I understood what people meant when they talked about being in love now, because suddenly everything here was rose tinted and perfect and I'd never been happier in my entire life. There wasn't a single reason I could think of that we shouldn't be together forever.
Maybe I was getting ahead of myself, but I could picture our life together, living in his apartment upstairs. I'd carry on dancing and we'd spend every free moment together. We'd get married and start a family, and I would take a break from the stage, maybe teach dancing while our little girls were still young, and then I'd make an epic return and Valentin would be there every step of the way.
He would dote on our children. I could already tell that about him, and the protective side of him that came out so easily around me would grow to encompass them as well. I giggled at the thought of him looming over future boyfriends, declaring that no one was ever going to be good enough for his baby. I didn't care that I was letting my imagination get away from me and thinking way too far into the future. It felt good to think about what our family would look like, and the idea of always having him by my side sent a tingle through me that I didn't know how to describe.
All my life, I'd thought that ballet was the only thing I cared about, but who was I kidding, I'd been in love with the romance of it right from the start, and coming to Russia all on my own made me realize just how much I craved being part of a family and having one of my own.
And my smile started to dwindle. What were my parents going to say? How could I possibly begin to explain to my mother that I'd met the man of my dreams, and he was so much older than me? And also some kind of mafia kingpin. She was going to totally freak about that, never mind the fact that if we really did settle down, her grand babies were going to be in a whole other country.
With disturbing coincidence, my cell phone started ringing and when I glanced at the screen and saw my mom's number, I went cold all over. How was I going to tell them that I was going to make a life out here with Valentin instead of coming home after a few years of experience, the way Mom had always hoped?
I almost turned the phone over to ignore the call, but that wasn't going to get me anywhere. I couldn't hide this from my parents. The longer I left it the worse it would look to them, and the last thing I wanted was for my mom to do something stupid like demand I come home.
"Hey Mom," I started, picking up the phone with some trepidation.
"Hey Honey. I've got you on speakerphone and your Dad's here too. How are you settling in? Is it freezing? Are you eating enough?"
I laughed at the sudden rush of questions, feeling a well of affection rush over me just from hearing her voice. "Hi Dad. Mom - one question at a time. I'm doing fine, I told you that. And it's not winter anymore. It's actually kind of warm. When do I ever skimp on my food? I gotta keep my strength up."
"That's my girl," Dad put in. "Didn't I tell you you're worrying too much. Mia's got a good head on her shoulders, and this is what she wants. Isn't that right Honey."
"Thanks Dad." Out of nowhere, suddenly I was feeling homesick. I could picture the pair of them in the kitchen, Mom bustling about while Dad sat back with a mug of coffee, in his slippers, and the pair of them spoke into the phone like it was some kind of walkie talkie. "I wish you guys could be here too. Moscow's amazing. I know you'd love it."
"Oh Honey, we wish we were there too. It's not the same without my little girl around the house. But you're still my little girl, wherever you are."
I bit my lip, taking a deep breath. The sooner I came out with this the better. "Actually, Mom, I'm not."
"What are you talking about, Mia? Of course you're my little girl."
"Mom, listen. I'm trying to tell you something."
"I'm listening, I'm listening. You're not saying anything sweetheart."
"Okay - just. I love you guys, and nothing's ever going to change that. But I - I'm grown up now. And, the truth is, I met someone."
"Hnh." Sometimes Mom's silence felt a hell of a lot worse than when she was talking a mile a minute. I could picture dust bunnies rolling across the kitchen floor, except that was a total fabrication because there wasn't a single dust bunny that would survive the cleaning routine my Mom did religiously, and the kitchen floor was so clean you could eat off it.
My Dad cleared his throat. "Someone. Like a boy?"
Oh God, this wasn't going well. I swallowed hard. "Yeah, like a boy. Except, he's… a bit older than a boy. His name's Valentin, and I - I really, really like him."
"How much older?"
"Dad, don't freak out! He's a total gentleman. He rescued me from this drunk guy on the way back home and-"
"What drunk guy? Mia, I really think you need to be more careful. I don't want to switch the news on and have them talking about finding you behind the dumpsters of that theatre of yours."
"Dad, that's ridiculous. I'm not doing anything dangerous. I was literally on my way home. And anyway, like I said, Valentin was right there and he saved me, and he's so protective you don't even know."
"What's he got to be protective about? You're not his to protect."
"Dad! Come on."
"How much older?"
I pressed my lips together, wrinkling my nose, knowing that there was no point in trying to wiggle out of this one when they were going to find out sooner or later anyway. Better that they had the time to get used to the idea. Sure, I hadn't even talked to Valentin about this going anywhere yet, but after that kiss, how could it not? "He's thirty-two."
"Thirty-two! You're telling me he's old enough to be your father."
"No, Dad. I'm not telling you that. I don't think he was running around becoming a father when he was sixteen!"
"That's because you don't know sixteen year old boys. Scum the lot of them."
"Well he doesn't have kids. And it's not like that. He - he makes me feel special. I really like him. I think maybe I even love him. When I'm with him, everything just slips into place and the world makes sense in a way it never usually does and-"
"Okay, Mia. We get it honey. Your father just needs a bit of time to…. Take all this in, you know? I mean, all this time everything's been ballet-ballet-ballet…"
"I know, Mom. I know, and it still is. I just - I want to be with him so much."
I heard her sniff and I realized I could hear the swell of tears in her voice. "You really are all grown up. Oh, Mia. Why’d you have to go all that way away? I can't even invite the guy over for dinner. Does he speak English? Tell me he speaks English."
I laughed, feeling tears of my own begin to trickle down my cheeks and I swiped them away. "Yes. He does. He went to college in England, and I would love if he could come to dinner to. But I never would have met him if I hadn't come here. It's got to be fate, don't you think?"
"Oh my God, how am I gonna argue with that? Listen to you, you're making me cry. It's just like one of your shows."
"Ballets, Mom. Ballets."
"That's what I said, one of your shows."
CHAPTER TEN
Valentin
The situation with Timoshenko already had me in a foul mood, but a broken night's sleep filled with nothing but tortured thoughts of Mia and exactly what I could have been doing with her, followed by a start so early it could have been classed as a late night just added to the mix.
Last night I was all set to take her up to my apartment and let what was mounting in the elevator between us play out. Riled up by the rush of what that drunken idiot could have done, I wanted to take her, to make her mine so that there was never any question. She was as desperate for me as I was for her but I could have killed Yuri for his insinuations, just because of the way they made her flush and pull away and refuse to look me in the eye.
I should have stopped Maria from pulling Mia out of my grasp. No one should have been able to make her question what was between us, but I knew why Mia let herself be pulled away. She is young and innocent, and Maria was looking at her like she hadn't expected behavior like that from her.
The woman was a snake - and she'd tried it with me before she lured Yuri in. She knew exactly who I was even before Yuri, one of Timoshenko's worthless lackies confirmed it for her. I imagined that with him she thought she might get the same kind of status she craved, but I knew better than she did that all Bratva men were far from equal.
I would have stormed down to their apartment and gone to take Mia back, but what would have been the point of that when I could see she was already embarrassed and maybe regretting being so forward and so eager? Better to bide my time, to see her again when we'd both had a chance to reflect. Even though that was the last thing I truly wanted, because that would be days away now.
This meetings in Siberia were the last thing I wanted, and it turned out the bossman himself had cancelled at the last minute, leaving me to deal with our outliers alone, seeing as I only found that out when I switched my phone out of airplane mode when I stepped off my flight and the message came through.
Viktor looked at me with a raised brow as I growled at the screen and shoved it back into my jacket pocket.
We'd arrived at the typical barren outlook of the land that was so inhospitable for so much of the year. Out here, people lived remotely in secure compounds guarded by dogs to keep away the chancers who thought that they could take everything from you as long as they had more firepower. When there wasn't snow and ice, there was infertile, gritty terrain with only the smallest, most hardy plants surviving in the tundra beneath the stark blue of the sky.
"Timoshenko sends his apologies." I was beginning to feel like sending me all the way out here was to get me out of Moscow. But there was nothing I could do about that now. I had to focus on the job. The only person who really mattered back in the city was Mia, and there was no way anybody could have known about the start of the relationship we were fostering when I hadn't even taken her out yet.
Viktor nodded. "How many contacts are we set to visit?"
Focus was what I needed to pull me through and I was grateful that Viktor was here to keep me on point. "Two today, and another further out tomorrow. There's a lot of distance to cover. Just be glad it's not winter."
Viktor's thin smile quirked at the corner of his mouth. "You don't like the snow?"
"Not in Siberia. It really doesn't mix with my Italian leather shoes." I let out a bark of a laugh, shaking my head. Out here, the snow was deadly and deep and silent, and a man could be made to disappear into the permafrost far too easily. At least with the majority of it melted, it was simply an inhospitable, partially tamed territory.
Security was what we did best here, even if it had started out back in the day as nothing more than a protection racket. Over the years, the needs for our services had taken on a more legitimate edge. I was visiting some of our larger clients who dealt in more dubious trades that were best kept well away from the eyes of either the cities, or the police in them.
Even if Timoshenko had planned this all along as an excuse to get me out of the city, I had to hope that I still had people I trusted in place when I returned to Moscow in a few days' time. And that the driver that was waiting for us wasn't tasked with more than taking us to where we needed to go.
After most of the the day in the back of a Jeep, I'd become even more short tempered, rattling off emails and connecting calls just for the pleasure of shouting at whoever was on the other end. Mid morning we'd pulled up to a compound surrounded by sturdy chain link fences, with guard dogs prowling the perimeters and security cameras that tracked our entrance, and the first of our meetings began.
These men were militia, and the most hospitality they offered was a bottle of vodka along with pickled herring, black bread and cheese when I could have done with a steak. But I wasn't about to snub what was on offer. Especially not when there were at least three Kalashnikovs to each of the handguns Viktor and I were carrying.
But after a round of shots to break the ice, our hosts couldn't do enough to sing the praises of the Bratva and what we'd done for them and while they eyed me with a little more suspicion, a few of the men took to comparing tattoos with Viktor, and after that it took hardly any time at all to get the new deal done and the relationship firmed up.
We stayed longer that I would have ideally liked, but it was the right amount of time to make sure our associates remained happy and then it was back in the car for another long drive.
Our next hosts showed us to a suit of rooms that looked, to my eye, more like an army barracks than any guest accommodation I had stayed in, but Viktor didn't seem perturbed as he sat down at the low coffee table and kicked back in one of the armchairs next to it.
"The windows are very well fitted," he commented, and I gave him a long look.
"Yes, I suppose they are."
"It is a good thing. Out here you do not want single glazing in badly fitted frames."
"That's true." The man's ability to see the best in a place as much at the edge of the civilized world as this might have impressed me any other day.
"I can smell cabbage soup. Do you like cabbage soup?"
I felt my jaw clench and I looked towards the door to the corridor, taking in the cooking smells. The man was right. There was no mistaking that aroma.
"I do, actually. My mother used to make it for us."
"Mine too."
Clearing his throat, Viktor set the plans for the St Petersburg security office down on the coffee table with more patience than a man of his brawn should have possessed. I could tell he was managing me, but I found I didn't mind that. Today I needed managing.
"What is this?"
Today I didn't want to do any of it. I wanted to be back in Moscow. To be able to go to the theatre and watch Mia in all of her rehearsals just for the pleasure of seeing her bend and flex and sweat.
"You need to sign the new lease."
I snorted and snatched up the paperwork, taking my pen out of my jacket pocket. "Why are you bothering me with this today?"
"I think that you need distraction from… all of this."
I growled. "I think it is not your place to tell me what I need. You are new here, Viktor, you will learn."
He let out a slow breath, and his head tilted to one side as though he was weighing up what I'd just said. "Perhaps. But we are in Siberia, and Timoshenko is in Moscow, quite comfortable, while he makes life difficult for you on a whim. I do know something of turning your back on your past."
My eyes narrowed dangerously. "That is not what I am doing. You betrayed the people of your city, justifiably, after they betrayed you. This takeover, it is not the same thing at all."
"I thought that Timoshenko had mentored you, brought you on."
"He did. And now it is time for him to step away and allow me to succeed him, just as he always planned."
I scratched a solid signature into the lease document and flipped through the pages to make sure there was nowhere else to sign before sliding it back across the table to the man.
"He didn't seem to be aware of that plan."
"I didn't seem to be aware that you have been promoted to my advisor." My smile was broad, and my tone was light, but anybody who knew me long enough found out that humor was never a good thing coming from me.
Viktor shook his head. "I'm not telling you to listen to me. You don't need that. But you should know that you have whatever you do need from me, Valentin. And not just from me, from everyone I have spoken to. We all know that your way is the way of the future."
I nodded shortly, tapping the end of my pen against my knee. "Thank you, Viktor. I appreciate that. I apologize that I have no patience today."
The whole evening was set to be a snare of complex negotiations that Timoshenko had avoided for half a decade and I didn't have the patience for. But I had to be the one in charge. Roman couldn't make the final tax decisions anymore than Maxim could decide for himself who needed to be disposed of, or Ivan could decide to expand across more New York boroughs. There had to be a man at the helm, and that man had been me for
a long time, no matter what delusions Timoshenko was laboring under.
"I will place some security on the girl," Viktor put in as he put the paperwork back in order and filed it away. "Perhaps that will set your mind at ease."
"What? What girl?" It startled me that he had noticed that I had taken an interest in anyone, let alone that he knew who Mia was, and I realized right then and there that if he knew then Timoshenko most certainly knew as well.
Viktor paused. "The dancer. On the floor below. The American."
I gritted my teeth. "Very good Viktor. But tell them to keep a distance. I don't want her to know."
He nodded. "Of course not. I understand. She is like my wife. She would not appreciate being used as a chess piece."
"She is not a chess piece."
"But perhaps Timoshenko will try to make her one."
My jaw clenched and I tightened my fists. Already Viktor was making it easier for me to envision myself killing the man who I'd come to believe had to be my father. No one, not even him, would get away with putting Mia in danger.
"You must make sure that cannot happen."
"Of course, Mr. Rozhkov. You have my word."
I nodded, looking up from the table to catch his eye. "Thank you Viktor. You are a good man. I do appreciate it."
Mia
Every day since the start of the week, a dozen roses with my name on the card turned up in the dressing room after the show.
The only person I would have wanted sending me flowers was Valentin, but that didn't seem remotely likely given that I hadn't so much as seen him since the night he'd rescued me from whatever that drunk guy had wanted to do.
I couldn't understand why he hadn't shown up at the studio like he usually did in the morning. Had he regretted kissing me so badly, or was he insulted that I'd let my roommate pull me away from him like he was dangerous? I felt so foolish for telling my parents all about him when barely anything had happened between us. I didn't even have a way of contacting him, and no one answered when I went to knock on his apartment door.
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