by Nicole Fox
I try to avoid staring by looking at his face, but those eyes have leverage over me. I sit down on the love seat farthest away from him. I pick up a wood carving of a bird, each of its feathers spread out like a fan.
“It’s a bird of happiness,” he says casually, like we’re friends meeting for tea. “An old Russian toy.”
I set the bird back down. “You care a lot about your heritage, don’t you?”
“My ancestors fought and thrived so that I could live. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I just find it interesting.” I shrug before looking straight at him. The intensity in his face almost makes me flinch, but I keep my gaze steady. “Someone who is proud of their Russian history might be easier to manipulate by certain criminal organizations.”
I expect him to be angry. To insist he’s not connected to the Bratva or that he could never be manipulated. But he smiles. And something about that smile makes me feel less aggressive.
“That’s quite the jump,” he says. “If I was Italian and proud of my Italian heritage, would you accuse me of being in the Italian Mafia? Or is your prejudice only for Russians?”
I flush. “I—I didn’t mean to—”
“Yes, you did.” He leans back into the chair. “If you’re going to blow smoke, at least have the courage to stand in the fire.”
I raise my chin. “I just want to know how you can afford a house like this. I’m sure Black Glacier makes a nice profit, but not this nice.”
“Should I be a little hurt that you didn’t look into me at all?” he asks. “You had my full name on my business card.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “I knew everything I wanted to know about you from last night.”
“Apparently not, if you’re still asking questions.”
“What would I have found out if I looked into you? Is there a Black Glacier in every city?”
He walks over to his home bar. He picks up a vodka bottle. Mariya’s Revenge. It’s a top-shelf vodka. I noticed a few bottles of it in the club because the tops of the bottles are shaped like shotgun shells. When Jonathan was asked about it, he told a patron that a shot cost $77.
Lev pours a shot and hands it to me.
“What is this for?” I ask, taking it.
“I want you to tell me what you think of my product.”
The shot glass nearly slips between my fingers. “You own Mariya’s Revenge?”
“Yes.”
I set the shot down. “Why would you need to marry me then? You’re rich. You own a successful business.”
“‘Successful’ is an insult. I put Fool’s Fire vodka out of business in six months flat.”
He’s like a blister: self-inflated, under my skin, and rubbing me the wrong way.
He slides his hand into his pocket. My eyes follow the movement, imagining the warmth of his skin, the grip of his fingers, and how it would feel to be between his thigh and his hand.
I snap out of my reverie. When I look back up at him, that alluring smile is back on his face. I could smack it. Or kiss it. Still undecided.
“Anyway,” I say. “I think we need to look at our deal again.”
“Our arrangement,” he corrects.
“I don’t care what it’s called. You have to know I won’t marry you. It’s a ridiculous—”
“Proposal?” he asks, an eyebrow raised.
“Proposition.”
He takes his hand out of his pocket and clasps them in front of him. “I have this life because I am willing to do what others won’t.”
“I’m not going to marry you,” I repeat.
He takes the shot glass from in front of me, walks back over to the home bar, and starts mixing up a drink.
“It’s a little early to be drinking, isn’t it?”
“Have you slept since last night? No? Neither have I,” he says. “So let the party continue.”
I check my shirt, checking if there’s any dirt that I’ve missed on it that gives away my sleepless night. His comment is a reminder that, amongst all of this opulence, I’m the cheapest thing here.
He hands me a drink. It’s a rum and Coke. I stare down at it, two ice cubes clinking against each other. I look back at him as he sits back down in his chair.
“You knew what I was drinking,” I say. “You were watching me at the club.”
I expect him to deny it. He could say he saw it on the surveillance footage. He could say he asked the bartender. He could say it was a lucky guess.
But he just shrugs.
I slam the glass down on the coffee table. Despite the sound of glass hitting glass, he doesn’t react. “You were waiting for me to do something illegal, just so you could blackmail me,” I accuse.
His eyes flicker over my face, trying to read something in my expression. I hope he sees the full extent of my rage.
“I was waiting for you to do something illegal?” he asks, restrained anger in his tone. “You were waiting to fuck me over.”
“Why would I do that? How would I even know that you were there?”
He shakes his head, his hands tensing on his arm rests. “If you weren’t there for me, why were you there?”
I take a deep breath. “I was there because my roommate wanted me to go with her. She has a crush on one of the bartenders. If you’ve seen the surveillance footage, then you’ve seen me dancing with her. But I saw Jeffrey Douglas, I knew he had committed a hit and run, and I wanted to make sure he didn’t do it again. That’s why I followed him out. He attacked me. I defended myself.”
“You killed him.” He runs his hand over his jaw. “That’s quite the coincidence that you two were in the same club. I’ll check your story.”
I open my mouth to snap back at him, but instead, I force myself to just pick my drink back up and take a sip. It’s frustratingly good.
He takes a swig of his own drink. I keep him in my periphery. My father told me once that the best chance for me to survive a hostage situation is to convince the abductor that I’m an individual with my own family, friends, fears, and dreams. Convince him of my humanity. But Lev is such a narcissist, he’d never listen to anything about me.
“So, how did you make Mariya’s Revenge so successful?” I ask, changing tactics. “It seemed to pop out of nowhere.”
“It didn’t. I undersold the competition for several years, learned everything I could about marketing, and used my father’s nightclub to my advantage.”
“Black Glacier?”
“Original Menace,” he says.
“Didn’t that club burn down?”
“Yes.” His face shows nothing again. If I’m looking for humanity, I’m looking in the wrong place.
“Why is it called Mariya’s Revenge?”
His stoicism flickers, showing something underneath. It’s not quite sadness—maybe shame. But in the next second, it’s gone. He drinks. I mimic his movements.
“Please excuse me for a moment.” He stands up, setting his drink down on the coffee table. “Stay here until I’m back. We wouldn’t want you to accidentally murder Irina.”
I take a deep breath. My hands are trembling. I sink them underneath the cushions of the love seat and
take a gulp of my rum and Coke. I didn’t mean to upset him, but at least it gives me some time to organize my thoughts and calm my nerves. I need to get into the right headspace before he manipulates me again.
I get up and peek out into the hallway. Somewhere, I hear the faint sound of a vacuum. I step out. As I start to walk down the hallway, I expect one of the floorboards to creak, but the mansion is flawless. I hate it and I want it. Just like I hate and want Lev.
I stop at the entrance of the mansion. The door is right there. It’d be easy to do. A clean, simple break. State my piece and walk away. No more Lev. No more mindfucking. No more of any of this.
But I let go. If the consequences only harmed me, I’d deal with the repercussions, but I can’t do that to my father. I can’t do that to the victims’ families. There’s too
many pieces of this house of cards and slamming this door shut will cause it all to fall.
I turn around as Lev is descending the stairs. He’s carrying a metal ammunition box, the army green contrasting with the yellow lettering. His expression doesn’t change as he stops at the bottom of the stairs. He indicates with his head for me to go back into the den.
I glance back at the door, but even as I imagine the cold steel in my palm again, my legs start moving. I sense him walking behind me. The scent of his cologne—smoky and spicy—settles over me, sinking me into irrational neediness. I stumble against the love seat before I sit back down.
He sits in the armchair next to me, our knees nearly touching. I scoot my legs an inch away. His eyes follow the movement, a small smirk playing at his lips. Heat floods my cheeks.
He sets down the ammunition box in front of me and leans forward, his hands pressed together against his lips.
“Open it.”
“Why don’t you open it?” I retort.
“Because you’ll be far more interested in the contents than I am,” he says. “I know what’s in it.”
I fold my arms over my chest, leaning back. I stare at the ammunition box—mostly to avoid looking at him. My mind should be filled with all of the possible things that could be in the box.
Money?
A gun?
Someone’s severed head?
But my thoughts keep returning to Lev. His toned arms are visible under his shirt. If my hands slid underneath the fabric, they could explore for hours and still not find every treasure on his muscled torso. Even better, he could explore me and discover parts of me I’ve never known about.
The ammunition box. I need to concentrate.
I move to the edge of the love seat and fumble with the latch. As I start to get nervous about looking like a fool, I manage to get it undone and lift the top. I reach my hand in and pull out a manila folder.
I flip it open.
I know it’s a surveillance photo right away, due to the tell-tale timestamp in the corner. And I know exactly what’s going on in the freeze frame.
I’m standing over Jeffrey Douglas’ body. Even when I know what happened and why, it looks bad. Very, very bad. The quality of the photo is surprisingly good, but the camera is still too far away to decipher my expression and the way my head is angled towards him makes it look like I’m just watching him die.
Remorseless.
“Flip through the pages,” Lev says. “You’ll see that Jeffrey Douglas starts exhibiting signs of distress at 2:47 a.m. You don’t start genuinely trying to help him until 2:50 a.m. From these photos and the video—which is in here as well—it looks like you wait until he’s already dead before you budge an inch.”
“That’s not what happened and you know it.” I shove the photos back at him, desperately trying to keep the panic out of my voice. “He wouldn’t let me help him.”
“You think a jury is going to believe you when you say you couldn’t overpower a suffocating man?” he asks, his brow furrowed in pseudo-confusion. “What about when I give the prosecutor all of my surveillance footage, where it shows you entering the club—and I will tell them you’ve never been in the club before—and you end up sitting a few seats away from Jeffrey Douglas and then follow him out to the back? Where he dies.”
I sip from the rum and Coke, praying he doesn’t see that my hand is shaking. “It’s a coincidence that we were both there that night.”
“Your father has been in the police force long enough that you know juries don’t believe in coincidences,” he says. “I also have the pepper spray you used with your fingerprints on it. Juries don’t believe in coincidences, but they consider forensic evidence to be God’s word.”
I try to glare at him, but his gaze is devoid of any mercy. It makes me feel like I’m staring at the barrel of a gun.
I need to get rid of this. There’s a fire across the room—maybe if I run, I can get it burning before Lev can stop me?
Or just tear it up. Yeah, that’ll work.
No, even better—pour my drink over the files. Ruin the DVD and the paper.
I stand up, pretending to prepare to drink from my glass before I hold it up over the ammunition box and pour the drink inside it.
For one brief, tiny moment, I feel like I’m winning.
The liquor splashes into the box—not enough to make it swim like I was picturing, but hopefully enough to do sufficient damage.
Lev watches me, his face betraying nothing.
I shake the last few drops of liquid into it.
“You do what you need to do,” I say, a rosy glow of triumph in my chest. “But I hope you know that tainted evidence is worthless evidence.”
“I have copies,” he says matter-of-factly. My heart drops. “Do you really think I’d be so stupid? I also have two bartenders and members of the security team that will testify that you were stalking Mr. Douglas the whole night while barely drinking and ignoring every man who tried to talk to you.”
My grip tightens on the glass. “I’ll explain to them what happened.”
The green shade of his eyes would look like moss or sea green on anybody else, but there’s nothing soft about him. He’s a knife, cutting me to pieces.
But I’d rather be in pieces than let him think he has me under his thumb.
“Even if you were acquitted—which I doubt—your reputation and your father’s would be tarnished.” He leans back into the armchair and tents his fingers together.
He’s so relaxed, like this is just another day in the life. Hell, for him, maybe blackmail really is just run-of-the-mill business. But not for me. My heart is trembling, my fingers tap-dancing on my thigh.
“Do you recall Cliff Deforest?” he asks.
I set down the glass, letting it loudly clink against the coffee table, and fall into my seat. “No,” I say, my voice a barely audible whisper.
“He was a DEA agent. His brother revealed to Internal Affairs that Cliff regularly stole money from drug dealers. When it was disclosed to the media, the media crucified him and he ended up needing to leave his street because people kept vandalizing his house and sending him death threats. What about Roger Durward? Do you know him?”
“No,” I say, my teeth gritted together.
“He was a lieutenant. After his wife said she was attacked by two men, which she claimed is how she lost all of the money from a fundraiser, surveillance cameras showed her in a casino, spending it all on craps. Previously, Roger Durward had gone on the record to say that whoever had attacked his wife would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. After he indicated that he was reluctant to prosecute his wife for various charges, he was forced to resign. He ended up leaving after he also received death threats and couldn’t get a job anywhere in the city. His wife still went to prison. Have you heard of Doug Anson? He accepted bribes.”
I scowl. “Let me guess—he was run out of town?”
“No. I pay him to get rid of evidence.” He smiles. “He’s a very charming man. If I need him to testify to anything, he’ll gladly do it.”
“You’re the devil,” I accuse, vitriol coursing through me.
“And you’re the one who chose to slip into bed with the devil,” he replies, the slightest sneer rippling across his face. “Don’t try to shift the blame on me. I didn’t kill Jeffrey Douglas.”
“No, but you’ve done something that you’re trying to hide,” I say. “I could have my father investigate you and find out why you were so worried that I was at your club. What skeletons do you have in your closet? It looks like you have a lot to lose.”
“Go ahead, sweetheart.” He leans his head against his hand. “Your father will be fired as soon as the news breaks about the murder, so the investigation into me will go nowhere and your father will look even worse for going after the person who revealed his little girl’s secret.”
I grab the ammunition box and fling it toward the fireplace. It smacks against the stone before spilli
ng its sodden contents on the floor. I storm out of the room, the explosions in my brain setting fire to everything except the fact that I want to put my hands around Lev’s neck and show him what an actual murder looks like.
I stop at the entrance doors. No matter how badly I want to run out of here, no matter what outburst I try on for size, he’s trapped me.
I turn around. He hasn’t followed me. He knows he doesn’t need to.
I take several deep breaths, pacing around the area. I have to change my mindset. This is for my father. This is for my future. This is for all the victims’ families. If I want to be a good person, I need to be willing to make sacrifices.
I return to the den. Lev is still in his armchair, drinking while gazing out the window. The ammunition box and his evidence are still spread out on the floor. He doesn’t turn to look at me when I step back in.
“When we’re married, you’ll need to watch what you drink,” I say. He turns to me. “You never know what ingredients could be added to give it a little kick.”
“Is that a threat?” he asks with a small smile. “You’re eager to rack up that body count.”
I pick up my glass off the table, which has been filled up again. He knew I was never going to leave. I take a gulp out of it, enjoying the burning sensation down my throat.
“You’re a piece of shit,” I bite out. He stands up, takes the glass out of my hand, and leans forward. His lips brush against my cheek.
“But I’m yours,” he says.
He stands back and straightens up, eyeing me carefully.
I say nothing.
Lev smooths back his hair. “Let me show you the house.”
He starts walking out of the den without waiting for my answer. I follow him out, keeping at least a few feet between us.
The mansion is extravagant, to say the least, but it never descends into a desperate desire to show off his wealth. Many, many parts of his home are expensive—the red-tinted hardwood floors, the skylights, the private courtyard, the cutting-edge technology humming behind every wall—but there’s never an attempt to fill up space with unnecessary displays of wealth. There’s no gold lions or diamond-encrusted map of NYC.