Nico has managed to successfully deliver two shipments, but it’s taking him triple the amount of time that it usually does because he’s taking so many detours. He isn’t telling even me where he’s going. Only he knows – and that seems to be the only way we can get our shipments through. That makes me think that someone in our house must be betraying us, or our lines are tapped – but that shouldn’t matter, because Nico and I speak in code that only he and I understand.
I feel like I’m losing my mind. And my spies tell me that Mischa is equally frustrated.
Could it possibly be Concetta? Have I underestimated her intelligence? Hell, could it be Nico? No. Never. He’d die for me. In fact, he dove in front of me once when someone shot at me, and he still has pieces of lead inside his body to prove it.
And now Mischa is being an asshole, and just to annoy me he has insisted that I go into town to meet him and discuss it with him in person. We will accomplish nothing. It makes me angry, but he is the boss this year, so I have no choice. I take Alonza with me at her request, so she can get some shopping done.
Before I leave, I make sure that the house is ringed with guards to ensure that nobody can go in or out. If I had any of my guards in the house when I was gone and not watching my wife, we would have to do another virginity test. The thought of another man examining my wife in that way – wife-to-be in that way – fills me with rage. It is a necessary evil until the wedding day, but I am trying to ensure that it doesn’t happen any more often than necessary.
I tell Concetta in no uncertain terms that she is to stay away from Natasha and not interfere with her cleaning duties. She agrees instantly, then sinks down on her knees before me right there in the hallway and offers a blow job.
“I’m running late,” I say shortly.
“Of course. I’m so sorry,” Concetta says demurely, casting her eyes submissively to the ground. I leave her without a backward glance.
My security guard Roberto drives us, and I am followed by a car with four more men. In times like this, it’s best not to travel alone.
When we arrive in town, Alonza and I go to a cafe that is known as neutral ground for our organizations. It’s constantly swept for bugs. The very well-paid Albanian (and therefore neutral) owner of the café has men on the property 24/7. He knows that if listening devices were found there, it would mean his life. Despite that, Roberto does yet another sweep in the back room where we meet, and so does Mischa’s head of security.
Alonza goes the counter to order an espresso, and I head to the back room to meet Mischa. Roberto is by my side. Mischa is sitting at a table with his son Arkady by his side.
As we’re walking in the door, Roberto’s Bluetooth earpiece alerts him that Mischa’s grandmother has just walked in. That isn’t good, she and my great-aunt in the same room together. A few weeks ago, they ran into each other at a department store, and Alonza bashed Devora on the head with her purse, and Devora ripped Alonza’s dress open and slapped her face.
Roberto and Arkady hurry out of the room to keep an eye on the women.
I settle into a seat facing Mischa. He is leaning back in his chair, and the plate of pastries lies in front of him, untouched. That and the look on his face tells me that he didn’t drag me here just to be a dick, he actually has something to report – something that makes him unhappy. Mischa is a man who loves his sweets; it takes a lot to kill his appetite.
He’s unsheathed his knife and is idly flipping it in his hands. Is he going to try to use it on me? Will this be our showdown?
“You found something,” I say after a minute drags by.
He sighs heavily and nods. “This stays between us.”
“Of course,” I say, puzzled that he would even think it necessary to say so.
“My son-in-law.” He grimaces, the words sour on his tongue.
“No. Why?” I am genuinely shocked. Oh, it’s not that I think well of Semyon. Mischa’s son-in-law is – was – a big, dumb brute, a bully who was always throwing his weight around when his only real power came from marrying into Mischa’s family.
But why would Semyon take such a risk? He couldn’t take over the family – he didn’t have the brains for it, and the place is promised to Arkady. Semyon had already risen as high as he was ever going to get, politically, by marrying Mischa’s daughter.
“I have no idea. He never broke.”
That surprises me too. Underneath Semyon’s bulk and bluster, he wasn’t particularly strong. He earned the right to marry Mischa’s daughter by surviving a fight with Mischa’s son, but I know that Arkady pulled his punches because Mischa wanted the marriage to happen. Semyon’s family is descended from old Russian aristocracy. Mischa arranged the marriage with Semyon because he wanted to buy some of that old-world prestige and glamor.
“How did you find out?”
He lifts his bulky shoulders in an angry shrug. “Evidence in one of his cars. Calls made from a burner phone that he thought he’d discarded but that I was able to retrieve – calls to the ATF.” He stares vacantly off into nothingness. “I did what had to be done after we finished interrogating him. My daughter understands, of course. She has gone to Russia to visit family and to mourn privately for a few months.” He grimaces as he says that. Mischa’s generally a useless asshole, but he does have feelings for his children.
I still have more questions than answers. There’s something missing here. “Do you at least know if he was doing this on his own initiative or if he was working with someone?”
“Oh, he was working with someone all right.” He gives me a dark look. “Nico. We found evidence that the two have been talking. He vigorously denied it, up until the very end, and he would not tell us if the two of them were working for someone else or if they dreamed up this bullshit on their own.”
I go very still.
“I expect you’ll take care of it.” He bites out every word, and his dull, slate-blue eyes bore into mine. He is ordering me to kill my own man – and since this is an issue between families, he has the authority to do that.
But I am still not convinced. So I lie for Nico. “I knew that Nico was talking to Semyon,” I say. “He did it on my orders. Semyon was reporting back to us – or he was supposed to be. He didn’t really give us anything useful. And before you give me shit about having a spy in your organization, I know that my man Orazio is reporting to you on a regular basis.”
Conflicting emotions drift across his face. “If you knew Orazio was betraying you, why didn’t you kill him?” he finally asks.
“Strategy.” I bend my lips in a thin, cold smile. “Why should I do that, when I could keep giving him bullshit to feed you?” What he doesn’t know is that Orazio is actually loyal – he told me that Mischa had approached him, and I let him take Mischa’s bribes. It’s a deep game I’m playing.
Now that I’ve burned Orazio, of course, I will have to send him and his family somewhere out of the way and safe.
Mischa is about to say something when we hear shouts of rage from the other room. Mischa and I rush out. Borya and Roberto are holding Alonza and Devora apart. A table has been overturned, chairs lying on the floor.
“Grandmother, please,” Mischa pleads with her in Russian. “There is a truce. We have enough trouble right now without disrespecting the Council’s orders for our families to play nice.”
Devora glares at Alonza and spits out some choice swearwords in Russian, all of which I understand. I learned the language at a young age so that I could listen in on our secret recordings of Mischa’s family and their doings.
I hustle Alonza out of the restaurant, glad for an excuse to end the conversation with Mischa. Alonza readjusts her wig, and there’s a smirk on her face that says this is the most fun she’s had in ages. Damn it, she’s too old for this crap. She could break a hip or something.
“Are you all right? You look pale,” I say to her in Italian.
That earns me a deathly glare. “I am going shopping. I will call you when I am do
ne,” she replies haughtily, also in Italian.
As soon as she leaves, I call Nico. Curse Mischa – now doubt is chewing at me. Why was Nico able to successfully deliver our shipments when nobody else could? But no, I still trust my gut. It tells me two things: one, there is something hinky about the situation with Semyon. Semyon wasn’t strong enough to withstand torture – if he’d known anything, he would have talked. And two, Nico did not betray me.
But I also need to get him to safety until this whole thing is over.
So I call him. In code, I tell him to leave the country at once, to go underground and stay out of sight and not to contact me again for thirty days. He is stunned. He is confused. He wants explanations that I can’t give him at this point.
And now I am deprived of the man that I trust most, at the time when I need him most. If I didn’t know that Mischa’s not capable of subtlety or complex planning, I would think that he did this on purpose.
So now I’m stuck with Roberto as my temporary chief of security. I hope to God he’s trustworthy.
With nothing else to do, I go to a jewelry store and buy a beautiful pearl necklace and pearl earrings for Natasha, and an expensive, flashy gold chain for Concetta. I don’t want to buy anything for her, but for the time being I have to keep her happy.
When we return, I find Natasha washing the windows in the parlor, and I give her the exquisitely wrapped box with the necklace of pearls. “You are my precious pearl. I bought these because they reminded me of you,” I say. The light in her eyes makes everything worth it. All of it – the secrets I’m keeping from her, the tightrope-walk I’m treading. Because it’s working. I’m breaking down her resistance, and it won’t be long before she’s really, truly mine, not because I’m forcing her, but because she craves me more than her next breath.
Then I go upstairs to my room. There’s a knock on the door, and when I call, “Who is it?” Concetta opens the door and steps in.
“Did everything go well, my darling?” she asks.
“Not really your business.” I toss her the box with the gold chain. She catches it, rips it open and squeals with delight. “Thank you! Thank you so much!”
She quickly puts it on. It suits her perfectly – gaudy and flashy. What did I ever see in her? Oh yeah, she gives good head. She casts a glance toward the doorway, as if to make sure we won’t be interrupted. Then she hurries over to me and sinks down to her knees in front of me.
“No, Concetta. Not in the mood.”
She ignores me and reaches up, caressing my raging hard-on. What she doesn’t understand is that the hard-on isn’t for her, it’s for Natasha.
“Oh, Matteo, you’re so hard for me,” she gloats. “Let me suck your big cock. I want to drink every last drop of your come,” she says eagerly. She starts to unzip me. Furious, I grab her hair and yank her head back, ready to slap her silly.
The door flies open and Natasha walks in, aglow with happiness. She’s wearing her necklace and she has a huge smile on her face – until she sees Concetta on her knees in front of me, with my zipper down and my fingers tangled in her hair. She glances down at the floor, at the gift box that held Concetta’s new necklace, then at the big gaudy necklace around Concetta’s neck – a new gift, just like the one I brought her.
That is why Concetta glanced at the door. Because she heard Natasha coming up the stairs.
I see the shutters slam closed in Natasha’s eyes, and I think, this is it. There is a vast distance between us now, an icy wind blowing across the great steppes that separate us. I have lost her forever.
“I am so sorry that I interrupted,” she says carefully. “I was about to ask you if you wished to eat lunch with me, but I can see that you are busy.”
“Yes,” I say, my heart heavy. “I am busy.”
“I will return to my duties, my love,” she says in perfectly accented Italian. I know her well enough to taste the bitter hate in her words. Her face is a carefully arranged mask, but underneath she is seething with fury.
Chapter 16
Natasha
For a brief while there, I was actually looking forward to the wedding. Partly for the relief it would bring. Just not having Concetta living under the same roof as us, and spending a couple of weeks on a honeymoon where I wouldn’t have to clean at all…and if I’m being honest, there’s a part of me that was starting to fall for Matteo. This handsome, proud, demanding man who is completely devoted to me, who declares his passion for me every day – it’s a heady feeling.
But seeing him with Concetta on her knees in his bedroom – the same room we’ve shared intimate moments in – was like a knife through my heart.
It’s funny that would be the deal-breaker. He’s kidnapped me, tortured me, turned me into an exhausted shell of myself, reduced my existence to pointlessly fighting against the forces of dirt and dust in a giant, echoing mansion. But what killed it for me was seeing him about to let Concetta put her mouth on his dick.
I hate the thought of sex on our wedding night with him now. I’m actively planning how I can get out of it. I just won’t do it. My plans are getting more and more drastic. Some of them involve ending myself. Sooner or later, I’ll have to face that choice anyway – because I won’t let anyone take a daughter from me. Ever since I found out that was a very likely possibility in the near future, I’ve been living on borrowed time anyway, haven’t I? I just haven’t let myself think about it.
My poor mother. I wish I knew more about her. She tried so hard to save me. She sacrificed her life for me. She knew that if she let herself be captured, she’d have been tortured, and she’d have ended up revealing the truth.
But realistically, if Matteo and I have unprotected sex on our wedding night, I could get pregnant. And I can’t let that happen. This is the year of the Peredyshka – and I don’t give a damn what Matteo claims, every single young woman in the family will be dreading it. There is no way that any mother ever, anywhere, would be okay with this.
Seeing Matteo and Concetta together jarred me back to reality. I must take action to escape, no matter how drastic. With a lot of luck, it’s possible that I could incapacitate Matteo and get to his cellphone and call for help. Bash him on the head when he’s not expecting it, maybe. If I fail…well, I can’t think about that.
So this is it. Somehow or other, it’s my final week here.
I keep my smile-face pasted on tightly, and every day, I clean until one or two in the morning and then don’t even bother heading to Matteo’s room afterward. I just stagger up to my own room and pass out. I wake up at six a.m. I am so tired I am walking into walls. I’m getting used to fainting, and I’m bruised from it. Matteo is angry and hurt by my rejection – I can see it in his eyes. By completely neglecting him, though, I am apparently getting the house clean enough that he hasn’t needed to punish me.
I have already been fitted for my wedding dress. I couldn’t care less about that, but I pretended to love it.
Then this morning Matteo announced that he has to leave for a couple of days. There is a shipment that needs to be delivered, and he is the only person who can do so right now, for reasons he can’t tell me. He says that I shouldn’t worry, that nobody will be able to hurt me, that there is a ring of men around the house.
There’s a subtext to that. He’s not just saying that I will be safe, he’s saying that I should not even think about trying to escape just because he is gone. Of course, I do think of it, but I can’t come up with any ideas of how to get past his army.
In the evening, I have dinner with Alonza and Concetta. Concetta was fake-nice to me for a while there, but ever since the blow job incident, she hates me again. She was caught kneeling in front of my fiancé, ready to suck his dick, and she’s actually mad at me. Figures.
At dinner, she picks scornfully at her food, trying to pretend that the meal is bad. Alonza isn’t eating a lot either; maybe she’s worried about Matteo. Something’s definitely been bothering him, and it’s not just the wedding.
“I guess nobody likes your cooking.” Concetta’s bolder with Matteo gone, and since she’s speaking English, Alonza can’t understand her.
Alonza gets the gist of it, though. She looks at me sympathetically.
“There is no fault in your cooking. I have a stomach ache,” she says in Italian.
“I hope you feel better. Perhaps Matteo could take you to the doctor?” I reply, also in perfect Italian. Alonza beams at me, and Concetta looks as if she just swallowed a bug and pushes her dish away. “I can’t eat any more of this.” She stands up and flounces off, leaving me to clear her plate.
A couple of hours later, I am cleaning the living room when I hear a huge boom and all the lights suddenly go out. I feel a cold fear, sitting there waiting for the generator Matteo has mentioned to kick in. It’s not turning on – that’s got to be a bad sign.
I hear an unfamiliar man’s voice calling out to me. “Miss Natasha, are you all right?”
Something tells me not to answer. Something tells me that I should hide, that the man means me no good at all. The person knows my name, and he must be one of Matteo’s bodyguards come in to check on me, so why am I afraid?
I don’t know, but I run for it nonetheless.
I run very, very quietly. Tiptoe running. For once I’m glad I know every room in this huge house. I know where the furniture is, where the doors are, where to hide.
I slip through a doorway at the other end of the room, and I realize what’s bothering me. All the men were locked outside the house. There is no way that one of Matteo’s bodyguards could be inside the house and at the doorway of the room that quickly. The person must already have been inside. Someone let him in. My money would be on Concetta.
I carefully make it to the stairway, planning on trying to head for Matteo’s room to see if he has any weapons there.
Where is Valentina? Is she being kidnapped? I don’t hear her screaming. She’d scream, wouldn’t she?
Matteo: A Dark Mafia Hate Story Page 13