by SR Jones
No matter what I do going forward, I’ll always have that past snapping at my heels, and one day it might take me down. It’s something I’ve accepted, and because of it, I want to live every damn day to the fullest, with Dasha. I don’t share this sentiment with her, though. I don’t want her thinking I’m not planning a future for us because I am. Its more that I know things can change quickly, and people like me and K, we don’t always get to walk away from our past sins and start again.
I pray every day I’ll be one of those lucky sinners that God forgives, but I’m realistic enough to know I might not be.
Banishing such dark thoughts, I turn to the woman I love and pull her in for a kiss.
“It was always you,” I say.
“Ditto,” she replies.
We head deeper into the woods, toward the point where the sea and sky meet, and the horizon goes on forever. Toward our future.
**
Vasily
Moscow
I stare at the missed call on my phone. I should call her back. Zoey has phoned me three times since we screwed. I’ve ignored her each time because I’m a cowardly shit.
I want to talk to her, but I can’t. The night we spent together was … well, actually, I don’t have words for it. I’ve never experienced such a high with a woman. Not purely from the sex either, but the sense of connection I felt.
She wiped out every woman to come before her and probably every damn one to come after. No one can match up to that. The intensity between us took me by surprise. The rawness blew my mind. I think it did the same to her, hence her calling me. I don’t know how she got my number. Probably from K or someone. I should ask him.
I ought to tell him we fucked, and I ought to tell him my vague suspicions about Zoey.
Instead, I’ve done nothing except for exist in this space where I seem incapable of making a decision on this.
I’ve chased Damen, but he says his digging hasn’t turned anything up. Nothing concrete, at least. There’s something off about her, about her life history, but only that it’s a little too perfect. Damen says if there were some hidden past, he’s convinced he would have found it. He also agrees with me that her history is too easy. Most people, they have something, a glitch in their online record here or there. A couple of years lost medical records. Exam grades that are missing. Perhaps there’s a period of time where they aren’t on the radar? Zoey? Her whole damn life is laid out perfectly. Too perfectly. In the end, Damen said to let it go. Said if there was something to find, he would have.
Fuck, I ought to call K and tell him, but that means admitting I’ve been looking into his employees, and that I’ve fucked her, and that my head is screwed up about her. It also means putting her in the crosshairs when there is probably nothing at all, and I’m just a paranoid shit.
Then again, K is my fucking brother, and I can’t keep these worries from him. It doesn’t sit right.
I will call him, I decide. Tomorrow morning, I’ll ring. I seriously doubt there’s a risk per se because Zoey hardly strikes me as the assassin type, but she might be digging around into him and his business. Maybe she’s one of those corporate spies you hear about. Then again, maybe she’s simply got an astonishingly clean life history? It wouldn’t be that amazing, would it?
The sound of someone passing my door in the hallway brings me out of my thoughts for a moment. I walk to the window, thirty stories above Moscow, and look down over the city. This place isn’t quite as flashy as the pad K had a few years ago here, but it’s not far off. That city below. It’s my city now. I wish to fuck Bohdan had come in on this with me, but it’s his loss.
Ilya is coming to meet with me tomorrow, and we’re going to pay a few visits to some people who need the fear of God putting into them. Soon, Ilya and myself, will run the biggest operation in Russia.
My fingers brush the tube of lip gloss on the desk, and I twist the top off and smear some on my mouth before I lick it all off. It makes me hard. I took it when I left the hotel room. I also took her panties. Fuck me, but I want her again. I want her so bad I won’t let myself have her because doing so will make me weaker. I know it will. I’ll get all emo like Bohdan or paranoid like Andrius, or careless like K. I’m already fucking up because I don’t know whether to call K and tell him a vague suspicion Zoey is not who she says she is based on … well, fuck all. Or whether to leave it well alone.
Women make you weak. Women make you stupid, and I need to be strong.
I take the panties that I stole out of my desk drawer and wipe the remaining goop from my mouth. I shove them back in the desk and stalk to the bedroom and the bath beyond it. I need a fucking cold shower.
**
Zoey
On the way to Corfu
He didn’t call. I tried, I tell myself. I tried with Vasily. I was going to talk to him the morning after we hooked up, but when I awoke, he was gone. Slipped out like a coward, or more like a thief in the night since he took my panties and lip gloss.
Freaking pervert. The thought makes me ache between my legs though. The man gave me the best orgasms I’ve ever had. It was life-altering sex. If you’d said to me three weeks ago that life-altering sex was a thing, I’d have laughed. Now, I know it is. He’s ruined me for anyone else.
Fuck him.
What sort of man takes a woman’s panties and lip gloss?
What sort of coward ignores her calls?
I hate him. It’s because of him, I’m on a plane to Corfu with instructions that make me sick to my stomach.
I can’t do what the Order are telling me to. I can’t.
How can I do that to Konstantin? A man who believed in me and gave me a job. A man who is in love and happy and who, despite his many past crimes, treats the woman he loves like a damn princess?
I’m still tempted to tell Konstantin everything.
Would he let me live? More pertinently would he, or any of the men he’s working with, help me save Esme because that’s who all this is about. My precious daughter.
My phone beeps, and I take it out of my carry-on and stare at the screen. It’s a picture of that fucker Number Two with his arm around her, pointing something out. The next picture is of a young child, dressed in ragged clothes, bound, and in the corner of a room.
The message is patently clear. I won’t be murdering my daughter if I don’t do this. I’ll be sending her to a life of misery and pain way worse than death.
I blindly reach into the pocket of the seat in front and grab the sick bag, ignoring the horrified gasp of the woman next to me as I throw up everything I’ve eaten that morning.
I want to die. I wish I’d never had Esme because I’ve failed her utterly. How did I let her get into the hands of these people?
Once I land at the airport, I manage to control my panic enough to act like a non-crazy person when Bohdan walks through the doors to help me with my bags.
“I wasn’t expecting a welcome committee,” I joke.
“K wants you at the house today for a meeting. He’s got some games designers who think they can work with the illustrations you and Maxim have been doing, and they’re meeting us there at two. So you’ll come to the house for the afternoon, and then I’ll take you to your hotel after.”
“Konstantin seems very happy out here,” I say. More to make conversation than anything else. I laugh. “I think Cassie has softened him.”
Bohdan glances at me through the driver’s mirror. “Maybe. Or maybe she’s simply made him less bothered about the small shit, but more determined than ever to protect what he loves.”
The words seem portentous. I know they aren’t. Realistically Bohdan can’t know why I’m here. I’d be dead by now if he did. But wow, talk about saying something to re-think my let’s-tell-Konstantin everything plan.
His next words put the final nail in that coffin.
“K’s never been one to forgive those who trespass against him. Most people learn that too late.”
Then he looks at the road,
probably blissfully unaware that with those words, he’s just signed Konstantin’s death warrant.
I’m about to do something there will be no coming back from.
Thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed Bohdan and Dasha’s story and for the EXPLOSIVE story of Vasily and Zoey one click here to pre-order THE HEIR.