Tatyana. That was Russian. Was that why Maggy brought her here? Was this spoiled brat family? Shit. He hoped not. "Grandfather is waiting. Is she coming with us?" He nodded toward the irrational woman.
Maggy sighed. "We'd better take her or she won't be here when we get back."
"She shouldn't be here now," the brat grumbled. "Fine, you all want to die, then who am I to stand in your way?" She reached into the car, plucked out a brown sweatshirt. She flashed her belly again as she tugged it on, the sweatshirt falling down past her knees. "Let's kill off Grandpa, too." She drew the hood over her head. "Hell. Why not?"
Nik chuckled. He couldn't help it. She looked like a monk, a very irate monk. Pavel snorted.
Even Maggy smiled.
"Laugh all you want. Your deaths won't be my fault." Slight shoulders slumped. "I warned you. Remember that when you're taking your last damn breath."
"Language, Brat." He should heed her warning. The woman was trouble, he felt it in his bones. Nik led the way through the casino's hidden passageways. He didn't look back to see if she was following, her stomping confirmed she was.
The handsome man would be the first to die. Tatyana peeked up at him, leaning so nonchalantly against the wall. Knowing that pained her.
The grandfather, quietly arguing with the woman, Maggy, was old but he didn't have the fragility of age. He was tough as nails. As was the handsome man, her eyes drawn to him again. Grandfather and grandson were two of a kind. Both stubborn asses. Noticing her attention on him, the handsome man raised an eyebrow.
Embarrassed she returned her attention to the grandfather, this Sergei everyone tiptoed around. As she'd lurked in the underground her entire life, she knew who he was. The head of a crime family. That meant nothing to Tatyana except for a little less guilt when he died.
He'd be second, dying after the handsome man.
Tatyana glanced at the door. The big ugly man blocked her escape. He might live. If they were close to a hospital and he was a slow bleeder.
It'd be her biggest death toll yet. It was her fault. She should have never gotten into the car.
She should have known Maggy, a woman with no real name, couldn't be trusted.
"Come here." The old man motioned to her, his gold rings flashing.
"I don't think that's smart." She stayed put. "It's safer if I remain here."
Both gray eyebrows rose. "I won't hurt you."
"It's not me I'm worried about." Tatyana was pushed forward, a firm hand on her back. She glared over her shoulder. The handsome man grinned, his brown eyes dancing.
"Thank you, Nikolay."
"My pleasure, Grandfather."
He did get pleasure from tormenting her, that sadomasochistic ass. The handsome man, this Nikolay, stood behind her, she felt his warmth, smelled his cologne. A pompous name, Nikolay. She didn't like it.
"Maggy says you wish to stay with us." Wise eyes looked her up and down. What he could see. The sweatshirt covered most of her up.
"Maggy is mistaken."
"I am glad." The grandfather's smile was pleased. "My assistance is not required, clover girl," he said to Maggy.
"Joey Chan will have her killed."
"Joey Chan?" Nikolay, Nikky she mentally nicknamed him, bumped into Tatyana's shoulder, knocking her off balance. He steadied her with one hand on her waist. It had been so long since she'd been touched like that, she was hypersensitive to it. That was the reason her stomach fluttered, no other. "How does she know him?"
"She doesn't." Great, now even she was referring to herself in the third person.
"The woman you took to the hospital was Joey Chan's wife," Maggy explained. "Without Sergei's protection, he'll go after you, next."
"Then, he'll die." And good riddance. The man, a wife beater, may be one of the few victims she wouldn't mind seeing dead.
"How do you plan to kill Joey Chan, Brat?" Nikolay, Nikky, remained close but no longer touched her. "Pavel," he said with a look at the big ugly man, "would find that challenging."
"I don't know." She shrugged. She'd given up trying to figure it out long ago. "Everyone around me ends up dead. I don't know how it happens."
"She has the evil eye?" the old man asked in Russian.
"She is a silly, scared woman," Nikky scoffed. "She sees one person murdered and thinks she's unlucky."
"Actually, this is my thirty-third confirmed death since my parents passed away," she corrected in the same language. "Before that, I didn't keep count." She had childishly thought the deaths would stop if she didn't acknowledge them.
"You speak Russian?" The grandfather stated the obvious. No reply was necessary, but she nodded anyway. "What's your name?"
"Tatyana." Not Tanya as Maggy called her. Her name was the only thing truly hers.
"Your family name?"
"I don't know. It changes with each move." It irked her that she didn't know the answer to a simple question like that. She felt like an idiot.
"You don't...," the old man spluttered. "Take that," he waved at her sweater, "thing off so I can see whom I'm talking to."
She hesitated. All of them were impeccably dressed in dark suits. Even Maggy wore a tailored pantsuit. To stand there in stained pajamas...
"Respect your elders, Brat," Nikky advised.
He spoke like he expected to be included in that grouping. "Respect is earned." Ass. She pulled the sweatshirt up, cool air hitting her stomach as her pajama top rose. While she struggled with the giant garment, there was a brush of skin against skin, a yank, and she was covered again. She dropped the sweatshirt to the ground, tucking her out-ofcontrol hair behind her ears.
"You wear no earrings," the grandfather observed.
"I have no earlobes." She flicked one. And her ears were pointed at the top. Elf ears, her mother had called them. "A family trait."
The old man, Sergei, rubbed his chin, staring at her freakish ears. "Your parents?"
"Dead." They had died when she was eighteen. The loss ached down to her very
