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“That’s my girl.”
As my mother made plans to leave, I tried to stay tough for her. She went on telling me not to leave my bedroom the following night. I nodded, though I didn’t agree. After all, I swore to myself that I would never be a prisoner to an illness—or anything else—again.
I was never much for following the rules. The advantage to being sick and everyone treating me like I was dying was that when I broke the rules, I got away with it, most of the time. Perhaps I should have felt bad about that. Then again, life was short, and had seemed even shorter for me not all that long ago.
No one had visited me since my mother had left a few hours ago, aside from the housekeeper who’d brought me dinner. After that, I was ignored. It probably had something to do with the industrious way people were working downstairs to prepare for whatever was going down tomorrow night.
The walls of my room came at me. I needed some fresh air, so I put on my sneakers, opened the door, and peered outside. The coast was clear. I stepped out of my room and took the hallway to the right. I was just going to look around, take a peek. Okay, so I was snooping around.
I ended up in a large room that looked like a study or a library. The mahogany bookshelves were completely filled with books; most of them being classics, from Sun Tzu’sArt of Warto theOdyssey.
The sound of clicking heels approaching outside the door startled me. Instinct made me dive underneath the huge desk. I yanked the rolling chair away and squeezed myself into the vacated nook. With a pounding heart I waited. The door creaked open. The clack of the pumps on the stone floor was muffled as soon as they hit the Turkish carpet. The person sat in the leather chair on the other side of the desk, and the heels started tapping impatiently. Dare I take a peek? How could I not?
Holding my breath, I peered around the corner of the desk. All I could see were red soles and spiked heels. Louboutins. Sigh. I’d give my right arm for those heels. Well, not really, but almost. Sadly, it would take me six months of saving up my allowance to get anywhere near those shoes. Who was wearing them?
When I heard the door open and the woman called out Kristoff’s name, I realized my mistake. It didn’t matter who she was. All that mattered was that I needed to get the hell out of that room. What if they found me? My heart did a thud when another thought occurred to me. What if they started making out? Or, worse, what if they discovered me while making out?
***
KRISTOFF
Svetlana loved to make surprise visits. Usually she popped up at an upscale hotel downtown under the guise of traveling on business with her father. Today, since she was already in the States for the gathering, she popped up in my house.
I found her exactly as I expected. Sprawled over my leather chair, legs crossed, arms draped along the back of the sofa. She was like a beautiful marble statue. Perfection was too mundane of a word to describe Svetlana. Until she opened her mouth.
“You haven’t returned my calls.” The icy Bratva princess was miffed.
I concealed my annoyance as I sat down next to her. “I haven’t.”
She seemed taken aback by my candid response, though I couldn’t understand why. I’d always been honest with her. Unlike most men in her life, I never made excuses for my actions.
She placed a finger on my arm, reminding me of how we’d met. That day, years ago, when I’d rescued her from her kidnappers. Svetlana had inadvertently been one of the reasons I’d been promoted topakhan. It had been the reason her father had voted for me, despite the fact that I hadn’t climbed up the ranks in the regular way. I’d always forged my own path, made my own crew, who were loyal to only me.
“Father wants me to marry Mikhail,” she said, sounding sour.
It was one of the things I liked about her. She didn’t do small talk. We either fucked or talked shop. She was a valuable source of information. The Bratva’s attitude toward women was much like the Italian families; they were to be seen, not heard. They were also meant to be married off to forge new alliances.
“I guess congratulations are in order.”
She huffed, but didn’t negate my words. We both knew the deal. So why was she here?
“I was wondering how you feel about that.”
Ah, feelings. “Since when do they matter?”
“We could maybe…” She fell silent. “If you’d just be a bit more…I could maybe…and your past wouldn’t matter.” For a second, her puffy lips looked as if she’d swallowed a lemon.
Finally, she got to the point of her visit. Her soon-to-be husband was an asshole. I was the lesser of two evils, even though I was the son of a whore.
“He’ll be good to you.” If by good you mean he’ll forget your existence as soon as he has a male heir so he can continue fucking his mistresses.
Her lips pursed once more. “He’s an ape with the manners of an ape.”
“And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty. And it stayed its hand from killing,” I quoted from the most famous of all ape movies, King Kong.
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Love is the one thing that makes people go crazy. It makes them do anything for anyone, no matter what.” My own mother was the perfect example of this madness. She’d fallen for a married man who’d kicked her out of his life the second she told him she was pregnant.
