Even Urvashi grinned like a school girl as she wrapped him in her warm, tingling embrace. Her delightful aura poured over him in a shower of happiness. The ladies dragged him into the heated interior of the mansion through the great room and into the large, open kitchen.
Ivan stood at the granite countertop with an open bottle of vodka and several full shots lined up. “Very good to meet you, Mr. Sanguine. Have we met before?” He grinned as he held up a shot glass in salute and downed it.
Aaron shook his head and accepted Ivan’s hug. He looked to all the glittering faces standing around him and wondered where the missing faces had gone to. “It’s possible we have met, in another life, perhaps.” Aaron teased and felt warmed by Ivan’s easy laughter.
Svetlana and Oksana each grabbed full shot glasses and emptied them. Their faces squinted with the burn of the strong liquor. Michelle clung to his left arm. He sensed all the panic she’d experienced during Aaron’s absence and the guilt she felt at having made such a mess of those men in public.
Aaron speared Urvashi’s mind. {{Where’s everyone else?}}
She slipped into his mind with a silent message in return. {{No one has seen or heard from Natalya. We suspect she’s with the Georgians you encountered the other night. Gavin has people looking for her now. Anatoly and Nikolay are in Iraq awaiting Ivan. He stayed in case he was needed to help with your problems. He is true friend. You would do well to cultivate that relationship. Friends like Ivan are a rare find.}}
A dark, wicked rage churned in Aaron’s gut at the thought of the Georgians having their way with Natalya. After steaming for a few seconds, he found the mental fortitude to set aside his fury for later. He sensed Urvashi had further news to discuss in private.
Katya strolled into the room with a hesitant smile, holding hands with Lana. “We’re growing impatient with all the waiting. Has anyone seen Aaron yet?”
Lana looked at Katya funny and then did a double-take on Aaron. “He’s back!” She squealed in delight as she took a running leap into his arms. This was the radiant little girl he’d seen in that brief moment before her mother died. Day by day she was bouncing back and finding her place in his world.
Her little girl smell and shimmering aura enveloped the darkness of his thoughts in a bright light of joy. He had missed this child. After a few moments of squeezing her as tight as he dared, he kissed her forehead and set her on the counter. She immediately recounted a stream of all the things she and Katya had done in the three days he was gone.
His estranged bloodslave had become close with Lana. A whole new source of worry.
Katya joined the bloodslaves and ate little cube-cut sandwiches of tuna-cucumber salad while they chattered about plans to redecorate several rooms in the mansion. Aaron watched her, sensing her continued avoidance of conversation. She seemed happy to have no connection with him at all. Though she smiled and drank several shots of vodka, laughing along with Ivan and everyone, she had closed off from Aaron completely.
They repeated the vodka-snacking routine several times over with Ivan pouring the shots. Then Oksana, Svetlana, and Michelle exchanged some sort of silent signal and moved forward to surround Aaron.
“What’s all this about?” They grinned but didn’t say a word as they pulled him out of the kitchen.
He caught Katya’s eye just before the women pulled him around the corner. Beneath the façade of a calm happy woman was a boiling churn of jealousy and spite. She would not be joining him tonight – maybe never again.
The girls led him down the hallway to one of the many rooms in the mansion. This one had a king-sized bed. Svetlana locked the door behind them and proceeded to remove her sweater and bra. Michelle unzipped the back of Oksana’s dress and helped her strip down to nothing. Then they traded off and Oksana unzipped Michelle’s dress and helped her take it off. As usual Michelle hadn’t bothered with underwear.
Oksana pulled Michelle to the bed, and the two naked women slipped beneath the covers with a series of giggles. Aaron could hardly wait to join them.
Svetlana didn’t look away. She didn’t even flinch at this public display. In uncharacteristic fashion, she moved in and molded herself to Aaron, letting her naked breasts press against the thin fabric of his shirt. Facing her nose to nose, she kissed him gently on the lips, testing his mouth with little flickers of her tongue. With the physical connection, he caught snatches of her emotions leaking past her mental blockade. She wasn’t ready for sex yet, but she trusted him, even liked him.
For the first time since Dmitri’s brutal sessions of rape, Svetlana had let someone into her tightly-closed heart, and now saw a glimmer of hope that she might find a way out of the darkness of Dmitri that had ruled her life for the past four years.
She gently laid her head on Aaron’s shoulder and bared her neck for him. “I know you think I have done so much for you, and you think me a hero for helping you out of jail. The truth is you’re my hero. You saved me first.”
With a smile that wouldn’t quit, Aaron bit down into her dainty little neck and gladly took what she offered, what they both needed.
* * * *
Chapter 27
Urvashi closed the doors to what was once Dmitri’s private office and locked the deadbolt as she faced Aaron. She had something very important to discuss, and the anticipation turned his stomach over in flip flops. He trusted her, to a point, but recent events had twisted his world inside out, and he didn’t know what to expect from his master anymore.
She sat behind the desk with a folder of papers in front of her and indicated for him to sit in the dark brown leather chair on the other side of the desk. “Dmitri’s estate settlement will be finalized in a few months, but I have the summary of it here.”
She flipped open the folder and flicked her finger across the first page, letting it slide across the smooth surface of the desk towards Aaron. He picked it up and flipped it around to read.
Urvashi didn’t wait for him to digest the paper. “Each of the wolves will have a relatively small percentage of the estate value. The size of Dmitri’s holdings are such that a fraction is the equivalent of millions of US dollars.”
Aaron scanned the list that showed names, percentages, and approximate values listed in rubles. Everyone showed the same number, a whopping 900,000,000 rubles each.
Aaron tried to do the conversion in his head, but Urvashi interrupted him. “Katya, Ivan, Anatoly, and Nikolay are receiving roughly fifteen million US dollars each. You and Michelle are also receiving the same. Your share will be wired to a Swiss account under the name Richard Sanguine, of course.”
Aaron was dumbstruck. He couldn’t move his mouth. He could hardly breathe. His brain refused to engage his speech mechanisms.
Urvashi smiled in genuine happiness, but her eyes told him there was more. “While I am receiving the same share as you all, something we determined out of equal fairness, there are other parts of this settlement that involve you and I. Shortly, I will inform the wolves of their shares, but the rest of this estate settlement is private knowledge, never to be divulged to anyone. Not even the wolves. Gavin is the only other person who knows of these provisions, and do not be mistaken – I do not trust Gavin – not entirely. Apart from me, and possibly Michelle, there is no one else in the world you should ever trust completely. No one.”
Aaron didn’t have the capacity to speak. He simply nodded.
“A portion of the estate is being allocated to a secret trust fund run by an attorney firm in Luxembourg. This fund will be your source of project revenue and expense reimbursement for the work you do with Gavin. It’s valued at one hundred million USD.”
“The CIA gets a hundred million dollars for giving us a ride in their fucking helicopter?” Aaron stood up, claws out and teeth down, furious at the ridiculous idea.
Urvashi’s aura flowed over him with her powerful command. {{Be calm.}}
He suddenly relaxed and felt it was a good idea to sit back down and listen to the rest of wh
at she had to say. The woman had a power over him that he simply could not fight.
“Gavin has been instrumental in a number of ways. Without his help Dmitri would still be terrorizing these bloodslaves and half of Eastern Europe. The good we did here, the good we are still doing, will have ripples across many boundaries and affect many people’s lives. We have put a stop to a great and powerful evil. The work you do with Gavin can achieve a similar result. It’s worth the investment of a small fraction of Dmitri’s wealth. Let his corruption pave the way to something better.”
The perverse logic spun around in Aaron’s mind. The world needed killers to selectively assassinate key people. This was supposed to be a good thing, yet it didn’t sit well in Aaron’s gut. How did you measure the evil of people deciding who should die against the evil of their targets?
Urvashi’s piercing eyes conveyed understanding of his unspoken reservations. “Regardless of what orders you are given, the decision to kill rests with you. Gavin has not gained a blind servant. He has empowered you with the ability to shape the world by the stroke of your sword.”
Shaping the world through assassination. Sounded like the title of a bestselling novel. Aaron slapped the paper down on the desk and sighed. “Urvashi, you have a way of making ugly things appear beautiful. Whatever.”
She acknowledged him with a nod.
“Is there anything else?”
“Yes. As you probably realized, these numbers do not reflect the bulk of Dmitri’s wealth.”
He actually hadn’t realized that yet, but he did now.
“There is another trust being established in Luxembourg on behalf of the primary benefactor of Dmitri’s estate.”
Aaron watched in confusion as Urvashi grinned like a Kardashian at her third wedding.
“Kristina made a very strange but prudent decision when she gave her daughter Dmitri’s surname. For whatever reason … Dmitri never denied parentage. Lana Nazarov is legally Dmitri’s daughter, and the only living heir to his estate. She will inherit a value equal to one point two billion US dollars.”
“Holy shit!” A huge stupid grin broke across his face, a match to Urvashi’s smile.
“By the last words of her mother, you have been designated Lana’s legal guardian and the trustee of her inheritance, under your new name of Richard Sanguine, of course.”
Aaron was at a loss for words, but his ridiculously stupid grin would not go away.
“As I have explained numerous times, what concerns you concerns me. Any major decisions regarding Lana or her inheritance will be cleared through me first.”
Urvashi’s smile slowly faded and she turned her office chair to the right, to face a laptop which she opened up. After typing in a password and clicking through to a certain file, she handed the laptop to Aaron.
“Svetlana has been working with me from the moment you were incarcerated. The woman is an asset and a friend, but her intimate knowledge and experience with Dmitri’s corruption leads me to wonder how much of her soul she gave up in the name of survival.”
Aaron had trouble switching gears past the jaw-dropping news. His eyes couldn’t focus on the laptop screen, and Urvashi’s words didn’t make much sense.
“After I pressured her, she agreed to help figure out the password to his laptop. I suspect she knew it all along. Most of what’s in there we already knew, his businesses, his contacts, his assets. But there was something I found that you need to read for yourself. Dmitri kept a diary.”
Urvashi’s eyes conveyed something Aaron had never seen in her before – guilt.
“If you run a search through his diary files for the word ‘otrok’, you’ll encounter the entries where he chronicled some very disturbing findings that he received from his laboratory, Pharzyme.”
* * * *
With a lightness of heart he hadn’t felt in months, Aaron made his way downstairs through the corridors of the mansion to find the six year old billionaire playing chess with her millionaire friend, Katya. Like a metaphor of universal truth, the billionaire was winning the game.
After watching for a few minutes, Lana’s queen and rook combination dominated Katya’s side of the board with a quick and inevitable checkmate. Aaron was impressed.
Katya scooted back out of her chair. “That’s quite enough for me. Your turn to have your ass kicked.”
Lana’s eyes crinkled into her sweet smile as Katya tried to make her escape, but he hadn’t come to chat with the billionaire. He needed to get inside Katya’s head once more and find out what the fuck was going on.
He pecked Lana on the forehead. “Give me a moment with her. I’ll catch up with you later.”
Katya was cruising fast down the hallway when Aaron snagged her wrist and slowed her down. She tried to pull away from him, but he wouldn’t let go. “What do you want from me? Haven’t I given you enough blood and sex to last a lifetime?”
Her eyes glistened wet, but the set of her face conveyed determination.
“You can’t avoid me forever, Katya. We need to talk.”
“There’s nothing I have to say to you, Richard.”
He tried not to smile as he pinned her against the hallway wall, face to face, eye to eye. “My name isn’t important right now. Stop pushing me away.” He ran his finger down her cheek and wiped away the lone tear that had fallen.
“Don’t you dare bite me! Keep your ruddy teeth off me.” She was starting to growl and her eyes turned golden wolf.
“It’s not a fight, Katya. It’s a relationship. I’m trying to talk to you.”
“I can’t replace her, Aaron. I’m Katya, a wolf. I eat the flesh of my enemies. I am a predator, a killer. I’m not your sex doll chew toy. And I’m certainly not a stand in for your dead alcoholic wife, Anastasia.”
Her words hit him where she’d intended, right in the balls. His eyes fell away from her, unable to face the bitterness she shoved at him. After a moment he let it fall away. It was time to be a better man. He understood the source of her vitriol, and hoped he could unravel it.
“I can’t undo the past, Katya. I can’t change what happened to Ana, or you. I can’t change what Dmitri did. All I can do is try to help you and Svetlana, Oksana, Natalya. I know you don’t like it. You hate it. I guess you hate me. I thought we had something more than just a bloodslave connection.” He slid back into her and sniffed up and down her body, reveling in that unique scent she carried that set her apart from all of humanity. “I’m a vampire. I bite. You know what that does to women, but there are some people I care about. It’s more than just sex, blood and venom. I care about you, as a person, what you need, what you want. Look in my eyes and find the truth. I care about you.”
She looked in his eyes, searching. A slight flicker of hope crossed her gaze, but then the same old spite returned as more tears spilled down her cheeks. “Don’t you see the problem? How can I ever know if it’s real? I can’t see past the intensity of the moment. I can’t feel what I feel when you’re hammering me with that Lochness monster and filling me full of venom. I need to know, Aaron. I need to feel for myself what’s real.”
She looked like she could use a bite right now, and he caught a glimpse of her need in her aura, but she continued playing the denial game. “You don’t need me anymore. Michelle doesn’t feed from me anymore. You have them, your bloody harem!”
There it was – the truth. Ugly jealousy reared its head. Jealousy had been twisting its knife through Katya’s guts, poisoning her against him.
“I never asked for any of this, Katya. All I want is for us to live our lives together, you, me, Michelle …”
“And Urvashi, and all the Russian strippers Dmitri left behind, and any other stray bitch who happens to get caught in your web. Bloody horndog vampires, you collect women everywhere you go! We could all fall over dead, and you’d fill this mansion with a new harem of bloodslaves by tomorrow. It’s not enough for me, Aaron. I need more. I need to know how I feel. I need to get away … from you.”
&nbs
p; She had yanked out the dagger of her jealousy and plunged its cold blade into his heart. Her words hurt with a physical pain worse than any of his gunshot wounds. She looked away from him, unwilling to face the pain she caused. “I have a supply of the otrok and I’m taking Lana out of this country, to a private school in the UK. I know people who can procure new papers for her.”
Full of her hurt, his heart shredded by the loss of the woman who hadn’t even left yet, he lashed out at her. “You’re not taking Lana anywhere. She stays with me! I decide what tutors will manage her schooling. I decide where she lives. She’s not in your fucking pack.” If the bitch wanted to take her drugs and run then she could damn well do it. But she sure as hell wasn’t taking anyone else Aaron cared about. “You have no right to Lana, legal or otherwise. If you want any kind of relationship with her, you’d better remember that I am her legal guardian.”
The fiery color of her wolf blazed and Aaron smelled the beast flowing under the twitching skin of her fisted hands. In her fury, she was damn near bringing on the change.
The thumping sounds of running feet caught up to Aaron and a warm little hand slapped his leg. He looked down at Lana, her face lit up with excitement. “Vashi said I have money to play with! We can go to Paris and see the Eiffel Tower! I can pay for the trip.”
He laughed aloud and stepped away from Katya, all his hurt and fury diffused by this little bundle of light and joy. Katya’s fires extinguished and her hands relaxed. She pushed off from the wall and wiped more tears from her eyes. Without stopping to face Lana, she spoke over her shoulder as she exited down the hallway. “Ask your guardian if you can have permission to visit me in London on your way to France.”
The Nightlife Moscow Page 21
