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As I wrestled out of my suit jacket and began unbuttoning my dress shirt, I took in the small diner ahead of me. Much like the prehistoric bar across the street, the diner also looked like something out of the past. A fifties-style establishment, it had the daily specials written on the windows in bright, colorful paint, red leather booths, a black-and-white checkered floor, and a row of barstools in front of the cash register.
The dining room was packed. Not surprising, considering it was the only place to get a prepared meal within sixty miles either way.
The diners were mostly men, dressed in snowsuits and thick hats. A few tourists taking refuge from the weather cuddled in the corner, wearing wildly inappropriate clothing considering the conditions. A woman with a bun of gray hair piled on top of her head and large owlish glasses stood behind the register. She wore a traditional black waitress dress with a white apron. This amused me for some reason.
I scanned the crowd once again. No honey-haired Lolita.
After peeling off my shirt, I began working on my belt.
That’s when I saw her.
Sophia Banks breezed out of the kitchen, her hands and arms loaded with plates of food. Literally, like you see in the movies, one plate on each forearm and one plate in each hand. She was wearing the same black-and-white uniform as the other waitress, although instead of amusing me, I instantly imagined a role-play scenario.
She was curvier than in the photographs I’d studied, and I immediately decided I preferred this. More of her, in any way, was a good thing. She moved quickly, nimbly through the diner. Gracefully.
The men watched her as she passed, every single one of them looking over their shoulder to get the full view. The few women in the room glowered at their husbands as she passed by. Sophia greeted her table with a warm smile before bending at the knees and sliding the plates onto the table.
I found myself frozen in place, my belt half-off, its buckle clasped in my hand.
The same feeling I got when I first saw her picture bloomed in my chest. Except this time, tingles joined the party, breaking out like a rash over my skin. Again, I was so dumbstruck by my reaction to this woman that I told myself to look away—although I couldn’t. I was mesmerized by her.
I noticed two things right away. One, she wasn’t wearing a ring, which didn’t necessarily mean much if she was working undercover for Black Cell. And her eyes were different.
In the surveillance picture Astor had shown me, Sophia’s expression was that of a tortured woman, sad, desperate, alone. Here, however, she smiled—albeit softly—and it sparkled in her eyes. In contrast to the picture, she was relaxed and obviously very comfortable in her surroundings.
As if sensing me, her gaze lifted to the window, and for a moment, our eyes met before she turned and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Jesus,” I muttered, the exclamation slipping from me.
With my pulse a bit livelier now, I slid out of my pants and kicked out of my shoes, wondering how this woman had found herself married to such an evil man.
Sophia returned to the dining room. With laser-like focus, I watched her move from table to table. The woman absolutely commanded the room. Due to her efficiency, or was it because of her beauty? A combination of both, I mused.
As she returned to the kitchen, I wrestled into my tactical pants and work boots, my attention never leaving the men who were watching the kitchen door like salivating dogs, eager for her return.
I slipped on a long-sleeve thermal shirt under a thickly lined flannel, then pulled a beanie over my hair. Comfortable now—and feeling much more like myself—I sat back and settled in to watch my target.
6
Aleks
He could tell by my expression that I didn’t want to have sex. I could tell by his that this was unacceptable. After all, he’d gone to so much trouble with the wedding and all. And by he, of course, I meant the party planners. Like me, my new husband had nothing to do with our wedding planning.
We were in one of those little huts on stilts in Bora Bora, the most cliché rich-person honeymoon on the planet, sequestered from the “common folk.” We had not one but two butlers, ready to attend to our every request. Everywhere I looked was another exotic flower arrangement, another box of chocolates, another priceless bottle of champagne. Every room smelled suffocatingly sweet, like my grandmother’s overbearing perfume.
I fully faced him, turning my back to the sweeping window that overlooked the ocean. I’d been watching the moon rise, too wired to sit, as my husband took calls.
There, I’d stared at the endless black ocean, daydreaming about dropping into the water and allowing the waves to wash me out to the horizon where, with one big gulp, they would swallow me up. In this fantasy, I looked at the moon while sinking into the abyss, and I died with a smile on my face.
Instead, I saw my husband, Viktor, the dealer of an entirely different kind of death.
After the nuptials, we’d taken a private jet to the islands, though Viktor and his colleague, a brusque man named Igor (who accompanied him everywhere), worked the entire time. I sat in the back seat of the jet, in the shadows, where a woman should be. Still and silent, as a woman should be.
Now, however, I was desperately trying to find my voice.
Viktor set his tequila on the coffee table. Below his feet, a dozen fish swam lazily under the glass floor, illuminated by an underwater light. Oh, how I wanted to be one of them.
My heart started to pound. I felt dizzy, light-headed. The weeks leading up to the wedding had left me wildly sleep-deprived. In fact, by our honeymoon, I was running on less than five hours of sleep in over forty-eight hours. I was at my wits’ end.
