“Thanks for protecting me,” she said.
I tried to keep my cool, even though that smile was disarming. I planned to leave her with Jack or Harlan as soon as I could figure out what was happening and how to keep her safe. She wouldn’t certainly be safe for long if she stayed with me. I should have said so right then, but somehow, I didn’t find it in me to let her down. You’re becoming soft, Ace. Your friend was right, as always.
“Tell me about Russia,” I said. We had a long trip ahead: twelve hours on the road at least. I figured there was no harm in getting to know each other a bit more. “Did you leave a job there? A boyfriend? Some enemies?”
“No, no, and god, I hope not,” she chuckled. “I’ve had some jobs and a couple of boyfriends. No enemies that I know of.”
“So nobody hates you back home? That’s good.”
“Nobody,” she said. Then she seemed to remember something. “Although I... I have broken a heart, I guess.”
“More than one, I’m sure,” I replied. “You’re so beautiful it can’t be any other way.”
“No, just one. A boy from Arzamas. His name is Piotr. He loved me since we were just teens.”
“And you didn’t love him back?”
“No. He never gave up, though. He kept telling me that I was the girl for him, even when Misha and I moved to St Petersburg. After a few months, he moved there too.”
“For you?”
She let out a sardonic smile.
“If only. He joined a gang there. Small business, just a bunch of lowlifes. He went down the rabbit hole pretty fast. I even visited him the first time they sent him to jail.”
I arched my brow and let my hand rest on her leg, just as she had done minutes before. God, her eyes were so pretty I could have kissed her.
“The first time? Then he went to jail more than once.”
“He did,” she said with a sad gesture, “and he dragged Misha down with him. My brother had joined his little gang, and they were outside all day, roaming the streets, stealing whatever they could. I told Misha... I warned him...”
She couldn’t go on. If she kept talking, she would cry. I knew the sensation: a knot in your throat that doesn’t let you speak. Anguish. Sorrow. Pain. I had forgotten that kind of feeling, but I knew it well.
“I had a girlfriend a few years ago,” I said, so that she wouldn’t have to go on. I could have changed the subject to literally anything else, but I thought about that. I was mirroring her pain, remembering my own. “Her name was Rhonda, and I killed for her.”
She looked at me with her big vulnerable eyes, and I could see how her sorrow receded to give way to fear.
“They killed her first,” I added. “I hope that makes up for it.”
She kept silent for a while, looking through the window at the boring landscape of rural Pennsylvania. Finally, she asked.
“What happened?”
“I had just become the head of Little Vegas. But it was too soon for me. The previous guy in charge had messed with the numbers and he died in the ensuing disagreement. I was expected to ‘fix’ things by killing even more people. I refused. I had been dating Rhonda for a while and we were deeply in love, so, naturally, I wanted out. I didn’t want such a risky life for her, and I was ready to renounce my position to just be with her and lead a normal life.”
“But you couldn’t.”
“Well, nobody just says goodbye and leaves,” I replied. “There are too many secrets. If you get out, you must make sure they can’t find you. I withdrew some millions and moved to a nice house in a Spanish coastal town. Someone sold me out, though, and we had to flee. If it weren’t for Jack Starr, who warned me that the location was no longer safe, they would have killed us both. After that, I decided that it was best that we moved to different places. This time they couldn’t find me. But they found her.”
I stopped there. After all these years, I still didn’t like to talk about it. The next part was the worst. Vanina said nothing, but her big eyes encouraged me to go on.
“I don’t know how they got to her. They... they shot her in the face. They didn’t even give her a warning. They broke into her little apartment in Paris and killed her before she realized what was happening.”
“Did you ever found out who sold you out?”
I shook my head.
“I had my suspicions, but never confirmed them. I took care of the guys who killed Rhonda, though.”
“Had you killed anyone before? Did you kill anyone after that?”
I shook my head to both things.
“It’s dangerous to be with me.”
I didn’t say anything else for hours. My mouth had become a hard straight line and my eyes were fixated on the road. She caressed my cheek with the back of her hand, briefly.
The trip was long and, luckily, uneventful. Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ohio went through one after the other, offering nothing interesting to a couple of fugitives. We took a light lunch and then another bite in the evening. As we approached our destination, the sun completed its circular arc in the sky, and Chicago welcomed us already completely soaked in artificial light.
* * *
The place was a basement, and this time there were more people. Three tables were laid down around the room, and the players were already sitting down in their respective places, except for me. Harlan winked at me from his post beside the computer, and Veronica waved her hand through the smoke that already filled the air, holding a tray with a bottle and a couple of glasses. When she saw Van, though, her smile froze in her face and gave way to a disagreeable rictus. She had likely bugged Harlan to get him to let her fly to Chicago too, hoping to surprise me after souring our last encounter. She hadn’t expected to see me entering the room in the company of a new girl, one that, among other things, was seven years her senior.
“I didn’t expect to see so many people,” Vanina whispered.
“This is more of an event, a gathering,” I explained to her. “In the present situation, it’s a good thing. It’s not very likely that whoever is after you would attack you here.”
“And what is she doing here?”
I stared at her, wondering if she was actually jealous of Veronica after the night we had just spent.
“She’s part of my team,” I said. “Why wouldn’t she be here?”
“And what about her?”
Van was pointing discreetly with her chin. I followed her gesture and met Tara’s eyes. Tara was wearing a highly revealing dress, as usual, and she had the goods to go with it. Her meaty lips shone seductively and her perfectly delineated eyebrows drew an inviting shape. She uncrossed her legs and crossed them again the other way. She had a perfect technique for showing off a perfect body.
“Oh, that’s Tara. Part of my team too. Come on, let’s say hi.”
Veronica and Vanina exchanged looks of strong disapproval when they greeted each other, and they let go of each other’s hand as soon as possible. Tara, on the other hand, was cool and friendly. She welcomed my companion and offered her a drink.
“It’s like gorgeous women follow you wherever you go,” Van said, in such a serious tone that I laughed internally. “Am I one of them too?”
“Well, at least you admit you’re gorgeous.” My quip was met with an audible snort.
The guys at one of the tables were already playing. I recognized Iraklis Nalkios, the owner of a tech company based in Chicago, and Jim Stoth, a petroleum executive who wanted to be mayor against all odds. Nalkios was smoking like it was the end of the world, while Stoth sat upright and held his cards with dismay.
My opponent was waiting at the center table. He looked upset; I was supposed to arrive much earlier, by plane, with the rest of my team. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to know that something had happened yesterday. Nobody seemed to have a clue. Jack Starr remained in New York, gathering whatever info he could find about the thugs.
I nodded at the man who was sitting at the poker table waiting for me. His name was Dmitri P
enyov, and was Russian as fuck, too. He gave no signal of recognizing Van, which was a relief for me.
Vanina’s big, dark, beautiful eyes were meandering around the room, absorbing every little detail. If she was a spy, she was too overt. But of course she’s not a spy. You already know that, moron, I told myself. And yet, I wondered if the Russian thugs might have been sent to dispatch her after she didn’t do the job she was supposed to do. Get information from me? Kill me? Whatever it could be. I intimately felt that I could trust Van, but that still remained a possibility. Or maybe I was growing old and mistrustful.
I leaned over Van and whispered to her ear.
“Take my place,” I said.
“What?”
“Do you know how to play poker?”
She hesitated. “Well... a little bit... Misha taught me, but—”
“Wonderful,” I said, and pressed three fingers on her spine, gently. Even such a small touch seemed to disarm her, as I felt her body relaxing and she took a step forward.
“Are you sure?” she whispered.
“Come on, I drove for twelve hours. You can do it.” She took another step. “That’s it,” I encouraged her. “Go ahead and screw the guy. Only not literally.” Raising my voice, I announced, “There is a change in the table. Vanina Vokhtazin plays for Ace Hart.”
A collective murmur followed Van as she walked towards the table and sat on the empty chair. Veronica was fuming. If looks could kill, Vanina would have dropped in pieces right there. The blonde sent me an incensed look and hurried into the restroom. I could catch a glimpse of a tear under the white flash of the lamps as she disappeared through the door.
Vanina sat down and played. Badly. Like really badly. She played so badly and she was so aware of it that in the end, her face was almost red. Adorably red.
“Assets transferred,” Harlan announced, after checking the computer screen. Van gave me a puzzled look.
“You’ve just lost four million dollars,” I told her. “Or, more accurately, I lost all that money. And a racing horse.”
The look on her face was priceless. She stared at me with her eyes wide open and her jaw dropped, her hand still in the air as if she was about to ask for a new card. She had turned from red to white in a snap.
“Really?”
“Really,” I replied. And added jokingly, “I think I should kick you out of here.”
“I can... I can go,” she said, sitting up clumsily and blushing once more. I stopped her with a gentle touch on her shoulder, and made her sit down again.
“You keep playing,” I said. “I have a good feeling about this.” Which was, of course, a lie.
I announced that I was looking for a rematch. Penyov nodded and they were dealt new cards. Van lost again, to the tune of five million. In the end, she was too embarrassed to look around, but she had also a weird fire in her eyes.
I’ve seen that fire before. It’s what happens to some people when they first start gambling and discover the emotional rollercoaster it entails. They may win or they may lose, but during the experience, they feel truly alive.
I had felt the fire myself, many years ago. The man who introduced me to Little Vegas also went by Ace, like the one before him. He hired me as a bouncer for his bar, without telling me what kind of people I’d be bouncing out. He must have seen something in my eyes, because one night, while we waited for the players to arrive, he took a shiny new deck of cards and made me sit at the table with him.
“Look at my eyes,” he said. “Look at my hands. Take a picture in your mind. Watch me move my fingers as I hold my cards. Watch my eyebrows, see if my eyelids flicker. Take note of the cards I put on the table. My hands, do they shake? Do I move them too fast?” We played hand after hand, quickly, without speaking. He won and won and then won again. He won with great cards. He won with shitty cards. I tried to read him but he was always ahead. I never let go of him. In the end, my face was flushed and my armpits were covered in sweat; my heart raced like a horse in its prime. I lost again. But I didn’t let go.
The following day, I got the call. I learnt about the real business behind the bar. Ace told me that I had a future with him if I played my cards well. He wasn’t talking about the poker deck.
I looked at Vanina, saw the fire in her eyes as she left the table and looked around searching for me. One of my own, maybe? I could teach her a few things... in another life. Because we were not meant to be together in this one.
* * *
She was absolutely excited when we stepped out the building, which made it all worse. Part of it was the wine, of course, but mostly, she had become a player: she had discovered the feeling all players feel, the adrenaline rushing through her veins. She had experienced that weird high, a special kind of happiness that comes with putting yourself in danger on purpose. And it had only costed me a mere twenty million dollars. Heck, I’ve lost more when playing myself.
“I will compensate you,” she laughed as we walked along the sidewalk, the fresh midnight air blowing against our faces. “You know I will.” She hugged me and stamped a playful kiss on my lips. “Oh, Ace, it was wonderful. I... Oh, that was your car.”
It was my car, indeed. But she would get in the other one. I stopped beside it and greeted Harlan, who was waiting for us. I opened the door for her.
“Harlan will drive you to the airport. You’ll both fly back to New York,” I explained.
She froze in place and stared at me, all joy wiped out from her face in an instant.
“What?”
I knew my expression was cold and self-assured. I’ve been wearing it for years. At first it was a mask; in time, it became my face.
“It was nice to meet you,” I said. “But I don’t need you anymore.”
“Wh-what?” she repeated, and I think I saw a tear forming in her eye.
Oh, I could hear her thoughts just as if she were speaking out loud. He fucked and now he’s throwing me away, just like all these assholes do. I’m just like any of his other bitches. I wish I wouldn’t have answered his email. I wish I would’ve never stepped inside that pub. I hate him so much.
How could I explain to her that I wasn’t planning on fucking her and leaving her, but that it was precisely that moment (that magical intimate moment when it became certain to me that I love her) when I knew that I had to protect her at all costs? I couldn’t. She wouldn’t understand. She would try to convince me. But there was no other way.
If I could make sure she was completely out of harm’s way, I could contact her again. But I couldn’t count on it. It was highly dubious. Men like me are poison for girls. They end up with a bullet in their face.
The last words I said to her. Impeccably pronounced, without an ounce of emotion, as she broke down and tears welled in her eyes:
“It’s best if I don’t know where you are. I suggest you move to a different city or go back to Russia. Thanks for everything.”
I kissed her softly on the cheek and walked back to my car. As I drove away, I saw her still standing there on the sidewalk, while Harlan waited patiently for her to get into the other one so that he could drive to the airport.
14. TWO DREAMS
VAN
I dreamt of falling.
I was suspended in the middle of the sky when it all started. Looking right ahead I could see the sun, spreading pink and orange light all across the landscape. Below me there was the desert, and only the desert. The sand was not uniform but striped in all the colors I can think of. Red sand, yellow sand, blue sand, pink sand, white sand, brown sand, green sand, black sand, one strip after the other, from horizon to horizon. I was trying to guess at what height I was floating in the air when suddenly I wasn’t floating anymore. I fell down at such a speed that I think I woke up but kept dreaming anyway.
I hit the ground with full force, causing a cataclysm of sorts. As soon as my feet touched the sand, a multicolored explosion covered my whole field of vision. I had created a sand tornado that kept growing and growing a
s I entered the ground. Soon I was completely covered in sand and descending to the core of the earth. I could somehow see the sand as I went down, but I also felt it scratching my eyeballs, my lips, getting into my nose and mouth and ears, grazing my clothes and tearing them by sheer pressure, then scratching my nipples and my belly and the slit between my legs too. It was painful, but not too much, since the sand was amazingly fine and almost ethereal.
After a while I realized there were voices whispering in the constant hissing of the sand flowing upwards. Women’s voices. They were all fresh and melodious, the voices of women one would picture as young and beautiful. I didn’t understand what they were saying, but there was a threatening tone lying beneath the sweetness of their words. As I kept drilling into the desert, I became aware that all those voices also rotated around me like a tornado, and there was a deep, masculine voice underlying them all, a voice that was not hard for me to recognize.
Right before I woke up, I realized the sand had a subtle smell too. A smell of gunpowder. And now it was all black.
The air in my room was chilly, and the sheet and cover had fallen by the bedside, leaving me exposed. I shivered as I covered myself again.
I knew what the dream meant. I would never truly have him. The words of my favourite poet, Marina Tsvetaeva, ricocheted inside my head as I fell down in the multicolored sand: However much you feed a wolf, it always looks to the forest.
Ace Hart was a wolf, and his head would always be turned to the forest. Gorgeous women grew all around him like trees in fertile soil. There was no way for me to avoid it. It was in his nature.
I was a creature from a different world. And all I could do was cry.
* * *
ACE
It had been years since I last dreamt of Rhonda. Always nightmares. This time was not the exception.
It was just her face at first, in a close-up, looking at me calmly in the eye. She wasn’t talking or moving, just staring, as if there was nothing to say or do. I don’t remember having ever seen such a peaceful expression in her when she was alive. She was always sparkly, passionate in the good and the bad, often irate. Not in the dream. She looked like a Madonna, full of inner peace and serenity.
Sold: A Billionaire Bad Boy Mafia Romance Page 6