The Lies Between Lovers (The Beast of Moscow Book 2)

by Bethany-Kris

  “Did you just ...” Feliks leaned in closer to inspect the door. “Chisel the fucking lock out?”

  “With a very good knife,” Vas responded dully. “The others, though—well, they just needed a bit of prying, no?”

  “The others?”

  Feliks didn’t hesitate to step inside the office at the news to see the rest of the chaos Vaslav’s surprise visit had brought along with his presence. Every filing cabinet and drawer that had been locked in the office was now busted. He hadn’t been kind about the way he dug through the man’s—and the business—documents. Scattered papers and files littered the floor. Years’ worth.

  He didn’t even bother to close the drawers of one cabinet before he moved on to the next in search of what he wanted to find. Eventually, he did. Amongst other things.

  “What in the ... why, Vas?”

  “I needed to find something,” he said simply, waving the file in his hand.

  Feliks’ gaze narrowed in on him as he took a step toward Vas where he sat behind the desk. His shoes, likely the same ones he’d been wearing at the funeral earlier, scuffed against the floor covered in discarded papers. It would take the man a good month to get them all filed back in place, but he’d probably hire the job out to someone else.

  “Is that—”

  “The file of employee V-A-T-S-H-point-oh-two-four,” Vaslav interjected.

  “Vera.”

  A tiny, but cruel, smile answered Feliks.

  Then, Vaslav said, “I see her contract ran out a short time ago.”

  “So it seems.”

  “And the file was a little disjointed from the others in the cabinet. Once I had the drawer open, it was the first one I pulled out because it was that noticeable.”

  “Meaning what?” Feliks returned hotly.

  “That you’ve recently been looking at it.”

  “I could have been in that cabinet for any number of reasons! This is my office!”

  “Namely, her. Yes?”

  He didn’t expect an answer.

  Not really.

  Feliks swallowed hard, his throat bobbing with the action. “Get out of my fucking office.”

  “Before or after I put a bullet in your brain?”

  “For what?”

  “I have an entire list of reasons, Feliks. Starting with whose blood runs through your veins,” Vaslav said before he threw the file with little concern to the desk, uncaring when the papers inside spilled out and to the floor as Feliks watched. Entirely helpless. “And ending somewhere around your involvement with that woman right there.”

  “Vera,” the man said.

  Again.

  Vaslav hated her name in his mouth. He despised the way Feliks said it, even when it was colored with his confusion. Even if it was the same way every other person in this godforsaken country would say it, Vaslav utterly loathed the sound coming from the man across from him.

  “I will literally split your tongue straight down the middle and watch you drown in your blood if you do that again,” Vaslav warned the man. “Test me.”

  Feliks’ brow knotted in the middle. “Do what—what in the fuck is wrong with you?”

  Many things.

  He had a whole list for that, too.

  “I know you’re crazier than batshit,” Feliks said, “on your good days, yeah, but I have done my very best to make my existence non-existent to you, Vas. Why can’t that be good enough?”

  Vaslav cocked his head to the side, his gaze narrowing into slits. “How much was Nico planning to float you for The Swan House to get you through the year?”

  Still confused, Feliks let out an anxious laugh. “I don’t know. What does that even matter or have anything to do with why you’re here? We had only discussed the initial—”

  “What were the plans for the money?”

  “It wasn’t going to anything outside of The Swan House, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I wasn’t. What were the plans for the money?”

  If he had to ask again, Feliks was going to learn just what Vaslav planned to use to split his tongue. And it was not his very sharp knife. More like the dull edge of the man’s letter opener on his desk.

  “You have to understand—”

  Vas stood from the desk, already reaching for the letter opener that Feliks had left on the edge of the desk.

  “To fund a production,” Feliks rushed to say. Whether or not he had figured out Vaslav’s next intentions without being told, he didn’t care. “Or mostly, to fund the production side of the company because I have nothing left over after classes and students are paid for. Even the scouts haven’t pulled in the money it used to over the last couple of years. We might as well be garbage to the rest of the ballet world at this point.”

  Fascinating.

  “She always said you’d run it into the ground,” Vas mused.

  Feliks stiffened.

  He didn’t ask who.

  There was only one her between them.

  Irina.

  “She wanted to walk away from it,” Feliks returned, his words almost a hiss.

  “Well, who was willing to play your father’s games, hmm?”

  That shut the man up.

  Fast.

  “And look who lost because of it,” Vaslav added, quieter, too low for Feliks to hear.

  “What do you want?”

  “Ah, the important question. Well done.”

  “Vas, just get on with it and leave me alone,” Feliks said, exasperated.

  Didn’t he know?

  The only peace he’d find was in a grave.

  “Seven-point-seven trillion,” Vaslav said.

  Feliks scrubbed a hand over his face, a sigh muffled into his palm. “I can’t read your fucking mind, okay? None of us can despite the number of bodies you’ve dumped at people’s feet trying to prove we should. I’m going to need more information to go on here.”

  “That’s how much I’ll give you to never speak to that woman again. Seven-point-seven trillion rubles. It averages out to a little more than a hundred million US dollars. That should be enough, yes?”

  “Uh—”

  “To fund whatever here,” Vaslav supplied when the man blanked.

  Feliks’ mouth opened and closed several times. His previously suspicious gaze was rounder than ever as he blank stared the man behind the desk. “You really are crazy, aren’t you?”

  “This conversation is getting very boring.”

  And dangerous because of it.

  For Feliks, of course.

  “She intended to quit, did she not?” Vaslav asked. “From her mouth, that’s what she said to me. Is she a liar?”

  “I never said that.”

  “If she’s already intending to quit, you have no contract to hold her under, and I am offering you a payday to cut her off from The Swan House as an employee, then what do you have to lose, Feliks?”

  The man eyed him hard, his teeth chewing on his inner cheek while he considered Vaslav. Eventually, Feliks muttered, “Because it isn’t that simple with you. Nothing is that simple with you, Vaslav. What are you trying to gain? What do you want?”

  Vas sat down and leaned back in the chair, chuckling as he opened his clasped hands wide when he replied, “Oh, don’t worry. I’m working on that.”

  “What?”

  “What?” Vaslav returned.

  Feliks blinked, more confused than ever.

  “Right,” Vaslav grumbled, standing from the chair and moving out around the desk. He didn’t pause in his stroll, or even look over his shoulder, as he passed Feliks by the mess of the man’s office. “Well, now seems like the best time to head out, yeah? I’ll know when she does—you’ll get your money then.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense!” Feliks called at his back.

  Oh, but didn’t it?

  *

  Tires screeched on the weaving driveway of the old, looming Federal Colonial. Vaslav didn’t even bother to look away from the darkening sky
overhead to watch Igor’s SUV take the driveway faster than it typically would. He hated the way the property looked in autumn. Everything lost its color. Every tree shed its leaves. Slowly, what looked alive, seemed to die.

  Then, winter came.

  It always happened too fast for his liking.

  It was only when he heard the door of the SUV slam shut that Vaslav finally dropped his gaze from the sky. Lifting the cigar to his lips for a hard drag, he studied every single one of Igor’s furious steps toward him. The man’s fists remained clenched at his sides, and he tried to keep his expression neutral, but Vaslav wasn’t fooled.

  Igor was pissed.

  “Where have you been?” his man asked.

  Vaslav coughed out an exhale and eyed the cherry red tip of the cigar. “Been too long, I think.”

  “For what?”

  “This—it’s too old.”

  “Doesn’t that make your migraines worse?”

  “Terrible,” Vaslav confirmed, taking another long pull that burned even worse. He reveled in it, though.

  The fact was, he’d not had a migraine since the morning he left Paris and he wasn’t wasting one more second when he’d truly earned that nicotine today.

  “I went back to the church, and guess who wasn’t there?” Igor asked, rolling the two of them back to his original question without him needing to repeat it. Smart man.

  “I snagged a drive from an old friend,” he replied in a shrug. “Which I assume you figured out.”

  “Not easily, boss.”

  Vaslav rolled the end of the cigar between his teeth, saying, “I had to pay Feliks a visit.”

  Igor turned to stone in the drive while Vaslav continued to smoke his cigar, leaving trailing plumes of gray lifting toward a blackening canvas. At least, they had the stars. Wide skies full of endless possibilities everywhere one looked.

  “You’re doing it again,” Igor said quietly.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “This,” the man clarified firmly. “Making decisions and doing things without explaining what or why. Leaving me to figure it out by putting together a puzzle without all the pieces. Feliks is the thorn in your side that you won’t remove—goddammit, Vas, how many times are you going to threaten to kill the man before you finally do it?”

  “Who said I went there to threaten him?”

  “Did you threaten him?” Igor returned just as fast.

  “I did, but I didn’t go there to do it.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense!”

  It wasn’t like Igor to shout.

  He knew better.

  That wasn’t even what bothered Vaslav the most.

  “You sound just like Feliks; too fucking dense to string together my sentences in a way you understand. What, do I need to paint you an entire picture for you to see it?”

  Igor sneered, biting back whatever reply he knew better than to say, as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re going to give me a fucking stroke, Vas, yeah?”

  “That won’t help with your picture problem, comrade.”

  “Feliks showed up with Vera; she fell, and you took it personally—I get the fucking picture!”

  This time, it was Vaslav’s turn to stiffen.

  “I let the first one slide,” he told Igor, his voice dipping dangerously low.

  Vaslav didn’t even need to specify what he meant; Igor knew.

  “My apologies,” Igor muttered, dropping his hand to his side and staring Vas straight in the eyes. “But I tend to get worked up when the man I have indebted my life to protecting—who is also ill and refuses to admit he is—takes off for over half a day and shows back up without a word. I didn’t mean to yell.”

  “Mira called you, then?”

  Igor nodded. “She noticed the car that dropped you off at the gate.”

  “Kiril—”

  “He’s one of the best spies I have in the brotherhood watching the captains and their business,” Igor interjected before Vaslav could get another word out about the young man he’d hitched a ride with that day. “I know he’s barely sixteen, but he’s born and raised in their streets, he’s a rat they don’t even look for anymore. I can’t get close enough to any vory in this organization to trust them. They don’t trust me when everything they know about me is you. I am working with what I have to make sure everybody stays in line.”

  “I was only going to say that he is a little young,” Vaslav said. “And he talks too much.”

  He barely even had to pay the young man any mind. Kiril was simply one of a handful of people that Vaslav knew Igor kept close at hand for various reasons, which meant he could trust the boy to follow a simple direction.

  “And that his ID is a terrible forgery,” he added.

  Igor palmed the side of his neck. “But he’s a better driver than me. And his fake passport works for most everything anyway.”

  Vaslav chuckled. “That is true. Get him another ID—one that’ll at least pass inspection.”

  “All right,” Igor replied, his tone dropping in confusion.

  “And this, as well, while you’re on the task. I’ve included the information that should be used to make a new one.”

  “What?”

  Vaslav produced a tri-folded stack of papers from the inner pocket of his jacket. Handing the documents over, he squinted one eye as the first stabs of pain began to spear behind his left eye. Fuck.

  Too much cigar smoke.

  It was also too late, now.

  “That,” he said once the papers he’d taken from The Swan House were in Igor’s hands. “I want a forgery—a passable one; it all has to look legal, you know—for that, Igor.”

  Igor unfolded the papers, the thickest one on top was really the only important one in the pile. With all its official letterheads and yellowed edges, even an idiot would understand what they currently held in their hands.

  “That’s the deed,” Igor stated, his gaze lifting over the edge of the papers to meet Vaslav’s.

  He grinned back, nodding. “To The Swan House, yes.”

  Igor’s attention dropped back to the document. “I don’t think I do have the whole picture, actually.”

  “Well, that’s fine, too. Sometimes you don’t need to.”

  6.

  Vera really needed to get better about checking the peephole in her front door, or even the decoratively frosted windows on either side, before just opening it up to whomever was ringing the doorbell. Or in this case, knocking on the glass.

  As she hadn’t checked before swinging the door open to ask just what the person was knocking on the glass with—because the loud ting that accompanied each knock didn’t sound like a bare-knuckle rap—she wasn’t ready to find the man who stood waiting on her front stoop.

  “Vaslav,” Vera said, not even in a greeting.

  Her visitor’s gaze drifted down her figure in the doorway, making her fist tighten a bit into the top of the large, white bath towel she’d used to wrap herself in when she heard the knocking after exiting the shower.

  “I have a doorbell,” she told him, eyeing the many rings on his fingers that were likely the cause of the strange noise on the glass.

  “Are you busy?” he asked.

  Glancing around the side of him, she was surprised to find no one waiting on the sidewalk.

  “I just got out of the shower, actually,” she replied. “Where’s Igor?”

  Vaslav shrugged. “Working. Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “I’m not allowed to drive myself,” he explained as she finally noticed the car he’d parked on the street in front of her villa. “Or that’s what useless papers from doctors say. I may have taken the car out while he was off doing his own business.”

  “Is that a—”

  “A Ghost, yes. I had it imported a couple of years ago. I keep it in the shed along the side of the property where it’s out of the weather.”

  He stepped aside a bit so she could have a better view of the Rolls-Royce. She
would not expect him to drive around in a white car because there was nothing quiet about the vehicle. Rolls had a beefy appearance from the large grill and hood ornament in the front to the overall boxy shape. People couldn’t help but look when the engine of a Rolls-Royce roared down a street.

  They also weren’t terribly common in Russia. In fact, she was sure the company had recently suspended sales and manufacturing in the country making the vehicle an even rarer sight.

  “Aren’t you worried someone might notice it?” she asked.

  “Not really. It’s only been driven a handful of times, and not for anything in particular that someone would know it’s mine.”

  “Wait, you said you weren’t supposed to drive?”

  At that question, Vaslav shifted his stance back in front of her doorway, effectively blocking off her view—or mostly—of the car. Instead, he put all of her attention right back on him. In a slate gray crew neck, cable knit cashmere sweater and tan khaki pants with sensible leather loafers, a person might think he was just out for a day of visiting. She couldn’t remember seeing him dressed in anything less than a button-down shirt and properly pressed pants. Usually with a blazer nearby to throw on just in case. He’d even trimmed his beard down by a good inch since their trip to Paris, and she had to admit, he cleaned up well.

  “Can’t and won’t aren’t the same thing,” Vaslav eventually replied.

  “That sounds like the difference between getting caught ... or not.”

  “Well, you said it. Not me. And you didn’t answer me—are you busy?”

  Gesturing at the towel she wore, Vera said, “I said I just got out of the shower.”

  “And then?”

  She suppressed the grin trying to form at his persistence. “It is Saturday, so—”

  “So nothing?” Vaslav asked, lifting a single brow.

  Well ...

  Vera shrugged one bare shoulder. “I don’t really have a life—as a few people have pointed out to me lately—so no, I don’t have any plans.”

  Instantly, his face darkened. “Who says those things?”

  “Nobody important,” she lied.

  It was the dark edge creeping into his tone that sent a shiver rolling down Vera’s still-damp spine. She hadn’t even bothered to wrap her hair into a towel before coming to answer the door.