Twisted Cravings (The Camorra Chronicles 6)

“Any new arrivals?” I asked, shaking Crank’s outstretched hand. I knew about at least one, and I was awfully curious about her.

“Three,” Crank said. “A girl and her brother. Plus another guy with a big ego.”

“He can’t be worse than our favorite egomaniac?” Racing was a magnet for a certain type of person, but some displayed an over-boarding amount of self-centeredness.

“Not sure yet, but he’s close.”

I held out my hand for the info sheets Crank had dug up about the newbies.

I narrowed my eyes as I read what Crank had found on the girl and the guy with her—her supposed brother. Nothing. No arrests. Squeaky clean with generic names. “This stinks,” I muttered. Mary, really? This girl wasn’t a Mary. The only way any Mary probably got close to her was in a glass as a Bloody Mary.

Crank nodded. “Fake names, definitely. That guy, he’s got the hint of an accent. Eastern European or something like that.”

Eastern European. The only time I ever dealt with Eastern Europeans, they were Bratva guys trying to mess with business or kill me. The races weren’t their main target though. Drugs and prostitution were their most successful business areas after all.

I went in search of “John” and “Mary”.

The qualification race would start in an hour. If this girl and her companion proved trouble, I wanted to know in advance and make sure they stayed the fuck away—unless it was the fun kind of trouble. The redhead still leaned against the hood of her car, smoking. By now her cigarette had burned down to a small stub. She flicked it away with her fingers. Given the red of her lips, I would have expected her nails to have the same color but hers were short and painted in a dark, almost black color.

The guy beside her with the buzz-cut stomped out her cigarette as it landed before his boot-clad feet. I had a feeling that was their usual dynamic. I strode toward them. “John” said something to “Mary” but she only smiled at me. Her eyes didn’t hold nervousness as I stopped in front of them. She lit up another cigarette. Maybe this was a small sign of unease, but it was difficult to say with this girl. Usually the Camorra tattoo on my forearm made most people shit their pants, even some of the people who knew me well, and they didn’t even register with false names in my races.

“Mary, John,” I said with a hard smile.

A bare nod from the guy.

The girl took another deep smoke before she squashed it under a heavy black leather boot.

“What lovely names…”

“Actually, it’s Dinara.”

Fake John threw her a warning look. “Mary, what—”

There was a certain edge to his words that belied English wasn’t his mother tongue. “Give us a moment, Dima.” She never took her eyes off me. Dima gave me a harsh look, promising me retribution, and something in his blue eyes made it clear that he wasn’t unfamiliar with the act of causing others pain, but neither was I. He shoved away from the hood and stalked toward his car, a blue Nissan Silvia.

“Dinara?”

She gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Mikhailov. Dinara Mikhailov.”

She said the name as if it meant something, or should mean something to me. I didn’t make a habit of getting too involved in all the business areas of the Camorra. Organizing and driving the races was a full-time job.

“Sounds Russian.” And not just that, it was the name of the fucking Pakhan in Chicago, Bratva royalty. Mikhailov was a common name in Russia though, so this didn’t mean anything.

“It is.”

“Why the fake names if you give them up at the first chance you got?”

She shrugged. “Dima insisted, and it got me your attention.”

As if she would have needed fake names for that. This girl was hard to ignore.

“A Russian name would have had the same effect.”

Her smile widened, white against the luscious red of her lips. “You don’t like Russians?”

I walked around her car, taking a closer look at the paint job. Viper was written across the passenger door and a snake curled along the side of the hood. “Just a certain kind of Russian.”

She never took her eyes off me. I couldn’t tell if it was due to worry that I’d do something to her car, or because she had trust issues in general. Probably both. “And what kind of Russian would that be?”

I stopped beside her and leaned against the hood of her car, an open provocation. You didn’t touch another’s car without permission and you definitely didn’t use it as a chair. “You want to race?”

She smirked. “Quick thinking.”

I stifled a smile. I liked her sass. “That takes courage. Few girls ever make the final cut. It’s a rough game. People get hurt. People die.”

She rose from the hood, making herself taller than me. A flicker of anger lay in her eyes. “I’m not like other girls.”