As my father sat down as well, I realised there was only one person he wouldn’t wait for before taking up his chair. The one man who dared to be late. Vasily Petrushkov.
Please let it be someone else. Please let it be someone else. Anyone else.
But I wasn’t listened to by any sort of deity. At a minute after eight, in walked the person I least wanted. Almost immediately his eyes fixed on me and he bowed as he came closer.
“Nadenka, how lovely it is to see you again so soon. I must say, you look wonderful today. Very graceful.”
I tried not to frown at the happy voice he talked with. It appeared something had also gone his way since we’d seen each other last. Could it simply be delight at getting me into trouble and getting Konstantine away from me? Was Vasily that petty?
“I apologise for being late, Sokolov. I hope I haven’t kept the food long enough for it to get cold.”
My father grunted and waved two fingers towards the butler. Instantly he and the two footmen with him sprang to life from their positions up against the wall, bringing us drinks and our first course.
As soon as I had a glass of wine in one hand and a large, garlic-fried prawn on my fork I looked to Vasily.
“You seem to be very happy today, Mr Petrushkov. Is business going well? Or is something more personally focused pleasing you? Have you found a young woman who takes your fancy enough?”
He chuckled as I slowly pulled the prawn off my fork with my teeth. It drew his gaze to my mouth, and I thought I noticed him subconsciously lick his lips.
“Please, call me Vasily. I feel we know each other far too well for such formalities now, Nadenka. Especially as we also know a few of our little secrets. But the cause of my merriness will have to remain a secret, I’m afraid. I assure you. As soon as it’s a done deal, I’ll happily give you all the juicy details.”
“Wise,” my father said. “We should never count something as ours until the last details are sorted. I often despair at how the young of our generation are so ahead of themselves.”
Rolling my eyes, I focused on my food. I didn’t need yet another lecture. I’d had enough of that sort of thing for one day. It was a relief that both men were in a good mood. It meant that I could sit back and listen to the pair talk of their business ventures together while I ate and tried to think of a way out of my situation.
I just wanted a little bit of freedom back again. Enough to get out of the house in a way I could send a message. I knew where Konstantine lived. I didn’t want him to think that I’d done a runner on him.
Not only did I genuinely want to know more about him, I had a feeling he wasn’t the sort of man to take being ditched well. Although, in theory, he had been the one to walk out on me. I suspected it was only because Vasily had interrupted. Konstantine wasn’t the sort of person to directly antagonise if he didn’t need to.
The main meal plates had just been cleared away and the footmen were revealing individual raspberry Pavlovas when my father’s phone rang. I frowned, knowing he normally liked to have it quiet during the meal. But it was his phone, not anyone else’s.
For a moment he looked as if he was going to ignore it, but after checking the number he excused himself and got up.
He went to the other end of the room, leaving me alone with Vasily.
“How are your horses? he asked a moment later.
“Horse,” I replied. “I gave the recent foal to a good friend of mine.”
It was a slight lie. They hadn’t been a good friend. A jockey I’d admired for a long time had been taken out of a race when his horse caught her foot in a starting gate and tore the main ligament. She’d never fully recovered.
More than once I’d had my own jockey complain about that particular gate and the fact that the racetrack owners had done nothing to fix it. When I had a way of helping, I couldn’t bring myself to sit by and do nothing. While most of us horse owners were wealthy, I knew the jockeys, trainers and a lot of the other people involved in the profession barely made ends meet.
This seemed to throw Vasily. A frown crossed his face for a fraction of a second, before he replaced it with a smile again.
“Well, I know how much your mare means to you,” he said.
“As much as all my animals do,” I replied, knowing I was interrupting him and doubting he’d like it.
I had been pent up for too much of the day. It was making me more reckless. More willing to say what I truly felt. And the truth was, I was more than a little frustrated at Vasily. He’d interrupted what could possibly have been one of the most memorable nights of my life.
Thankfully, he seemed to sense my mood and dropped the subject, his phone becoming his new focus. I went back to my dessert until I noticed father had finished his conversation. He came back to the table, almost glaring at Vasily.
And the Petrushkov don had noticed the attention. Vasily rose to his feet, his eyes glancing to a message and reading as he did. By the time he was on his feet he had locked eyes with my father. An understanding seemed to pass between them.
“It looks like you’re leaving,” my father said. My mouth fell open. This was the closest a man like my father got to kicking someone out of his house.
“Yes, I believe it’s best I do. It appears I have misread a situation and a mutual acquaintance of ours.”
“I’m sure it was a simple misunderstanding. I’ve been assured that you’re not the kind of man to take something important from someone else without at least checking why first.”
Vasily nodded and gave a slight bow, his jaw set as if he held back words he desperately wanted to say.
“Perhaps next time you visit we can discuss how such a man came to act the way he did. I don’t entirely approve of his methods.”
“He did what was required of him,” Vasily said. “Perhaps a little too well.”
“Perhaps.” My father sat back down at the table and picked up his spoon. It was a clear indicator that the conversation was over. Knowing he was dismissed, Vasily left.
For a moment there was almost complete silence, only the sound of the metal cutlery hitting the plate as he broke off chunks of meringue, fruit and ice cream.
I was desperate to ask what had happened between the two men, but I knew better than to do so yet. Father was calming himself in his own way.
When half an hour had passed, however, and Father still said nothing, I knew there would be nothing gained by waiting. Instead I excused myself.
“You can go to your room, spend time in the sitting room, or go to your pets,” Father said as I rose to my feet. Immediately I felt anger rising inside me, wanting to leap out of my mouth along with the opinion I had of his suggestions. I wasn’t a child anymore.
Somehow I managed to clamp my mouth shut over my retort, his eyes holding a warning that it wouldn’t go down well. I wanted my freedom again at some point. Saying something now would be more likely to take it away.
In the end, I nodded and stalked off. I would spend time with Levin and the other animals before heading to bed. Maybe the new day would bring some kind of change to it. And if it didn’t, I’d find some way of getting my father to relent.
April 16th – 6:21am
I clenched my legs together, heat coming out in waves from my core. In my mind I imagined Konstantine pinning me down, his mouth and lips roaming my skin as he slowly screwed me, but it was just a dream, and before I could orgasm I woke, my body a sweaty mess.
The bed covers were in a mess, no doubt from all the unsettled tossing and turning. I groaned, considering using my fingers to finish the job, but instead I got to my feet and padded to the bathroom. Maybe a cold shower was a better idea.
No matter what I tried to think about, however, Konstantine always came back to my thoughts. For a man I knew so little about and had interacted with for such a short time, I was beginning to feel obsessive. What was it about him that made him more appealing than alternative men? I didn’t know.
All the men around me we
re controlling in their own way, all of them at least pretending to be confident. And maybe that was the difference. I didn’t think Konstantine had ever pretended. He knew exactly who he was and what he was capable of.
Somehow I needed to get out of the house and out from under the watchful gaze of one of my father’s bodyguards, just long enough that I could find out more or reach out. There had to be some way.
Not long later, once I was clean and dressed, I padded through the hallways to the breakfast room. An early riser, my father was already there. He barely glanced up from his newspaper, his breakfast not yet even in front of him.
I sat down, and almost immediately one of the footmen came over and offered to serve me one of the many options. I chose a croissant, something simple and fairly light. The night’s frustrations had made me hungry, but the thought of having to beg my father for freedoms I once had didn’t do anything to make me feel settled.
“I’m glad you’re up, Nadenka,” Father said before I could begin the line I’d been rehearsing in the shower.
“You are?” I asked. This wasn’t normal. Had he decided more of my details and wanted me to sign off on it?
“There’s a visitor arriving shortly. A man responsible for some very impressive things, and the reason Vasily left in a hurry last night.”
The last part of the sentence made me sold on pretty much anything that came after this statement. If someone had annoyed Vasily, then I wanted to know who and how.
“What does this visitor have to do with Vasily?” I asked, hoping my father was in an explaining mood, but he merely grinned and went back to his paper. It seemed I was going to have to wait to find out.
Thankfully, I didn’t have long to wait. I heard the sound of a car pull into the drive, someone get out and close their door none too gently. When one of my father’s bodyguards opened the door and spoke, I froze. The voice that replied sounded eerily familiar.
I looked to Father, but he was still reading, or at least pretending to. He didn’t realise who was at the door, but I did.
My cheeks flushed hot, and I couldn’t breathe. Thankfully, Konstantine was soon in the room, but his eyes went straight past me to my father.
Slowly, with a great deal of purpose and carefree attitude, my father folded the paper and put it down. Only then did he look at Konstantine, now immaculately dressed in the stiffest dark grey suit I’d ever seen. Underneath it his muscles rippled, but somehow it still looked far too posh for the man I’d met in the club five nights earlier.
I felt my mouth drop open as he walked up to my father and held out a hand for a shake. At no point had he even acknowledged that he knew me or had any interest in me. It was as if I wasn’t even present.
“Thank you for inviting me into your home, Mr Sokolov. It’s an honour to finally meet you, sir,” Konstantine said, his accent different as well. He was more subservient, polite. None of the things I’d liked about him when we’d first met.
“I must admit, I am curious about what happened yesterday. You seem to have handled something very delicate with a great deal of skill. But I also know of your reputation, Konstantine. You are not the sort of man I would normally do business with.”
“Not all the rumours are entirely true. I must confess to being less of a sadist than my reputation allows. It’s one of the reasons the farm has ended up in your hands.”
“I see,” my father said, but I didn’t. What happened? Would either of them tell me? As Father motioned for our guest to sit down to breakfast, the footmen came forward again, pouring drinks and preparing to serve. I raised my eyebrows. Not just anyone had breakfast with us.
“Vasily hired you?” my father asked. Konstantine nodded as he bit into a croissant as well. I took another bite of mine, realising I’d forgotten it with all the surprises.
“He didn’t give me much choice about doing a job for him. A little research and I quickly noticed you’d made an offer for the father’s farm. It didn’t take me long to work out an arrangement that would give you what you’d sought before.”
“I was told the farmer came up with it.”
“It’s best if it looks that way.”
Father nodded slowly, evidently considering the words.
“He won’t hear anything else from me.”
“Thank you. If it’s not so bold, I’d like to make another request if I may?”
“You can ask it. I won’t promise to abide by it if I don’t like it.”
“Will you do your best to keep the family safe? They’ve been through enough.”
My father blinked. The only sign this surprised him, but it was enough for me. If he hadn’t been shocked, he’d have answered right away.
“They come under my territory now. They’ll be as safe as anyone else living on my turf.”
This seemed to satisfy Konstantine. He focused on his food for a few minutes, all of us now eating in silence. Several times I tried to catch his eye, but he still acted as if I was barely there. I definitely wasn’t part of this business arrangement. And the longer it went on the more I felt myself tensing, growing angrier and angrier.
“Well, Nadenka, you may be pleased to know there’s somewhere you can train that mare of yours properly, and any more foals.”
Once more I raised my eyebrows, but I didn’t respond.
“The farm Konstantine here has acquired for me has a fantastic area for racing. In your honour, they’ve agreed to build a small course. We both agree that it will also add some much-needed revenue to the site.”
Now I nodded, the whole thing making so much more sense. It was about money. And it probably always had been. No wonder Vasily had been so cross. Racetracks were a big source of money when somewhere like Moscow. The rich had the ability to gamble away large amounts of cash in a very short space of time. On top of that, it was a wonderful way to clean up money. All it took was a bunch of fake receipts for cash on horses that lost. Or sending in your own men to choose horses that lost. Easy.
I looked to Konstantine again, knowing this was a way I could finally open up some dialogue.
“Thank you,” I said, getting his attention. His face remained impassive as he matched my intense gaze. “It’s rare for someone to make a gift to my father and I that matches our interests so completely.”
“You’re welcome, Miss Sokolova. It was a pleasant accident. I don’t make a habit of seeking to please young women with gifts and bribery, but if that sort of things works for you…”
I felt my mouth drop open at the insinuation. How dare he make out that I was the shallow one!
“I assure you – Konstantine, is it?” He gave me a brief up and down of his head, focusing back on his food as if I was boring him. “–that my head is not so easily turned. But I am grateful enough to mention it.”
Father seemed to detect the iciness in my voice even if he didn’t appear to and motioned to the footmen with one hand. They poured more drinks and offered more food, taking some of the sting out of the atmosphere.
Sitting back, Konstantine seemed to be finished.
“Well, I thank you, Mr Sokolov. You seem to be the first don I’ve met who understands me and the work I try and do. And you’ve got a daughter who is more than easy on the eyes as well. I hope I can be of service again in the future.”
Father let out a small humpph of amusement as I gasped. It was rare for someone to refer to my attractiveness so blatantly, and he spoke as if I wasn’t even in the room.
“I like you, Konstantine, but the kind of work you do is... more-”
“Violent… than you usually employ,” Konstantine finished for him.
“Yes. I don’t like there to be so much blood involved.”
“I confess, I don’t particularly, either, but I can only say no to a don so many times before a man like me, with no particular affiliation, finds they can no longer refuse. There are many ways to get the results I can deliver. Some employ more psychological, and less physical, methods.”
My fath
er leant forward, suddenly very interested in Konstantine’s words.
“And you would prefer more work of this nature?”
“Of course. I never like to inflict pain unnecessarily. I’m no sadist.”
“I’ve heard you’re very effective,” Father replied, putting down his knife and fork, his scrambled eggs on toast devoured.
“I do what needs to be done. No more, no less.”
“Hmmm. I could do with someone with that attitude and your results. Would you consider aligning yourself with me?”
“If it would mean Mr Petrushkov couldn’t ask me to do anything quite so... horrific to a young woman again, I’d be more than happy to. I’m aware that a person can only remain independent for so long, and, as I said earlier, you’re the only don I’ve met that I thought I could agree with on basic principles.”
“Yes.” Father grinned almost smugly, and looked at me. Whatever he planned to say, I knew I wasn’t going to like it. “And you also mentioned you thought my daughter attractive. I can’t fault a man who thinks she’s beautiful. As long as she’s treated well, of course.”
I growled a warning, but it was as if they couldn’t hear me, both of them looking at me briefly.
“Of course. I wouldn’t dream of anything else.”
“Then why don’t you stick around for a few days? I’ll get Grigor here to show you around, let you get acquainted with my daughter. She’s currently staying within the confines of the house and looking after her pets.”
Letting out another growl, I clenched my fists. Was my father going to tell Konstantine everything? I’d planned to tell him some of the details anyway. But not like this.
For a moment I thought I saw amusement in Konstantine’s eyes. Almost as if he enjoyed my discomfort, but I’d had enough. I stopped eating and got to my feet.
“I’m sure you two... gentlemen... have lots to discuss. Since I’m not required for the pair of you to congratulate each other on being prudent, I am going to get on with something more productive.”
Claimed by the Thief Page 7
