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"I'm with you," I agreed.
"Stay safe and kick ass, Maisy."
The line went dead and I curled the phone into my hand so hard it hurt my palm.
I closed my eyes as I took a deep breath, wondering how the hell my life had come to this. Everything had been so normal, so tame, so certifiably boring until...TenMazeMoving back to the city after my grandmother's death and the volcanic explosion known as my relationship with Thato had been a culture shock. Granted, I had been born and raised there for the first ten years of my life, but that had been under the shelter of my mother. She was there to bring me to the right subways and lead me down the right streets, to slam into the people who were too busy with their lives to notice they almost trampled me.
And then I had been in Vermont where I could walk just about any sidewalk and never run into another soul or drive without seeing more than a handful of cars on the road.
So the crowded sidewalks, the constant squeal of taxi brakes, the honks of horns, the shake of the subway beneath your feet at all times, the never-ending brightness... it had been off-putting.
But that being said, I thought it was what I needed. I needed to disappear. I needed to not be that naive, gullible girl who had lived above a chop shop for months and never realized it, despite the fact that I had seen the men taking doors off of random cars or removing the stereos and that the supposed car owners never seemed to come by to pick up their vehicles.
I was happy to be a nameless, faceless person in the crowd, to be just another cog in the wheel that was the city that never sleeps.
I took some of my grandmother's money and I got myself an apartment that was so small that I couldn't walk more than ten feet in any direction without hitting a wall. But it was in a not-so-sketchy area and it was all I felt I could afford. I took my unfinished degree and finished it online while working the counter at a pharmacy. Then, Kinkos-printed degree in hand, I started applying for jobs that would allow me to have a little extra change in my pockets after rent and utilities were paid.
That was how I came across Kozlov Inc.
It was like any of the other offices I had interviewed at. There were desks and chairs and office equipment. The decor was a fair bit nicer than the other offices however, sleek, modern, maybe expensive though I had no eye for things like that.
Viktor Kozlov himself had been in the office to interview me. He was exactly what one might expect from a man named Viktor Kozlov. He was tall and brawny with a strong, low brow ridge over his brown eyes, a prominent but not unpleasant nose, and a square jawline. He was attractive and somewhere in his thirties with a booming voice that, even when speaking softly, seemed to reverberate through your entire system. In all the time that I knew Viktor, I had never seen him in anything other than a perfectly tailored suit.
Viktor had a brother, Ruslan, who was similar looks-wise and that was about it. Where Viktor favored nice suits, expensive watches, and Cuban cigars, Ruslan preferred jeans, heavy-knit sweaters in winter and simple tees in the summer, cheap vodka to the point of excess on Fridays during work hours, and his old beat-up pick-up truck. Where Viktor commanded the room, Ruslan owned it with his easy laid-back charm. Both had the lilt of their motherland and I always enjoyed when they would come into the office and I could listen to it. Though the rough Russian accent was wholly unlike the smooth, polished sound Thato had, I always just loved to listen, to occasionally close my eyes and let the sounds wash over me.
Needless to say, I got the job.
And I actually liked the job.
It was mostly solitary work, just keeping the books, occasionally answering a rogue phone call about one of their businesses. The Kozlov brothers owned a restaurant, a pawn shop, and a small gastro pub.
Some days, Ruslan would drop in and hang out at his brother's desk, propping his dirty shoes up on the polished wood like he had absolutely not a care in the world that his brother was anal about things like tidiness and appearances. He'd sip the vodka he kept on the drink bar and bullshit with me about any topic from the latest homicide to stories about the winters in his homeland.
"Girl like you, blondie, you'd have had men falling to their knees to claim you, keep you warm through the winter," he'd tell me, forever flattering my vanity in a way that I often wondered if it was just his flirtatious nature or if he actually meant it. Either way, it was nice to hear and I maybe developed the tiniest of crushes on him. "Know how they'd keep you warm?" he asked, dark brow quirked up, lips twitching.
