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“Let’s take this to your office. I have shit to do today,” K states, speaking to Alexey as Kozlov drops his hand. There is fire in his eyes at my blatant disrespect. If I were anyone else’s daughter other than my father’s, that wouldn’t fly, not in the life I was born into.
“Yes, let’s. Follow me,” Alexey says, then turns.
Krishna’s winter-blue gaze meets mine for the length of a heartbeat, but enough was said during that silent stare that I know why I’m here. Make sure no one tries to ambush or follow them into Alexey’s office. Be his eyes outside the closed door.
I blink my acknowledgment. We aren’t twins like Ren and Sienna, but Krishna is my best friend too. My only friend if I’m honest. I don’t get close to people. It’s not safe to bring in outsiders, so there was never a reason to make friends. Other than my brother, Ren really is my only other friend, but even him I keep at arm’s length. I never mingled with any of the dancers I worked with. In hindsight, perhaps that was an error on my part, because had I, then I might have known Ren owned the fucking club.
* * *
I checkthe smartwatch on my wrist. It’s been nearly half an hour since Krishna followed Alexey to an office down the hallway from the foyer and sitting room I’ve been pacing around in for the past five minutes. I’m getting antsy. I hate sitting, twiddling my thumbs, being idle. I need something to do, and I haven’t done shit since arriving here on Sunday night.
I’ll never make a good housewife. I’m not cut out for that position. I don’t even know how my mother did it for the fourteen years she and my father were married. I go visit her three times a year. Since I’m this close to Florida, maybe I’ll go stay a week with Mom. Get away from the Caputos and whatever reason we’re here. Ren can do his thing just like when we’re back home and I can do mine.
“Little birds aren’t allowed to leave their cages.” His words and an accent I’m all too familiar with stop me in my tracks. My head snaps up from its downward position to find Dimitri Sokolov, the eldest son of the Russian Canadian pakhan, standing in the foyer holding the front door open. “Lucky for me, I’m skilled at bird hunting.”
“Then go back home and hunt all the damn birds your black heart desires. You won’t find any here,” I say with false bravado. Dimitri Sokolov scares the shit out of me, more so than any person I’ve met. I’d rather step in the ring with Mike Tyson every night than be in the presence of this man.
“That’s where you’re wrong.” A sinister sneer looks back at me. “They’ve all headed south for the upcoming winter. One might think that’s how I found you so quickly.”
I know how he fucking found me. My father probably reports every goddamn move I make back to this scumbag. I know all about the deal his father made with mine, and had I not overheard that conversation years ago, Dimitri would have told me himself. He loves to torture me with that fact every so often. It’s why Sienna making that stupid tweet about Ren and me being married was such a clusterfuck. It’s not her I’m mad at, though. Had I not made the first tweet, then she wouldn’t have made hers. I’m the one to blame for this, and I know it.
“If you think for one second that I give a rat’s ass how you found something that clearly doesn’t want you, let alone belong to you, then let me set the record straight. I don’t, Dimitri. Get fucking lost.” I cross my arms and straighten my spine. It does nothing to stop the speed at which my heart is racing. I can mask my fear, but all he’d have to do is touch my chest to know what’s really running through my head.
Closing the front door, he takes measured steps toward where my booted feet are rooted to the hardwood floor beneath them. He carries around his own mask. To anyone else, they wouldn’t think my defiant words had any effect on him, but I know different. He doesn’t tolerate disrespect from someone that is mere shit on his expensive shoes. I’m that shit in his eyes. He may want to own me because his father deemed it a suitable match, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever be an equal. No woman will. That’s only one of the problems I have with him, the biggest being that I’m in love with someone else.
He stops when the toe of his black leather shoes touch the pointed toe of mine. I’m kicking myself for leaving the leather jacket Ren bought me a few years back home in New York instead of bringing it with me. I didn’t want the hassle of having to find specific knives for the sleeves. Had we flown on my father’s plane with Krishna, that wouldn’t have been a problem, but the asshole didn’t bother to tell anyone he was tagging along.
“Soon, Sasha.” He speaks in a hushed tone as he looks me in the eyes. My boots heighten my five-six stature, making me almost match his five-eleven height. “You won’t be able to hide from me. I don’t care what some little piece of American paper says. It holds no value to me.”
“I stopped playing hide-and-seek ages ago, Dimitri, so stop looking.”
Before I can tell him to go get fucked, he latches onto the front of my black T-shirt and yanks me closer, his mouth going to the shell of my ear. “There’s nowhere you can go that I won’t find you, ptichka. You’ve been mine since before you were born.” He breathes, inhaling, pulling in my scent. Saliva pools in my mouth, my stomach nauseated from his closeness. “And you’ll be mine until you die. I don’t share my toys.” His voice is no more than a whisper, but his words hit their mark as if they had been screamed down my parched throat.
“You lost, Sokolov?” Relief washes over me in waves at the sound of Krishna’s deep, authoritative voice. As if Dimitri wasn’t touching me, he lets go of the material of my shirt and takes a step back. “Long way from the Canadian border. I don’t recall you asking permission to enter my territory.”
“Pleasure seeing you too, Nikolayev.” Dimitri pivots away, turning his back to me, and the urge to stab him with all my might weighs heavy, but not even I can break that law. It would create a war that I’m not sure my father has the manpower to fight.
“Never mistake being in my company as pleasurable. It sure as hell isn’t for me,” Krishna says flatly. “Now why the fuck are you here, Dimitri?”
“Checking on my investment.” The way he says that last word to Krishna makes me know he’s referring to me. If my brother were the pakhan, he’d never allow an alliance or a joining of families to strengthen the Russian organized crime in North America. He wouldn’t, for one, because he doesn’t trust others like that. He also wouldn’t use me as currency, but maybe that’s all my father sees as my worth, a tool to use for gain. The thought of that sends a current of pain through my chest, weighing me down. I don’t want to believe Mischa Nikolayev would ever stoop that low, but my head knows he has.
Krishna slowly reaches behind him, obviously not giving a care in the world that Dimitri Sokolov is the son of a boss, a mirrored image of his authority just in a different country. I know he’s reaching into the waistband of his pants for his handgun, even Dimitri would know that move, yet my brother is doing so with measured speed.
He wants Sokolov to know who’s in charge here, whose soil he is standing on, so to speak. Krishna pulls his right arm back around to his front, the pistol in his hand. There is no need for my brother to do a show of racking the slider. He keeps a round in the chamber at all times.
“You don’t have investments inside my borders. If you’re telling me you do, then we have a big fucking problem.”
“Relax, Nikolayev. Alexey is simply consulting on a few casinos I’ve recently taken possession of. That is what I meant by investment. The Russian American pakhan is aware that he’s working with us. Perhaps you should speak to your father before you become trigger happy.”
“Perhaps you should go back home before my finger accidentally twitches.” Flicking his heated blue stare from Dimitri to me, he says, “Let’s go.”
He doesn’t have to tell me twice. I round Dimitri without a backward glance, walking with calmness, I haven’t the first clue where I’ve summoned it from. Dimitri Sokolov gives me a level of anxiety that I’ve never been able to shake. I don’t want anything to do with him. I certainly don’t want to be a prisoner with a death sentence because that’s exactly what being his wife would entail.
But not doing so may get Ren killed, and that isn’t something I can live with. I’d rather die than survive in a world without his beautiful face in it. I just don’t know how to save both of us.
