by Nicole Fox
As much as I hate to admit it, it’s refined. But I’m certain it’s just like him—enticing façade, but hidden rot under its foundation.
On the second floor, he skips over one of the rooms. The door is closed, so I can’t see what it is. I stop in front of it. He turns to see why I’m not following him.
“What’s in there?” I ask. “Your doll collection?”
“No. It’s my bedroom.” Before I can stop him, he opens the door. “You don’t need to see it. There’s not much inside.”
The bed could easily fit three people on it and it has a thick, white comforter—the kind that if you fell back onto it, you’d sink several inches and still feel the layers of softness underneath you. There’s only one pillow. The only other notable thing inside is the speakers that are built into the walls.
“I expected a bachelor pad,” I admit.
“Is that what you wanted?” he asks. For the briefest second before he looks me in the eye, his eyes flicker up and down my body.
“You just seemed like the type that would have the leopard print silk sheets, the mood lighting, maybe a clap-on disco ball—the tools of seduction, you know?” I say sarcastically.
As I glance back at him, I’m struck by his appearance again. He’s not beautiful. At least, that’s not quite the right word. Everything about him is too severe—the angles of his jaw, the ruthlessness in his eyes, his movements—to make me think of beauty, but I can feel my pulse in every part of my body when I look at him.
“I don’t bring women back to the house,” he says. “I’m not running a bed and breakfast.”
“Why not? You’re such a charming host,” I mutter.
He seizes my arm.
It should scare me—he’s significantly bigger and stronger than me. Even just looking down at his fingers around my arm, I know that he could snap it easily.
The aggression in his face slips away—not like he’s made it disappear, but more like he’s tucked it away for later use.
“Let’s go back to the den.”
He closes his bedroom door. I should be relieved, but as he lets go of my arm—my skin a bright red—I’m stuck with this ache.
I follow him. I don’t have a choice anymore.
6
Lev
In the den, I walk straight to the bookshelf. I take down Russia: From Slavic Tribes to Potential Superpower. The binding is loose, but the invitation is still easy to find. I take it out and put the book back.
I hold it out for Allison to take. She hesitates before snatching it from me. She reads it. And rereads it.
“What the hell is this?” she demands.
“You should recognize it. You must have gone to it a couple of times.”
“No.” She’s holding the invitation so tightly that she’s crinkling the edge. “The Great Blue Foundation gala is for the NYPD and donors. Why do you have this?”
“Because I support our brothers in blue.”
“Bullshit,” she mutters. “You have to donate a lot to be invited and you were afraid of the police chief’s daughter being in your nightclub. You’re not funding your own criminal investigation.”
“No, but I can make the police a lot more reluctant to investigate me if they know pissing me off will cut off their funds.” I sit down on the armrest of the sofa. “The amount of money I’ve donated to the NYPD could buy enough tanks to destroy all five boroughs.”
“How fascist of you,” she says. “So, why do you need me?”
“Money doesn’t work on some people. They’d rather have the glory or the legacy. I can admire the sentiment, but I’d also prefer to not waste my time or money in courtrooms.”
She looks back down at the invitation. “I get it. You have control over everything. You don’t need to keep proving that to me.”
“I didn’t show you this to prove anything to you. I’m allowed to bring one person with me. You’re going to be that one person.”
Her jaw drops. “The gala is on Wednesday. That’s three days away.”
“Plenty of time.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not going with you to the gala. You know how pissed off my parents will be if I show up with my brand-new fiancé that they’ve never met?”
“We’re not going to show up as an engaged couple. We’ll show up as two people who have been dating for a few—let’s say, six—months.”
She shakes her head. “My parents will still be pissed. After I tell them that I’m going with you, they’re going to want to—”
“You’re not going to tell them,” I interject. “Your parents won’t know that we’re arriving together until we show up.”
“That’s insane,” she blurts. “My parents need to know. They’re going to have an incredibly hard time believing I’ve kept a relationship a secret from them for six months. They’re going to be hurt if they find out that I just showed up at the gala with a long-term boyfriend that they’ve never met. We’re very close. I don’t want them to think I’ve been keeping such a big secret from them for so long.”
“I don’t care,” I say. “I need your father to find out the same time as all of his NYPD buddies and all of his rich donors. If he finds out beforehand, he could become suspicious and try to punish me for being with his little girl or he could try to do damage control before everyone else in the public eye knows we’re together. But once everyone knows, he has to accept it as a reality. This whole situation is about his reputation—he’s not going to ruin it because he doesn’t like his daughter’s boyfriend.”
“They’ll never trust me again,” she says, her voice almost breaking. There’s a twinge in my chest, but I brush it away.
“They won’t trust you if they find out that you killed someone and tried to hide the murder, either,” I say. She turns her head away from me.
“Well, it’s always good to know that I have no control over my life,” she says.
I pluck the invitation out of her hands and set it on the fireplace mantle.
“Who’s your best friend?” I ask.
“What?” Her head whips back around. “Julia. How is that relevant to anything?”
“Arrange for the two of us to have dinner with her. Preferably somewhere that she’ll be comfortable. Money isn’t a problem. We need at least one person who can say she knew we were dating before the gala. Since the gala is on Wednesday, you should call her now.”
“How about you go to hell?” she snaps. “I’m not your employee or your whore. I’m not going to jump to my feet and do whatever you want just because you say it in a demanding tone.”
“I can change my tone,” I say, taking a step closer to her. Our toes are nearly touching, showing the stark difference between her sneakers and my leather shoes. “But you won’t like it.”
We stare at each other. Her lips are slightly parted. A strand of her dark hair cuts across her face. Her gaze is steady. If we were on equal footing, she’d be a worthy foe, but she knows I hold all of the power.
She blinks before looking down. She grabs her bag and gets out her phone. She taps on the screen a couple of times before bringing the phone up to her ear and glares at me as she waits for Julia to answer.
It better be Julia she’s just called.
I look down at my empty glass, the ice slowly melting. This woman is going to drive me straight to alcoholism. She should understand at this point that she has no power in this situation.
Yet something about her resistance is hot as fuck.
Being the Bratva boss and being rich, people easily bend to my will. The people who don’t usually end up dead. But this woman keeps pushing against me, either too dumb to realize that I’d fuck her up as quickly as I’d fuck her raw, or too courageous to properly evaluate the situation.
I look behind me, toward the window. The sun is reaching its highest point. Even on a Sunday, I can’t waste time like this. Balancing the Bratva and Mariya’s Revenge has always been dependent on me keeping the same schedule and Allison has thro
wn a wrench in the whole thing.
“Yes. I know. It’s insane,” Allison says into the phone. She tilts her head back, revealing a sensual collarbone and an appetizing throat. “Okay. Yes. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. We’ll make something together though, I promise. Okay. I love you too. Be safe on the road.”
She gets off the phone.
“We’re having dinner at the apartment tomorrow around 6:00,” she says.
“She’s your roommate?”
“Yes,” she says. “Which you would know if you’d bothered to ask me.”
“Great. We have plenty of time for that.” I stand up. “I need you to change into some running clothes, so we can ask each other some questions. I can have my driver drop you off at your apartment and you can get what you need.”
“Why would I need running clothes?”
“Because right now is my running time, but we need to become informed about each other, so you need to come with me.”
If looks could kill, I’d be burning in hell right now.
“My clothes are fine,” she says. I glance at her sweatpants and shirt. The sweatpants are heavy. She’s likely wearing a regular bra under her shirt. It’s going to be a pain in the ass for her.
So be it.
“Fine,” I say. “Let’s go.”
Kingston Trail is in Konkiel Park, tucked away on the west side. I keep my breathing steady as I push forward. Allison is somewhere close behind me. She appears a couple of inches to my right side, her breathing labored and her hands clinging to her sweatpants that keep sliding down her hips.
I told her not to wear them and now they’re distracting us both.
“It’s your turn,” I remind her.
“Uh.” She sucks in a deep breath. “I don’t know. You’ve shot down half of my questions.”
“They’re things you don’t need to know about me,” I tell her. “We just need to know enough about each other that we can convince people we’ve been dating for the last six months. Ask me something.”
“What was your first job?” she asks.
“A waiter. Is rum and Coke your favorite drink?”
“Uh, no,” she says. “I just order that now because I’m familiar with it. My father used to love it.”
I stop running. She nearly trips, surprised by the abrupt change in pace. She turns to face me.
“You need to tell me more. You can’t just tell me that something isn’t your favorite drink.” I wipe sweat off my face with my arm. “Tell me what your favorite drink is.”
“You’ve barely told me anything. Why am I the one who has to tell you everything?”
“Because you only need to know the basics, so we’re not giving different answers to the same question. It’s just a precaution for you to know facts about my life, but I need to know everything about you. Julia, your parents, and all these policemen are going to know random pieces of information about you that I should know if I’ve been dating you for six months. Your parents are also going to be motivated to test my knowledge about you to see if I genuinely care about you, so we need to be prepared. Tell me what your favorite drink is.”
“It’s …” She swats a fly off her arm. “It doesn’t matter. Nobody there is going to know what my favorite drink is.”
“Your parents are going to know what your favorite drink is.”
“No. They aren’t,” she says. “It’s stupid. My father used to make me this cinnamon chai tea, but he stopped making it for me when I was in my teens. He must have thought I outgrew it, but I crave it all the time.”
“Your favorite drink has no alcohol in it.”
“Yes. It’s not that crazy.” Her hands rest on her hips. She gazes down the length of the trail. My eyes trace down her body. Sweat has sunk through her shirt and I can see the outline of her breasts. They’re not as big as the fake tits I normally go for, but they’re still worthy of some attention. As her breathing slows to a moderate tempo, she looks back at me. She’s caught me staring. I smile at her. She crosses her arms over her chest, which just causes her sweatpants to settle lower on her hips. She adjusts her sweatpants again and turns her back to me.
Most city girls look out of place in the woods, but she looks out of place everywhere. It just makes me want to crack her open wide and figure out exactly how her mind works.
Her body, too.
“It’s your turn to ask me something,” I say. She looks over her shoulder at me.
“Do you ever get tired of being an ass?” she asks.
“No.” I take off running again. After the short rest, she’s able to keep up with me now. “We need to decide on a reason for why we didn’t tell people we were dating.”
“That’s easy,” she says. “We’ll tell them that you wanted me to keep it a secret, so you could keep sleeping with other women.”
“No. You’re not going to paint your future fiancé as a womanizer. We’ll say that I didn’t want my negative reputation to affect you.”
“Do you mean your womanizing reputation?”
I shake my head. The less she knows, the better. The more time that passes since Jeffrey Douglas’ death, the more she will be inclined to stay silent.
“Well, I don’t like that,” she says, tugging on her sweatpants again.
“I don’t care what you like or don’t like.”
“It’s not just my preference. People are going to be able to tell from a mile away that you’re an asshole who would never keep something a secret for the sake of another person. We need something different.”
I pick up my pace. She runs harder too.
“Fine. We’ll say that we kept it a secret because I was too busy to deal with you and the fact that I was too busy meant that we weren’t certain if we should commit to each other.”
“We were both too busy.”
“Fine.” I force a smile as we pass a couple jogging in the opposite direction. I look over my shoulder, waiting for them to disappear around the corner. “We also need a story for how we met. I already know you’re going to disagree, but my plan was that you spilled coffee on me at a coffee house. You helped me clean it up, we started talking, and we had our first date that night.”
“Not a chance in hell,” she says, her breathing getting ragged again. God, that sound would be an aphrodisiac in bed.
“I knew you were going to say that.” I have to turn my head to talk to her because she’s falling behind again. “Why? Because I made you look clumsy?”
“No, that part is completely believable,” she says. “The unbelievable part is that the whole scenario sounds like every romance movie in existence. And that makes me a little suspicious. Are you watching a lot of chick flicks? Are you a romantic under all that ego?”
I scowl, but the teasing in her voice is invigorating. There’s something simplistic about it—there’s no layers or agenda underneath it.
“We have to have another spot where it’s normal that we’d encounter each other,” she says. “Where do insanely rich people go that average people also go to?”
“The gas station,” I say.
“Okay. We met at the gas station. And I went up to you because … you were being a dick to someone. Statistically, there’s a strong chance that happened at some point.”
We keep running. She almost trips but manages to keep herself upright and catches up to me. Her arm brushes up against mine as she tries to keep up.
“We met at the gas station,” she repeats. “You mistook me for one of your high school classmates. You bought me the bottle of soda I was holding. I had no idea you were rich. Our first few dates were very casual.”
If this were an actual business meeting, I’d give her some credit—it’s creative without being outlandish.
“Sounds good,” I say.
“Can we … can we please stop for a second?” she pants.
I stop. She stops a few feet ahead of me, leaning forward and trying to catch her breath. Her hand is pressed over her heart. I take a step forwa
rd to check on her.
“Do you need to sit down?” I ask. She shakes her head. Her face is covered in sweat, but she pulls it off well. One of the models I fucked a couple of months ago joked that she didn’t sweat, she glistened, but she was full of shit. Glisten is too elegant of a word, but as Allison closes her eyes, letting her head fall back as the sun beats down on her, there’s an unmistakable authenticity to her.
I could grab her, have her legs wrap around my waist, and fuck her against a tree, then in the fallen leaves. It’d be a perfect end to the run.
She stands up straight, taking a few more deep breaths. She pushes her sweatpants down and carefully pulls them over her shoes and off her legs.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask.
“It’ll be easier to run without them,” she says. “If somebody has a problem with it and calls the police, apparently you can take care of that.”
She balls the sweatpants in her arms and takes off running again.
I chase after her. She’s in her T-shirt, her underwear, and her shoes. Her ass sways with her movements and her thigh muscles contract and relax with her stride. It’s a thing of beauty.
I run slower now. There’s significantly less conversation. On some level, she must know I’m watching because she doesn’t check to see where I am.
Then the rain begins.
Water drips onto the floor as I close the door. Allison is drenched. Her dark hair appears pitch-black when it’s wet and it sticks to her shoulders and arms like latex. Her shirt is clinging to her skin, but more importantly, her underwear seems nearly translucent.
“I’m going to sit down for the next decade,” Allison says, walking toward the den. She’s carrying her sweatpants in her right hand and her bag on her left arm. The familiar body ache hasn’t hit me yet, but Allison is already walking with a slight, wincing limp.