blunt question quickly derailed her curiosity.
She rolled her eyes at the bartender. “As if I’d date any of the slimeballs who come in here.”
The guy guffawed and poured her a plain soda with a twist of lemon, the way she liked it. She sipped at the drink for a few seconds, her back pointedly turned to Ashe and Vitaly and whatever bromance the two of them were having.
She moved around the club, serving patrons and enduring their lewd comments. Just another night in downtown hell. Except that it wasn’t. She couldn’t shake her hyperawareness of Ashe sitting in the corner with her boss. Her dangerous mobster boss. Their heads were close together, and they laughed uproariously now and then like they were trading war stories.
Vitaly called for a refill of crushed ice, and when she approached the table, she was stunned to hear them conversing in Russian. Ashe was freaking fluent? Bastard. Unreasonable jealousy surged through her that he was getting further with her boss in one lousy hour than she had in months.
It wasn’t fair. She was a no-account female, and Vitaly ignored her existence for the most part. But Ashe could stroll in here and order some hoity-toity vodka, and just like that, Vitaly was hanging on his every word.
The level of vodka in the parrot-beak bottle dropped steadily over the next hour, and Vitaly demanded yet another refill on the ice. But this time, when she approached the table, her boss grabbed her rear end under her short skirt and gave it a humiliatingly familiar squeeze through her panties.
It was all she could do not to pull away from his hard fingers digging into