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

by Bethany-Kris

  “And there’s more than four walls in the master suite—there’s an entire three rooms, practically,” Vaslav added after a long pause between the two.

  “Not really what I was getting at, boss.”

  Yeah, he figured.

  Except he wouldn’t go there. That part of Vera’s stay, how he kept her naked and wet; needy, so tender and hungry in a way food wouldn’t fill, was not something Vaslav would ever share.

  He needed it to stay in his mind.

  One day he might forget.

  “And,” Igor muttered as the elevator shuddered its way down the shaft twenty feet, inch by slow inch, “if we’re sharing and being honest without getting a gun to the back of the head—”

  “Who brought the gun?” He nodded Igor’s way. “We are going to need that, hmm?”

  Igor scoffed. “You’ll just use mine.”

  Well ...

  “Fair enough,” Vaslav said in a sigh.

  “I was starting to think you were scared of the master rooms,” Igor said quietly. “No offense, of course.”

  Also, fair.

  “Honestly,” Vaslav returned, “because apparently we’re doing that, you and me—I thought I was scared of it, too.”

  He could feel the elevator hit the bottom, and in the three seconds it took for the door to begin creeping open, Igor asked, “But?”

  “But I felt nothing there.”

  Except now.

  Now he couldn’t wait to get back upstairs.

  Vaslav stepped out of the elevator first, but Igor quickly followed. Another metal door—although this one wasn’t reflective and took two men to open after the code was correctly spun into the tiny dial of ten symbols consisting of Cyrillic letters and dots of various numbers.

  Vaslav waited as Igor spun the code in—the only soul on the planet other than him that knew it. There was no ventilation in the room hidden by the ten-inch-thick steel door. No windows when it was deep in the basement. A person had about twenty-four hours, give or take a few, before they would run out of air in what was essentially a safe room.

  Except he’d never used it to keep people safe.

  Quite the opposite.

  Once the two had pulled the door open using the bar that had been welded on to act as a handle, light spilled into the small space between the elevator and the room made of cement. The single light bulb inside flickered, but it was enough for Vaslav to see who waited for him inside.

  “I see you made it back from Italy, pup,” he told the young man sitting in the corner.

  The bound and gagged lump in the other corner wasn’t even conscious for him to give a shit about so he focused on the first issue at hand. Igor’s pet project that seemed to be showing up more and more. Kiril. “You’re going to have to be quicker with the girl, Kiril. Especially if you’re going to be trailing her on and off. A step ahead, you know?”

  The young man using the wall to push his heels on while he precariously balanced a metal folding chair on two out of four legs barely glanced up over the cell phone in his hands that he tapped at with his thumbs.

  “Yeah, but I don’t even like flying,” Kiril muttered, never looking away from the screen.

  “Is that all he does?” Vas asked Igor.

  To his benefit, Igor headed beyond Vaslav and snatched the phone out of the sixteen-year-old’s hand despite the shouted, indignant hey from Kiril that followed. The kid even had the nerve to look offended.

  “That’s mine! I almost beat the damn level, and the battery is about fuckin’ dead, you prick!”

  Igor’s hand swatted the kid hard enough on the back of the head that he actually let the chair fall to four legs. “Knock it off. What did I tell you, yeah?”

  Rubbing at the back of his head and scowling, Kiril glowered at the heap starting to move in the corner. “Well, I was watching him. I did like you said. And then he wouldn’t shut up, even if he is gagged. I can only take so much of that, Igor. It’s four walls, a lightbulb, and a fuckin’ chair in here. What do you want me to do?”

  “So?”

  “So, I knocked his ass out,” Kiril returned. Then, he looked to Vaslav, shrugging. “Not a hard whack, or anything.”

  “With what, pup?”

  Kiril made a face. “Maybe the chair. Maybe not.”

  Well, okay, then. He appreciated the semblance of honesty.

  “Eh,” Vaslav grunted, watching the slow rise and fall of slumped shoulders from the man crumpled in a heap in the corner. “It’s alive. Best one can do.”

  “Until you kill him.”

  Vas glanced Kiril’s way again. “Who said I was going to do it?”

  “Vas,” Igor warned quietly.

  He didn’t pay the man any mind, and only tore his sharp gaze away from Kiril to put his attention back on the reason why they were all there this late at night. He could have been upstairs burying his dick into wet pussy that smelled like sex and sin while he made his broken ballerina make the prettiest music with all her sounds ...

  Instead, he was here.

  “Kiril, you’re cleaning up,” Vaslav said.

  Kiril made a curious huh. “What?”

  “Vas, I can handle—” Igor tried to interject.

  Never looking back at the teenager who Vaslav found mildly amusing and partially useful, he told Igor to settle the matter, “If he’s in, you put him all the way in. I don’t care if he shits his way through it—you make sure he gets it done.”

  “Vas, he’s sixteen.”

  “If he can run drugs, play with the street girls, and work for you, then he can dispose of my problems, too.” After all, in a roundabout way, Pashkov money paid the kid. Even if it did go through Igor’s hand first. Vaslav raised a brow, grunting, “Hmm?”

  He didn’t expect Igor to deny any of the things he said about Kiril. Mira filled Vaslav in well enough because she was constantly feeding the boy whenever he tagged along with Igor. Of course, it had been a good stretch since he was around considering he’d been stranded in Italy for days now.

  Igor let out a hard breath. “I don’t mind doing it.”

  “Nobody’s asking me?” Kiril spoke up, still sounding a bit too curious.

  “You know what,” Vaslav said, tipping a hand Igor’s way, “I think he’ll be fine.”

  Igor stepped close to his boss, then—closer than another man might have been comfortable with considering the way his gaze narrowed. “Vas,” he said, too low for the teenager to make out the hushed words, “he idolizes you. You’re a legend to kids like him that grow up in the gangs; he thinks he can do it, that he’s ready, but—”

  “So let him learn the same way we had to, that you’re never ready for it,” Vaslav replied, still sure in his choice.

  That kind of shit was learned.

  Kiril was already knee-deep into their life. A little thief without his stars and spider. Oh, he’d work and bleed for them if he survived, but someday he’d have them. People thought when they caught a tyrant young, they could show them another way. That wasn’t how it worked, and Igor made the final choice for the kid by taking him under his wing. He was criminal—of vory. There was no going back now.

  “It’s too late,” Vaslav added when Igor didn’t step back enough for his liking. “Hell, he’s already here.”

  Nobody came this close to Vaslav Pashkov without paying a price—friend or foe, he didn’t play favorites. Everybody got treated the same.

  “If he’s in, he’s all the way in,” Vaslav repeated.

  Kiril had already folded up the chair, and had just sat it along the wall when Vaslav finished speaking.

  Igor released a defeated gust of breath. “Zachet—noted.”

  “Ugggh. Fgggghhh.”

  The garbling in the corner could no longer be ignored. Vaslav wasn’t sure if the sound was choking or snoring.

  “Get it awake,” Vas uttered as he moved to the side of the room to get a better look at the unconscious man’s face. “And make sure he’s lucid for this.”r />
  Viktor Antonovich should at least know why he was about to die—right?

  18.

  “What are you doing awake?”

  Vera’s head turned at the sound of Vaslav’s voice, finding him where he stood in the open double-doorway that led into the master suite’s sitting area. Two chesterfields faced one another with a black coffee table in the middle, and a single recliner at the head where one could watch the fireplace crackle.

  “I woke up,” she told him, “and you weren’t here. I couldn’t get back to bed.”

  Like it was just that simple.

  Vas wondered if it actually was as he stepped further into the space. He didn’t bother to turn on the lights, but the flare of the bright flames licking the logs he’d added to the fireplace earlier was more than enough to do the job of illuminating the room. Even the shadows sent cascading over the walls and ceiling was a better show than anything he could find on the television.

  If only because Vera seemed so enraptured by it.

  Vaslav crossed the room and came to stand at the back of the chesterfield that faced hers. Placing his sore hands along the curved edge, he matched her small smile. She was too busy staring at him to notice his raw knuckles that still bled a bit every time he clenched his hands too tightly. The pain was easy to ignore, though, because the resulting injury was worth it when everything was said and done.

  It was also the last thing on his mind when her smile didn’t quite ring as true, and eventually faded away altogether when she looked away from him to stare at the dancing flames in the fireplace.

  Vaslav frowned. “What’s wrong, kisska?”

  “I have a list.”

  “Do you?”

  Vera shrugged. “I like to pile things in my mind until it gets too high and then ... well,” she finished with a mutter.

  “It all comes down.”

  “Usually.”

  In the middle of the chesterfield, upholstered with crushed black velvet, Vera sat wrapped in the slate gray quilt from the king-size bed. The way the quilt hung from her left shoulder gave a peek of bare skin and where he’d left a quarter-sized love bite just below her collarbone earlier in the night. She sat with one leg hanging down from the couch and the other tucked under her and the blanket.

  Vera peered up at him, and as she shifted on the chesterfield, the quilt fell a little more from her other shoulder. The perfect picture of innocence and sin all rolled in one waited just a sofa away. He didn’t even think she realized the way she appeared with proof of their fucking still evident on her skin, hair mussed from bed, and a sleepy pout.

  “Are you going to keep standing there?” she asked.

  “Why not? At least, until you tell me what’s wrong.”

  “That’s not fair. Maybe I don’t want to think about any of it. Did you consider that? Maybe I’d rather do anything else.”

  Vaslav arched a brow. “Or you don’t want to tell me.”

  “Some of it is about you.”

  Fair.

  Except whatever it was had left her unable to return to a comfortable, warm bed. Even if he wasn’t in that bed and she’d been looking for him. He didn’t like that at all.

  “Start talking,” he murmured, offering no room for argument.

  Vera rolled her eyes, and all of the sudden, the fire became more interesting than him again. “I think I’m broken.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I didn’t want to be alone, remember?” she asked.

  Vaslav’s brow furrowed. “You were sad. Your neighbor was attacked, you felt a sense of responsibility, and here you are. Not wanting to be alone seems normal to me.”

  Expected, even.

  Vera shook her head, the mid-length sleek strands of her black hair flying back and forth at the action. “I lost my biological mother when I was born—never even knew her.”

  Clearing his throat, he admitted, “I know. It was in the information Igor gathered and brought to me before I invited you for tea that first time.”

  A nod answered that.

  She offered nothing else.

  Not wanting the silence to stretch on, he prodded with, “But you had a mother, didn’t you? Your father married again when you were quite young. Didn’t that help?”

  “I love my mom. She taught me to read, actually. Her name is Claire.”

  I know, he said again. Although, silently this time. He didn’t think it was smart to continuously remind Vera that he’d already been given an intimate look at her life from infancy to adulthood. Just because he was able to skim those details on paper didn’t mean he understood the complex workings of her life that brought her to the point where she was sitting across from him.

  Vaslav blew out a steadying breath that did nothing to settle his newly frayed nerves. Whatever was playing on Vera’s mind affected him in the way that if she would just tell him what was wrong, he’d fix it. However he could, by whatever means necessary. The somber mood radiating from the young woman wrapped him like the quilt around her delicate, bare shoulders.

  “Imagine being little,” Vera said then, “and knowing death already. I had a family that wouldn’t let my mother’s memory die—and I’m grateful for that, I felt like I really knew Gia because they loved her so much, and they told me all the time that she loved me—but with it also came the story. What it meant to be gone, I mean. It’s final, always. Once they’re gone, you don’t get someone back.”

  His gaze dropped to where his hands clutched the high back of the chesterfield because that was easier than admitting she was right. Or rather, letting her see that fact reflecting in his gaze. Death was not kind. It couldn’t be a friend.

  “I don’t really do well with all of that,” Vera finally settled on saying, letting out a heavy exhale as she looked at him again. “Death, I mean. Especially if it’s someone I know or care about. I just ... I know what it means, but a part of me tries to pretend like that’s not what happens. And if I can ignore it, then it’s not real. It scared me when I was little, and it really terrifies me now.”

  “So did you not want to be alone,” he started to ask, “or did you just not want to go home?”

  Her lower lip quivered, but the hard press of her mouth was enough to quell the tiny show of emotions. It did little to hide the swimming water in her eyes that the flickering fire only made even more apparent to him. “When I go home, Mr. Anatoly won’t be next door like he should be. It’ll be real, then.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Well, because it’s a bit of both, I guess.”

  “Nobody said you had to go back to the villa anytime soon, if you’re not feeling up—”

  Vera’s eyes narrowed on him playfully. “You can’t keep me here forever.”

  “Who is keeping you?”

  “Just because you don’t have to try doesn’t mean it’s not happening, Vas.”

  Well ...

  That was also fair.

  “I don’t know,” Vera said, melancholy thick in her dipping tone, “I just woke up alone and sad, and I can’t really ignore why anymore. That’s all.”

  “Congratulations,” Vaslav returned as he rounded the chesterfield, and then dropped to sit in the middle across from hers with the coffee table between them. His arms snaked wide along either side of his head as Vera watched him warily.

  “For what?”

  “Being human, Vera.”

  Flaws and all.

  While the fire had taken her focus again, and he was fine to let her soak in her feelings and silence without his input, Vera still said under her breath, “Well, I never asked to be human—or to feel like one, anyway. Seems unfair when I was doing perfectly fine the way I was before.”

  “Da, me either.”

  Life simply didn’t work that way.

  He considered urging Vera back to bed when he noticed the sleepy droop of her eyes, and the way her long lashes fanned her cheeks when she yawned. The only thing that stopped him was the fact she stood u
p before he could, but he didn’t expect her to shrug the quilt tighter around her while she rounded the coffee table, coming to a stop in front of where he sat.

  “What, printsessa?”

  “I’m a princess now?”

  Vaslav grinned. “Mine, for the moment.”

  He leaned forward, unable to keep a respectable distance when she was that close, and his hand disappeared under the edge of the quilt to find her bare knee. Her legs were as smooth as her sex—waxed, he imagined—but for the tiny patch of trimmed hair she kept neat on her pubis. Stroking his hand up the side of her leg to where her hip melted into the dip of her waist, he grabbed on tight.

  And then yanked her a step closer.

  Vera didn’t even stumble on the way to him. “What happened to your hand?”

  “The one touching you looks even worse.”

  She eyed the raw, bruised knuckles that she could see, lingering on the particularly bad spots where the skin had been split and ached with every flex of his fingers. How he hadn’t broken a finger or worse, he didn’t have the first damn clue. Luck, maybe. That, or his bones were simply used to taking a good beating now.

  Or rather, giving one.

  It could also be the double Vicodin he’d dropped in the den after shedding his bloody clothes making him numb. Who would know?

  “That’s not what I asked,” she said.

  “You’re naked under that quilt,” he returned, refusing to engage her prodding.

  “You left me naked.”

  “Hmm, and?”

  Vera have him a demure shrug. “Just pointing it out.”

  Why bother?

  “I know exactly how I left you,” Vaslav said. “Because I couldn’t stop thinking about getting back.”

  Even if the constant crack of hard skull against unforgivable cement, over and over, remained echoing in his mind. The thought of her did too.

  If she noticed the fact that he wore a different pair of sleep pants than the ones he’d pulled on earlier to climb into bed, she didn’t say. The clothes he’d been wearing wouldn’t see the light of day again after they were incinerated in the furnace before morning light.