Mikhail and I sink back into the corner, almost all the way into the heavy brocade drapes. The look on Mikhail’s face tells me that it’s something urgent. His face is down and his hand hung in front of his mouth. He can’t be overheard or even lip-read. We develop these habits like sportsmen in range of the TV cameras.
Treat everything as confidential. That way you shouldn’t have to worry later.
“Boss,” he said, “A man has been sent.”
“That was fast.”
Mikhail nods. “Out of Helsinki. From St. Petersburg, Leon thinks.”
“From Vovo’s mystery backer?”
He looks up at me. “It’s what we think.”
I find Konstantin, thank him for the reception and make my apologies for an early departure.
The way that he says, “I completely understand,” I wonder if he knows, too.
Konstantin’s thin smile doesn’t give anything away. As I’m leaving, he reminds me, “You’ll think about what we discussed. Don’t leave it too long.”
~~
I drive fast, back to the city in my car. Mikhail sits beside me in the front. The Maserati grips the curves in the road like it loves them. Feeling the power of the Italian engine roar like a beast beneath me, I’m thinking of that girl again. Her hot body moving against mine. I wouldn’t take her on Marco’s terms and I’m angry that he even thinks of proposing that to me. But even the anger stirs a feeling in my gut. I want her. Red and white lights of the traffic blur past and fade behind us outside.
A kick of acceleration onto the night road matches with my hunger inside. I need to be back at the club. Make some moves. Even though I can’t tell exactly what’s coming, there’s plenty I can do to get the outfit onto a war footing. I don’t want this. This disturbance. This conflict. But I would be lying if I said that I didn’t love it. The road rolls faster beneath my wheels. I remember that I didn’t get a chance to talk to Medved before we left. I put in an earbud and call him.
“Sorry, my friend. I’m called back to New York.”
He says, “You heard what happened to Vovo.”
“Tragic,” I say.
“Well,” Medved says, “Nobody is going to be too surprised. Pissing people off seems to have been a key part of his business model.”
I resist a laugh. I hear Medved do the same. He says, “But I hear that someone’s traveling from Russia already.”
“I heard that, too.”
“We could be seeing trouble ahead.”
“I hope not.”
“I’m sure that we all do, Vassily. I can’t pretend to be too broken-hearted to see Vovo out of the picture, but you know that I have interests to protect.”
It was an open secret that Vovo planned to make a move on my club. Also, that a lot of Medved’s drugs moved in and around Vovo’s establishment.
If I don’t help Konstantin to take control of Vovo’s, Medved will likely move on it himself or put somebody in place there. Medved will want to see that his business is not disturbed or interrupted.
Medved talks and I have the sense that he wants to avoid getting into a confrontation with me. Gangsters nearly always say that they do everything they can to avoid a fight. And then, after all the smoke clears, they’ll say that they didn’t want the fight, they tried to do things the peaceful way, there should have been a compromise. But when it all comes down, they almost always choose to fight.
I understand. Inside I’m the same. It’s why I’m listening carefully. Being agreeable. While I try to guess what kind of a war Medved is going to start when I take Konstantin’s proposition.
Konstantin is the more dangerous opponent. But if I have to go head to head with one of them, he’s the one that I’d rather beat. Like a knife fight when you’re against a gang. Go for the biggest man, the most dangerous one first. Go head on and full bore. After you’ve put him down the others start to melt away.
~~
I tell Mikhail, “I need to know for sure who was backing Vovo. Do we have any leads at all?”
“Not many, Boss. But I’ll pull all the strings that I’ve got. You remember when Vovo first was going after the premises, there were big financial moves behind him. We thought they looked unusual at the time.” I nod. He says, “What we saw connected with accounts in Panama. We couldn’t get information about the accounts and it looked like a dead trail.” Mikhail reads and flicks at the screen of his phone. “A banker was involved. A man I recognized from somewhere. I thought I saw him in that club in the Financial District.”
“Pierce’s club? You think there could be a link?”
“Who knows? It could be a start.”
I’m fishing for my phone and I can’t find it.
I tell Mikhail, “Call our friend Pierce and see if he can throw any light on this guy. Maybe we’ll pay a visit. Like you said, it could be a start.” I thought about Pierce’s club, Hotsteppas and it set an idea rolling.
It wasn’t too long before we hit traffic. I said, “The Long Island Expressway must be the worst named road in the world.”
“Well, it is long. You can’t argue with that part.”
“I switched my phone off when I went in to talk to Konstantin. I wonder if I left it behind in there.”
Mikhail calls it for me. It rings in my coat pocket.
“Guess not.”
Mikhail says, “You’re always losing your phone. Give it to me. I’m going to set up a phone tracker.” I want to put up an argument, but he’s right, of course.
The dark sparkle of Manhattan rises at last on the horizon. Mikhail has been chewing something over. In the sluggish traffic he says, “Boss, you didn’t have to do that.” I look across, questioning. “Those two kids harassing Marco’s girl? She can handle herself.”
He’s right. It was unnecessary. I probably shouldn’t have done it.
I shrug. “It’s never a bad thing to remind people not to cross you.”
There’s a pause before he says, “You aren’t going to buy her, are you?”
I chew my lip as a memory uncoils of her hips inside the soft rustle of that dress, as her heat rolled against my knotting thigh.
rina runs toward me. Grabs my hands and holds them in both of hers. “That must have been so fucking scary for you. Do you think they were serious?”
I let her hold my hands firm and shake them. It’s her wedding day. She has every right to be giddy, and over-excited, and gushy.
I look in her eyes. “Irina, honestly, I’ve seen scarier things on a dinner plate. I really didn’t need any rescuing. I could handle those two with one arm behind my back.”
She takes a long look at me. Then she pulls back like she’s seeing me in a new light. “I bet you could. You’re really something, you know? I mean, like nothing ever seems to phase you. Really, nothing at all. Still,” she holds onto my arm to pull me closer, “It was probably worth it to get rescued by the man with the granite cheekbones. Isn’t he fantastic? My god, Katya. I mean, seriously. How hot is he? And the way he looks at you. Call nine-one-one! Get the fire trucks! Wouldn’t you have liked him to carry you away? For safe-keeping?”
“My fate probably has a closet full of times where I get snatched and carried away. As well as being owned, traded, and who-the-fuck-knows what else. But I’m not going to do anything to hurry it along.”
“Come on,” she squeezes my arm. “Are you really telling me that having men fight over you doesn’t do anything for you at all? Weren’t you excited, not even the tiniest little bit?”
“I was thrilled, Irina.” I’m playful. She knows I mean the opposite. I start to try and steer her toward the bar, hoping I can at least get some coffee into her. “There’s nothing more fun than playing a guessing game of who’s going to own you next.”
“I don’t know if our situations are so very different,” she sighs.
“Seriously. Irina.” I love her, I really do. Even with champagne sloshing around where her brains were supposed to be. But like everyone who’s been
in America all their lives, she has no idea what it means to really not have freedom. She thinks freedom means having choices at the mall.
I look into her eye. “You’re marrying from one family at the top of the Manhattan mobs to the next. You’ll have garages stuffed with even more Bentleys, Mercedes, and Cadillacs than you have now. You’ll spend your days at lunch in the best restaurants, evenings in art galleries and weekends on a yacht. All squeezed in around the charity balls and the endless fittings for couture clothes.”
She laughed. “That’s the life of a mob wife. You got it in one.”
“It may be a fairy-tale marriage, it may not, but you have choices in life, Irina. Don’t ever forget it.” I look around and lower my voice. “People are starting to look at us.” And it’s true. Partly, I’m sure, because of the number of times we said the word, ‘Mob.’ That’s a word that doesn’t tend to get used a lot around these circles. If you’re in a family called ‘Smith’ where all the kids marry other people called ‘Smith,’ then, ‘Smith’ is a word you’ll probably never hear because nobody needs to use it.
For a change of subject, I remind her, “Aren’t you supposed to be leaving for Vegas or something? Didn’t I hear talk of plans for a honeymoon?”
“Yeah, Vegas. Really.” Irina sighed. She takes a big gulp of champagne. “It was meant to be a secluded beach in Hawaii. Then a last-minute change of plans that just happened to fit in with a poker convention.”
Starting as he means to go on. I manage not to say it but I’m sure that she’s thinking the same thing. I am still hoping that Irina has been right about Bruno and that everybody else has him totally wrong. “I’m sure you’ll have a fantastic time, wherever you go.”
Her raised eyebrow tells me she isn’t so sure.
“I’m afraid he’s turning out to be very, what should I say, ‘traditional’ in his ways.”
“You mean he’s a bullying brute who thinks women are put on Earth to be his adoring and obedient servants?”
“Oh, well, I’m not sure I would go that far,” she giggles. “But,” her face darkens, “I think my fairy tale may be over before it’s begun.”
I don’t know what I can tell her to comfort her. Irina isn’t stupid. “You know that I’m totally on your side, Irina. But I’m a Russian girl, too. Just like you are. We both know things are the way that they are. There’s no point hammering your fists into a storm. You have to accept how the world is and make what you can out of all the opportunities you can find.”
“And, I’ll tell you, Katya, I believe you could find some opportunities around that man.” the thought is cheering her up, I can tell. “I saw you slip away with him a while ago.”
“I wasn’t slipping away with him. In fact, I was just using him as an excuse to get away from… somebody else.” She wants to know who. She knows I won’t tell her.
“Didn’t you sneak away to a dark corner somewhere?”
“Yes, but…”
“So, are you going to tell me that nothing happened?”
“Nothing,” I told her. Her eyebrows arch. “Well, okay. Not completely nothing. Not exactly.”
Her laugh sparkles like ringing bells. “And? Tell me. Was he huge? Hard? Urgent?” I laugh, too.
“I can’t deny it. He was all those things.” It’s true. I realize, that while I was down there acting as though nothing was happening, that’s exactly how he was. Huge, hard and urgent. A tingle rocks the insides of my thighs as I recall it.
Irina clinked my glass. “You live more like a princess than I do and I think you always have.”
“Oh, Irina, if you only knew. Yes, I really did live as a princess once. That was all a very long time ago. Since then I’ve lived as a slave and in so many different ways.”
“Still you carry yourself like a princess and you act as though the whole world belongs to you.”
“It does. The world belongs to us all. Every one of us should feel that and act that way. All the time.”
“We should, you’re right. But you can, Katya, and you do. Even though in most ways, it’s true what you say. Outside, in the real world, you probably are the least free person I know. But here,” she touches my chest, “Inside where it matters, you are as free as a bird.”
“How do you think I survived this long?”
“I believe you. I really hope you’ll tell me what happened sometime. But I know it may still all be too painful.”
“That isn’t why, Irina. And, in time, I will.”
“And through all of that, is it true that you kept your virginity?”
I can’t help myself. I laugh and it’s the best laugh I’ve let out for some time. “Yes, my darling Irina. yes. It’s true. All this time I kept that precious nothing. And you know why? Because it’s the key to my future, to any chance of success, and maybe even to my survival. While I have it, I am valuable, a prize beyond a price to all of these men. And to me? It’s nothing. It doesn’t mean a thing. I could give it away like that,” and I snapped my fingers.
“I think that is how I’ve been able to keep it, though. It means so much to them, to the men that would take it. And it’s nothing to me at all. Keeping them off me wasn’t so hard. It’s keeping me off them that hasn’t always been so easy.” I sighed. “Sometimes, some men.”
Irina’s grin is charged, “A man in the basement, for instance? A big, broad, hot killer with watery gray eyes?”
I want to say a lot of things. But I smile and hold her hand. “How do you know me so well, Irina?”
She squeezes my fingers. “Like I said, Katya, we aren’t so different, you and I. We’re more alike than you think.”
There have been times I’d wished I could lose that treasure. Shed my maidenhead, have my precious flower pierced. To let my innocence be parted and split, speared and broken. Those times led to fantasies and the fantasies fluttered around in my mind like flapping bats or schools of hungry, flesh-eating fish.
The only way that I ever found to keep myself from surrendering to their power and giving myself to them is to find time when I can be alone. Then I nurture the fantasies. Give them their head. Allow them to swell and gush through me and flow free like the splashing currents of great mountain rivers. To let them explore where they will and show me whatever they want me to see.
Marco dashes toward us. Flustered asks me, “Where is he?”
I look in his eyes. Poor sap. My captor, my owner, and my jailer. And I feel sorry for him.
His face is creasing. “I can’t find him. He must be here somewhere.”
Innocently, Irina asks him, “Are you looking for Vassily?”
“Of course. Do you know where he is?”
I tell him, “Him? He left. Ages ago, Marco.”
Thinking of him makes me tense again and hot and unconsciously I’m already hunting for my pointed key. It’s not even likely that he’s going to be my next owner but just in case it does turn out to be him, I need to put some effort into despising him more thoroughly.
~~
After the long drive back to Marco’s salon, the three VIP girls, Olga, Daria, and Svetlana lounge in the bar. They give me their usual side-eyes, lubricated with vodka after their own long evenings.
“Did you sell her yet?” The only time Daria looks straight at me is while she’s talking to Marco.
Vassily: Perfect Pain - a Bad Boy Mafia Dark Romance Page 6