by SR Jones
Popov helped kill my wife. My revenge on him must come before all else.
My phone rings from where it’s placed in the dock on the dash. I glance at the screen and see it’s Michael. Really not wanting to talk with him, but knowing at some point I must, I sigh and answer it.
“Yes?” I grind out.
“Konstantin, listen, I didn’t sleep with that girl. Ted did.”
He’s referring to his stupid friend, the idiotic one who wears ten thousand dollar running shoes and thinks it makes him a catch.
I pause. For a moment relief floods me. Cassie sleeping with anyone seems to be an issue for me, but Michael would have been the worst. Then I grit my teeth. The kid’s lying. Why wouldn’t he deny it?
“Michael, don’t throw your fucking friend under the bus. Be a man and own up to your mistakes.”
“I swear it, Konstantin. I did not sleep with her. Call him and ask him. Or ask her. Is she still with you? Cassie? Tell him.”
Okay, that convinces me some. A little.
“I dropped her off. So tell me, why was she at our house, and Ted wasn’t?”
“Because he’s a dick who pulls girls and then cuts and runs on them.” Michael supplies. “I don’t know. I was surprised when she came back with him, to be honest. I’ve seen her out before a few times, and she’s kind of boring.”
“Oh, boring how?”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line, and I know Michael isn’t stupid. He’ll have noticed my interest in Cassie and is probably trying to figure it out.
I go with the partial truth. “She’s an employee of a company I’m buying, and I need to decide whether to keep her or cut her. I’ve got a meeting there on Monday, and she’s going to find out I’m her new boss.” Her new nightmare. Then I continue. “When I thought you’d fucked her, it meant I might have to cut her, and she has some skills I can use.”
“Oh shit, sorry, Dad.”
I smile. Michael often calls me Konstantin these days, but I much prefer it when he calls me Dad. Each time he does, it hits me right in the chest.
“It’s okay, son,” I reply with a grin I can’t stop. “So tell me, boring how?”
“Well, she goes to the same club as us, but not often. There’s a group of girls, and sometimes she’s part of their crowd. The others are party animals. Out every Saturday like clockwork, dressed up to the nines, and looking for a good time. One of the girls, she’s hot like burning, but a total ratchet.”
“What?” I’m lost with all this young person speak. Fuck me, English isn’t even my first language, never mind young person’s English. “What’s a ratchet?”
“She’s sexy as fuck, but a total mess. Like, drinks too much every weekend, probably does drugs, takes home a different guy every Saturday, and she’s fallen down the stairs to the cloakroom about ten times.”
“Okay, and you’re saying Cassie isn’t like this?”
“Yeah, exactly. Well, you saw her clothes, right? She never dresses like that. Normally she wears black trousers and a top or something equally boring. She’s not hot like her friends,” he says.
I beg to differ. I can’t imagine anyone hotter, even with her newly dull hair, lackluster skin, and sad eyes.
“She always gets half a lager, how sad is that, and sips at it. My guys have fucked a few of her friends, but no one has ever fucked Cassie. Not that any of us have tried. She’s weird. I think I remember her hot friend, Vanessa, telling me Cassie is a huge nerd. So yeah, don’t let this morning put you off keeping her if she’s got skills. She’s not normally this way. Although, Dad.”
“Yes?”
“You do know that in England you aren’t allowed to fire someone for wearing a slutty dress and getting wasted on the weekend, right?”
I laugh and turn right into the office car park. “Yeah, thanks for the reminder. Just wanted a bit of background on her. You helped, thank you. And, Michael.”
“Yes?”
“Sorry I doubted you. It looked suspicious, at first.”
“It’s okay. I’m not stupid, Konstantin. I know not to fuck this up with the Italians, and I won’t.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose as the car idles outside my office. This isn’t what I wanted for Michael, but he’s got to learn responsibility some time, and I suppose this will teach him it quickly, if nothing else. I promised Yulia, my wife, I would look after him, bring him up right, away from our seedy world. I did everything I could to make that happen and failed anyway.
“I’ve got to go. I’m at work.”
He says goodbye, and we hang up the call. I stare at my phone for a long time. Memories flood back, as unwelcome as heartburn and just as acidic. The moment I found out from Vasily, one of my henchmen, that Michael’s mother, my wife, and childhood friend, Yulia had been murdered. Not only murdered but violated too, in the worst way.
The one thing I promised her, the one thing I can still do for her, is protect Michael. Should I stop this? Put a halt to the wedding? I could take on the Italians if it came to that. Hell, I could probably do it without needing my Russian friends for back up. The clout I have with the wealth I’ve made in this country, never mind the connections, would protect me and Michael if needs be. I don’t know what to do for the best.
Him being part of their family will provide Michael with added protection if things get too hot between myself and my enemies.
After a long time away from the front line, war is once more brewing. Once a soldier, always a soldier, and I never back down from a fight.
Popov won’t know what hit him, the fat fuck. He dared to get involved in the harm done against my wife, one of my family, and he’s still alive, strutting around like cock of the fucking walk. No way. I’m going to dismantle his organization, and then I’m going to kill him. No one does to me what he did.
When Popov helped my father kill Yulia, he took something uniquely precious away from me, and I’m not a man to back down from that kind of thing.
She was the one bright spot growing up. As things fell apart, first with my shitty, weak father leaving when I was thirteen, and then with my mother getting sick, Yulia was there.
She was also there when my sister died, and I lost my last remaining family. She was there for me when I fought in terrible wars, writing to me consistently. Without her and Andrius, a fellow brother-in-arms, I doubt I’d have got through some of my time in Chechnya.
We married for convenience, for her, because she needed a father for Michael and a cover for the fact she liked women. Me, because I needed a wife at that time to get ahead in the conservative business world, shooting up in post-Soviet Moscow.
She and I worked, until my jealous, pathetic father decided he wanted revenge. Why? Because I wouldn’t share my hard-earned wealth and power with the man who walked out on me, my mother, and baby sister. He had such a sense of entitlement, the old cunt.
Most Bratva are honorable. We don’t go after one another’s family. Wives and kids are off limits. Popov clearly doesn’t abide by the rules. So now he must face the consequences of this.
It’s dangerous, though, highly so. I don’t believe for a moment that Popov wouldn’t go for Michael if it meant stopping me, but if Michael married into the Bianchi family? That would mean Popov would bring down another war on himself, this time with the Italians.
So many balls in the air, so much to juggle. My head hurts, warning of a possible migraine if I don’t calm the fuck down. I could do with a coffee, but instead of grabbing one, I head straight into the building. I want to read about Cassie’s ex-fiancé, the idiot who dumped her and shoves her nose in his new relationship every day if my intel is correct, before I decide how to twist the knife I’m about to stick him with.
I smile grimly at the prospect of telling the shit who broke Cassie’s heart that he’s lost his job while Cassie keeps hers. Sometimes having this much power is a rush.
When I hit the floor my office is on, I sigh at the sight of my PA, Grace, at her desk. I
t’s a Sunday, but the woman is a workaholic.
“Oh, hello, sir. I didn’t know you were coming in today.”
“Yeah, neither did I, but I have some things I want to look over. What are you doing here? You need a day off.”
She smiles. “I was planning on it, but then my mother decided to come and visit, and I remembered I had urgent work to do.”
I laugh. Her mother is awful. We don’t talk a lot, but I do recall her telling me how much she dreads her mother’s visits. It seems the old dear comes to visit often too because she likes being able to look around London.
“Here.” I take my wallet out and pull a bunch of notes from it. “Go to the spa around the corner and have that pampering package thing they do that all you women love so much. If your mother calls, I’ll answer and tell her you’re doing particularly important work and can’t be disturbed.”
She looks at me, her eyes wide. “Really?”
“Yes, really.”
It’s partly a nice gesture, but it’s also selfish to a degree because she’s the best damn PA I’ve had in years. I take care of the things that matter to me, and she’s a good PA, so I take care of her.
She grabs the notes with a huge grin and stuffs them into her Mulberry handbag. I pay her well, but she earns every penny.
“Thank you so much.”
I nod at her and push open the heavy wooden door to my office.
Once inside, I open my drawer and take out Cassie’s file again. I sit and stare at her picture as I wonder how the hell I’m going to get her to hack into Popov’s business for me if she’s as straight as my son seems to think. It could be that her previous little experience with hacking was one of those crazy moments of rebellion most of us have when we’re young, or even due to peer pressure.
I want her too, and I had planned on simply taking her and making her mine. Yeah, not politically correct, but I don’t give a fuck about these things. However, having seen her today, how bad she looks, I’m not sure I should be doing anything quite so drastic. At least, not yet. Cassie is like a flower wilting and dying in barren soil; uproot her against her will and she’ll simply waste away.
Tend to her first and then uproot her? And she might survive.
Perhaps I ought to be a tad more … old fashioned? Try to seduce her. I like the chase, after all.
What about the hacking, though? I need her to do that. I don’t trust anyone else right now to do it for me. Should I simply offer her a fuck ton of money to hack Popov for me? Would that work?
One way or another, I’ll get her into my bed, I decide, but I might let that take a backseat right now. First I need to get her to hack into every single corner of Popov’s life.
I need to avenge Yulia and make sure Michael is safe in the future. Those two things must be my priority beyond anything else, including what I personally do or don’t want.
It’s as simple as it can be. One way or another, I need to make Cassie hack Popov for me.
I just can’t decide whether I’m going to use the carrot … or the stick.
CHAPTER THREE
Cassie
Monday morning comes around and for the first time, I don’t feel up to facing work. I almost call in sick, but know if I do, Tim, my ex-fiancé and all-round douche will see it as a victory. He won’t believe I’m sick and will think he’s winning.
I need to woman up; I can’t start missing days. I’m too new, and yes, I’ve had my heart broken, but who hasn’t? It’s a rite of passage, as I keep telling myself.
To be honest, I don’t know if I am heartbroken. I’m beginning to think I didn’t really love Tim, not in any meaningful way.
It’s not even the whole dumped-by-my-fiancé-for-a-co-worker thing that’s really getting to me, not truthfully. It’s the weird interlude with Konstantin at the weekend which indicates that Tim might not be as important to me as I’d once led myself to believe.
All I can think about is Konstantin. A man with a body to shame Adonis and a personality worse than herpes. How can so much beauty and yet such dickishness reside in one person?
The man freaks me out. I’d always known he had an edge of danger, even when he was a mere customer in the coffee shop, but he always smiled at me and made conversation with me, so I told myself he wasn’t a danger to me. Then I ended up at his house, and I let him think I slept with his stepson. Why would I do such a stupid thing?
And what the hell did he mean when he said he’d be seeing me again? Oh, God, is he a stalker?
How is he going to see me again? When? Maybe, he thinks I still work at the coffee shop… Oh, shit!
He said, didn’t he? He said that I didn’t work there anymore. How does he know?
My heart picks up speed, but then calms again as I tell myself to stop being so damn paranoid. Of course, he knows. He most likely popped in again for a coffee and saw I no longer worked there. Maybe, he even asked after me?
See, Cassie? I tell myself. Simple explanation.
God, I’ve got enough to cause me anxiety without worrying about whether Konstantin has superpowers or is a spy.
Despite deciding that I probably didn’t love my fiancé, nothing seems to take the sting of the humiliation away. Finding out that Tim, six months before our planned wedding date, met someone else, and worse, that she worked with us, was so humiliating. Then to make matters worse, he told me he’d be staying on at the company because he loved it there, which was a horrible blow. I hoped that as the cheater, he’d move on; no such luck.
But as the days wore on, I became aware that there was this tiny inkling of a sense of freedom. Not in the whispered words and long stares of my colleagues, but in coming home to an empty apartment and having the place to myself.
I do believe I tried to love Tim, but deep down, if I’m being honest, he wasn’t, and isn’t what, or who, I truly crave.
Tim was nice enough, good looking in a bland way, polite, and good at his job. He had major indecision issues, though, and took forever to make any sort of choice. He also liked things to be routine and freaked if it was changed. Friday night was curry night because we didn’t have to work on Saturday, so it didn’t matter if we had curry breath. Sunday night was movie night. Wednesday night was mid-week-meal-out night. I once jokingly told him I was amazed he hadn’t written out a lovemaking schedule. He wasn't amused.
I’m not someone who wants to live by a routine, not to that degree. I suppose, at the start, I liked the certainty his routine brought to my life, but in the last few months of our relationship, I felt increasingly stifled. If I were being truly honest with myself, if Tim hadn’t ended it, I probably would have majorly regretted marrying him.
I think my reluctance is all too clear when one looks at the facts. Only months until the wedding and I hadn’t bought a dress yet. No venue was booked. No catering done. Yeah, not the actions of a girl desperate to walk down the aisle.
Seeing Konstantin again has reminded me too that most of the time I’ve been with Tim, I’ve been secretly fantasizing about another man.
I sip at my coffee and prepare myself mentally for work. Despite my realization that I might not be quite as broken hearted as I first feared, I still want to look good. In fact, I want to look amazing. Or as amazing as I’m capable of looking, not being a bombshell like Vanessa, or a model type, like my work friend Suzy. No one wants to be left for someone else, and I want Tim to regret his decision, even if I don’t wish to take him back.
I’ve been moping around looking like a mess for weeks now, so today is the day I buck my ideas up and try to look hot, or at least decent.
It still stings that Konstantin told me I lost my … what did he call it? My sunshine? I’ve thought myself, many a time recently, that I’ve lost my sparkle. So from this week, no more working ultra-long hours; instead, I’ll make sure to get some sun during lunchtime instead of sitting at my desk. I might even get some highlights in my hair, just a few subtle ones to mimic the color it used to have when I was a much more out
doorsy person.
Today, though, today I can make up for my lack of glowing health using fakery. Yes, makeup will be my friend. I might not normally wear much, but today I will make an effort. Today Tim will regret letting me go because from now on I’m no longer going to be dowdy Cassie, but I’m going to be sexy-office-Barbie Cassie.
Five minutes later and the futility of my plan is clear. I don’t own any sexy-office-Barbie clothes. I’ll have to make the best of a bad situation.
I spend ages rummaging through my wardrobe and decide on a tight black skirt, which is years old but luckily still fits. I pair it with a smart hot pink shirt, about the only splash of color in my wardrobe. Tonight, I’m going online shopping.
I tuck the shirt into my high-waisted skirt and add a black patent belt. Then I go all out and add some black stockings, and the only pair of heels I own. The ones I wore the other night aren’t mine but are on loan from Vanessa. The ones I own are mid-heel and black, sensible really, but they give me a bit of added height compared to the running shoes and smart/casual black pants I normally wear for work.
Still pissed off by Konstantin fiddling with my hair and telling me it looked dull, I pull it back into a high ponytail and then brighten my face by adding blush, mascara, and very unusually for me, a hot pink lipstick.
I don’t often wear bright lipstick as I have pouty lips and I think it makes me look too … I don’t know, too attention seeking maybe. Today, though, these lips are going to be the star of the office.
I empty my coffee into the sink and march to the bathroom where I rinse with mouthwash, and spritz on another layer of Channel, and I’m ready.
The studio flat I rent came with a parking slot in an underground garage. I wanted to move to something bigger and was looking at houses with Tim. Now, I only have my wage, but it’s a good one for a person as young as myself. I tell myself at least I’m not alone and trying to live on my barista salary, which would have been impossible. At least these days I don’t need Tim financially to be able to afford the rent.
