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But on her own, with her father’s remaining years doubtless numbered even without the poison, she would be a prisoner of his making.
She stared at the drinks on the bar, considering the other option for the hundredth time: she could leave. She could pack her bags and leave this place, make her own way in the world.
The idea was as foreign to her as departing for Mars and just as terrifying. She’d never had a job, hadn’t even gone to college. Who needed college when your future was assured, stretched out in front of you like the yellow brick road, this one paved with gold?
She’d never lived on her own, had never even been to a grocery store.
What was it people in America said? First-world problems.
Perhaps, but problems nonetheless, and big ones for someone like Valeriya, as naive as a child in the ways of the world.
The real world anyway.
She was a queen in her own world. She could speak three languages, determine the origin of caviar with a single taste, the most expensive champagne with nothing more than a sniff.
She knew how to seduce and beguile the most jaded of men — except for Roman Kalashnik apparently — and how to dress to impress for any number of occasions and events.
None of those were skills that would allow her to live alone in the world.
But money was an indestructible safety net. With money, everything was possible, attainable.
And didn’t she deserve it? She’d never known love, wasn’t sure if she even knew what it felt like to be happy. She dulled the gaping hole in her soul with parties and recreational drugs and a long line of men who were as interchangeable as the designer gowns hanging in her closet.
She spent most of her time with her father, listening to him ramble about business and politics, soothing his ego and attending to its many needs.
Should she sacrifice the rest of her life on the altar of his ego as well? Marry a man she would never even be able to tolerate simply so her father could lay claim to some of the world’s fiercest thugs? So he could use them to intimidate his enemies into submission like a personal army?
No, she couldn’t bear it.
He was an old man. He’d had his fun, quite often at her expense.
It was her turn.
She took a deep breath and picked up the glasses, then carried them into the adjoining sitting area.
Her father was sitting on the sofa, his feet swollen and mottled, resting on an ottoman.
“There you are,” he said. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me.”
She handed him his drink and kissed his head. “You? Never, Father.”
“Thank you,lisichka.”
Her chest warmed with the sound of the nickname,little fox.
She sat on the sofa and watched him take a drink.
24
Ruby
She was on the sofa reading — it really was an uncomfortable couch and she was surprised to find herself longing for the second hand sofa in her apartment, which she’d always thought was too squishy — when she heard the elevator open, followed by Roman’s footsteps.
She picked up her phone to look at the time: 6:05 p.m.
He almost never came home this early.
“Hello,” she said when he entered the room.
