Her smile snapped clean off her face and her eyes narrowed. "You are an asshole."
"No. But I have far more respect for women in general than you appear to have for yourself."
I had to grab her wrist to stop her from throwing the glass of champagne down the front of my suit, and she winced at the fierceness of my grip, her eyes turning narrow and catlike. She thought she was original, but I had seen that coming easily enough. She was predictable as well as ugly to me, in all of her brash, overly sexualized mannerisms and her flares of passion. Her smile curled in again as I squeezed her wrist, and she vamped up the struggle.
"Oh Mr. Rozhkov, you are hurting me. Do you like that? Is that what you don't want anybody to know? Your secret could be safe with me, my darling."
I snarled at her, disgusted and pushed her away from me in an instant. "Stop wasting both our time. I am here for business."
Striding over to the booth at the back, I took the portfolio I had been working on out of my briefcase and stood in front of the table, ignoring the writhing, half naked women as I shook each other gentlemen's hands in turn.
"My name is Valentin Rozhkov, and Timoshenko and I have some interesting figures to put to you. I do think that we could implement a solution to assist with opening up wider government funds. I suggest you turn to page three, if I could steal your attention, for just a few moments, gentlemen."
Cyber crime was big business these days. We had rooms full of hackers all working mundane tricks to bring in low level amounts of cash from all over the world. We had companies set up to call every number they could generate and sell unnecessary insurance or IT support for some issue that had never been an issue in the first place. We had charities that ran campaigns for villages in disaster zones that didn't exist.
They were dirty scams, every single one of them, and while I couldn't claim to be proud of them, I could at least sleep easy knowing that none of them came with loss of anyone's freedom, or loss of life. And best of all, when it came to the bottom line, these companies were carefully set up to protect our anonymity, thanks to our skilled money man, Roman. That was the trick and the secret to our success.
We could replicate these centers, create franchises, write rule books on how to run a successful enterprise in the margins of what was legal and offer support to negotiate the ever-changing landscape. And we'd done just that. What we sold now was the method, the brand. All over the world we had allegiances and outposts simply because of all the systems I'd put in place. If our criminal reputation was not our main asset, we could have been almost entirely legitimate. And now was the time to take it even further, and push the reinvestments to a whole other level, binding the government and police even closer to us, making sure we had them in our back pocket, under our control rather than working against us.
Timoshenko looked up from his copy of the report, and gave me a wordless nod over the top of the page. I shifted my eyes away from him. His approval wasn't anything I needed. The only reason the Bratva was where it was today was because of me, and both him and his old fashioned ways were holding me back.
I was done with playing nice about it. As soon as I figured out the best way to do it, things had to come to a head, and then it was all going to end.
Once our official friends had been escorted into the back room by all three girls, I slid into the booth and ordered a drink while I waited for Timoshenko to finish reading the rest of the document that the other men had eagerly signed.
He let out an impressed sounding hum. "Always you make these things so watertight, Valentin. Never any room to wriggle out. I hope that you do me the same favor, when the time comes."
I knocked back a mouthful of vodka and skidded the empty tumbler down onto the table next to him. "Don't you worry, Yakov. When it happens, you won't have a way out."
CHAPTER FIVE
Valentin
I didn't get to return to my apartment until well after dark that evening. Being up at dawn and back so late was becoming a very familiar pattern, but I didn't have the luxury of admitting exhaustion, or even letting myself feel it.
After I'd switched on the lights, I poured Viktor and myself a couple of glasses of vodka and brought the bottle over, sitting down opposite him on my deep couch. The man didn't accompany me everywhere, but I was putting him up in my spare room and I was beginning to think that making his bodyguard duties more official might be for the best.
"Drink with me. It's been a long day."
Viktor held the shot glass up, and the pair of us nodded before knocking the contents back in a single gulp. The only way to drink vodka was to shoot it. It was not a drink for sipping, and I didn't see the point of mixing it. When he set his glass down next to mine, I reached for the bottle again to refill them. Living alone had never bothered me, but lately I found myself glad to have some company and Viktor's presence was easy enough.
In St Petersburg we had, between us, taken out the rival crime contingent. Viktor had proved himself as worthy of the old fashioned title Vor that he had clearly spent his lifetime working towards.
Sometimes it surprised me that he wanted to align with me at all when our ways were so very different and my goals for the Bratva seemed to be so contrary to the way he had lived his life.
Here in Moscow he had seen the extent of that, playing bodyguard to me as I went between meetings with important partners and stakeholders, attended gatherings and lunches, shook hands with politicians and took press conferences, while all the time juggling remote video calls and managing the strategy for the Bratva's route ahead on encrypted software, wearing my second business life like a superhero wears a cape. Not once had I had cause to ask him to assist me in roughing anybody up, or wiping anybody out, but I knew he would rise to the challenge in an instant if that was what I demanded of him.
For now, I worked from the gilded tower, the point of respectability that a man like him had never had, and I wondered whether he would have shared Timoshenko's conviction that I didn't know how to get my hands dirty, had it not been for the St Petersburg coup where we'd fought shoulder to shoulder.
Increasingly, my work day seemed to stretch at both ends, and I couldn't see that changing any time soon. Not until I found a way out of the stalemate with Timoshenko - a way of ending it with one clean strike. But tonight, for the first time in months, I wasn't focused on that.
With a glance out of the curtains, down to the street and across to the Bolshoi Theatre, I checked the time. The performance wasn't yet done. But it would be shortly. And now that I knew the company had a new dancer, I couldn't get the thought of going to see a performance out of my head.
"How do you stand it?"
Viktor looked at me, confusion clear on his face. "I do not follow."
"Having a woman. Having your thoughts permanently on her. Wanting to break all the bones of any man who touches her."
I had only met Mia this morning, but already I knew without a doubt that I wanted her to be mine. I'd never seen anyone so beautiful, so captivating, and as soon as I'd seen her smile I knew that she was made to be with me. It wasn't a familiar feeling.
Viktor let out a gruff laugh and knocked back another mouthful of vodka. "I married her."
"And now it is better?" I narrowed my eyes and knocked back my own drink, skeptical given how many times I'd seen Viktor checking his phone, or smiling over pictures from his home. I didn't understand how it would be possible to fully focus the way that even the recently married men in the Bratva seemed able to.
Viktor shrugged.
"Now it is worse. But at least I know that she is always mine, so at least I don't need to kill every man who looks at her."
That, I could just about believe. Watching her stretch had been pure torture. I could have crossed the studio floor and shoved my pulsing cock hard up against her a dozen times over, and rutted against her like some wild beast. It had taken every shred of control that I had not to.
And now, I couldn't stop thinking about how to
night she would be sleeping downstairs, right in this building, with only thin walls and floors between us.
I topped our glasses off once more. Was this what lay ahead for me in my future? I hadn't considered taking a wife before, because I'd been too focused on the Bratva, on getting where I needed to be, but Mia…
It was ridiculous. She was a stranger. But I couldn't think of her as anything less than mine, and I knew I wouldn't be satisfied unless that was going to be forever. She would be the only woman I touched for the rest of my days, and that was more than fine with me. How could I ever want anybody else when just watching her stretch was the closest thing I'd ever come to touching perfection?
Any given day, all I had to do was look out into the corridor to see half a dozen ballerinas stretching on the banister like it was their personal barre, but their flexing didn't even compare.
The smell of soft leather shoes and the sight of women in leg warmers was something I had grown up with, but I had no real interest in any of them in particular. There were always invitations to their shows and lingered, hopeful conversations in the hall, usually accompanied by exaggerated stretches, as though they really thought it was a novelty to me to see how flexible a woman's body could be. Not for someone who had grown up in this world, it wasn't. They were boring to me, average and uninteresting. But not Mia, she was different, special.
And I had to find out why that was. I had to get to know her better and to see just how many more sparks would fly when we came together skin to skin.
"Who is this woman?" Viktor asked, leaning in slightly, his arms against his knees, curiosity displayed on his face.
I shook my head. Women were usually the last thing I had time for. Although some of the Bratva's best men had recently found the love of their lives, I hadn't anticipated the desire to follow in their footsteps any time soon. It was disconcerting to know that all it took was one glance, one conversation with Mia, and I was hurtling off down the same path.
"She is a dancer. Don't laugh. I know there are a lot of them around here. And that is not why I set this place up."
As soon as I had established myself and my capabilities, back in my twenties, I had purchased the entire building. I had taken an apartment on the top floor, expanding and renovating the rooms we used to live in when I was a boy, and then I divided the rest of the building so that I could rent it out.
For the time being, it was what it was. A series of large apartments in multiple occupancy, advertised through the dance companies with special rates available to dancers.
Viktor shrugged diplomatically. "I would have thought you would have a wife by now if being a dancer was all it took."
I nodded, feeling a smile tug at my face. Of course Viktor would understand that it took more than a pretty face or a certain look to turn my head. Mia was truly special, as I imagined his American wife was special to him.
My mother had been the best dancer in the world, or so I had thought as a boy and I was grateful that Russia celebrated the ballet traditions so deeply that there was never any cost for attending the choreography schools, only a requirement to pass the audition. I wouldn't have been in the position I was, if it hadn't been for my mother and her success, and in establishing these apartments, I aimed to pay forward her generosity to me in some small way.
Being surrounded by ballerinas always made me feel at home, even when I spent the majority of my days alone, or holding endless meetings with men from different corners of the globe, facilitating solutions for the Bratva's problems and issuing orders that Timoshenko was too far removed from the day to day to realize needed issuing.
I could go to the ballet, watch them dance for an evening and go home again, knowing that I didn't have to disappoint any of them with my lack of time, or putting my focus on business ahead of them. Seeing the dancers, so disciplined with each and every movement, reminded me of how to strive to be in life. I never had anyone to disappoint, and that had been the way I wanted it. Right up until I met Mia and she captivated me completely.
I raised my glass one final time, meeting Viktor's eye.
For now, he had agreed to the position here with me for as long as I needed him in Moscow, but I knew it was no long term solution. It wasn't fair to rely on him when his new wife and baby girl were waiting back in St Petersburg for his return. I had every hope that I wouldn't need him much longer.
"The sooner this is all done, the sooner you can go back to St Petersburg. I am sorry to keep you away from your family. I am coming to realize how hard that must be."
Already I was impatient for the morning when I would get my chance to see her again, and hopefully begin to convince her that she didn't have to choose between me and the theater. Otherwise I might be tempted to burn the damn building to the ground.
Mia
I settled in quickly enough, falling into routine. I'd head to the studio first thing in the morning before the other girls were up and work through an hour of stretches and meditation with the increasingly familiar sound of Valentin's fists against a punching bag in the background.
I was becoming accustomed to the rhythmic patter and I could tell now when he misstepped or missed a hit without looking up. Somehow it was kind of soothing, once I got over the fact that he had a body to die for. Not that that was happening any time soon.
He hadn't asked me again about a date, but the chemistry still sizzled between us and I couldn't keep my eyes off him. I felt it almost physically every time he looked at me, and he looked at me a whole lot. At first I'd felt awkward under his stare, unsure whether his pride was bruised after I'd told him that I was far too busy with work for anything at all to develop with him, but I got used to the way his eyes roamed over me. And somewhere along the course of the week, I found myself getting disappointed when I didn't feel the cat lick of his gaze roughing over me.
The truth of it was, I liked the way he looked at me, even if I hardly knew what to say to him.
He didn't seem to have the same problem. "How did your first week go?"
"It was… exhausting!" I confessed, sparing him a grin. "And absolutely perfect." My calves were so tight from all the strain I'd put them under learning so many new routines so quickly. Eva had been right about them working me hard; the week had been brutal and the one ahead of me was set to be worse. I could understand why. At the moment I was dead weight to them and I needed to get to a point, very quickly, where I could hold my own on stage without messing up. I only had another few days to learn the parts before the woman I was replacing moved on, and I was feeling the pressure. My feet definitely were.
"You have a show?"
"Not yet. My debut is tomorrow. Unless I mess something up. And then I'm on every night after that."
Valentin nodded and something in his eyes intensified, making me draw in a breath as I looked up and caught his eye. "Perhaps I will come and see you."
With my heart fluttering like a caged bird, I gave him an incredulous look, doing my best to keep my cool. "You like ballet?"
"This is Russia. Here, we appreciate art in all its forms. And ballet is for us the greatest point of pride. The Ballet Russe is beyond compare, is it not?"
I bit my lip. He had me there. "I guess you're right. I never thought of it like that. It's not like everyone back home likes ballet." But I could see that Valentin was different from all the men I'd ever known back in America. He was cultured and refined, and I could tell that even when he was standing there bare chested with his muscles rippling, winding bandages around his knuckles so that he could go at the punching bag again.
Here he could be both things, but back home he would not have struck me as the kind of guy who'd voluntarily go to the theater to see anything at all. I guess I liked the contrast. Rough and smooth, just like I imagined his stubble would feel up against my skin.
"Are you some kind of fighter?" I asked him, suddenly curious about why he came in here so early. It didn't seem like something that anyone working a normal nine-to-five behind
a desk would want to do. Not this early in the morning.
He let out a gruff laugh. "I don't know. Perhaps I am."
I flushed. "I just meant - you coming here this early. What's that about? I wouldn't even be awake if I didn't have to carve out some me time to make sure I'm on top of my training."
He shrugged. "This is the time of the morning I have to myself. The rest of the day, it is different. I suppose that is the same for both of us. The rest of the time, I have to be who I have to be."
I nodded. "I get that. I'd be all over the place without my yoga. It gives me strength."
His eyes met mine and I could see him smiling at me. "I can see that."
I rolled my eyes, suddenly very aware that I had been lying stretched out on the mat not doing very much at all to help with strength. "Oh shut up. I was meditating. And then you distracted me with your… sweaty muscles."
His eyes glinted like he'd won a prize, or maybe caught me out, and I flushed at what I'd just said. "I beg for your forgiveness."
I shook my head, deciding to joke it out. "Oh, you better. I'll have you know I have some pretty kick-ass moves of my own. You don't want to mess with a pissed ballerina, I'll tell you that much for free."
But maybe he should have. Maybe I didn't want him to take me at my word. Not deep down. If I did, it wouldn't be the sight of him going at that punchbag, working hard enough that sweat rivered down his bare back that kept creeping up on me any time one of the posturing male dancers remotely exerted themselves. And I wouldn't feel that stupid little glow every single time when I told myself that Valentin was way, way more attractive than any of them were.
CHAPTER SIX
Mia
As my first week gave way to my second, it became very clear that I wasn't as organized as the rest of the Corps. No matter what I did, it seemed like I was always about fifteen minutes behind them all in getting changed and getting out of the dressing room after the evening performance. Partly, it was because they all had their places well mapped out in the changing room, while I bounced around trying to fit into the gaps.
Bratva Boss Page 4
