With This ring

by Le Carre, Georgia

  I whirled around to confront him, but he was gone, as silently as he had arrived.

  Chapter Three

  Freya

  I didn't slow down until I arrived at my apartment and my heart was racing in my chest as I locked the door behind me.

  "Freya!" Britney called as she headed from the kitchen towards me, a teddy bear head band holding back her messy hair, and a pot of noodles in her hand. She appeared at the doorway as I was locking the door behind me. I turned around to face her.

  “Hiya.”

  "You're finally back. I was waiting for you. We have to finalize the sample details before tomorrow so we can send it off."

  “Yeah, okay. Just give me a couple of minutes.” I tried not to sound panicked.

  She gave me a funny look. “You okay?”

  I forced a smile. “Of course. I just need to make a phone call first.”

  “Sure, no problem. Your Chinese is in the microwave btw.”

  Then she turned around and went back into the living room. I watched her plop down on the couch and immediately get lost in a reality show on VH1.

  I pulled out my phone, my hands trembling slightly. I unlocked it as I hurried to my room. Maxim’s appearance meant that a big shift in my life was about to happen and it would be one I would most probably hate. He would otherwise have never made such a pointless visit. He had no ties with me, and neither I presumed, would he have the spare, unassigned, minutes to squander.

  I shut my bedroom door behind me and dialed my father’s number, but he didn't pick up on the first ring like he normally did when I called, and for a moment I wondered where he was... Perhaps he wasn't in Moscow. Budapest then? Or Paris?

  I began to scroll through my contacts hastily to look for his other numbers until I realized I was not calling his personal one, the one he kept between us. I dialed again and when it was answered, I collapsed to my bed.

  “Dad?” I called out anxiously.

  “Moya Printsessa,” he said.

  The endearment made me clench my jaw. When my father called me My Princess I always knew it was time to beware. Something horrible was coming my way. “Where are you?”

  "New York," he answered in his thick accent. “I landed two hours ago.”

  I was confused. “You’re here? Why didn't you tell me you were coming?”

  "I wanted to surprise you." His laughter boomed down the line.

  The last surprise from my Dad I enjoyed was when I was seven. Ever since then his surprises just meant bad news for me. “That’s nice,” I said automatically.

  “I'm only here until tomorrow evening so come have breakfast with me at my hotel. I'm staying at the Ritz-Carlton. You haven’t bought your own apartment yet, have you?”

  I ignored the question. "Why are you only here for one day?”

  "I was in Puerto Rico, but I have … business to handle in Moscow so I have to rush back. I stopped by to speak to you.”

  My heart sank. I knew then that there was something very wrong.

  "What does this have to do with the Ivankovs?" I asked.

  "Come to breakfast tomorrow at ten," he instructed, “I'll tell you everything then.”

  "I have something important to do tomorrow morning, Dad."

  "That jewelry business you're launching? I told you to get people to handle it all for you. Why are you constantly involved?”

  I clenched my fist. “Because I want to do it on my own.”

  “Hmm … you always were a silly little thing. Well, you will just have to change your plans. I will see you at ten tomorrow morning. I will send a car for you. Ah, marvelous. My food has arrived. Goodnight.”

  "Goodnight, Dad,” I said, but he had already hung up.

  I went out then. I ate the noodles Britney had microwaved for me. I even put the finishing touches on the sample. When Britney talked to me I gave her all the right answers. But inside I was a seething mass of nerves. I felt it in my bones that tomorrow my life was going to change and there was not a damn thing I could do about it. At the usual time I said goodnight to Britney and I climbed into bed.

  Sleep never came.

  Chapter Four

  Freya

  Curled up in my window seat, I watched the dawn arrive. It seemed magical. As if it was going to be taken away from me. Someone once told me the greatest luxury was freedom. Deep down I knew my father was about to snatch away my greatest luxury. How? I did not know yet. But in a few hours all would become crystal clear. For my father did not waste time mincing his words.

  As life began in the street below I got into the shower. When I came back out wrapped in a towel, Britney was sitting on my bed, eating a bowl of cornflakes and chocolate milk.

  “Morning,” she said brightly.

  “Morning,” I said, matching her cheerfulness. I put my towel on the heater and naked went to open my underwear drawer. I took the first set I saw in it and began to dress.

  “You never talk about your dad. Is he horrible?”

  Horrible? Horrible was not a word I would use to describe him. My father was a repulsive sociopath. A man who was so utterly cold, he lived without compassion, remorse, or conscience. Only two things mattered in his life. The relentless insatiable acquisition of more and more power, and the pursuit of his own pleasure.

  He didn’t care about anyone or anything.

  Once I went into his study and he was fucking a woman on his desk. I immediately tried to leave, but he wouldn’t let me, but neither would he stop. I had to stand there with my gaze on the floor until he finished. As the woman passed by me, he said as casual as you please, “What did you want?” I’ve seen my father kill a man the way someone else would kill an ant.

  I met Britney’s eyes in the mirror. “My father is not … horrible. We’re just not close.”

  “Yet you’re changing all our plans to go to have breakfast with him?”

  I pulled on a white blouse and started buttoning it. “Yes. He is my father. Besides, he has to fly out again later today and this is the only time he has.”

  “Hmm …” She eats another spoonful of cereal. “What do you think he wants to say to you?”

  Tucking my blouse into a pair of comfortable black cargo pants, I picked up my hair brush. “I don’t know.”

  “You mean, he didn’t say at all?”

  “Nope.”

  When I got out of my shabby apartment building in the Bronx it was 9:30. A glistening black town car with a dark suited chauffeur inside was waiting for me. It was the shiny statement of excessive wealth that did not belong in that neighborhood. Britney was hanging out of the window looking down on me. Her mouth was open in shock. A pair of dreadlocked twins playing guitar and smoking weed by the dirty graffiti wall in a corner of the street looked on curiously.

  The chauffeur slid out of the car smoothly. "Miss Fedorov,” he greeted, as he opened the door nearest the sidewalk for me.

  Far from happy at the disruption from my wonderfully ordinary life, I got in and began to count the minutes when I would stand before my father.

  The Ritz-Carlton was by Central Park. The moment I stepped into the sophistication of its world, far beyond the one I currently lived in, I felt the familiar chokehold of the old life that I had tried so hard to tear free of begin to reassert itself. I walked into the breakfast lounge. It featured an oriental color scheme. The high windows gave a picturesque view of the city’s magnificent skyline. The exquisite furniture and paintings reminded me of our home back in Moscow. I could see my father’s goons hanging around the lobby. They were trying to blend in with the other guests, but they stuck out like sore thumbs.

  I made my way to the breakfast room.

  It was expansive, filled with the scent of expensive coffee roast and the fragrance of flowers. Breakfasting in it were a smattering of people engaged in quiet conversations. I spotted my father in a corner table quite hidden by a gigantic plant that was so incredibly green it looked fake. Of course, it was not. As usual my father was on his pho
ne.

  “Printsessa,” he called loudly the moment he noticed me. I cringed inwardly when people turned to look at us. My father had no use for customs or niceties. They were fools, he declared.

  He ended his call and rose to receive me. Dutifully I walked into his large embrace. Shutting my eyes, I inhaled his familiar scent. The components of which were indecipherable as they had been carefully curated by a man who specialized in custom perfumes. Except, of course, for the jarring note from the cigars that he often had either in his mouth or dangling from his fingers.

  For some strange reason, I suddenly thought of my mother.

  “Sit,” he said and I took the seat opposite him wondering why there was another by my side.

  In his world everything was for a reason so I immediately called his attention to it. “Are you expecting someone else?”

  He blatantly ignored the question and he regarded me critically. “You’re thinner, moya Printsessa,” he said. “Why are you living this way?”

  “I’m fine, Papa.” I smiled at the waitress as she came over, grateful for the interruption.

  I didn’t want him to know how nervous I was so I went all out and put in my order for eggs, a Belgian waffle, a bagel and cream cheese ensemble, and some yoghurt topped with berries and flax seed, and Assam tea.

  When the waitress went away with our orders he watched me curiously. His black eyes unreadable.

  “Your account remains untouched,” he said. “And you’re sharing an apartment in one of the worst neighborhoods. I also received reports that you now work in a low-class bar at night?”

  My mouth felt dry and I wished I had ordered some orange juice. “I’m happy where I am.”

  “I disapprove,” he said sternly.

  In my mind, I muttered my response. I don’t care whether you approve or not. Before he could keep going I quickly took my turn to ask the questions. “Why are you staying for such a short time?”

  “This country does not welcome me.” He laughed cynically. “It is better I leave before they tie me to some trouble. What about you? You’ve been finished with University a year. When are you planning to return to Moscow? Soon?”

  “America is my home now.”

  His eyes flashed. “America is not for you. Your homeland is Russia.”

  I could have talked about the fact that my mother was American, which made me an American, but I knew that would only serve to encourage him to fly into a murderous rage. The last thing I needed was to make him feel the need to punish me. I played the only card powerful enough to reduce his interest in my return. “You know Moscow is dangerous for me at the moment, Papa.”

  ‘No one would dare touch you,” he said, his face stone cold, but I had hit home. His enemies were plenty and vicious and not even the president of America is immune to assassination. Fortunately, his phone rang and he picked it up.

  “Good. You are here,” he said in Russian. It seemed the guest he’d been waiting for had arrived.

  I looked down at the snow-white tablecloth and wondered why he was sharing our table with a guest. My suspicion went to the demon I had run into last night. Our families were bitter rivals so why then had he been the one tasked with asking me to call my father?

  “Why did Maxim Ivankov come to see me yesterday?”

  My father rose without responding, and with my heart suddenly hammering hard, I turned. As I had suspected, it was none other than the devil himself.

  Chapter Five

  Maxim

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTsCZ1_pHuM

  She was impossible to miss, especially with that hair, a brazen auburn, wild and cascading in tousled waves all the way down to her waist. It was the first thing I’d noticed when I first laid eyes on her more than a decade ago. She was fifteen and I seventeen, and I had saved her from breaking a few bones in Moscow.

  She had been hanging from one of the branches of an oak tree in my father’s estate, mere seconds away from falling to the hard ground. I had stopped to watch her as she struggled vainly to keep her hold from slipping. I couldn’t help wondering why she hadn’t thought to call for any help whatsoever. I stood underneath her.

  “Why are you not calling for help?” I asked curiously.

  “I don’t want to be found.”

  “So paralysis is a better option?” I was genuinely curious for her response.

  She snapped at me then, “Get the hell away if you’re not going to help.”

  My mood had been sour until then, but at her bark I had felt a smile stretch my lips and something warm fill my chest. So there we were, she struggling uselessly and I just watching the show. When she eventually fell, I had caught her in my arms.

  The momentum of her fall sent us both toppling to the ground. It was strange to feel the warmth of her body on top of me. I remained in that state until she recovered enough to raise herself on her elbows and look down at me. The sun beyond seemed to create a fiery halo around her hair as she glared at me with the bright green eyes of a witch. They were nothing like mine. I knew mine were a cold, detached blue. Hers were alive with green fire.

  For a few seconds neither of us moved. We just stared into each other’s eyes. Then I felt my cock grow suddenly hard and press into her flesh. Color flooded her cheeks. She jumped up and raced away, her hair flying in the wind.

  It was another three years before I saw her again.

  Right now, she was glaring at me with those same bright green eyes that never failed to hold my attention. Scowling, she swept her gaze between me and her father. Clearly, she had not been filled in about what was going on.

  As my three bodyguards scattered around the room, the other patrons sensed a rise in tension with the security detail that accompanied both me and Igor. No doubt they could sense from the severity of our profiles that we were not ordinary men who had come to eat half-a-teaspoon of Beluga caviar carefully balanced on a quail’s egg.

  I reached Igor Federov’s table and I held out my hand to him. Many had heard about him and his brutal reputation, but few had ever seen him in person, or even knew what he looked like. He was a simple enough man, bald, with a strong nose, and dressed in a rust colored pin-striped suit. A gold necklace hung from his thick neck. He would have been a caricature of a Mafia don, a joke, if not for his gaze. It was ferocious.

  At this moment though, he had a handshake and a smile for me, albeit a watchful one, full of effort.

  I took my seat next to Freya. I could feel the hostility and antagonism coming from her in waves. I turned to look at her and our eyes clashed. Suddenly, it was as if we were back in my father’s old estate. I was seventeen and she was fifteen, the air was warm, the sun was shining, and there was only us in the whole wide world.

  Then her father said something.

  I didn’t catch it, but I felt it disturb the air around me, and I turned to look into his ferocious eyes. I was no longer seventeen, she was not fifteen, the air was not warm, the sun was not shining, and there was no erection in my pants. I cleared my throat. I only had a few minutes here before I had to move on to the next engagement for the day.

  There was business to be done and the sooner we got down to it the better.

  “What’s going on?” Freya asked.

  Totally ignoring his daughter, Igor addressed me. “It’s been almost five years since I last saw you, Maxim. How are things? I hear that you’ve taken over major parts of the country on behalf of your father.”

  My response was simple. “I heard that you’ve been well too, Mr. Fedorov.” His chest bubbled with laughter at my elusiveness, but I could sense that the woman by our side was close to exploding.

  She pushed her chair back and rose to her feet. “Since neither of you deem me important enough to receive a simple answer, I will excuse my meagre self from your highly-esteemed company.”

  She grabbed her bag and stormed off, but she had only gone a few steps when her father called to her.

  His voice was like the crack of a whip and
she came to a halt mid-stride. I turned to watch her rigid back. Slowly, stiffly, she turned. She had on one of those ridiculously baggy pair of black pants that women who don’t want to be sexy wear. She had paired that with a loosely fitted white blouse. She wore no jewelry beyond a simple leather watch on her wrist, but I knew that it had originally belonged to her late mother.

  “Sit,” he ordered in Russian.

  She hesitated only for a second, then she returned, sour and begrudging. To be honest it was quite troubling to see that this was what I would be getting my hands involved with. But then again I did like a little spirit in my women. And spirit she apparently had in spades.

  Just then a nervous waitress arrived with a pot of coffee. I nodded at her, and she quickly filled my cup. I took a sip of my coffee and listened as Igor addressed his recalcitrant daughter.

  “I really would have thought that you’d have thoroughly matured by now. How are you still so impatient and childish?”

  She scowled outright at her father and I almost choked on my beverage. The look she gave the deadly don was more than enough to put someone on his hit list. What a privilege she enjoyed.

  Her father turned to me. “Maxim,” he said. “I have heard from your father, but not from you.”

  “I have accepted the agreement,” I replied and turned to watch her at the same time that her eyes lifted to hold my gaze. She was waiting for an explanation for what I was referring to. I made it clear. “A Fedorov will be married into the Ivankov family.

  All emotion disappeared from her face. Her father and I both waited for her response.

  Neither of us expected her to burst into laughter. It was unbridled and humorless and loud. It made everyone in the room turn to look at us uncomfortably. Except me. I listened to the throaty sounds and felt my interest grow for the woman.