She hasn’t said anything more about wanting me to take her virginity. She will, but maybe not yet. I’m pleased to see she’s rousing and she wants to eat. I tell her my plan. My plan for her, at least.
She puts on the hotel bathrobe and sits by the table. For the first time, she isn’t putting on any kind of an act with me. There’s no façade. None that I can see, anyway.
I don’t think for a moment that I’ve unlocked her and got inside. I haven’t begun to take her out of all the matryoshka dolls. I haven’t gotten anywhere near the center. I haven’t even got past the outside.
But she’s not pretending to be anything. She isn’t playing a part. That’s a big step for her, I think.
She looks up at me. I tell her, “I’m aiming to get you some authentic Russian documentation – ninety-nine percent authentic, at least. But for now, I want you to have papers. ID, documents of your own. So you can’t be owned. So men can’t just take you.”
She stops. The fork is halfway to her mouth. Gently I tell her, “There’s a Justice of the Peace up in Albany. We’ll use the passport that Marco got for you. We can get married. Then you’ll have the passport and the marriage license. We’ll get you a driver’s license and you’re independent. It’s not solid, but we only need it to hold until the new passport comes through.”
“Why?”
“I told you. So you’ll be free.”
“But why would you do this for me?”
“I want to. I hate to see you owned and passed around by someone like Marco.”
“There’s more.”
“It’s maybe a way to keep you out of the way of whatever the fuck it is that’s threatening to start gang wars in my town.”
She drains her glass. Holds it out for me to refill it. She says, “What if it’s me?”
I tell her, “It’s not.”
“How do you know?”
“I know. You’re a part of it, for sure, but it started before you were here. Whatever it is, I want to get to the bottom of it.”
She reaches to touch my hand. “Not if it’s who you think it is you don’t.”
I pat the back of her hand. “Don’t worry.”
“You didn’t ask me.”
“What?”
“If I want to marry you.”
Now she’s back to playing her part. Her slippery, trickster act. I think I did well to see her without it for that long. And I can’t blame her. It’s a miracle she trusts me at all.
I say, “You need to be asked?”
She stretches. In the loose hotel robe, she looks wonderful. She glows as she says, “I want to be asked.”
~~
It’s late in the morning. I wake with her curled up in my arms. My lips are on the back of her neck. I could nuzzle with her here under the covers. I could stay like this for a month. Explore the rest of her charms and surprises.
Just while I’m imagining it phone starts to chime. Moving gently so as not to wake her, I miss it and it goes to voicemail. Mikhail’s name is on the screen. No point trying to call him when he’s leaving a voicemail message.
I slip out of bed and into the bathroom. Katya’s still asleep. No point disturbing her. I call down for a pot of coffee while I give Mikhail a minute to leave his message. When I call back, he picks up right away. He sounds like he’s running.
“Boss. Did you get my voice message?”
“I haven’t played it, I just called you right back instead.”
“It’s Konstantin, Boss.”
“What?” A hollow feeling opens in my stomach.
“He’s had a bad accident. At his house. I’m on my way there.”
A bad accident. I ask Mikhail, “His wife, Caterina?”
“Caterina was out. Shopping. She got back and found the situation.”
“What is the situation?”
“A massacre by the sounds of it.”
“Do what you can. Let me know. I’ll call her now.”
I check that Katya’s still sleeping. I’m back in the bathroom calling Caterina Konstantin. She picks up after two rings. “Vassily. You heard.” Her voice is flat.
“I’m so sorry. Do you know what happened yet?”
“I know exactly what happened. I was going to call you. I want your help.”
“Of course. Anything. Tell me.”
“Meet me.”
I have an idea. I suggest Pierce’s club. It’s a safe environment and it’s run by friends.
She says, “Perfect. One hour,” and she hangs up. I didn’t detect any expression in her voice. She’s a strong woman but I have no idea how she’s going to handle this. Whatever she wants, I’m surprised that she’s ready to see me so soon.
Meanwhile, I need to hear from Mikhail. I doubt he’s even arrived there yet. I wait. Drink coffee and watch over Katya. She sleeps with her face arms hiding her face, like a kitten. It’s a touchingly cute look, but I wonder if it comes from a darker place. I think about those scars again.
I’ve almost finished the pot of coffee. I call down for another pot so there should be some fresh when Katya wakes. Maybe I can leave her sleeping while I go to meet Caterina. Nope, something about that doesn’t feel right.
When Mikhail calls, all he can tell me about the situation over at Konstantin’s house is that it’s really bad.
I ask him, “Security? Any survivors? Anyone missing?”
“Nope.” He only gives me one-word answers. I assume it’s because people are with him. The place is probably full of cops.
“Any idea who’s responsible?”
“Not yet. I’m going to get the CCTV, Boss. As soon as I have it, I’ll send you a link.” Then shock dulls his voice. He says, quietly, “Boss, it looks like one guy did all this.”
“How did they get in?”
He doesn’t answer. There’s usually only one way that happens. We both know that.
Mikhail gets links to the CCTV footage and sends them to me before we go to meet Caterina. There are fourteen separate screens plus one mosaic showing of all of them. I only have a chance to watch the whole thing through once. It’s a little less than ten minutes of carnage. I watch while Katya showers.
The pictures are blurry. It’s impossible to make out any faces. Mikhail was right, though.
One guy. Came in the drive. Security opened the gate for him, then let him in the front door. He walked in with three AK-47 rifles. Russian guns. Old tech. One in each hand, one on a strap.
Pulled up a hood. Walked in the open door and shot everyone to pieces. Petrov and Jakob at the door. He knew where security guys were going to be, and he just blew them all away. Mischa, Leo. He strolled through the house. Konstantin is in the den, farthest from the front door. He reacts about half a minute in. Must have heard the shots.
He gets two handguns. Positions himself against the wall, along from the door. The camera in the hallway outside the room catches two guards toppling backward down the stairs. One I recognize is Oleg. I can’t place the other. They fall on their backs, arms up. The killer steps over them. Before he gets to the door of the den, he fires blasts from both guns into the wall, right where Konstantin is standing. Then the killer fires two long blasts through the door. Rolls in a grenade.
After the explosion he and waits for the smoke to clear. Konstantin is on the floor and in a bad way when the killer steps into the den to finish him off. He uses way too many bullets to do it. I don’t want to watch the end.
There’s no audio but for security to have just let him in the way they did, he had to be someone they all knew. I had a suspicion from the start. When the killer was finished, he looked up toward the camera. As he turns to go, his shoulder dips. His neck is exposed for an instant. He turns. I see the tattoo. But I know who it is already.
nocking on the hotel room door woke me out of a nice dream. It was a rerun of what Vassily did to me last night. And what I did with him. Only the dream was slower. And much, much longer. We went a lot farther.
Vassily gives me a
warm smile as he goes to the door. He holds a gun behind his back while he opens it.
Stretching under the covers, the first thing I notice is that my hand doesn’t reach for a key or a fork. I didn’t even put anything under the pillows last night. The smell of fresh coffee comes into the room with the rattle of a trolley. A boy in the hotel uniform looks over at me as he pushes the trolley to the table by the window. His uniform doesn’t fit too well. I noticed that the blond bellhop’s uniform last night didn’t fit so very well either. I guess they have a high staff turnover in this hotel. Or maybe they’re just cheap.
He clears away the things from last night onto the bottom of the trolley and he looks around the room as he sets up the coffee on the table. He hands Vassily a tablet to sign on. Still only using one hand, Vassily tips the boy and follows him back to the door.
As the boy turns to pull the trolley backward out of the door, two hooded figures in black are in the doorway behind him. The boy reaches under a napkin and pulls a gun. It’s a clumsy move. Vassily shoots him as the hooded men are raising guns.
I’m rolling for the side of the bed.
Vassily holds the boy’s body up by his throat and pushes him at the hooded men. He shoots the first of them point blank and he falls backward against the other. The other shrugs him off. then he runs. Vassily leaps over the crumpling bodies after him.
I’m straight out from under the covers. I grab the bellhop’s gun without stopping to put on clothes. I jump over the bellhop and the slumped gunman, into the hallway. I look right and then left, the direction Vassily ran. I point the gun at arms’ length. The only person in the hall is Vassily. He is opening the door to the stairs. He leans through the doorway. Quickly he turns back. Running back along the corridor, he waves. He’s telling to get back into the room. I have to step over the gunman and the bellhop. But I do as he told me.
Vassily drags the gunman and the bellhop into the room. Quickly he shuts the door. Then he hauls them into the closet. They don’t fit too well.
He makes a call on his cellphone. “Mikhail? We just had uninvited visitors. Three. One got away. The other two aren’t going anywhere. You could call it in to Captain Morden or just send a cleanup team. What do you think.”
He waited. Then, “Me, too. Good call. New York’s finest have plenty to do. I’ve moved them anyway. Yeah, they’re in the closet.” He’s looking at me as he listens, then, “No, Mikhail. I didn’t fold them neatly.”
As he finishes the call, I dress, quickly. We take the elevator. At the parking level, we run for the van. the early morning sun is dazzling as we drive out.
On the way to the club, Vassily tells me what happened to Konstantin. I feel sick. Then he calls Caterina Konstantin. He tells her that I’m coming along to their meeting with him. She doesn’t object. When I went to visit Irina, Caterina always seemed pretty much indifferent to me. I was never sure how to take her.
Shiny black doors at street level have a discreet silver plate with the name, Hotsteppas engraved. Stepping inside is like passing from the day into night. A lovely, elegant girl greets Vassily warmly. He introduces her to me as ‘Princess.’
Princess is professional in her hospitality. “Mrs. Konstantin called to say she will be here soon,” but she seems sincere and genuinely warm. She welcomes us inside, guides us into a private room, and asks what we’ll need. Vassily and I thank her, and both tell her that we don’t need anything.
“I’ll have coffee and some pastries sent in anyway. Just in case.”
She touches me on the shoulder before she leaves. “It’s really good to meet you, Katya. I hope you’ll be back again. Soon and often.”
Waiting for Caterina, we don’t talk but it’s comfortable. I sense that he doesn’t want for us to be in the middle of something when she arrives. Nothing to distract. I’m hurting for her and I can see that he is, too. Princess stops back with coffee, water, ice, and a pile of pastries and croissants.
I think Vassily has seen a video of what happened at Konstantin’s house. From the sound of his voice when he told me, it’s not something that I want to see. But I wonder if I need to see it. I think he knows who the killer is, but he hasn’t told me. I wonder if I know, too. I have an instinct, or maybe it’s just my streak of black cynicism rising.
While we wait, I think a lot about what Vassily said to me last night. About how it will make my prediction come true. And I think over what we did before. I remember waking up in the night with him there. His arms around me. My body folded inside his. The thing between him and me feels real. I can hardly stand to think about it because I’m sure that it’s not real.
When he touched the marks on my skin, it felt like something was opening. He didn’t ask me about them, he just waited for me to tell him. And when I didn’t, he didn’t ask again. That makes me trust him.
It slips into my mind like an itch that I know I shouldn’t scratch and all I can think about not scratching it. Now, for the first time today, my fingers are hunting for a key or a paper clip.
Princess shows Caterina Konstantin into the room. Vassily and I rise as one out of respect.
She’s like an empress in her mourning. Her movements are slow, dignified and stately. Vassily opens his mouth to speak. Caterina waves her hands, palms down. Her face is still as she waits for us to sit. She doesn’t take coffee or a pastry, only water. Her voice is gray and hard as slate.
It’s hard to look at her without a squint or a series of blinks, a reflexive physical reaction. Her anger and sadness are so strong they’re a force.
Vassily lifts his head again to speak, but she lifts her hand off the table. It’s hard not to say something, show her some sympathy, but Vassily respects her wish and I have to as well. There’s no expression in her face but we both see that wants no words of sympathy.
She sits a few moments in silence before she speaks.
Her voice is flat.
“I want your help, Vassily. You have a good relationship with Medved. I want you to take the message to him.”
“What’s the message?” His voice is so tender it touches me.
“When we find the boy, I’ll give Medved twelve hours. After that, if he doesn’t take care of it, I’ll do it myself.”
Vassily’s mouth tightens, “You mean–”
She speaks quietly. “You’ve seen the CCTV?”
He looks in her eyes a moment before he nods.
She says, “We know who it was, Vasily. Don’t we.” The calmness in her eye is hard to take. She’s not even looking directly at me and I find it hard not to look away. Vassily returns her gaze steadily.
She says, “I want there to be every chance for Medved and I to have an understanding. He’s going to have to work with me afterward, and I’ll need to work with him.”
“Work with you, Caterina?”
Her blink is slow, and she draws a breath. “Konstantin’s businesses aren’t going to run themselves. I’ll need to communicate with Medved, as well as with Carmine and the others from time to time.”
He says, “You’ll take over?”
She nods. She’s quiet for a moment. “Afterward, after this… this thing is over, I may need someone to be my contact with Medved. It will be difficult for us to talk directly.”
Vassily: Perfect Pain - a Bad Boy Mafia Dark Romance Page 14
