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5
Mandy
Iwasn’t attracted to him.
This was the mantra I had been playing in my head ever since I’d gotten back from the club. I wasn’t attracted to him because I wouldn’t allow myself to be. No matter how sweetly he spoke or how physically appealing he was, I couldn’t allow myself to fall into that trap. Damnit. I’d spent too long changing my life to allow this to happen.
But it already had happened, hadn’t it?
With just the appearance of my father at my graduation, it had been sealed in stone.
I was Bratva. Not just by blood or relation, but by marriage as well.
Handle the husband and have a happy marriage, my babushka had said. But I didn’t think she knew what husband she was asking me to handle. Or maybe she overestimated my ability, as I had been foolish enough to do at the start of the evening. I had thought that I could steel myself, make myself more witch than woman. Like a girl out of some fairytale, I could paint my face and change the world at the whim of my imagined magic.
But life didn’t work like that. I was not a fairytale, and my husband was more monster than man. I knew it, even just by looking at him. Those black tattoos crisscrossed his muscled flesh, peeking from beneath clothing, from beneath jewelry. And the scars that crisscrossed those . . . well. They spoke of him fighting monsters with claws far sharper than my own.
He was large, not just in size; his very presence forced attention onto him. When he had smiled at me before kissing me again. . . .
Pah. I was a weak woman.
I’d wanted to allow him to deepen that kiss, feeling his tongue pressing against the line of my lips like it had. I had wanted to tilt my head back and feel his body pressing against mine like his eyes kept promising that it would. Because I was weak. Because his magic was stronger than my own, and it pulled at me, inviting me in despite all the reasons it shouldn’t have.
It was why I sat here waiting for him, two hours after the hour he had promised to return, a wine glass clutched in my fingers and my eyes on the clock. I had no reason to expect him back just because he had told me that he would be.
For all I knew he had been frustrated with the fact that I had pushed him away again and he’d gone to his girlfriend’s house after meeting with his father to have her make it up to him or something. I had no reason to be upset with that thought either.Even if it sat in the pit of my belly like curdled milk.
I stood from the chair I’d sat in, prowling back to the front entryway and staring out at the brightly lit courtyard in front of the house expectantly . . . but nothing was there save for the two expensive cars usually parked on the far side.
I was of half a mind to go out there and hotwire one to go and find him.
Lord knew that I knew how. Fuck, I’d only spent three years in high school doing just that very thing, before the cars had been updated with all the security features. That had been a different time. A different me.
So full of fury at the death of my mother and the fact that my father refused to retaliate against her death, I had lashed out in any way that I could. I’d skipped curfew at every opportunity, skipping school as well. And when I’d found out I had a certain deftness of finger that made it easy to start a car without needing the keys. . . . Well, that had become my secret thrill.
I’d only stopped because I’d realized how disappointed my mother would have been in my doing so. It was why I stepped back from the door now instead of giving in to temptation.
Instead, I paced back to the kitchen, finding the landline hanging on the wall there and dialing the first number I could think of. I may not know his number, or how to find it, but my father would at least know the channels that I could go through in order to try finding it. Not that I should have held my breath. The line rang . . . and rang . . . and rang, eventually going to voicemail.
I sighed and replaced the receiver with a snort.Disappointment as always. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time my father had come through in any real way for me. On instinct I lifted the phone again, holding the one down and listening to the ringing start again. . . .
Sooner than it had before though, it went to voicemail. “This is Yerik Koalitsia, leave your name, number and a brief message, and—goddamnit Yerut, put the fucking—” The phone beeped, signaling the end of the recording, and I hung up before I could leave my own. I was fairly certain that it was the sound of gunfire I’d heard in the background of that recording, but my mind was more focused on the name. Yerik Koalitsia. Dmitry’s father.
My eyes ran over the phone in my hands, a sigh shaking my ribs. Damnit. I had been hoping to reach someone, to have some sort of option. I lifted the phone back to my face, holding the two down this time in the hope it would dial through again . . . but nothing happened.
So, he only had the one number programmed into his home phone.
“Fucking fantastic,” I grumbled, all but shrieking at the end of the word at the sound of a throat clearing behind me.
“Excuse me, madam, but you called?”
The driver from earlier this evening stood in the entryway of the kitchen, his thin frame outlined by the light behind him.
“I . . . what?” I stumbled over my words, replacing the phone back on the hook.
“You held the button down to summon me. Was there somewhere you were trying to go this evening?” The driver asked, his tone deferential. I was going to have to ask his name at some point, but his question piqued my curiosity, my palms warming.
“You have to take me wherever I ask?”
