“I have no idea what to order,” I say worriedly. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
“I’m sure we’ll figure something out,” she replies, dragging me up to the counter to order. The bartender is a tall, skinny guy with heavily-lidded eyes and a shock of dark hair. He looks cool and detached despite the noise and chaos happening all around him.
Maggie leans in and hands him our driver’s licenses, tucking her hair back behind her ear and saying, “Bonjour, que recommandez-vous?”
Before the bartender can even respond, a guy comes up and all but smashes into us, his hard body pressing up against me at the bar. I turn to look at him with a glare, only to fall back in surprise at the sight of Will’s smiling face. He looks back and forth between Maggie and me with a look of mingled glee and confusion on his handsome features.
“No wonder you left in such a hurry this morning,” he says to me. “I had no idea you already had a beautiful French date to meet up with.”
Maggie’s face goes bright pink and she stammers, “Oh n-no, we’re not together or anything, and I-I’m not French.”
“Oh, you’re not…?” he presses, a twinkle in his eye suggesting to me that he never suspected that in the first place at all. But Maggie has fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.
“We’re not — uh, we aren’t…” she trails off, looking very perplexed.
“This is my roommate Maggie,” I interject, eager to dissipate the awkward tension.
“Je m’appelle Will, ça va?” he says, holding out a hand for her to shake. She takes it gingerly, looking like she might actually melt into a puddle and drip through the floorboards at any second. She’s definitely not used to any kind of attention from cute boys, I can tell. Not that I’m particularly accustomed to it, either. But I still feel a pinch of wariness in regard to Will, after his forwardness earlier today. I hope he doesn’t hold it against me or try it again anytime soon. Although, I have to admit that he does look absolutely fantastic tonight. His flaxen-blond hair is brushed back, with a few pieces hanging artfully around his temples and forehead. His California-esque tan and bright blue eyes almost glow in the surreal neon lighting, and every time he brushes up against me I can feel his sculpted musculature.
At his insistence, he buys us both cocktails with a name I cannot pronounce nor remember for the life of me. Whatever it is, it tastes like strawberries and sweet liqueur, with a slight fizz that tickles my nose when I take a sip. It’s delicious, and because I’m so nervous, I drink it much more quickly than I probably should.
Maggie does the same, downing hers in record time before ordering a second one. Will leads us over to a group of beautiful girls and handsome men all dressed in the same hip, slightly ragged style of the crowd here at Zero Zero. Everyone is very accommodating and kind, enthusiastically inviting us into their circle without question. They mostly speak French to each other, with the occasional phrase of what sounds like possibly Russian being tossed around. At first it seems slightly off to hear Russian, but then I simply chalk it up to the fact that Paris is such a metropolitan, worldly place. There are people here from all over, mingling together. It’s no big deal. So I force myself to relax a little.
Before long, Maggie is substantially liquored up and bantering loudly with a few guys in lilting French. I don’t know what she’s saying, but the way she’s leaning on them and twirling her hair suggests that they’re flirting. For a while, I manage to sneak her away from them by asking her to dance with me. The heady mix of unfamiliar territory, alcohol, and seductive music creates an intoxicating concoction, urging me a little further down the rabbit hole one drink and one dance at a time. Maggie holds her plastic cup above her head and spins slowly in front of me, her other hand grasping mine as we both giggle and sway to the music. I can feel myself getting slightly carried away, but Maggie is another story. She’s long gone, stumbling and laughing and blowing kisses to every guy who walks by.
“What the hell did we drink?” she murmurs, giggling as she leans in close to me.
“I don’t know, I don’t speak French,” I reply, shrugging. Maggie tilts her head back and wraps her arms around me, starting to lose her balance. However, she’s much taller than me and I am nowhere near equipped to hold her up, so we both start to fall backward. Just in time, Will slides in behind me and braces us both, pinning me between them in the process. In front of me is my new friend, her dark hair falling around her rosy cheeks and her eyes cloudy with intoxication. Behind me is the handsome, charming man who tried to kiss me today, his strong arms holding me in place. His hands slip down to grasp at my hips and roll me back against him.
I realize, through the fog of alcohol muddying my thoughts, that I can feel his dick hard against my lower back, just above my ass. Will smoothly swipes my hair back over one shoulder, then bends down to gently brush his lips against my exposed neck. I shiver and close my eyes, not sure if I want to recoil or just embrace the moment.
“We’re heading to the flat now,” says a male voice somewhere to our left. I open my eyes to see one of Will’s friends taking Maggie by the hand and letting her slump against him. She’s still conscious and grinning, but her expression is dazed. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I see a warning sign flashing dimly in the darkness.
“D’accord,” Will replies. “We’re coming, too. Aren’t we, Olivia?”
I manage to fight my way through the numbing sensation to push off of him slightly and reply, “Oh, I think we’d better get back to our apartment, actually. I have training early in the morning, and it looks like Maggie’s about done for the night, anyway.”
“Nonsense,” my sloshed roommate slurs, waving her hand dismissively. “I’m good!”
“Oui, you are, baby,” murmurs the guy holding her up. He leans down to kiss her and to my shock she simply accepts it, kissing him back.
“Yeah, we’d better get going,” I interrupt, reaching for Maggie’s arm. But the guy pulls her away, the two of them all but limping out the door and onto the street. I try to follow after, but I keep stumbling, suddenly realizing just how deeply fucked-up I am.
“Whoa, there. Wait for me,” Will remarks with a chuckle as he comes up behind me and pins me to his side with a strong arm around my shoulders. We walk out of the bar and I see a black car pulled up to the pavement. Will’s friend is pouring Maggie into the backseat and climbing in after her, beckoning for us to follow.
My head is swimming, alarm bells ringing. “No, no. I’m not going. I’ve gotta get back home. Right now,” I balk, planting my feet firmly on the sidewalk even as I sway slightly. Will nudges my back, pushing me toward the open door of the black vehicle.
“Without your friend?” Will reasons. “How’re you gonna leave without her?”
“I don’t know,” I murmur, fumbling in my pockets, unable to find my phone. I have no idea where it’s gone, so I can’t call anyone to come get me. I haven’t exchanged any of my money for euro yet, so I can’t buy a taxi ride back to the apartment. And I’m realizing just how far away I am — I’ll never be able to walk all the way back home. I’m stuck.
“Don’t worry,” Will says, his breath hot at my ear as he steers me toward the car. “If you don’t wanna go to the party, it’s fine. We’ll just drop you off at your apartment on the way, alright? I won’t let you go home all by yourself in the middle of the night. It’s not safe out there.”
Without any other alternative, and with the pounding clouds of oblivion gathering in my drunken brain, I allow him to push me toward the open door, feeling like I’m stepping through a dark portal to a world from which I may never return again.
6
Max
I step out of the black sedan and into the morning sunlight that’s lighting up the whole city as it wakes. The university will soon be bustling with activity as always, the streets around and within the campus teeming with fresh-faced or dreary-eyed students, as well as faculty, like myself.
But I arrive on campus a few hours befo
re most of the activity really gets started. I always do. Before the rest of the faculty arrives, and long before the students begin to show up, I make my rounds about the facilities I’ve been put in charge of.
I stride into the gymnasium proper, breathing in the air of the training facility and enjoying the moment of peace before the hustle of the day that will be starting before much longer. There’s something about the inside of a gym even more peaceful than the world outside, something unique to this place in particular.
I know what it is, though I dare not dwell on it long. This place has become something of a refuge for me. A shrine where I can distance myself from the past and maybe earn some absolution for the things I still remember, the things that still keep me up some nights.
“Bonjour, Max,” greets Marcel, one of the custodians who is finishing cleaning the floors for the morning. “Still don’t trust old Marcel to make sure everything is up to snuff, eh?”
He laughs, and I shake my head with a half-smile. “Your work is impeccable, my friend. I’m just here to keep you on your toes. Can’t have the best custodian at the university resting on his laurels.”
“No, I don’t blame you,” he says as he starts to put up his cleaning equipment. “I’ve seen this round of girls checking out the gym this past weekend, and I swear, some of them could trip on a flat surface, they’re so starry-eyed. You’ve got your hands full with this lot, Max.”
“Don’t discount them so early,” I say with a wag of my finger, bending down to stretch my legs out idly while I wait for the first arrivals. “All these girls worked hard to get here. Can’t be more than three or four of them just here on their parents’ dime — most of them are first-rate athletes, where they come from.”
“There you go with that ‘hard work’ speech again,” Marcel says, shaking his head. “I tell you, I’ll be impressed if half of them last past their starry-eyed welcome to this city. Happens to all the Americans.”
“We’ll see,” I say firmly, “but there’s real potential in this bunch, and maybe you’d see that if you’d take a day off once in a while.”
Marcel laughs as he heads out the door, but only waves to me as he goes. “You should take your own advice. Good training, my friend!”
I give him a nod as he goes, then get back to warming up for the day. Marcel is a jaded old man, but he was one of my first friends coming to the university. My Russian accent still shows, whether I’m speaking French or English, but the custodians here are one of the few groups of people who don’t hold that against me.
Before long, the athletes start filing in, and I must once again stop being Max and become the distant instructor, Monsieur Pavlenko. The role suits me more, I believe. Or at least hope.
Within about ten minutes of each other, just about everyone has arrived. I try not to smile at the thought of how long that habit will last. Today is only the first day of the semester, and my experience tells me that the majority of these students will be bright and eager for the first month or so, but only a few will maintain such punctuality the whole way through. Most of them still speak little or no French, too, so they have each other to rely upon as social outlets.
But I intend to extend that punctuality as long as possible, or weed out the weak ones trying.
“Welcome to training, everyone,” I announce after enough of the class is assembled, clapping my hands to get everyone’s attention. “Glad to see nobody’s booked a flight home yet. We have a long day ahead of us, so I expect all of you at your best.” It doesn’t take long to herd everyone together. I don’t patronize them with the routine of having everyone line up or stand at attention like trained dogs; I know better than to treat skilled athletes like soldiers. My skill and my voice are enough to command the respect I give them in due part.
“My name is Maksim Pavlenko. To you, I am Monsieur Pavlenko, as our gracious French hosts insist. Let me be clear on one thing alone,” I say, pausing dramatically, to look each of them in the eye for an instant. “You are here because you have potential, not because you have any edge over your peers. I will not tolerate anything but exceptional teamwork going forward. I will not hesitate to cut you from this program if you fall short of my expectations, and I have seen some of the finest gymnasts in Paris come through these doors. While you are here, you must give this training your all — I say this for your benefit as well as your peers’. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Monsieur!” comes the general reply from the group, many of them nodding hastily.
“Good,” I say, granting them neither smile nor shift in expression. “Now let’s get to work.”
Drills begin immediately, and as I send the athletes through the routines that their muscles will know as intimately as walking by the time I’m finished with them, I monitor their progress with hawk-like attention.
“Williams! Run that routine again, you know not to hold your back like that.”
“O’Connell, you and Anderson help each other with your posture, I want to see both of you with your shoulders level without thinking about it before lunch today.”
“You didn’t eat breakfast, did you, Jurkowski? You need to take care of yourself, no skipping meals while you’re on my watch.”
I have to drill the athletes harshly. Gymnastics is already an incredibly demanding sport, but in Paris, the expectations surrounding the gymnasts is tripled, easily. Many of these girls have been used to being the best of the best in their respective hometowns, and it is even true that many of them have earned that respect from their childhood classmates and peers. But the feeling of superiority they’ve enjoyed for part of their lives must be stripped from them if they are to advance any further.
As I bark orders at all of the trainees, I see some of them appear to be chafing under my commands, many of them never having been pushed this hard, this fast in a very long time, if ever. But this is by design.
No part of me feels guilty for pushing the athletes so, not even as they’re fresh off the plane in a foreign land, probably feeling more vulnerable than they ever have before. This must be part of the process.
This breaking period serves another purpose, too. As an instructor, it is essential for me to establish a clear hierarchy in the class as well as maintain my distance as a mentor rather than a fellow athlete.
Every time I send one of the gymnasts through a routine, whether on a bar or beam or flat-footed, I personally demonstrate the technique they must use as a baseline for their development.
“That,” I say after sticking a back layout with a half-twist while some of the students look on, “is not a technique I demand that you mimic to perfection. If I were here to teach you how to pantomime, I’d send you out on the streets to emulate the silent performers.” There’s a bit of laughter, and I afford them a half-smile. “I want you to look at the examples of me and the other trainers you’ll meet and develop your own, personal style from that template. Nobody can perfect your technique but you. It’s easy to forget that in a place like this — as a fellow foreigner, I can attest to that,” I say, and my words seem to encourage most of the gymnasts.
“Now back to it, come on!” I shout, and in a moment, they’re off to training again.
I admit, I have more of a teacher in me than I thought I would before starting here. It feels good to give the encouragement to these young women I never received when I was growing up, particularly not so in Russia.
Memories of an old, weathered, dreary orphanage flit through my memories, me and my one friend in that cold and wretched place sticking together to steal food from the administrators and teaming up to defend one another from the other boys.
I shake my head, snapping myself out of the memories. At least that place served to let me be cold and distant when I needed to be.
As I monitor the progress of the gymnasts, I don’t fail to notice that some of their eyes rove to me when they think I’m not paying attention. I am a tall man, easily towering over all of them at six and a half feet, and my wo
rkout clothes shows off muscles far larger and harder than most gymnasts, both in my rippling arms and cut calves. My tight shirt leaves little to the imagination in my pecs and abdomen, as well as my stony back muscles that flex and stretch with each technique.
These women are very young, and all of them are out of their element. It would be the easiest thing in the world to become unprofessional with them, and at least once a year, every faculty member has a story about a student who’s tried just such a thing. And there are more stories yet of those professors who have taken advantage of the women’s vulnerability.
That is, in part, why I distance myself so harshly, so early, often before the women even arrive in Paris. There was one student in particular with whom I was especially harsh...and I haven’t failed to notice her absence today. As well as one other young woman’s. I know some of the students are prone to dropping out mysteriously, but such a thing is a rarity before the first day starts.
“Martins,” I call one of the women over, and she looks up from her training. “Where are Greenwood and Mason?”
She looks confused for a moment, then blinks in comprehension. “Oh! You mean Liv and Maggie? Uh, I don’t know. Heard they’re roommates, but haven’t heard much from them.”
“Does anyone else here know them?”
“Don’t think so,” she says with a frown. “Everything okay?”
“Nothing for you to worry about,” I say with a frown, taking out my cellphone and waving her off. “But thank you.”
I make my way across the gym to somewhere a little quieter, scrolling through my contacts to find their numbers — I made sure to have everyone’s contact information as they came over. These foreigners were all in my care, after all, and this was not the kind of program to be taken lightly.
Not that I would suspect Liv to be the type to blow off training, which is why I felt a touch of concern as I listen to the droning ring go on and on. I furrow my brow and try Maggie’s number, but only to the same result.
Hitman - the Series: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Collection (Alexis Abbott's Hitmen #0) Page 57