I smile sadly at him. I know what it must have taken for him to say that. ‘Nothing. Just knowing you’re a friend that I can turn to is enough. I’m going back to Michigan this afternoon. I’ll text you if I have any news, OK?’
He looks suddenly miserable. ‘You’re leaving?’
‘Yeah, my mom needs me.’
‘When are you planning to come back?’ he asks anxiously.
I shrug. ‘I don’t know. I bought a one-way ticket and I’m playing it by ear.’
He nods slowly. I have never seen him look so devastated. I resist the desire to reach out and stroke his hand. That would just be cruel. In the end it is clear I will never love him the way he loves me.
‘I guess it is goodbye,’ I say softly.
He looks at me fiercely. ‘What’s his name?’
‘What does it matter?’ I say gloomily.
‘Tell me,’ he insists urgently.
‘Zane. His name is Zane.’
His expression doesn’t change, but his eyes flash suddenly.
‘Do you know him?’ I ask immediately.
‘I know of him. He is called Zane, but his real name is Aleksandr Malenkov and he is a very dangerous man. A ruthless killer,’ he says slowly. ‘Think very carefully, Dahlia. You could be making a very big mistake.’
I feel a shiver go through me at the quiet horror in his voice. Yet another voice in my head says, Yes, this is the name that suits him far better than Zane.
Aleksandr Malenkov.
Nine
Dahlia Fury
When I go back to the apartment Stella is awake. Her door is open, the radio in the kitchen is playing, and I can hear her moving about. I stand at the doorway. She is cutting fruit to make her breakfast smoothie. She looks up from peeling a banana then looks away without saying anything.
‘I’m leaving for the States today,’ I say.
‘Good,’ she says, and chucks the banana aggressively into the blender.
‘I’ve paid my rent for this month, but I’ll pack all my stuff and leave it in a corner of the room so you can start to show the room to prospective tenants. I’ll also make sure everything is out before the end of the month.’
‘Great,’ she says, and viciously rips the stem off a strawberry.
‘All right then. I … I guess, I’ll see you around.’
‘Have a safe flight,’ she says without looking at me.
‘Thanks,’ I say backing away as she cracks an egg on the side of a bowl with unnecessary force.
I hear her curse loudly when the shell smashes and the egg ends up on the counter. I can’t believe that our friendship is going to end like this. I love this woman and in my heart I have never betrayed her, no matter what she thinks. That thing with Zane just happened. I go into my own room, close the door and lean against it. I press my palms tightly against my mouth.
‘Oh God!’ I cry into them. Then I straighten my shoulders. I didn’t do anything wrong. No one is going to make me feel guilty for doing everything I can to save little Daisy. I pull my two suitcases out from under my bed and put them on top of the bed. I won’t take very long. I don’t have that much stuff and I will throw away what I don’t need. My eyes fall on the string of flower fairy lights that Stella and I bought together when we went to that Christmas fair. It was the last one and we had tossed a coin to decide who would have it. I won. I have just taken it down from the mantelpiece when there is a timid knock on the door.
‘Yes,’ I say immediately.
Stella stands at the doorway.
‘Do you want these stupid lights or shall I just bin them?’ I ask her, not looking at her directly.
‘I don’t want you to move out,’ she says.
I turn to look at her. Tears pouring down her cheeks. I start crying too. ‘I don’t want to move out either,’ I bawl.
She comes into the room and we hug each other and cry.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. Really I am,’ I sob.
‘And I’m sorry I was such a bitch yesterday,’ she wails.
‘No you weren’t,’ I cry.
‘Yes, I was.’
‘We sound like two cats caterwauling,’ I sniff.
‘I’ll have the lights if you don’t want them,’ she says.
‘God, you’re so greedy,’ I say with a half-laugh.
‘That’s not true. The only thing I’m greedy for is shoes,’ she says.
I laugh through my tears.
She pulls slightly away from me. We stand facing each other. ‘When are you coming back?’
‘I don’t know yet. I just know that I need to be with my mom right now. She went to the police station last night and they didn’t give her much hope so I pray that Zane finds her.’
‘I’m not going to have Zane as my client anymore. You were right when you said I shouldn’t keep massaging him. The sooner I cut him off and start to heal, the better for me.’
I smile at her. ‘That’s very brave of you.’
‘It’s not easy. I’m so jealous of you, Dahlia. Why couldn’t he have wanted me?’
‘Come here,’ I say, and taking her hand, pull her towards my bed. We sit next to each other. ‘I want to tell you something.’
‘What?’ she asks, a note of caution in her voice.
‘Zane doesn’t want me to be his mistress. He wants me to be his … sexual slave.’
Her eyes widen. ‘What does that mean?’
‘During that one month I have to do anything he wants sexually.’
‘What does anything mean?’ she whispers making air quotes around the word anything. ‘Is he allowed to hurt you?’
‘He says if it appears I’m not enjoying something he won’t do it.’
Stella turns beetroot red. She looks at me wishfully. ‘If you thought telling me this was going to make me less jealous of you, you have no idea about me. I am even more jealous.’
My mouth drops open. ‘What?’
‘Just think. It is the ultimate sexual fantasy for every strong woman. To be forced to submit to a big and powerful man. To be completely at his mercy.’ She fans herself with her hand. ‘Oh god! It makes me hot and bothered just thinking about it.’
I stare at her. ‘Really?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Don’t you want to be an equal partner in a relationship?’
‘Pfftt … equal in bed? God, no. Where’s the fun in that? I love a man who lets his animal instincts take over. Who just wants to fuck hard. I want someone hot to look me in the eyes and tell me “Turn over you fucking slut. Get on your fucking hands and knees and put your ass up.” Yup, that’s my kind of man.’
Slightly shocked, I giggle. ‘OMG! I can’t believe that’s what you like!’
‘That’s me. A total slut,’ Stella says airily.
‘Oh, Stella. I’m going to miss you so much.’
‘I’ll miss you more, because you’ll be off doing different things and I’ll have to come back to this empty flat. I’m warning you now that I’ll be using your perfume and your black dress while you are gone.’
I hug her. ‘You have my permission to blast yourself with my perfume and wear any of my clothes.’
She grins. ‘This might work out all right, after all.’
I laugh. ‘You know I was so sad last night when I thought I’d hurt you and you were mad at me.’
‘You did hurt me and I was mad at you, but it’s OK now. It was my fault. I was being silly; carrying a candle for him all this time when I could clearly see that I was nothing to him. Besides, you thought you were protecting me. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me.’
‘No,’ I say sincerely, ‘I wouldn’t willingly hurt you for the world.’
‘Yeah. I know that. I was just jealous. I still am actually.’
‘Are you going to be OK?’
‘Of course. I just have to accept that he doesn’t want me. Maybe it’s all for the best. I should move on.’ She smiles. ‘Yes, I’ll get over it. This is good for me. One day I’
ll look back and be glad this happened.’
Stella offers to cancel two of her appointments and come with me to the airport, but I refuse.
‘Saying goodbye to me here will be exactly the same as at Heathrow. Anyway I will be back soon.’
So we say our goodbyes on the street. I turn around to watch her as the taxi moves on. She looks alone and miserable. When the taxi turns the corner I look out of the window blankly. It is a typical gray English afternoon and even though Stella and I complain about it all the time, I feel really sad to leave it. It is hard to sit still in the taxi. My mind is so full of unfamiliar images and thoughts.
It is easier at the airport when I am caught in the procedure of taking a flight, but once I am seated in the plane the anxiety starts again. I don’t sleep during the entire flight. The woman next to me snores like a hog so I put in my earplugs, close my eyes, and think of Daisy. I remember back to our childhood days when she used to beg me to make daisy necklaces for her. They were so precious to her she would wear them even when they were shriveled, brown and ugly.
I guess even then she was already so different than me. ‘Does the grass feel pain when we walk on them?’ she asked my mother when she was three years old. My mother used to roll her eyes and call her Silly Billy every time she came up with one of her totally odd questions.
When she was six she announced that she was becoming a vegetarian. She was no longer going to eat anything with a face. That was until she found out about the experiment with the woman and the cabbage. It’s the one where plants are hooked up to machines that record their electrical emissions. A woman is then told to go into the room and violently butcher a cabbage.
The scientists notice the plant responds by showing distress, by increased and frantic electrical activity. They conclude that plants have the ability to understand violence and exhibit fear. A week later the same woman is told to walk into the room with a knife and though she does nothing this time, the plants mark her arrival with increased activity.
After my sister read that she became a fruitarian. Sometimes she will sit for hours outside not reading or listening to music, or talking to someone on the phone, but in her lingo just ‘being’. To think of such a gentle creature being abducted and harmed makes my blood boil, and I jump up suddenly waking the woman beside who mutters with irritation and goes right back to sleep.
I walk up and down the aisle restlessly until I have calmed myself by thinking that maybe they have already found her. Maybe by the time I get off the plane my mom will have good news for me.
My mother comes to pick me up from the airport. One look at her face and I know that she has nothing new to tell me. She looks pale and frightened. I hug her tightly.
‘I’m so glad you’ve come, Dahlia,’ she whispers into my hair. Her voice trembles with anguish.
‘They’ll find her, Mom. I know they will.’
‘Do you really think so?’ she asks earnestly.
‘Of course they will,’ I say firmly.
She nods eagerly.
We hang on to each other like the survivors of a war and walk to the truck. Suzie, our pit bull is in the back. She jumps out and goes crazy, launching herself at me as she whimpers and yelps with joy.
‘She knows something has happened to Daisy. She’s been acting strange for the last three days,’ my mom says.
‘Of course she hasn’t, Mom. She’s just picking up your fear,’ I say while Suzie licks the hell out of my face.
I take the keys from my mother and get into the driver’s seat. We don’t speak in the car. I can see Suzie in the side mirrors holding her gorgeous diamond shaped head against the wind. Her top lip is pushed right back and all her sharp teeth are exposed. I feel a tug of sadness at the sight. It feels very strange to be back home with my mom and Suzie and no Daisy.
Just as I pull into our driveway a text message comes through for me. I park the car and look at it. I have to look again. I lift my head and look at my mother.
‘Oh, Mom,’ I cry.
‘What is it?’ my mother asks in a panicked voice. ‘What is it?’
I can’t talk. I just start sobbing uncontrollably. All that emotion and fear I had stored ever since I heard that Daisy might be missing gushed out of me.
I hold the phone out to her. She snatches it from me and looks at the screen.
It is just two words.
Found her.
My mom looks at me, her eyes wide and shining with crazy hope. ‘Is this what I think it is?’
I nod, tears streaming down my eyes.
Suzie is whimpering and scratching pitifully at the grill because she thinks something horrible has happened to us. I get out of the car, let her out and hold her tight.
‘Daisy’s coming back, Suzie,’ I say again and again, sobbing hard into her silky fur.
It seems like an eternity passes before Daisy is back home. The reunion is odd. My mother and I cry buckets of tears and young Daisy comforts us as if we are the ones who have been through an abduction ordeal. Later we sit on the porch just staring at her. She gazes back serenely, one hand absently stroking Suzie’s head.
‘So you never saw the men who took you?’
‘Never. Like I said we were walking back from the restaurant to the little hotel when a dusty white van pulled up, two men got out, grabbed us, and bundled us into the van. There were four of them, but they wore Disney character masks. They immediately blindfolded, gagged and tied us up.’
‘Didn’t you and Marie struggle?’
‘No. One of the men had a gun which he pointed at Marie’s head. We were so shocked and they were extremely efficient and professional. All the while they never spoke a word, and when we arrived at that house they kept their interaction with us at an absolute minimum. We knew there were girls in the other rooms because we heard them crying in the night. Once we tried to talk to them, but the men banged on the wall and we shut up and so did the girls.’
‘Did they ever … hurt you?’ my mom asks cautiously.
Daisy shakes her head so vigorously her brown curls bounce about like something in a shampoo advert. ‘No, never. In fact, they treated us quite well considering. We had food to eat, bottled water to drink, and when it was really hot they switched on some kind of fan that blew air through slats at the top of the walls.’
‘So how were you rescued?’ I ask.
‘Well, one day the men started scurrying around and talking urgently in whispers. Then they came in, blindfolded us, tied our hands, and put us into a van. Then they drove us to the edge of a little aboriginal town, dropped us off at the side of the road and drove off in a rush. We could see a town not far off so we just walked to it.’
‘Were you very scared?’ I ask.
She grins cheerfully. ‘Actually I wasn’t.’
That baffles me. I stare at her face, clean of all make up except for a good spray from some homemade aromatherapy concoction from a plastic spritzer bottle.
‘Why not? I would have been terrified,’ I tell her.
She looks at me calmly. ‘It’s called the universal law of action and reaction. When you live a life never hurting another being, you cannot be hurt yourself.’
My mom squeezes Daisy’s hand and tells her how brave she is, but I just sit back in the chair and shake my head in wonder at my sister. Here we were sick with worry and frightened half to death about what had happened to her, and there she was abducted, held prisoner by human traffickers, and merrily floating about in fairyland.
For a moment I wonder what would have happened if Zane had not intervened, then just as quickly I shove the loathsome thought away. May my sister always remain so innocent and blissfully ignorant of all the horrible things that can and do happen to millions of blameless creatures every single day. Her action and reaction universal law sucks big time, but she doesn’t need to know it.
I smile at her. ‘A fairy was sitting on your shoulder, Daisy.’
She smiles back. ‘A fairy truly was. That fairy’s name
is Dahlia. Mom told me that you asked a friend to help. It was because of him that they got scared and dropped us off, isn’t it?’
I nod slowly. Yes, the law of action and reaction was truly at play. If only she knew how it all really worked in this big bad world.
‘What’s his name?’
‘His name is Aleksandr Malenkov.’
‘Thank him for me,’ she says with the biggest, sweetest, most adorable smile.
That night an email arrives from Aleksandr Malenkov’s solicitors. The attachment is a twelve page Non Disclosure Agreement. I sign it without reading it and the next day a courier comes to pick it up. That afternoon I keep my appointment at the clinic for the necessary blood tests, and since my period came early thanks to all the stress I also go on the pill.
The test results arrive in a week and I send them on to Zane. The next day I say a tearful goodbye to Mom and Daisy and catch a flight back to England.
Stella is happy to see me. She sits on the bed and provides me with a bossy but entertaining running commentary as I pack a small suitcase to take to Zane’s.
‘No, don’t take that. That makes your legs look like sausages. You have to take the red dress. That makes your boobs look twice the size they really are. Oh God, not that. It looks like you stole a tablecloth from a French bistro and stuck a belt on it. I was hoping you’d leave that behind for me, but all right, take that and the black ankle boots to go with it, etc. etc. etc.’
When the appointed time comes for me to leave, she kisses me on both cheeks. ‘I can’t believe you’re leaving me to go live with a boy,’ she wails in a baby voice, but her eyes are actually wretched.
‘One month will fly by in no time,’ I tell her.
‘It will for you. It won’t for me,’ she replies.
Yeah, reckless behavior…
Ten
Dahlia Fury
It is not Noah, but Yuri who opens the door for me. ‘I’ll take your bags up to your room,’ he says wearing a funeral director’s expression.
‘Thanks.’ I hand them over to him.
You Don't Own Me: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (The Russian Don Book 1) Page 6