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None of that makes it easy to determine ifthismight be her–if the dark-haired, lustful beauty on stage a few minutes ago with adancer’s body and a sinner’s face might be the same woman I’m hunting.
What’s more unsettling is that I no longer feel sure if I want to keep pursuing this lead at all.
What if it’s not her?I take a drag of my cigarette, blowing the smoke out into the rain.Or what if I decide that it is, and I’m wrong?
Nothing like that has ever bothered me before. I’ve never been the kind of man who scruples at violence or at doing what needs to be done. I was Viktor Andreyev’s brigadier at Viktor’s most violent–the left hand who dealt out consequences, pain, and death. When he gave me orders, I was his loyal dog, willing to bite and devour where he told me to.
Now, look what’s become of me.
I take another angry drag of my cigarette, frustrated with myself.What makes her different than the rest of them?She’s no different than Sofia Ferretti, whom I kidnapped out of a New York basement club when Viktor decided he wanted her for himself. She’s not any different from any of the girls I picked up off of streets like the one I’m standing next to now, shipping them back to New York for Viktor to sell off to the highest bidder.
The only thing that could make her stand out is if she were the woman I’m looking for–in which case, her fate would be much worse than what eventually befell any of those women.
I snort, flicking the ash into the rain. Sofia Ferretti is now SofiaRomano, queen of the New York Italian mafia. The women Viktor sold are living like queens of a sort now, the concubines of billionaires, princes, and sheiks. As for Sasha Federova, whoI remember most clearly of all–well, I can’t exactly say what her fate was. But it, too, was tied up with Natalia Obelensky.
I grit my teeth before taking another drag.A year. It’s been over a fucking year since Viktor took his blushing new bride to Moscow to parade her in front of his peers, and Konstantin Obelensky saw a chance to cut him off at the knees. Over a year since Konstantin, fucking snake that he was, managed to get Alexei Egorov to betray Viktor and stage a coup that nearly shattered Viktor’s Bratva entirely. Over a year since I barely escaped Alexei’s rampage with my own life, only to find out that Viktor thought I had been complicit.
Fifteen years of being his loyal dog, biting on command, and that was the thanks I got. He’d been angry and paranoid, ready to wipe the board clean of anyone who might have been on Alexei’s side, and since I hadn’t come straight to Viktor’s, he’d believed me to be a part of it. I’d been lucky to have heard that through the grapevine, or else I might have come back of my own accord and gotten a bullet through the temple for my troubles.
All the while, I’d been looking for the source of the coup, knowing that Alexei would never have had the balls to pull off something like that himself. I’d been fucking right.
Obelensky had been pulling the strings, something Viktor was unaware of. He’d been so goddamn focused on reconnecting with his family, nurturing his newfound romance with his wife, and protecting her and his children, so eager to blow up the business we’d spent years building on to turn his empire into something more palatable for the Rossi woman, that he’d overlooked entirely finding who the head of the viper was. It hadn’t been Alexei, that’s for fucking certain.
I’m going to bring him that fucking information. I’m going to tell Viktor who it was who really put his wife and children through that hell, whose cock Alexei was sucking to cause him to make such a stupid fucking decision. I’m going to find Natalia Obelensky–if she can be found–and once I finish asking my questions and taking my revenge out on her, I’ll deliver what’s left to Viktor to question or kill as he chooses.
I’ll be the one who brings all of it to him. The man he threw away. And then, when Viktor thanks me, when he begs for my forgiveness, when theUssurihimself pleads with me to return to the fold, it will bemychoice as to whether or not to take my place again within Viktor’s Bratva.
I’ll be able to ask for what I want. Money, power, favors. And I’ll buy it all with information and Natalia Obelensky’s blood.
Which is why I have to makeverycertain that this woman is the right one.
I can’t hesitate. I can’t scruple at what needs to be done.
Most of all, I can’t allow myself to be distracted.
I blow out the last of the smoke from my cigarette, thinking of the woman on stage. She’s unlike any woman I’ve known in a very long time. Beautiful, graceful, with the hallmarks of a classically trained dancer–I’m sure of that, at least. And her bearing…
She hadn’t flinched from my gaze. If anything, it had seemed to empower her–until she’d realized I had no intention of stuffing any rubles into those cheap panties of hers. Her attitude had changed instantly–haughty, dismissive, and it had sent a jolt through me that I forgot the feeling of.
My cock throbs at the memory, swelling uncomfortably against my fly as I shift and stub my cigarette out against the wall. Breaking a woman like that would be exquisite. The struggle, the fight–I let out a hiss of air between my teeth as my pulse picks up, thinking of how she might react if I stripped away that cheap gold lingerie, baring the bits of skin she managed to keep hidden to my gaze.
She wouldn’t flinch away, cover herself, or scream and cry. She’d fight back, bite and claw, and when she did eventually lose, it would be so much sweeter.
Fuck.I reach down to adjust my rigid cock, unable to resist rubbing my palm against the hard line of it for a moment, feeling the pleasure fizz in my veins. I haven’t been this aroused in a long time, aching with need and craving the feeling of a slender soft body pinned beneath mine, delicate wrists caught in the circle of my fingers as I drive into tight, wet heat.
I doubt she offers extras, but in this kind of club, someone does.I could go back in, find a dancer who would suck my cock for a few rubles, and get the release that I so desperately need so that I can focus again. But even as I picture it, the dark-haired woman on the stage, the one they announced asAthena, swims into my head again.
Anything else suddenly seems cheap, a faded facsimile of what I really want. Natalia or not, the woman has captivated me–and that’s a problem.
I’ve never beencaptivatedby any woman. All my life, I’ve practiced detachment. Sex for perfunctory pleasure, nothing more. When I have craved something darker - more violent, more consuming, I paid for it….and there was never any question of obsession.
None of them ever made me feel likethis.
Stubbornly shoving my erection down, I fumble in my pocket, pulling out my wallet and the photo it contains. I unfold it, looking down at the pretty, smiling face of the woman there, and a calm resolve fills me and deflates my arousal. Nothing about the picture could ever make me feel lust. Looking at it has the desired result, replacing the burning heat in my veins from watching Athena dance with a cold and renewed anger.
If she is Natalia, I want my revenge. If not, I’ll enjoy finding out, and then I’ll look elsewhere.I can’t leave Moscow until I’ve discovered proof that I can bring back to Viktor–and I refuse to spend the rest of my life like a rat in an alley, scurrying from place to place to avoid being caught.
The rain is coming down harder now, the red neon from the street glowing through it eerily, and I clench my teeth as I reach for the door that will lead me back inside the club.
