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“Delightful,” I mutter, fanning myself.
Whatever. It’s not like I’m trying to impress Timofey anyway. He’s seen me looking like a drenched sewer rat once and again with sleep breath in the middle of the night. He can handle my post-bike ride stank.
I go to knock on the door, but it’s already cracked open. Voices filter out onto the porch.
I lean in, turning my ear towards the door. The voices are definitely male, but I can’t make out what they’re saying.
Suddenly, the door yanks inward and I stumble forward slightly. A pair of large hands set me upright.
“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a Girl Scout. You selling cookies, sweetheart?”
The man in front of me is tall and lean. His face is gaunt, shadows pressed under his cheekbones and his eyes. His lips are stretched into a threatening smile that raises the hairs on the back of my neck.
I pull away from him and frown. “I’m not a Girl Scout. I’m a grown woman.”
He looks me over, his eyes taking their time descending my frame. “Indeed you are. But by the look of you, you still might have something sweet for me to taste.”
I have no idea who this man is, but I’ve more than met my asshole quota in the last forty-eight hours. If I have to live in this house for any period of time, I’m going to set a precedent for how I’m treated.
Starting now.
I fix the creep with an overly polite smile. “I’m fresh out, so I’m afraid you’ll have to find a treat on your own. I’m sure you’re accustomed to servicing yourself anyway.”
The other men in the entrywayoohand cackle as the gaunt man’s face reddens.
Serves him right.
“I’m here to see Timo—err, Mr. Viktorov.” I look past the man to the men standing behind him. They’re staring at me, refusing to make themselves useful. “Is he here?”
A younger man steps forward, finally prepared to help. Before he can, the gaunt man reasserts himself. “I can help with whatever you need.”
I clench my jaw. “I’m sure you’d like to, but I’d rather pluck off my fingernails than talk to you for another second. Get out of my way before—”
“Before what?” His voice is a low hiss. “You think you have rights here, little girl?”
“The right not to get harassed by an asshole, if nothing else.”
His lips twist into a nasty smirk. “You gave that up when you stepped through the door. You don’t walk into the lion’s den and tell a lion not to bite.”
I look him up and down with a shrewd eye. “Are you supposed to be the lion in this analogy?”
His eyes flare and he yanks up his shirt sleeve, revealing a black blob tattooed on his inner wrist. “You know what these stand for, Girl Scout?”
It takes a few seconds for me to recognize the blob on his arm is not a blob, but a cloud of individual black dots. There are at least a hundred tattooed dots, maybe more.
“These,” he growls, leaning towards me, “represent each person I’ve ki—”
“Rodion.”
A deep, commanding voice I recognize booms through the room. I turn just as Timofey steps through the parting crowd of men.
Considering that the last time I saw him, he was threatening me in the dark of my room, I’m surprised at how relieved I am to see him now.
I suppose the devil you know really is better than the devil you don’t.
The man—Rodion, I guess—steps back. “Timofey.” He drops his sleeve and his tattoos disappear from sight. “I was just greeting your guest.”
“That’s not your job for a good reason,” Timofey snaps. “Fyodor is better at it. He’s also more pleasant to look at.”
