From Russia With Fangs

by Jacey Conrad

  He nodded. She stuck her head out into the hallway and looked both ways before ducking out. She took several deep calming breaths and pasted on her best, most innocent smile. She could hear the buzz of conversation as she walked down the hall. She glided to the top of the elaborately carved mahogany stairs and saw the milling crowd of supernatural criminals and their glittering wives. Her father stood at the bottom of the staircase, visibly twitching. Nik was standing beside him, whispering what she was sure were calming “non-murdery” words to Ilya. Alexei was fuming, his nostrils flared over a huge tumbler full of scotch. Andrey stood off to the side, watching the proceedings with an air of amusement.

  Galina was conspicuously absent.

  A hush came over the crowded room as Irina descended the staircase, feeling very much like the most depressed Cinderella in the history of dysfunctional fairy tales. Papa turned to the stairs and saw her walking toward him. His tense expression melted away to one of proud delight. While she wasn’t ready to smile at him just yet, she did nod to him in a gesture of daughterly submission.

  “You look beautiful, bobochka,” Papa boomed, taking her hand to help her down the last few stairs. “Andrey is a lucky man, yes?”

  “A very lucky man,” Alexei ground out, shooting her “fiancé” a death glare that Andrey patently ignored. Papa placed Irina’s hand into Andrey’s grasp.

  “You do look lovely, Irina,” Andrey said, kissing the back of her hand lightly. She offered him the hint of a smile. Alexei growled at the interaction, but no one commented.

  “We need to talk,” she whispered.

  “Of course,” he agreed.

  “If I can have your attention please,” Papa shouted over the babble of conversation. The rumble died down to nothing as Papa called. “Thank you all for joining us on this joyous occasion. Though it has been a difficult year for our Irina, we have much to celebrate tonight. Our new friend, Andreyev Lupesco, has asked my beautiful daughter to be his wife.”

  Ilya paused for dramatic effect, though it was clear that everybody knew Irina’s answer.

  “And she has agreed!”

  A cheer rose up from the crowd, so loud and enthusiastic Irina could almost believe it was genuine.

  “So, in a few months’ time, I am happy to say, we will join our families, stronger and more powerful than ever before. So, please, drink! Enjoy yourself! Help us celebrate this beautiful union!”

  The applause was so loud that no one noticed when Alexei dropped his glass on the floor and stomped out of the room. Andreyev nodded to the crowd, a pleasant smile fixed on his face, even if his eyes were just as cool and calculating as ever. Irina smiled her detached beauty queen grin, even though she knew it creeped Nik the hell out.

  “You haven’t, you know,” Irina muttered through her teeth.

  “What’s that?” Andrey asked, giving the guests at large an absent wave, like a visiting, but bored, crown prince.

  “Asked me to marry you.”

  “I didn’t think you’d mind a lack of formality.”

  “Will you mind having my expensive, but tasteful, shoe lodged in your ass?” she asked pleasantly. “FYI, I wear a size nine.”

  Andrey surprised everybody in the room by throwing his head back and laughing. Irina’s eyes went wide and glanced around the room, waiting for the ceiling to collapse and give way to frogs and pestilence or some other sign of the impending apocalypse. Andrey placed his hand at the small of her back and gave it a friendly pat. “Oh, I’m looking forward to our ‘engagement,’ Irina.”

  “The sarcastic air quotes around ‘engagement’ aren’t necessary.”

  He grinned at her. “Aren’t they?”

  11

  Everything Gets Worse

  IRINA WASTED NO TIME in getting to know her new fiancé. The very next afternoon, she walked into Andrey’s office, though with a slight knotting-related hitch in her step. She dressed the part of the mob boss’s daughter, a slick black power suit and diamonds and onyx at her throat. She looked cold and sharp, like a hypodermic needle waiting to plunge, as she strode through the chrome and glass lobby of Andrey’s offices.

  “He’ll see me,” she told the receptionist as she passed by the big black lacquer front desk. She pushed through the office door and prayed that Andrey wasn’t doing something upsetting. But the moment she saw Andrey in his seat of power, behind the enormous black slate desk, she felt much of the bravado that had carried her through the door drain right out of her.

  Andrey looked up and seemed just as shocked to see her as she was to be standing there on his plush gray carpet. Still, he managed to mask it with that pleasant, vacant smile. “Irina, what a nice surprise. Can I offer you anything?”

  “Thank you, no.”

  “Well, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

  Irina crossed her arms over her chest. “Can we please cut through the bullshit, Andrey?”

  For the first time, Irina saw Andrey smile, a true expression of mockery-free amusement almost as shocking as his laughter. And somehow, it put Irina at ease. He crossed his arms over his chest, wrinkling his perfectly nice tailored white dress shirt. “I think I would appreciate that as much as you would.”

  “I doubt that very much,” she told him, sinking down on the leather office couch.

  Grinning, Andrey stretched his long, lean frame next to her, the very picture of a man in control of his universe. “So, what are we going to talk about?”

  “I don’t want to marry you,” she blurted out.

  “That was decidedly bullshit-free,” he said, nodding. “And not a surprise.”

  “Do you want to marry me?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I hope that wasn’t a proposal.”

  “It was not,” she told him. “So, if you don’t want to marry me, and I don’t want to marry you, why are you following along with my father’s plans like a little puppy?”

  Andrey bared his teeth, clearly not pleased with the puppy comparison.

  “Oh, stop it,” Irina huffed. “You’re letting my father run you down like a steamroller and you know it. All I want to know is why, when you’re sleeping with my sister. I mean, I don’t have a problem with it. You seem to make her happy. And Galina’s happiness is a big priority for me. But I doubt very much she’s going to enjoy serving as a bridesmaid in my wedding to her secret boyfriend. She says you won’t let that happen, but so far, I haven’t seen anything from you to indicate you’re going to put a stop to this quote-unquote marriage. And trust me when I say the lack of effort of your part has created hurt feelings on her part.”

  Andrey sagged against the couch next to her, seeming a bit deflated at the idea of hurting Galina.

  “Also, it goes without saying that if you hurt my sister, I will end you.”

  “Really?” Andrey deadpanned.

  Irina shrugged. “I would hire several large werewolves to end you.”

  “Fair enough.” Andrey cleared his throat. “I have plans in place, Irina. But I need your family to believe that I have every intention to follow through with this marriage. I can’t afford to risk offending your father, not now. I am sorry if this causes you distress. That was not my intention.”

  “And how far are you willing to take this?”

  “As far as necessary for me to get the information that I want. Galina and I cleared up the…confusion between us last night. I can assure you, she is on board. And when this mess is settled, I plan to make Galina my wife.”

  “I do not want to know what you did to get her on board,” Irina muttered, though she smiled at Andrey’s declared intentions. “Out of curiosity’s sake, did my late husband steal a shipment of Bullet from you?”

  Andrey cleared his throat, plucking at his tie, a swirling pattern of blue and gray silk. “Yes, he did.”

  “And did he do it for Alexei?”

  “Galina believes that to be the case, and so do I.”

  Irina nodded. “And did you have Sergei shot for ste
aling from you?”

  Andrey leveled her, no hint of anger or derision in his steely gray eyes. “No, I did not.”

  Irina shrugged and patted his hand awkwardly. “Fair enough. To be honest, I wouldn’t have held it against you if you had. I just believe we should have these things out in the open if we’re going to be family. Imagine how awkward Thanksgiving would be with an unresolved murder hanging over the table.”

  Andrey laughed, pushed up from his chair and poured them both a healthy portion of vodka, neat. “Now, I have a question for you. Why was everyone so tense last night? Up until you made your grand appearance on the staircase, it looked like your father was ready to spit tacks.”

  Irina blinked at him owlishly. How could he not guess? The details of Elena’s story were a cautionary tale repeated to every volk daughter from the time of her Sweet Sixteen.

  Perhaps the Russian contingent had kept the gossip from the Rom, unwilling to spread news of Elena’s weakness if would reflect badly on her countrymen. At her silence, Andrey chuckled. “You would be surprised how little people speak to me when I attend one of your gatherings.”

  Irina took a deep breath and swallowed a good portion of her vodka. “We had a sister, Elena. She was a few years older than me, beautiful, headstrong. I was Daddy’s good little girl, but Elena was always a bit of a wild child. My father asked why she couldn’t be more like me, which was much more of an insult considering I was younger and human. Elena and I never really bonded, I think, because of the comparisons. For the record, Galina was the cherished baby, so, good luck with that.”

  “When I was sixteen, Papa started arrangements for Elena’s marriage. A nice, established man from a good Russian family. He was a doctor, whose parents sent him through medical school on the back of teen prostitutes. Elena flat-out refused. I mean, she didn’t even play along like she thought about marrying him. She laughed in Papa’s face and asked him what century he thought he was living in. She was braver than I am. She was in love with a boy she’d met in her college classes, Brian McKenzie. I think maybe she’d strong-armed him into proposing, all hopped up on their Romeo and Juliet outrage. I know, that’s not a nice thing to say, but it always seemed so strange that the minute Papa found a husband for her, she miraculously had another fiancé.”

  “The parallels to your own situation haven’t occurred to you?” Andrey asked, lifting a brow.

  “Do you want me to finish the story?” she asked, with enough sass to make him smile. “My father told her she was too young to know what love was and that she would adjust to her situation in time. The night of her engagement party, Papa found a note in her room telling them that she’d eloped with Brian. Papa lost his mind, made a scene in front of all his guests. I’ve never seen him lose his cool in front of people like that, not before or since.”

  “It only took my father’s men three days to track her and Brian down in Vegas. I mean, she used Papa’s credit card to book a room at Caesar’s Palace, for God’s sake. I think part of her wanted to be caught, like she thought that Papa would be so frightened by the thought of losing her that all would be forgiven and he would walk her down the aisle to marry Brian at our church.”

  “I’m assuming that’s not what happened.”

  Irina shook her head. “Papa’s men shot Brian in the face and left him in the desert. Papa made sure that she watched. He wanted her to see what happened when she didn’t do what was expected. Papa brought her home and sent her to her room, like she was in time out. He was so confident that she’d learned her lesson that he left her razors in the bathroom, a decision he came to regret.”

  Andrey made a distressed, sympathetic noise. Irina gave him a sad little half-smile. “After Elena’s funeral, it got so much worse for Galina and me at home, security wise. I was barely allowed to leave the house to go to classes. I had a detail at all times, so did Galina, which was really hard to explain to classmates. And any boy who approached me was ‘redirected.’ Papa has plans for me and will not tolerate the loss of face if I defy him. It doesn’t matter how old I am. If I run, Papa will send his men for me. They will kill Viktor in front of me without a second thought, and drag me back here.”

  “But your papa always seems like he’s wrapped around your little finger,” he said.

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong. Papa loves me, in the way that he understands love, but he loves his pride more. So, no matter where I go, no matter how many times I run, he’ll find me. And Viktor will be dead. And if anyone tries to help me, they’ll get caught in the crossfire. I will not tolerate that. Viktor getting hurt, that is unacceptable to me. So I’m going to go along. No one gets hurt that way.”

  Andrey was quiet and contemplative for a long moment, staring at her. “Is there anything else I should know?”

  “If we end up married, I will make you the most miserable man alive,” she told him solemnly.

  He nodded, the corners of his mouth were tugging upward. “I believe it.”

  She laughed and he joined her. He had a surprisingly pleasant laugh. She supposed she could see what her sister saw in Andrey. He was attractive, and Galina had always been attracted to the more complicated men. Irina would tolerate him, she supposed, as a brother-in-law, but as nothing else.

  Irina left Andrey’s office feeling considerably lighter. She felt more assured, both in terms of her own non-future with Andrey and that Galina’s feelings for the wolf in question were not undeserved. She nodded to Anatoly, an older, dependable Beta who’d been assigned her detail for the day, as she sauntered out of the building, toward the parking garage. Anatoly practically had to jog to keep up.

  Irina dug through her purse to find her phone. She had a new message on her voice mail.

  She pressed the voice mail code as Anatoly unlocked the car. Viktor’s voice, warm and affectionate, filled her ear. “It’s me. I’m supposed to drive your father to his weekly chess date with Petyr this afternoon, which will give me a chance to talk to him about a few things. I should be free by the afternoon. Talk to you then, Беда.”

  She smiled. She loved the man, but he was not the most effusive person she’d ever met.

  She damn near dropped the phone as her own thoughts echoed through her head. She loved the man. Really and truly. She loved Viktor. This wasn’t just a fling. This wasn’t just fantastic sex. This wasn’t just the desperate attempt at escape before Papa rearranged her life. She loved Viktor. She loved his humor, his honesty, the way he refused to let her fall back into her “Old Rina” habits. She loved the way he listened to her, the way he touched her, the way he spoke to her. She wanted to spend the rest of her life loving Viktor Zhukovsky.

  Now, she just had to tell him.

  Smiling to herself, she dialed Viktor’s number. The call was sent straight to voice mail. She considered her words carefully, aware of how damning lovey-dovey messages on Viktor’s account could be. “Hi, it’s me. Message received. Be careful. See you soon.”

  Anatoly was smart enough not to talk much on the drive back to the shop. Irina closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the seat-rest. For the first time in a very long time, she thought maybe they would all make it out of this nightmare situation without heartbreak. If Andrey was working with Galina to find a way out of their engagement, maybe, given enough time, Papa would accept Galina’s marriage to Andrey. And, given even more time, maybe Papa could accept Vitya as a son-in-law.

  Irina sighed, rubbing her fingers against her temples.

  Probably not.

  When she arrived at the shop, she was surprised to find Nik standing in the showroom, pacing and looking agitated. “Nik? What’s wrong?”

  “Rina.” Nik’s eyes were glassy with unshed tears and he wrapped his arms around her. “It’s Papa.”

  Irina stood in her living room, staring at the TV in horror. The shot from a circling news helicopter showed a flaming town car in the middle of a midtown traffic jam. Emergency personnel couldn’t get to the fire because there were too many car
s in the way. However, the helicopter could get close enough to do a tight shot of the hood. Her father’s distinctive wolf’s head hood ornament showed on the screen.

  It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t.

  Papa couldn’t be gone.

  Her Vitya…he couldn’t be gone.

  She seemed to hear nothing and everything all at once. She barely registered the people moving around her, only blaring noise of the news report. Konstantin walked Galina into her living room, his hand supporting her sister’s elbow. Galya winced at the noise from the television, broadcasting up-to-the-minute news of the crash. Irina ran past yet another close-up of the flaming wreckage, throwing her arms around Galina and sobbing into her neck. Galina mirrored the gesture, tucking her face into Irina’s throat. Nik wrapped both of them in his arms. The three of them stood there, holding on to each other in a long moment of unified grief. Irina felt so much more responsible to and for her siblings now, though she knew they were more than capable of taking care of themselves. Elena, Mama, Papa, all gone, and Alexei too mad to connect with any of them. They were all that was left of the family now.

  “Has anyone heard from Alexei?” Galina asked.

  “I’ve called and left messages with him,” Nik said. “I know he was out of town last night. He should be on his way back by now. I’m still waiting to hear from him.”

  “We need to go to the big house.” Galina paced the room, needing to move as she thought out loud. “We should be there when Alexei gets home.”

  “No.” Irina shook her head. “I’m staying here. I can’t be near him right now. I’m not strong enough to fend off his crazy just yet.” She swallowed before asking, “Vitya was driving the car, wasn’t he?”

  Nik nodded, sharing a look with Galina. “I’m very sorry, Rina. I know you…I know you were fond of him.” She held off on rolling her eyes at her brother’s gift for understatement.

  “I loved him, Nik.” Irina knew she sounded broken, but she couldn’t give one single fuck about appearing strong when she felt like she was being pulled inside out. Galina squeezed her hand.