by Jaden Wilkes
He rubbed his head and picked the plates off the table to take them back downstairs. This needed to end; he needed to end it.
He couldn’t take another year here, like this. Sergei would have to pay or Dimitri would lose his mind.
*****
Dimitri read the message again. It had been sent to his email through one of his encrypted channels, so the authenticity wasn’t suspect. He forced himself to follow the words, carefully reading them aloud to comprehend each one.
“They found you.”
Dimitri reached for his phone and checked his texts. There was nothing new from the concierge. This one time his friend was gone, and he was discovered. Had the concierge still been here, this information would have been discovered hours ago. He typed the words “Plan B” and hit send. By the time the concierge was on his way back to Vancouver, he would have everything arranged for Dimitri’s move. There was no way they could stay put if Sergei’s people were coming.
The laptop beeped and Dimitri turned back to it. Another message had come through. It was a repeat of the first one. Dimitri had information networks set up worldwide so repetition of the message wasn’t unusual. It served to twist the knife a little though, to emphasize the fact that Sergei’s people now knew his location. It was only a matter of time before they came for him.
He stood and paced down the hall to his bedroom, plotting his next move. The concierge was due back in four days; that gave them a week to stay here, tops. This gave them plenty time to make the move to their next stop, another beautiful penthouse, like this one but in Hong Kong. It was trickier territory with Sergei’s ties to Triad, but that was the reason they had plotted this particular move. Sergei would expect him to flee once discovered, not jump into an area he had close ties with. Dimitri still had some friendly faces in Hong Kong he could trust as well. It was the perfect location.
Dimitri would transfer enough money to live comfortably for a year or so, the concierge could arrange for house staff and handle the actual logistics of the move. The problem was that now Sergei found him once, it would take less and less time for him to do so. This was going to lead to an inevitable confrontation between the two men, but Dimitri preferred it to be on his own terms.
Expecting this from the very beginning, the concierge had set up several safe houses worldwide for Dimitri, along with new identities for this exact situation. It just caused a small quake of panic in the core of his belly, he hadn’t left the apartment in so long and now he would be trying to settle into new surroundings in a new country. Change was not as easy for him to handle these days, and yet the predictability of his current life was dragging him into insanity.
He let out a howl of frustration and punched the wall near the bedroom door. The wood was untouched, but he rubbed his knuckles. He was close to reaching his fill of this life on the run, in hiding. He reached down and felt for the knife he kept on his body at all times, strapped to his midsection and beneath his clothes. It was there, as it always was, a comforting fourteen inches of razor sharp steel. He opened the door and stepped into the hall to begin preparations for the coming days.
Dinner came and went with nothing out of the ordinary. So far it had been a very ordinary day for Dimitri in spite of the shocking email he had received that morning. He ran twenty kilometres on the treadmill, gone a few rounds with the punching bag and sat for an hour in his steam room. Sweating all the vodka from his veins meant he could control his emotions and keep his rising anxiety in check.
He found himself in the security center watching the staff clean up and get ready to leave for the night. It comforted him to be connected to them some way. Dimitri toyed with the possibility that he might be lonely, but dismissed it as a flight of fancy. He didn’t have the luxury of being lonely; he didn’t have the luxury of feeling anything that deeply. A Solntsevskaya Bratva member was trained to have no emotion, now that he was out of the family was no excuse to get soft.
He leaned back in the chair and watched the last person leave the kitchen, one of the kitchen staff. The man turned the lights out, locked the door and closed it. Dimitri watched the monitors and saw them all leave the apartment; the night guard shut the door behind them and locked it. His apartment was almost empty and he could feel the weight of their departure on his chest.
“You moody bastard,” he grumbled under his breath. He was a little disgusted at his own train of thought. He stretched his long legs and let his mind wander to the time he would confront Sergei and fucking destroy him. His hands clenched and unclenched as he thought about the feel of a knife going into Sergei’s stomach. The grunt he would make when Dimitri twisted it into his gut and poured all his rage into a single act.
Deep in his fantasy he almost missed the movement on the kitchen monitor. It was just a small flash in the corner of his eye, had he been deeper in the moment of killing Sergei he would have had his eyes closed and missed it.
Luck, or fate, or the slow grinding gears of life was on his side. He turned his head and saw something. He stood quickly, leaned in and examined the movement. He thought perhaps he had imagined it and almost turned away when he saw it again. A leg poked out of the bottom of a food cart, one of the same ones he had his meals delivered on three times a day. A woman unfolded from the shelf, rolled over and stood up gracefully. She looked wobbly, like a fawn on uncertain legs. She stretched and turned around, taking in the room. As she moved towards the camera, Dimitri realized he had been holding his breath. He had to see her face.
She was beautiful. Even on the grainy black and white film her beauty radiated. Black hair, white skin, tiny body, large dark eyes. She was perfect. And she was invading his space.
His hand hovered over the handset to call the guard at the front, but he hesitated. He saw her walk towards the locked kitchen door and press her ear to it, listening. He was entranced. She was the first woman in his apartment who wasn’t on the payroll. He hung the handset up and thought about what this meant. Clearly she had been sent to kill him, she was after the bounty.
He strode from the room with purpose, intent on finding this girl before she found him. He clicked open the security door and slipped into the dining room off the kitchen. He paused at the door connecting the two and heard her exclaim on the other side. He assumed she had tripped on something in her unfamiliar surroundings. This boded well for Dimitri, highly effective assassins didn’t often bump into things.
He opened the door carefully, to determine where she was. She had her back to him, she was bent over rubbing her shin and completely unaware of him approaching her from behind.
She stood up as Dimitri reached for her. He was balanced on the balls of his feet, as silent as his entrance had been. He noted how large his hands seemed next to her tiny body, he would have to be careful not to injure her before he found out why she was here. He grabbed her in a swift motion. He pressed his hand against her mouth and pulled her body towards him. He wrapped his other hand around her throat and held her tight until she started to lose consciousness. Her blood supply was pinched off by his expert touch, but he could feel her body’s strong protest in her fluttering pulse. She felt nice, she smelled nice. Dimitri’s body responded to these stimuli.
He held her tighter, and just as she slipped away she must have felt his hardening cock pressing against her. She struggled weakly in his arms, but finally succumbed and went limp. He took the hand from her mouth and let her fall over his arm. Her head lolled back, exposing her white, elegant neck. Her thick black braid fell down and hung there, swaying gently as he walked. He wished he could have seen her eyes before he laid her out, but that would have been too risky. He stared at her face for a moment too long and felt caught up in something bigger than himself, but shook it off as another sign of his madness.
Resisting the urge to tear into her on the spot and fuck her in her shredded clothing, Dimitri exerted the professional control that had allowed him to survive in the criminal world for so long. He lifted her higher into his arm
s, marveled at how small she was now that he carried her full weight. She felt no larger than a child, but her body was that of a woman, a very beautiful woman. He took her into the room in order to tie her up and interrogate her, but half his brain was being drawn down by one strong undercurrent, the image of her helpless body splayed open, ready for him to use.
Chapter Six – Columbia
Sleep did not come as easily as Columbia anticipated. The kitchen was hot and noisy; people came and went the entire time she was there. That entire staff for one rich prick, it boggled her mind.
Every time she thought she could doze off, somebody would drop something or scream at somebody else. The worst were the guards who would wander through from time to time and hit on the girls in the kitchen. Columbia ended up pulling her hood up over her head and forcing herself to close her eyes.
She drifted in and out of sleep. True to his word, she had been stowed somewhat away from the main traffic in the kitchen as far as she could tell. It was loud enough with the cook’s music blaring and the constant chatter that she felt safe to sleep with no fear of being heard.
A couple of hours into her long day, the door to the cart opened. A smiling young Indian girl popped into view. “Hey, you need a bit of a stretch?” she asked in a crisp British accent.
“Yes, how did you know I was in here?” Columbia said and climbed out. She stretched and looked at the girl, then peeked around her at the rest of the room. The staff was all out of the room at the moment.
“Marco told me,” she smiled and walked away. “Come with me if you need to go to the loo. Their break is only about ten minutes”
Columbia ran after her, she did need to, desperately. The girl was short on information but seemed somewhat interested in the plan, or Marco, so she was helping.
Five minutes later and the girl was shutting her back into the cart. Columbia had the smallest moment of panic as the door clicked shut again, but soon fell into a dreamless sleep.
The next time the girl let her out; she paused before locking her up again. “This is the last time, in about an hour we’re going to shut the kitchen down and you’ll be left alone. Sneak out at that time, I’ll make sure to leave the door unlocked between us and the rest of the apartment. Ok?”
Columbia nodded and said, “Thanks for everything, wish me luck.”
“Good luck,” the girl replied and clicked the door locked.
The last hour crawled, Columbia’s muscles ached and her back felt like she had twisted a nerve. She was sweating and could feel a droplet travelling down the curve of her breast, under her layers of clothing. There was no way she could reach it to scratch, so she concentrated on other things instead.
Like Stuart. How could he have acted that way last night? How could she have acted that way? She wasn’t sure anymore what had actually happened. He kissed her, he touched her, and then he ran his hands along her bumpy skin and recoiled with terror.
She was a freak; he had discovered that and found her lacking. She thought about perfect Debbie, the bitch, and felt guilty that she had kissed Stuart. What had gotten into her, other than all those beers, but she swore long ago she’d never use alcohol as an excuse for bad behaviour. Not like her father.
“He didn’t mean it, Daddy was drinking,” had been her mother’s mantra growing up. The problem was, he really did mean it. He liked it. The booze just made him feel less guilt.
Columbia never wanted to be like that.
She heard a thump on the outside of the cart and the lock was disengaged. She listened as all the staff left the room and finally it was silent. She would have time to sort her issues with Stuart out later. She thought she heard Marco say the code phrase, but waited ten minutes, making sure everyone was actually gone, and slid her leg out the door. She paused, she thought she heard something, decided it was nothing and continued.
The lights were dimmed in the kitchen, but she could still see what was going on. She walked to the door outside and found it locked. That was strange, usually doors lock from the inside. Latching it from the outside made her uncomfortable, why was Jarrod Jacobs so worried about keeping something in?
She walked back towards the cart and ran into the sharp edge of a low bench. “Fuck,” she exclaimed, then shut her mouth when she heard how it echoed in the quiet space. She bent down to rub her shin where she had made contact with the bench.
She slowly stood up and thought she heard something again. The smallest whisper of fabric or a misplaced foot, but before she could determine the direction it was from, there was a hand clamped over her mouth and one gripping tight around her neck.
She panicked and struggled against the pressure, but had no chance. She deduced it was a man who had captured her, and his grip was iron strong. She saw bright lights blooming in the corners of her eyes behind her closed lids. She tried to take a breath but her efforts were met with resistance under the determined hand that had her tight. Every nerve ending was alight and she felt as though she were falling into a deep abyss.
She tried again, one last ditched effort as she felt her consciousness slipping away. The man was breathing hard in her ear, she thought from exertion until her body slipped and she brushed against his thick hardness restrained in his pants. She tried to whimper, “Please don’t…” but no words made it past the hand around her neck. With a small shudder and a gasp, she lost her grip on the world and slipped into darkness.
Chapter Seven – Dimitri
He took a carefully controlled breath and nudged the door to the room open with his foot. It was a windowless space in the centre of the penthouse. It was designed for maximum control with minimum effort, so a single man could truss up a willing victim in no time flat. The architect had raised his eyebrows at his request, then sat back and nodded knowingly when Dimitri described it. Dimitri had the distinct impression that this wasn’t the strangest thing one of his rich clients had asked for.
He set her on the narrow wooden platform in the centre of the room and stepped back. She really was magnificent. From this angle he saw her pulse beating steadily on the curve of her neck. Her breasts were full and round and moved slowly as she breathed. Her legs were long for her body, lean and gently angled under the black tights she had on. Her stomach was flat and her hips wide, triggering some primal instinct to cover her like a stallion and fuck her until she was his and only his.
He shook his head and tried to concentrate. It must have been too long in between whores, that was all. He pulled her arms over her head and used silken white ropes to bind her there. He blindfolded her, again regretted not seeing her eyes, and moved to her feet. He pulled her legs apart and made sure she couldn’t move. He would wait by her side until she woke.
He dragged a heavy mahogany corner chair close to the platform. The fact that he knew it was a corner chair carved from mahogany made him smile to himself and glance towards to girl. She looked like the delicate kind of little dove who would look him up and down, take note of the many expensive items located about his space, and find him lacking. Girls who possessed this kind of rare beauty always sniffed out the grubby street urchin he had once been, no matter how much couture he draped on his body or how much money he threw at his past in an attempt to outrun it.
He sat carefully, felt the wood creak under his muscular frame, and watched her. She was dressed in all black form fitting clothes. A black hoodie, zipped up, black yoga pants and ankle high black leather army boots. Nothing expensive or remarkable.
He moved as though startled as a thought crossed his mind. He needed to look for identification. He was a man familiar with killing or fucking women such as her. This in-between was unnatural for him, was he going to kill or fuck? He did not know.
He ran his hands along her body looking for a pocket. A smile curved at the corner of his mouth as he ran his hand along her firm thighs. She was such a delicate creature. Who had sent her? Was she one of Sergei’s or contracted out by somebody who worked for him?
He found no weap
ons and nothing to indicate where she came from or her identification. In the hoodie pocket she had a torn Skytrain ticket, a wadded ten-dollar bill with some loose change, and a receipt from 7-11 for one Coke and a couple lottery tickets. He found no tickets.
He took the items and laid them on a low table near the platform. Inspecting them gave him nothing. He knew no more about her than he had five minutes ago.
She made a small noise, a moan in the back of her throat followed by a long sigh. Dimitri leaned in and watched her face; she appeared to flutter her eyelids under the blindfold and grew still. He felt her pulse; it was throbbing under her skin, as it should be. He could see light red finger marks blooming on her neck. His hands had done this. His cock responded to the thought of her struggling under him, fighting him off, trying to get away.
Boredom and frustration did strange things to a man. Years earlier he never would have imagined choking such a beautiful woman while driving himself deep inside of her, but at the moment this image became almost all consuming. He reached out and placed his hand around her throat, lining his fingers up with the bruises forming on her flesh. He squeezed, ever so softly, and felt his body respond to her flesh. She moaned and moved her head. She was regaining consciousness so he removed his hand and watched her carefully.
She wiggled her hands against the ropes; her entire body shuddered ever so slightly. The smallest of movements snaked through her limbs, she was testing her bonds. She was awake.
He didn’t move, stilled his breathing. This was one thing he still excelled at, avoiding detection.
She strained against the ropes, pulled her right foot and found her limits. She twisted and struggled, stopped and exhaled loudly.
