by Bethany-Kris
“I picked it up for her, actually.”
“Ah, well ... I liked that, too.”
The two men quieted as Vaslav went back to his target practice. He was halfway through destroying the items one at a time when the tingling started in his left hand. The one he was using to shoot.
At first, he just tried to shake it away. The hard crack of his wrist with every wag of his hand did nothing to rid the pins and needles starting to crawl higher up his arm.
Igor, not noticing Vaslav’s plight, said, “Kiril called with an update on the Italy situation. Seems your newest conquest is—”
“Don’t call her that.”
His right-hand man glanced his way, brows furrowed tightly together. “I can’t call her your fiancée, can I? She’s not said yes, Vas.”
“And don’t remind me of that, either. I am working on it.”
“Right, by letting her take off to Italy.”
“Well, I didn’t have much of a choice in that, no?”
Igor didn’t reply.
He also didn’t need to.
Feliks, being the coward that he was, had decided to lie to Vera about the construction happening at The Swan House. Apparently, a waterline break had been the reason for her recent stretch of time off, according to Igor who had his ears and eyes to the ground at all times. Which was also why the hacker hired to keep track of Vera’s online footprint had received an alert early in the week about a round-trip flight she’d purchased to Italy. Vaslav didn’t fault Igor for doing what had to be done with what means he had to do it with—which just happened to be sending the only man with a passable forged passport to keep an eye on Vera from afar.
One that wouldn’t ask too many questions, who would do his job as expected, and a man that Vaslav wouldn’t kill when he returned to the country.
Well ...
They couldn’t really call Kiril a man, could they? He was barely beyond puberty.
“Her little friend—”
“Hannah, you said,” Vas muttered.
“Right, this ... Hannah. Are you aware of her connection to Viktor Antonovich? As in, the fact that they were married and recently divorced?”
“Vaguely.”
That was a lie. Vaslav rarely cared to concern himself with the personal affairs of his men, and weddings were the one thing he refused to attend regardless of who stood on the altar. The opinion of vory was split damn near down the middle on the topic of wives and children. Half of the men involved in the brotherhood came from a different time where their values and expectations did not include recognizing children or marrying women that could pose concerns to the nature of their lifestyles.
He’d never cared either way.
It wasn’t a rule he enforced, either.
“What importance does her friend’s connection to a brigadier in my organization have anything to do with her sudden trip to Italy?” Vaslav asked.
“Nothing. Just making you aware.”
“You think she’s running there for information?”
Igor scoffed at that. “What would her friend know, Vas? I can’t see Viktor spilling his guts in bed every night to the woman—from what I was told, all he cared to do was slap her around anyway.”
That made Vas blink. “Huh.”
Beside him, Igor sighed. “Nonetheless, Kiril said she’s settled in.”
“At her friend’s home?”
“An apartment in Milan, yes.”
And she did buy a round-trip ticket.
“By his account—Kiril, I mean—he said her friend appeared happy to see her, and they haven’t done much the past couple of days. He’s close enough to keep an eye on them at this point. That’s all I can ask considering she didn’t give me any time to work out a better method of watching her.”
Well, to do that ... Vera would need to know Vaslav was watching her. At the moment, he wasn’t sure she’d like that very much even if he was doing it for her safety.
Mostly.
“Good,” Vaslav grunted as he pushed away from the gun and up from the ground.
“You aren’t done,” Igor said, glancing between Vas and the targets down below the hill. “I was just getting into it.”
Vas gestured at the gun with his right hand. “You’re welcome to it, comrade.”
Igor looked him up and down. “What’s wrong?”
Oh, nothing much.
He shrugged ... well, tried. “Seems my left arm has gone numb.”
Entirely.
From fingertip to shoulder.
That couldn’t be good.
11.
“Bella, bellissima!”
The jeer from the passing man accompanied his gawking stare that lingered a second too long on Vera where she relaxed poolside. He said something else she couldn’t understand, after which he licked his lips, and nodded her way like he wanted a response.
Behind her opaque sunglasses, she glared back at the man, but otherwise, didn’t respond as he continued on by her reclined lounge chair. Italian men had little to no problem offering any woman a compliment if they thought it was deserved, but that didn’t mean Vera had to like being leered at like a piece of meat on display just because she wanted to wear a white bikini and sit beside the pool.
Barely a minute later, Hannah finally joined her friend. Although, unlike Vera, Hannah plopped down in the lounger beside hers with a sheer wrap draped over her shoulders, a wide-brimmed, floppy sunhat blocking the bright rays from her face, and a pair of tightly laced runners on her feet. All of which told Vera that her friend had no intention of getting in the pool that morning.
“I slept in again,” Hannah said in a sigh, propping her chin up in her hand.
“Could be the bottle of wine you downed last night.”
Hannah seemed more concerned with scanning the scattered residents of the Milan apartment lingering around the pool than giving Vera’s comment any attention. It wasn’t as if Vera thought Hannah had a drinking problem, really. Wine was just the one way her friend chose to relax and blow off steam. The one glass at dinner could easily turn to a half of a bottle by the time desert was brought to the table, and by that point, a person might as well just finish the damn thing off.
Which Hannah did.
Who wouldn’t sleep in after that?
“Is your mom gone?” Vera asked, glancing Hannah’s way.
“Yeah, she’s got a magazine thing ...” Hannah waved a hand flippantly, adding, “A shoot for an interview. Or something.”
“You should really consider getting your own place especially if you plan to stay in Milan.”
“I should.”
“But?” Vera pressed.
Because she heard the but. Even if her friend didn’t say it.
Hannah shrugged under the flimsy, flowing fabric of her shawl, smiling just a bit. “I mean, the building has great security, Ma is only around a couple of days a week, and I’m still trying to figure out things, you know?”
“I guess.”
The bob of Hannah’s throat when she swallowed told her friend that she had forced back words she didn’t want to say. It only took one word, though, for Vera to really understand why Hannah had yet to leave the Milan apartment she now called home alongside her former supermodel mother.
“Viktor,” Hannah muttered, indifferent.
“Has he even left Russia since the divorce?”
“Not that I know of, but he also doesn’t need to. Someone else could show up. It doesn’t have to be him to get the job done. “
Vera’s brow furrowed. “What job?”
A sigh passed Hannah’s pursed lips. “Getting rid of me?”
“Hannah.”
To that, her friend lifted one shoulder like she was silently asking, “Did I lie?”
“Don’t say things like that,” Vera told her.
“Not saying it won’t make it any less true, Vera.”
“Yeah, I know, but—”
Hannah glanced her way, smiling softly again as she
interjected with, “Maybe it’s easier for me to say because I heard it over and over and over again. Something he just drilled into my head every chance he could. Makes you a little numb to the whole idea.”
God.
Deep in her chest, Vera’s heart and lungs constricted from the swell of emotions that threatened to spill her tears down her cheeks. Before she could manage to form a reply—not that it would be anything that could make the two of them feel better about the domestic violence that plagued Hannah’s marriage—her friend readjusted on the lounger to recline back in the same way Vera had done with hers.
“You even start wishing for it after a while,” Hannah whispered.
No, that one did it, actually.
That comment had the tears welling and falling the next time Vera blinked behind her sunglasses. Maybe it was the picture her mind was able to conjure up of her friend, bruised and beaten, cowering, and defeated, hoping death would come so then the man who was supposed to love her would stop hitting her.
Hannah didn’t say whether she noticed Vera wiping away the streaks of wetness that slipped down beyond the large frames of her sunglasses.
“Maybe staying here with your mom is better,” Vera said.
“Yeah,” Hannah agreed quietly. “Maybe.”
A part of Vera wanted to ask Hannah what that meant for her life, though. What kind of a life could she have when she still felt like, despite putting a legal divorce and entire countries between her and her ex-husband, she wasn’t safe or free?
Instead, she chose not to ask anything at all.
It wasn’t the time, and Hannah’s ex also wasn’t why Vera made the surprise trip to Italy. She bet it was far easier for her friend to put it all in the back of her mind when someone wasn’t constantly talking about Viktor, too.
Hannah didn’t seem to mind the silence, and minutes crawled by with the two of them enjoying nothing more than the view beyond the tall, iron fence protecting the pool and each other’s company. Vera had to give her friend credit—there was no way Hannah didn’t suspect that something was up when her friend knocked on her door without warning. All the same, she hadn’t asked a thing.
She didn’t even bring up Paris.
Yet.
The familiar beep of Vera’s phone where she’d kept it safe from the sun in her bag under the lounge chair broke the silence. Hannah turned her way as Vera pulled the bag out, and fished for the phone. Once she had it in her hand, and could see the name flashing on her screen, she opted to ignore the call, turn off the device altogether, and shove the phone back into the bag without a second thought.
Hannah quirked an eyebrow high, asking, “Who was that?”
Vera sighed. “My father.”
“Since when do you ignore Demyan Avdonin’s calls?”
Well ...
“Since I found out he was still having me watched by someone on his payroll,” Vera returned.
Hannah made a face. “Ouch.”
“Oh, he’ll say it’s to keep me safe, and that I never even notice ...”
And a bunch of other bullshit that wouldn’t make any difference to the way it made Vera feel. Like she wasn’t her own person capable of making her own choices. Even if he let her think she was and could do those things, he was still somewhere in the shadows making sure he approved of each and every one.
“So, you just don’t want to talk to him about it?” Hannah pressed.
Vera nibbled on the inside of her lower lip, mumbling, “Sort of.”
“I don’t understand. Either you do or you don’t so—”
“Oh, I assume that part of it will come up eventually, but he’s probably more concerned with what he knows than what I do at the moment.”
Hannah’s confusion reflected in her expression.
Vera tried to laugh it off.
“I don’t get it. What does he know, Vera?”
Right.
The question of the hour.
“My involvement with a man he wouldn’t approve of,” Vera admitted. “Vaslav Pashkov—the man I was with in Paris.”
She expected Hannah’s silence, and even the way her friend eyed her from the side like she was trying to piece together a puzzle in front of her. That puzzle being Vera and her secrets.
“I didn’t recognize him,” Hannah said after a long minute.
Vera nodded, laughing weakly. “Me, either.”
At first.
“That’s a very dangerous man, Vera.”
Oh, she knew.
She didn’t need to be told.
“He’s also just a man at the end of the day,” Vera replied.
A man she thought might be lonely, who was likely ill even if he wouldn’t admit it, and there was a part of her that never let him be too far from her mind now. That was the really crazy part. Or maybe just the scary side of it.
Vera tipped her head in Hannah’s direction when her friend didn’t say anything else, asking, “What, do you want to warn me about him? You can. I won’t even stop you.”
Hannah released a shaky exhale. “One time, I heard Viktor talking with a friend about the man they called their boss.”
“And?”
She didn’t realize Viktor was a man under Vaslav’s control or employment. Frankly, she barely thought about him at all if she could help it.
“The first time he went to prison, he was thirteen.”
Vera picked at her nails. “Huh.”
“For killing a man.”
“Not the last, likely.”
In fact, she was pretty positive about it.
“Vera.”
“What?” she asked, avoiding Hannah’s intense stare.
“Do you know what he’s involved in? Like Viktor, I mean, they’re basically the same, and—”
“Like my father,” Vera interrupted calmly. “Like my grandfather, and brother and every other man in my life and family, you mean?”
Hannah slumped back into the lounge chair.
Vera only shrugged, muttering, “Yeah, Hannah, I know what the stars on his chest mean and that he’ll never tell me the truth about it. It’s still just ... skin under the ink, though.”
And under that inked skin was a beating heart, she knew. Probably one that was battered and broken. One that was filled with loneliness and anger.
“I know he’s dangerous,” Vera murmured softly as a couple strolled past their chairs, “but that doesn’t have to mean he’s dangerous for me.”
“Actually,” Hannah replied, “that’s almost always what it means, Vera.”
Between them, that’s where she knew Hannah and her would always be different. Despite how annoyed she was at her father, the fact that he was a criminal at the head of an organization responsible for trafficking guns and drugs ... he was still her dad. A man with a family that loved him; the same man who had cried when Vera told him she wanted to move to Russia because he didn’t want to let his only daughter go without him there to keep her safe. Her daddy who played pretend tea, let her paint his nails, and read her five bedtime stories every night, no matter what.
And he was there ...
Every night to tuck her in, every morning to see her off to school, and at every competition to cheer her on.
“I know because of Viktor you think that men in the mafiya are all the same,” Vera started.
Hannah scoffed, glancing away. “They are.”
“They’re not, though.”
She didn’t bother to explain why. Hannah wouldn’t care or want to hear the reasons, and frankly, she was allowed to feel that way without Vera’s opinion on the matter. The fact that she could see beyond what made a man a monster because of her upbringing was not exactly something that Hannah could comprehend never mind empathize with—she was well aware that her morals in that regard skewed to the gray side of things.
Not everything was black and white.
“Just ... promise me you’ll be careful?” Hannah asked as an unfamiliar, muffled ringing echoed around them.
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Hannah soon produced the reason for the ringing. Her own cell phone that she had tucked into the bra cup of her bikini under the sheer wrap. Her friend’s brow dipped low as she stared at the screen. The phone rang once more before Hannah swiped at the screen, and it stopped ringing altogether.
“I don’t pick up numbers I don’t recognize,” she explained.
“Because it might be him?” Vera asked.
Viktor, she meant.
Hannah nodded as she squinted down at the phone once more. “He’s done it before—did it a lot, up until recently. He likes to fuck with my head, but it’s all just a mental game now, so that’s kind of easy compared to the part I don’t have to deal with anymore.”
Her defensive tone chilled Vera because in that moment she realized her friend wasn’t always honest with her. While they talked every day, distance still separated them. Hannah might say on a video chat that things were great, and Viktor wasn’t even a thought in her mind, but Vera couldn’t confirm that was the case. Less than ten seconds later, Hannah’s phone beeped before she could tuck it away.
“What’s that?” Vera asked.
“A voicemail. Whoever it was left me a message.”
Not that she had any reason to let Vera listen to the message, but her friend put the phone on speaker when she dialed through to her voicemail. It took all but one word—a Russian greeting—for both women to recognize the voice on the message.
Viktor.
“Hannah, baby girl, I’m sure you’re wondering how I found your new number, but that’s not really important, is it, no? We are so past that,” the asshole said after barely saying hello. Then, Viktor got right to the point of his call, barking, “About your old friend, Vera—I heard through the grapevine that she’s been out to see you recently. I have some information about her that I’d like to confirm if you wouldn’t mind giving me a call back. Wouldn’t want her finding any trouble, would we? I’ll be chatting with you soon. Don’t sleep on it.”
Hannah blinked at the screen of her phone as the message ended, and the voicemail moved on to the options available. She opted to delete the message.
Vera stayed still on the lounge chair while her mind raced a million miles a minute. “What do you think the chances are that his information is about Vaslav?”