Zel: Markovic MMA by Roxie Rivera

in more product that he turned around and sold on the streets. It made him very popular with the cartel, and he grew fast. Maybe too fast,” she said, thinking of his paranoia and his hunger for power.
    Exhaling roughly, she recalled, “When I went back to work for Besian, Lalo fucking lost it. He went into the club where I was dancing and started attacking patrons. He had his crew with him. They trashed the place. When Besian got there with his men, it was mayhem. Blood. Glass. Broken chairs. Busted up doors. And then? Gunshots.”
    “Shit.”
    “It was awful. The police showed up, of course. Everyone ended up in jail that night.” She rubbed her face between her hands. “Nikolai showed up at my house. This was back in his early days in Houston when he was really dangerous. From what I’ve heard, he’s mellowed out a lot and is more into legit business now. Back then?” She shuddered. “You didn’t want to come face-to-face with him. It was bad enough if he sent Alexei or Ivan or—God forbid—Kostya to deal with you.”
    “What did he want?”
    “He told me to sort my shit out—or he would sort me out.” She gulped at the memory. “To him, I was just some stupid girl causing problems. I didn’t want to go back to Lalo, but I didn’t have any choice. For me, going back to Besian and dancing was just about business and earning a living. To him? It was a slap in the face. It was about his wife—his woman—choosing to dance naked for an Albanian loan shark. He was going to start a war to save face, and Nikolai wasn’t going to let that happen. It was pretty clear that Kostya was going to make me disappear if I didn’t make things right with my husband.”
    “What happened when you went back?”
    Sara couldn’t meet Zel’s intense gaze. Dropping her focus to her hands, she wrung them together and tried not to dredge up the memories threatening to surface. “Lalo wasn’t happy. He decided I needed to be taught a lesson. He made sure it was one I wouldn’t forget.”
    Very gently, Zel reached out and traced the bridge of her nose. “Was that when this happened?” At her look of surprise, he smiled sadly. “In my business, you get to know the signs of a broken and healed nose.” He studied her face a moment longer and then traced the apple of her left cheek and the slant of her jaw. “And these?”
    She nodded, her eyes stinging as the memories of horrific pain surfaced. “It was a long three nights tied up in that trap house before Alexei Sarnov bailed Besian out of jail so Besian could come looking for me.”
    “Besian saved you?” Zel seemed taken aback. “Even after all the trouble you’d caused him?”
    “Besian has his faults, but he’s loyal to his friends. No matter what happened with Lalo, he was never going to abandon me.”
    “So what happened when he found you?”
    “He nearly killed Lalo. The two slingers he was letting take turns with me?” She drew a slow line across her neck. “By morning, most of Lalo’s crew had vanished, and he was in Ben Taub’s ICU.”
    “And you?”
    “Besian had Alexei get me out of Houston. He drove me to Dallas and put me in a hotel there to wait.”
    “For?”
    “For Besian to fix things with Nikolai,” she said simply.
    “Is that why you have that tattoo?”
    She nodded and touched the fading mark. “Besian gave up part of his territory and had to give two of his clubs to Kostya. The dollar figure was so high I didn’t know if I would ever pay it off.”
    “But you did.”
    “I did.” She nodded. “Besian and Alexei—he’d been one of my favorite patrons—gave me some seed money for my lingerie company idea. I knew that the only way I could turn that company into a reality was to create a sexy as fuck plus-sized personality. A brand,” she emphasized. “I created this Nena Rubens character and learned how to leverage social media. I came to Vegas to dance and learn and network. I started a burlesque show that traveled to New