by Lena Skye
“All the places I know are just starting to get loud this time of night,” the woman told him.
“I know a place that isn’t too far from here,” Victor told her. “If you’re looking for quiet, it should be pretty calm there.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said. Victor went back to the call he was on with his driver and told Alan that they were on Moravian, around the corner from Vagabond.
“I can be there in about ten minutes,” Alan told him. Victor thanked the man and put his phone away, turning his attention back onto the woman he’d helped.
“We should probably at least know each other’s names,” Victor pointed out. “I’m Victor Andersson.”
“Danielle Price,” the woman replied. “Andersson doesn’t sound very Russian.” Victor raised an eyebrow.
“Why would it?” Danielle crossed her arms over her chest.
“You’re the one who asked me if I was involved in business back there,” she pointed out. “So, I’m assuming you know that your buds in the VIP room are part of a family—the Sokolovs.”
“I do,” Victor said cautiously.
“I’m not affiliated with anyone, but I know about the families,” Danielle said.
“And you figured I’m a member of the Sokolov family?” Victor raised his eyebrows just slightly higher. Danielle shrugged.
“I mean, birds of a feather and all that,” she pointed out. Victor laughed.
“So how do you know about the families if you aren’t affiliated?” Danielle glanced back up the alleyway they’d traversed.
“My brother’s in,” she said. Victor nodded; he could understand that situation.
Alan drove up to the curb at that point, and Victor opened the back door to the modified Lincoln town car gesturing for Danielle to precede him into it.
“So, if you’re not in the family, who the hell are you?” she asked. Victor laughed, grateful that Alan was separated from them by a divider.
“Just someone they know,” Victor said dismissively. Of course, that was not—strictly speaking—true. The Sokolov family had been good to him, and even if he wasn’t affiliated with them directly, he still owed them some respect and a certain amount of politeness. If they wanted to speak to him about legitimate business—and some people in the family did participate in legitimate business—he would hear them out and make an informed decision.
He tapped the divider and Alan rolled it down. “Take us to 1925 Lounge,” he told his driver. Alan nodded and confirmed he understood and started off in that direction. Victor glanced at Danielle, whose eyes were a little wider in her face.
“That place is pretty pricey,” she pointed out. Victor chuckled.
“I can afford it,” he said easily.
“I guess you can,” Danielle said agreeably. Victor chuckled.
“It’s just that I’m pretty sure things will be reasonably quiet there,” he explained. “And it’s a good place to sit comfortably and have a drink and wind down for the night.”
“I don’t even know what I would order in a place like that,” Danielle said. Victor shrugged.
“If you trust me, I’ll order for you, if you tell me what you like.” Danielle smiled at him.
“If you’ll let me watch them make the drink, I’ll trust you to order for me,” she said. Victor smiled slowly.
“I am more than happy to prove to you that I have no interest in drugging you,” he said, matter-of-factly. “I just want to talk a bit, and then I’ll have Alan drop you off at your place.”
He settled in for the brief drive to the bar and thought about the discussion he’d been having with Nikolai before the raid had started. Nikolai wanted to diversify his business a little bit—and so far, the Sokolov family had done well by investing in Victor, so he was hoping that Victor would be interested in going in with him on a business venture.
Victor would be getting the details within a few days, and he’d been clear with Nikolai that it would have to be a fully legitimate business—nothing having to do with things falling off of a truck, nothing to do with drugs or prostitution or anything like that. Nikolai had assured him that it was fully legitimate, something he was interested in as a “side venture,” and that none of the rest of the family would be involved.
It was, in a sense, Victor knew, a kind of money laundering; investing ill-gotten money into legitimate businesses was a time-honored tradition for the Sokolov family, and they’d benefitted from it immensely. They had grown to a point where the family income was split almost half and half between illegal and legal pursuits. As long as his hands weren’t going to be dirtied by the association, he was almost willing to go forward with it—but he hadn’t worked hard to make his business fully legitimate five years before, only to be pulled into the syndicates again.
He had a standing arrangement at 1925 Lounge, which meant that when he and Danielle arrived there was someone to lead them to the smallest private area they had. “I come here pretty often,” he told Danielle quietly as they settled into the plush, old-fashioned chairs. “They like me here because I tip well and I never yell at the bartenders.” He grinned at her.
“That would be a good reason to like someone,” Danielle pointed out.
“Seated here it’s not going to be easy for you to watch them make our drinks, but I’m assuming that if you don’t see me tampering with yours, you’ll be comfortable enough?” Victor raised an eyebrow in query. Danielle laughed.
“Fine, fine,” she said. “I’ll stop assuming you want to drug me and have a little faith. It’s not easy, but I’ll go along with it.” Victor chuckled. A server came, dressed in the stylish uniform of the bar, and he ordered his usual for himself.
“What alcohol do you like?” He looked at Danielle for the answer. He knew quite a few of the old-fashioned, classic cocktails the lounge was able to make—and he wanted to give Danielle a drink she would love.
“Vodka, whiskey...pretty much anything but tequila is fine with me,” Danielle said. Victor pressed his lips together as he considered.
“I think the lady would enjoy an Old Fashioned,” Victor told the server, who nodded and turned away to take their orders up to the bar.
“Just what’s in an Old Fashioned?” Danielle’s dark hazel eyes—the color visible in the better light of the lounge bar—looked at him with some lingering distrust.
“Whiskey, bitters, sugar, ice, an orange wedge and a cherry,” Victor told her. “Though you really don’t get much of the last two, since they’re pretty much a garnish.”
“And what was it that you got for yourself?”
“I got myself a sidecar,” Victor replied. “Cognac, Cointreau, and lemon juice.”
“Sounds tasty,” Danielle said with interest. Victor smiled.
“If you want, we can taste each other’s drinks when they get here.” Danielle smiled back at him.
“You’re just being all kinds of charming,” she said, and Victor laughed.
“I have good reason—I want you to feel good around me,” he said. Their drinks arrived and Victor handed his to Danielle to give her a chance to taste it first, sipping hers at the same time.
“Oh man—that is good,” Danielle told him, handing it back. “Now, to taste what you got for me.” They clinked glasses and took their first sips of their proper drinks, and Danielle nodded with approval. “This is not as good as what you have, but it’s pretty damn good,” she said with a little, playful grin. Victor chuckled.
“If you want another when we finish these we’ll switch—how about that?” Danielle snorted.
“We’ll see how tipsy I get with this one,” she said.
Chapter3
“Are you sure you’re okay with coming to my place?” Danielle smiled slightly at Victor.
“I am sure I’m okay with it,” she said. She’d gotten a text from her brother while they’d been at the bar: he had managed, barely, to slip through the net of the police raid. She was relieved but at the same time, the news had left he
r feeling restless; so when Victor had playfully suggested going back to his place, she’d gone along with it.
They hadn’t even taken the car; Victor had told Alan he was off for the night, and they’d walked the three minutes from 1925 Lounge to the huge building where Victor apparently lived. “I got this place for a steal,” he told her. “They hadn’t done anything at all to it—it was just this...basically a giant cavern with insulation, and so I could make it exactly what I wanted.”
“That sounds awesome,” Danielle said—but really, it sounded almost overwhelming to her. She’d already gotten the impression that Victor was beyond the realm of wealth that even the richest of Sam’s friends, or the members of various families she’d met, had managed to accumulate. But as they’d entered the building on 18th Street where Victor lived, Danielle had begun to expand even that notion of his wealth, and with that came the worry of why someone with that much money would take notice of a nobody like her.
“It was really gratifying to be able to just...make everything exactly the way I wanted it to be, without having to worry about pre-existing structures, or waste time tearing anything out, or dealing with a historical society telling me what I could and couldn’t replace,” Victor explained.
They got to the door of his apartment, which was down a very short hallway from the elevator, and Danielle felt her skin actually beginning to tingle as she watched Victor take care of the locks not with something as basic as a key—but instead a fingerprint scanner on the door itself and an app on his phone that apparently went with it. He opened the door, and for a moment Danielle could only stare into the entryway. Even without going into the apartment itself, she could tell that it must have cost easily almost as much to decorate and finish the place as it had for Victor to buy it in the first place.
The wall facing the door was floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over downtown Philadelphia, and the entryway was marble flooring, with a Persian-style rug leading from the door to protect the stone. “Are you having second thoughts or something?” Victor’s words cut through her thoughts.
“No, just appreciating how...amazing this is,” Danielle said.
“It’s better inside,” Victor pointed out, his voice playful. Danielle smiled and shook off her stunned amazement enough to step through the door. There was a shoe rack just at the end of the entryway, and she glanced at Victor; he was slipping his own shoes off, so she followed suit.
The apartment was even more luxurious past the entryway than her first look had given her the ability to anticipate: the main space of the apartment was huge, with a fireplace that was—since it was late summer—clean and dormant, but which took up most of one of the walls, of which there seemed to be two hallways flanking it.
In front of it was an enormous couch that might as well have been a bed, but the living room area itself was so large that it just looked proportionate. To her left, Danielle saw the kitchen, fully equipped with appliances and furnishings that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a high-end restaurant.
“Do you cook?” she asked Victor as they moved towards the couch, gesturing to the kitchen. He nodded.
“Not a whole lot, but I do like cooking,” he said. “Then, too, it’s more convenient on the nights when I have a private chef come in to do dinner—for business meals, things like that—to have something they can really work with.”
“So just how rich are you? I know that’s a rude question to ask, but…” Danielle gestured around the sprawling penthouse apartment. “I kind of feel like I have to ask at this point.”
“I have 30 billion dollars to my name,” Victor said. “Not as great as Jeff Bezos, but doing better than a lot of other people.” Danielle let out a low whistle.
“I honestly can’t even imagine ever having access to that kind of money,” she said, shaking her head. She sat down on the couch and looked around her. With that kind of money, she thought, doing mental math in shorthand, she could—if she had it—spend millions every day and probably still never go broke for the rest of her life. She could flat-out give half of it to random strangers, and she would still never go broke, and still never want for anything. It was a realm of wealth that was almost terrifying.
“I definitely wasn’t planning on it when it happened,” Victor said. “I had hoped at best to become a millionaire—and to pay off the Sokolovs for their investment in my idea—but then it just sort of...exploded.” Danielle nodded, not really understanding but at least wanting to.
“You could spend over a million dollars a day and never go broke,” she pointed out. Victor nodded.
“I know. It’s sort of…” He shook his head and sighed. “I think about it sometimes, when I can. How it’s more money than anyone could ever manage to spend short of literally just giving it away.”
“How do you deal with that?”
Victor grinned. “Well, I have a system. It’s just a drop in the barrel, but I like the thought of at least doing something with all this money,” he told her. “I pick ten fundraisers—GoFundMe or whichever platform—a day and donate the amount they need for their goal anonymously. I’m looking into some more charity endeavors. I’ve bought out about half a million dollars in student loan debt and forgiven it.”
He shrugged. “I really need someone in my employ whose only job would be finding ways to get rid of my money.” Danielle laughed.
“That is a hell of a thing to need,” she said. Victor chuckled with her.
“What about you? I know you’re not involved with any of the families, so what do you do?” Danielle shrugged.
“Right now, I’m a receptionist,” she said. “It’s a shitty job, and it pays just a little bit more than minimum wage, but it’s enough to keep me afloat—and it’s better than what I was doing in the Bey family. Or what I might have ended up doing.”
“So, you were involved with them in the past?” Danielle shrugged again.
“I did some basic stuff,” she said. “Went on dates with guys who needed a legit-looking woman on their arm. I’m pretty sure my brother was using me as cover for whatever it was he was up to tonight. Things like that.” She tucked her feet underneath her legs, pulling her knees up onto the couch. “I got out before I could get pulled deeper in—to do stuff I already knew I didn’t want to do.”
“That was smart of you,” Victor said. He stood. “Do you want something to drink? Water? Coffee?” He smiled slightly. “I have alcohol too, but I think we’ve both had enough for at least the next hour or so.”
“I’d love some coffee,” Danielle told him. She watched him go into the kitchen and spotted the rather impressive-looking coffee machine just before he went to it.
“Decaf or regular?” Danielle rolled her eyes.
“Decaf is for wimps,” she told him.
“Just my thinking, too—but I keep it around in case I have any wimps in my apartment,” Victor told her. A few moments later she heard the telltale sounds of coffee brewing, and the sharp fragrance wafted over in her direction. She was beginning to relax and feel a little better about inadvertently ending up in the company of a billionaire. He seemed—she thought—like more or less of a normal guy, in spite of having more money than God.
“I’m assuming that you don’t see the Sokolovs often,” Danielle said, once Victor came back with two cups of coffee, along with a pitcher of half-and-half and a bowl of sugar cubes.
“Not all that often, no,” Victor said. “They leave me alone since I paid them back for their initial investment in my company.”
“So, that’s your connection to them?” Victor shrugged.
“That’s what more or less started my connection to them,” he said. “Mostly we stay clear of each other nowadays—I owe them nothing, they have no hold on me. I’m kind of a success story, in that I earned them back twice what they spent on me; they invite me to dinner or for drinks now and then, occasionally if they have a legit business they’re interested in working with, they come to me—things like that.” Danielle
nodded; while she wasn’t on the inside, she could see how it would work.
“In theory at least, we really should have never met,” Danielle pointed out with a wry little smile. She finished stirring the milk and sugar into her coffee and took a sip.
“I’m glad we did, even if it was under less-than-ideal circumstances,” Victor told her, and Danielle felt herself smiling—she’d done a lot of that since running into Victor.
“What I’m wondering right now is whether or not you intend to make a move on me,” Danielle said, setting her coffee down. Victor raised his eyebrows and grinned slowly.
“I was waiting for you to get settled in first, but now that you mention it…” He leaned in, and Danielle felt her body tingling all over as his lips brushed against hers. He kissed her softly at first, and Danielle tasted coffee and cognac on his lips as the embrace deepened. She hadn’t had any real expectations when she’d agreed to go home with him to continue talking—one way or the other—but she had at least had an inkling that things would get a little bit physical.
For the moment Danielle was happy to stick with kissing, and to her surprise Victor seemed fine with that as well, shifting on the couch so that they were close enough to each other to deepen the kiss a little further, but with his hands staying within the “approved” areas, barely avoiding her breasts and not quite going past her hips. She kissed back, draping her arms around his shoulders, pulling him a little closer to her, but for a long time Danielle didn’t escalate anything; she just enjoyed the feeling of closeness, the sensation of kissing and being kissed.
But after a while, Danielle felt herself getting more and more turned on—her body tightening, the slick heat along her labia deepening and spreading out until she was fairly certain she’d soaked through her panties. She trembled slightly, pulling back to take a breath.