by SR Jones
After about five minutes, a different waiter comes out and goes up to Violet.
“Hello, my lovely. How are you?” He’s got a Greek accent, and she grins up at him.
"I’m good, Costas, thank you. How are you? Your wife and the baby?”
He grins. A fool so in love it seems he doesn’t even have eyes for the delectable Violet. He’s all laid-back friendliness, not a hint of a come-on in his body language. “Oh, she is good, and the baby, he is big. A big, bouncing boy. What can I get you to eat?”
“A Greek salad please and water.”
“How are things with you?” he asks as he scribbles on his pad. “Is work going well?”
I perk up at this; she’s obviously told him where she works.
“It’s good, but busy.”
“I tell you, you ought to come work here.”
“I like it there.” She shrugs. “The food is great, and we’re allowed to pick what we want from the menu at the end of the night.”
“Are you saying the food here isn’t as good?” He raises an eyebrow.
He’s clearly teasing, but she flushes. “I love the food here; you know that. But there we get to have a full meal every night we work, and a big plate of pasta fills me up enough I don’t have to eat properly until the next evening. I can get away with a light breakfast. Every penny counts.”
“Ah, my friend, it is bad is it not we have to scrimp this way? My wife, she wants me to buy this pram for her, one of those you can jog with, but it is expensive. I’m sure there are ways to earn more, a young, pretty girl like you.”
He’s not being skeevy from what I can tell, but she seems surprised. “I don’t want to do the kind of work that would entail me earning more money. My father, he’d be upset with me, and I’d hate to think of him looking down on me and not approving. My plan is to go to school, maybe next year. Get a degree, not sure what in, though.”
“You should study Ancient Greek Mythology,” he tells her. “Amazing stories, you’d never be bored.”
“I’d like to be a vet nurse, and there’s a course for that,” she replies.
I’m noting all of it down, filing it away for later perusal.
She seems legit. Innocent and nice, a person who wants to do good. Unlike me. A person who does bad. I want to kiss her. Taste her innocence. Take some of it for myself. Fuck, I want more than that. I shift as I harden and focus on the practicalities of her life.
She’s obviously hard up for cash, and the restaurant pays well for the kind of work she does. Plus, as she says, she gets to eat too.
Why the disguise, though? It niggles at me. If it were to ward off male attention, surely she’d carry it over to her everyday life? Not be out here with her long blonde hair flowing down her back and her pretty face radiating good health and happiness?
“You ought to be the vet not the nurse.”
“Ah, girls like me can’t afford the fees for a seven-year degree; that’s for girls with families and financial help.”
He nods and pats her shoulder. “I will go get you your water, little one; it is hot. You are a good girl. Your father would be proud.”
He walks off and passes by me. For a moment, I want her to turn around and follow the waiter’s tracks and see me, but she doesn’t, and it’s for the best. I need to get out of here and think. This girl has me all mixed up.
She’ll be a while eating her salad, and maybe I can check her place out in the meantime. I should wait until she’s at work one night and I know how long she’ll be gone, but I’m itching to see her personal space.
Mind made up, I take out a ten, place it on the table under my coffee cup, and leave. The amount will more than cover my coffee. I head away from Violet and the busy terrace, and walk back the way we came, retracing our steps until I reach the grand building that is her home.
It takes over ten minutes of waiting, but eventually someone comes along and opens the outer door. I give them a smile, slipping inside as they do. They give me a look for a moment, but I glare at them and they look away.
Inside the hallway are post boxes for each flat. I linger until the other person is long gone, up two flights of stairs, and then I look. Double check that the information I hold is correct. Immediately, I see her name by flat seven. Violet Johnson. Jogging up the stairs, I climb all the way to the top floor. Hers is indeed the attic room.
Great. It means less risk of being seen than on one of the lower corridors.
Taking my wallet out of my pocket, I find the bobby pin I keep for this sort of occasion. After a few attempts, I finally manage to open the lock. I twist the handle and step into Violet Johnson’s lair.
It’s hot up here, airless too, despite the window she has open. It’s a small, depressing space. A studio flat with everything in one room, it seems, and a door off to one side, which I assume is the bathroom.
A girl as beautiful as Violet shouldn’t be living in a room like this. She deserves a fucking castle. I suddenly want to build her one and take her back to it, whether she wants to come or not.
She’d be pretty and nice and sweet. I could come home from debauched days of hurting other people to have her smile at me the way she did the Greek waiter. Then I’d get her to kneel in front of me and suck my cock.
I smirk at my stupid flight of fancy and pull my thoughts together.
Knowing I don’t have much time, I look around her room and begin by checking out the drawers by the bed. Then I inspect her coffee table and the bookshelf lining the far back wall. Nothing incriminating, but she does have eclectic reading tastes. I can see where her wanting to be a vet nurse comes into play, though; there are a ton of books about dogs and horses. Clearly, she likes animals.
I add a beautiful white stallion and a pack of Huskies to my fantasy of our castle. Shaking my head at my stupidity, I trail my fingers along the spines of her well-worn books. Either they are much loved and read by her, or secondhand.
The kitchen cupboards are pretty bare, only a few basics like pasta and passata.
I examine all the drawers, but there’s nothing of interest.
Turning from the kitchen, I look once more around the small space. There’s a bureau in the far corner of the room, and I stalk over to it. Upon opening the first drawer, I see letters, all addressed to her. Some are from her bank, one from the council, two from the gas company; one of which is an overdue payment notice. There are three letters from a girl called Aliya, who is working abroad, and a photograph of a dog is tucked away at the bottom of the drawer.
I glance around her room and decide she’s a puzzle. On the one hand, it’s homely and a space full of her; on the other, if this is where she lives full time, she has little to her name.
There are the books she likes, knick-knacks, a horse sculpture, made from pewter it seems; a couple paintings on the wall, a bright blue bowl, four sets of Russian dolls, which gives me pause, but plenty of people like Russian dolls, right?
There are candles dotted about, and she likes the scent of figs and also vanilla, because they are all a variety of one of those two scents.
There’s a dream catcher above her bed and a row of five Llama pots on the shelf above the bed. She has either travelled to a lot of places, or she wants to and picks things up from flea markets to decorate her space with.
She likes color. Everywhere there are bold splashes of it. She has a couple of 1960s ash trays on the coffee table, and next to them a fucking cool, cobalt blue, 1930s Art Deco glass cigarette lighter. And a pewter Art Nouveau vase that has to be worth a grand at least, which means it’s probably a family heirloom if her tale of being skint is true.
Fucking hell, I’m a bit in love with her taste. After thoroughly searching the rest of her small living space and finding nothing to hint at her being a cop, or being undercover in any way, I decide I’ve been a paranoid fuck.
Maybe Ms. Johnson simply doesn’t want guys fawning over her at work and therefore hides her beauty.
Checking my watch, I
realize I’ve been twenty minutes. Plenty of time for her to have finished her salad and be heading back. I go into the bathroom and check it out, before crossing to the door, opening it carefully and then exiting, making sure to lock it behind me with my trusty pin.
As I hit the warm sunlight on the pavement below, I vow to put Violet out of my mind. I’ve checked her out, and she seems legit. She’s a small, scared, young woman, and she’s off limits to me because I’m a big, jaded bastard who would ruin her for life.
I try to ignore the part of me that wants to ruin her.
CHAPTER THREE
Violet
I’ve had a lovely day. A nice lunch, a walk in the sun, and then a calorific mocha at my favorite little café on the way home. Two coffees in one day! Despite the caffeine, I’m tired as I climb the stairs to the stuffy room I call home and think a nap might be nice. A nice finish to a day filled with small pleasures.
I open my door, step inside, and freeze. I sniff the air, and for a moment a rush of panic overwhelms me. It smells of Andrius. I’d recognize his scent anywhere. The man wears the most gorgeous aftershave, and it’s distinctive. Not fresh and lemony like many men prefer, but musky and decadent. Vanilla undertones with something darker like leather or smoke.
I sniff again and can’t catch the scent this time. I must be going insane. As if Andrius would have been here. He couldn’t have got a key, no way, and he’s clearly not broken in as my door is still in one piece.
Shaking my head, I cross to the single bed I use as a sofa more often than not, because the actual sofa is lumpy and hard, and flop down on the mattress.
I’m overwrought, I tell myself. It’s been an upsetting week, what with the anniversary of Father’s death, and the thing at work with Andrius.
The thing that was a nothing, but keeps playing over and over in my mind. It makes me shudder the way he looked at me. A shudder of fear, but also something else. Something I don’t want to examine too closely.
He makes me want to run.
He makes me want to be caught.
There’s something horrifyingly seductive in his power, in his ultimate control of himself and his environment.
What would it be like to submit to a level of magnetism so much more than I’ve seen in anyone else? But there the fantasy screeches to a halt, because it would be possibly suicidal to do so, for the man is a killer.
A stone-cold killer. Yet when he looks at me, those cool, cold eyes warm and hold a deeper substance. One that speaks of another side to him, a side with more fire than ice.
Get too close to the flames, though, and you get burned.
That moment he spoke to me, in the dark, forbidding parking lot, I felt balanced on a knife edge. I could stay where I was, in the light, or fall to the other side, into him … into the dark.
Thank God, I have my sanity and walked away.
Ever since, though, he’s been messing with my mind. I think about him far too much, and I’m scared as hell to see him again.
Maybe I ought to take Costa up on his offer to work for him in the Greek café? But then how to get close to Allyov? To my destiny. For he is my destiny. And Andrius is nothing more than a road bump along the way, which I need to remember.
Still, I can’t shake the sense of something being amiss in my stuffy little kingdom at the top of the stairs.
I clamber off the bed and walk around the room, letting my fingers trail along the spines of the books on my bookshelf.
Nothing is out of place. Everything is as it was. Then I get a surge of panic, an adrenalin rush of butterflies in my stomach. With all my strength, I push the bookshelf with my shoulder until it moves, groaning in protest, a good few inches along the floor.
The small wooden door behind it is closed. The tiny hatch leading to the eaves secure. I slide the door back and cough at the dust. I hate this place; it’s full of spiders, but it also houses my secrets.
Crawling along one board, careful not to fall lest I go straight through the floor and break my neck, I reach the back. There’s enough light from the open door to see the bag is still where I stashed it, squashed under the farthest eave.
In there are the most precious things I own. Family photographs, my history, my mother and father’s history. The ties that bind me to a land long ago forsaken and barely remembered.
Much of what is in that bag is a mystery to me, and I can’t ask Dad about it. However, a few things make sense, and one thing that stands out most of all is the knowledge Allyov is an evil man. Someone my father spent his life wanting to get revenge on, but not daring to try for fear of putting me in harm’s way. And he had an easy way to do it. My dad was a baker, and a damn fine one, and Allyov has a major weakness. A severe nut allergy.
In Dad’s diary are pages of recipes for cakes and delicacies with nuts as ingredients, which don’t taste of them at all. Nut flours, nut butters. It’s a weird and obsessive collection, and Dad used to daydream about one day working in one of Allyov’s businesses and basically poisoning him.
Now, I’m the one trying to get revenge. Not by baking a deadly confection, but by a much more time-honored method—using my feminine wiles to lure Allyov into a false sense of security.
A kiss, all it would take is a kiss, mouth to mouth, mine having recently eaten a hearty meal of peanut butter, and Allyov would become sick. If he couldn’t get access to his Epi-Pen, he’d die.
It’s insane and crazy, but it could work.
At the restaurant we are all told on day one that the head chef has a severe nut allergy and none of us are allowed to eat nuts on days we have a shift, or to bring them into the restaurant. It’s a lie; Allyov is the one with a nut allergy. And I know his little secret.
Still, Allyov is one bad man, and I am risking everything by even working for the bastard.
And Andrius works for him; worse, he carries out Allyov’s most disgusting and vile orders, which makes Andrius evil too.
Shuffling backward and not daring to try to turn around, I reach the small door and crawl out, into my bright room. It seems airy almost now. No longer stuffy after the confines of the eaves, my small attic has become a palace.
My phone trills and I pick it up, staring in surprise as Aliya’s face pops up on screen.
“Oh my God!” I shriek as I pick up. “How did you get to call me?”
“I’m in the nearest village; one of the guys I work with came for the afternoon to gather supplies and said he’d bring me so I could call. It’s only about ten minutes by car, but coverage is awful near the sanctuary.”
I close my eyes for a moment and let Aliya’s voice wash over me. It’s lovely to hear from my friend, but I can’t help but experience a twinge of new hurt over the way she upped and left suddenly. I can’t begrudge her this, helping out in a rainforest wildlife sanctuary for a year, but she is the only person I have left.
We talk for a long while, but mostly it’s me listening and her talking. I can’t tell her what I’m planning. Can’t tell anyone. It’s lonely. It’s terrifying, and I think I might be losing my mind.
We finish our call, and exhausted beyond belief, I lie down and close my eyes.
**
I’m late for work, and I’m in a tizzy. I did my usual routine, hair slicked with gel, then pulled back with a few greasy strands left down. But I didn’t apply my two-shades too pale foundation, and instead left my skin bare.
I don’t want Andrius to keep being suspicious I’m wearing makeup to appear less pretty. Then, I go one step further. I add brown mascara, for the first time. Making my eyes stand out a little. I tell myself it’s to begin the process of getting Allyov’s attention.
I know it’s not true.
Sighing, I stare at myself in the mirror. I’m still plain, boring, and insipid looking with the unflattering hair and the lack of any adornments, but I put on mascara. Worse, I know why I did so.
The real reason.
I don’t want Andrius to see me as ugly.
I can t
ell myself it’s because he noticed the eyeshadow under my eyes, and the whole pale and sickly disguise thing I’ve got going on, but I need to stop him from being suspicious. I can tell myself Allyov might be on the look out for a new mistress, and this is the start of trying to get him to notice me.
It’s a big fat lie. I don’t want to look as unappealing tonight as I normally do.
My plan has always been to casually start to look better. A bit of blush here, a dash of lip gloss there, and then one night let my hair down, wear a skirt.
Flash a little thigh, get Allyov interested.
I’ve used my time running around in the restaurant being invisible to listen to him and his men talk, to listen to the gossip and rumors, and then when he is free of his latest mistress. Bam, I’ll let my hair down like in the proverbial cliched movie scene, and Allyov will see me for the first time, really see me.
He’ll want me, as his, because I fit the profile of the sort of girl he likes perfectly.
Instead of a happy ending, though, he’ll get nothing more than an anaphylactic reaction for his troubles.
Is he definitely free of his last mistress, though? If I time this wrong, I will miss my chance. Too soon, and he might not be in the frame of mind to notice me; too late and he might have a new mistress by the time I start simpering around him.
Shit. I can’t seem to think straight.
I shake my head at my reflection and head for the door, mascara in place, dark shadows under my eyes gone.
The night is busy but uneventful, and it seems I did the whole mascara routine for nothing, because Andrius doesn’t show. Neither does Allyov. It’s after midnight, and I’m taking the heavy linens off the tables when the front door opens.
I turn to tell whoever it is we’re closed when the words freeze in my lungs.
Andrius stalks in, followed by two other men and a glamorous woman. He’s pissed off; I can tell by the set of his jaw. He glances around impatiently, gaze landing on me. He doesn’t look at me like he did before, outside. There’s no mocking coolness, or a hint of the fire behind it, only blank impatience.
