An apparition from the past, or something very much like it, I thought as I contemplated her gorgeous body and tried not to get lost in her big dark eyes. Color me impressed.
And then she left, and life recovered its usual rhythm and texture. Only not quite.
“No. There’s no prize tonight,” I said, waving away Bibi’s hand and sitting up without even looking at her. My eyes were still fixated on the empty doorframe, as if the pretty foreigner were about to appear again at any moment.
She looked so much like Rhonda...
On my way to the top, I have been able to get rid of almost everything that could make me weak. I stood strong and steadfast, I faced all obstacles, and I rose. I’m stronger than ever now. But I still have a few weaknesses.
Dead girls from the past named Rhonda, with big dark eyes and curly hair, who took the sunlight with them on their way to an early grave, are one of them.
And Vanina Vokhtazin looked so much like Rhonda.
Rule number one is no mercy for cheaters. Rule number two is you keep your heart safe. Intact. Protected. Out of the game.
Until that night, I had been able to enforce both rules.
Until that night.
4. THE RUSSIAN BRIDE
VAN
Many years ago
About the only thing I liked in Arzamas was the Gaidar Museum, because I had read Arkady Gaidar’s books for kids and I was fascinated about the life of someone who had made a living out of writing books. I visited the place where he had lived and spent long minutes staring at everything, getting soaked in the atmosphere of the place. Otherwise, it was a sad neighborhood, with more churches than people, or so it seemed to me as I grew up.
But a little girl does not decide where she lives, at least as long as she’s a little girl. And when we lost Mother (to death) and Father (to abandonment), even though I was not so little anymore, it fell upon Misha to decide what we would do with our lives, even though I was four years older. It didn’t matter that it was always me straightening his path, mending his mistakes and forgiving his slip ups; he was male, so he made all the decisions.
So we stayed in Arzamas for sad, long years. Misha became a gopnik, one of those young jobless guys who turn into smalltime criminals as a natural result of a long succession of days and nights pointlessly roaming the streets. I worked at a grocery store, then cleaning a couple of nice houses downtown, and in my free time I devoured old books from the library and the used bookstore.
I wanted to be like the women in those novels and short stories written by Russian men long years ago: self-assured, enigmatic, impossibly beautiful and secretly tragic. Some of them were utterly dismissive of their many suitors, others suffered dramatically for things that a modern girl would find silly, but all of them had such a deep soul, a twisted nature that revealed the highs and lows of human condition.
As I grew up, I had my suitors too, but I was never dismissive. A friend of ours, Piotr, was in love with me, and it was so painful to turn him down only to see him come back again with some silly argument why I should be with him... He was dramatic too, I could almost touch his suffering at my denial, but there was nothing I could do about it, only try to be soft and gentle in my repeated nos.
The horizon was closing around us very fast as we went from childhood to adolescence and from there to young adulthood. One day, as categorically as years before he had decided that we would stay there, Misha decided that Arzamas was not the place where we would find a future after all. Not a week had passed before we were on a train that would take us from Oblast to the big city.
* * *
But St Petersburg was not much better. We ended up in a tiny old apartment in the suburbs, where the gopniki roamed the streets too. Actual jobs were scarce and we had to struggle constantly to get by. We grew up, became adults, and we still couldn’t get out of our woes. Misha went to jail once, twice, thrice, and every time he got out, he returned to the gang life. There was no other way for him, for us.
We had almost given up to despair when he came up with the idea. By sheer chance, he’d met some people who ran a website offering brides to people in the US, he said. Men in the US would pay good money, up to fifty thousand dollars, for a girl like me.
“Misha,” I asked him incredulously, “are you saying you’d sell me to a prostitution ring?”
“Oh, no, no,” he said, blushing instantly. “How could you think that, Vanina? This is real. It’s a site where you can get to know the guy and decide if you like him. You can be talking for months. Look,” he said, and fired up his old laptop. He had bookmarked the site, and he already had an account, since he logged in in front of me. “Take a tour of the site. You’ll see it’s all good. Vanina, you’re beautiful and interesting. Men will flock to your profile. You’ll be able to choose anyone you want. This could change our lives.”
I was not convinced, partly because I didn’t consider myself that beautiful (you’d easily find thousands of Russian women who look like supermodels, with perfect faces and bodies, unlike me), but I started browsing the site all the same, familiarizing myself with the system. The people who ran it took a commission from every contract, and the girl got the rest. She could back down at any time, though; in that case, she’d still be paid a small sum for her time, and the client would be reimbursed part of his money, without the commission. This way, only the client could lose, but the site owners and the brides would at least break even.
I had never met a girl who had been sold as a mail-order bride (or Internet bride in this day and age), but what I saw on the site assuaged my doubts. There was a mechanism to report harassers and block annoying clients; also a phone number to talk with the site owners themselves. But of course, since Misha knew them personally, there was an additional layer of safety for me. “They are serious, Vanina,” he insisted. “Please, think about it.”
“Misha,” I said, “I don’t wanna leave you. I won’t.”
“But Vanina,” he said, holding my hands and looking me in the eye, “this is a new life for both of us. Think about it! A new life for you in America, and some money for me to build something here. I will start a business, I will come clean and forget about the gang and everything. No more dangerous people around, no more visits from the police, no more phone calls from jail. I promise.”
“So you’ll keep the money?”
“Just part of it. If you agree.” His eyes were big and needy.
If I did this, I would be doing it as much for him as for me. That I knew from second one. It was not the money for me; it was the freedom, it was the possibilities. Every time I looked through the window and saw grey buildings barely contrasting with the grey roads and the grey sky, I wanted to leave this place forever, but Misha was what kept me anchored to this grey life. Misha and not knowing what else to do, where else to go.
Well, perhaps there was a what and a where now, and a way to help Misha, even if that meant that we’d be separated.
Because it meant that we would be separated. He had put it in those terms, at least implicitly.
“Misha, why don’t you come with me?”
He flinched at the question. He looked hurt. “I can’t,” he whispered almost inaudibly.
“Why not?”
“You know why.”
I realized, even before he said it, that I knew why indeed. Misha had been in jail several times. He would never be admitted in the United States. That door had closed for him long ago. He looked down to hide the tears, but tears were flowing from my eyes too, as I hugged him and held him tight.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I said, and then again and again, as the sun disappeared in the West like a red-gold promise.
* * *
Two years ago
As soon as I got off the plane, I knew Steve was there. He had sent me no less than six messages in the previous minutes, and I got them as I disabled the airport mode. He had bought the phone for me on the Internet. It had a US line and a full plan he was payin
g for. It was a surprise, and the package got stolen as soon as it arrived to our modest apartment in the suburbs of St Petersburg. Misha had to chase the thief and make him turn the damn thing back at knifepoint. My brother is like that.
I had seen Steve’s face, of course, because we had exchanged pics before the deal was done. We had also chatted once, through that same phone, just a week before I got on the plane to leave Russia forever. But seeing him in person was kind of a letdown. I mean, I already knew he was kind of average, but his smile when he saw me was... too innocent, maybe, as if he was clueless about the ways of the world.
I have a master’s degree in the ways of the world, of course. You learn quite a bit about life when you grow up in Arzamas, then your mother dies, then your father leaves and your brother becomes a gopnik. Roaming the frozen streets of our decadent hometown, fighting for every little thing, moving to St Petersburg and having to keep fighting, left me with very little space in my heart for believing in fairy tales.
And that’s what I was to him: a fairy tale. A princess come from the winter lands to instill some warmth into his heart. Even the premise was stupid, but then again, we’re all stupid when we are in love.
Steve was a software engineer. He spent most of his days sitting alone in front of a computer. That’s how he started dreaming about a Russian bride. His computer was a window that opened to the whole wide world. And there I was: a beautiful girl, with dark curly hair and pale skin and big eyes, all grown up and ready for him... as long as he could pay the price.
I flashed a wide, enthusiastic smile. It was the first of many smiles and it wasn’t completely fake. Hey, I was in America after all, and there was a lot to be joyous about. Even if the man himself was underwhelming.
“At first, I thought your profile was fake. Well, the picture at least,” Steve said as he drove from the LaGuardia airport to his house in Forest Hills.
“The picture?”
“Yes,” he said, and looked at me intently. “I thought the photo was fake. Because you look like Rachel Weisz.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said as he clumsily put his hand on my thigh, driving the steering wheel with the other hand. “All that matters is that you’re here now, and I will make you happy.”
He tried, for a while. He was nice to me and took me to fancy restaurants and gave me expensive gifts and took me to wonderful places until he ran out of money. Then he despaired.
“I look into your eyes and see your frustration,” he told me one night. I didn’t say a word. I wanted to explain that I was frustrated with myself, not with him. I didn’t need any fancy dinners or expensive clothes; I was more than content with a chance to live my life in this country, with a good man, in a good house; get a job; pay the bills; fall in love. But I wouldn’t, not with him. And besides, I wasn’t what he really needed; hard as I could try, I wouldn’t be able to turn him into what he desperately wanted to be. It would have been impossible to explain that to him, though, so I kept silent.
He had a handful of friends, and I met them all in the course of two months. The looks they gave me were telling. Where did she come from? they asked without uttering a single word. Steve was not the kind of man that makes a pretty foreigner fall for him. Heck, he was not the kind of man that even meets a pretty foreigner. In a sense, even though I had landed here escaping from poverty and danger, I was too much for him.
Things got worse and worse until they ended, as it always happens. I wish there was other way, but whoever designed the world didn’t pay much attention to the ungentle way things get undone. There’s no amicable way to part, no friendship after the fact, no good terms for anything. It’s all a lie. Russian writers seem to know this instinctively. I had left most of my books back home, but I brought a handful with me, which I reread often.
We were together for just over a year. And for all the struggle and suffering, we didn’t even get married.
Shortly after the breakup, I took a job in Manhattan. The admission process was weird and intense. The guy (I mean my boss) was known all around and apparently owned half the city. He took me as his secretary and arranged a work visa for me so that I could stay in the country. He was a handsome, weird man. His office was located in a building where every floor was named after a different card. The top one, where he went to work every day, was called the King of Hearts. In the months I spent working for him I discovered that he owned that building and many others, and that he had named many, many things following the playing cards theme. I didn’t understand why, and before I could ask him about it, I had fallen in love with him, become one of his “toys”, and been summarily discarded as soon as he got tired of me.
In retrospect, how could I have not fallen for him? Theo Lambert was everything Steve Haines was not. He was handsome, athletic, charismatic, and he seemed to be in the process of swallowing the world whole. Sometimes he would show me a magazine with his picture on the cover and make some stupid, cocky remark. I felt so special when he started hitting on me, then fucking me right there in his office, saying sweet words to me, taking me to places where Steve could never dream of even being admitted. But then there was the disappointment, the fury, the nights weeping and sobbing. I was just a toy, and got quickly replaced.
So I got another job, as a bookstore clerk. I tried to clear my head and fill it with work, read a lot, cultivate myself (my heart still had a special place for Dostoevsky and Chekhov and all the rest, though; I found myself in their words of sadness and clarity and shame). But I was at my low point and I even started missing home. I couldn’t concentrate and I read just little pieces here and there. I fucked a coworker for a while, and hated myself even more. All the while, I kept leaving messages on Theo’s phone, knowing full well that he wouldn’t even hear them, that he would put that task on the shoulders of my replacement, surely some pretty young girl. Was I speaking to her, then? Did I want her to take notice of the desperation in my voice, so that I could augment my own humiliation, like a character in a Russian novel?
Late one afternoon, I drank too much and somehow ended up bypassing the building’s security and taking the elevator to the King of Hearts. My replacement was there. She was indeed a pretty woman, but no longer a girl. She was in fact a bit older than me, and had a clueless expression that made me want to smash her face against the wall. Only days later I realized how frightened she must have been: I had become the crazy ex. “How many times did he fuck you?” I asked her, and she didn’t answer. I had made it to seven. Seven, I said, stupidly proud of the number. I smiled and left, staggering a bit, stumbling against the wall once or twice. Somehow I managed to get into the elevator and get out of the building as tears veiled my vision. I wandered down the streets as the sky got progressively darker, stumbling against strangers from time to time. It was already pitch black (or, rather, as pitch black as it can get in Manhattan) when I went into the pub.
I never knew what was waiting for me inside that pub. If I had suspected it, I would never have crossed that door. But I did. And I ended up falling in love once more.
5. RIGHT PLACE, WRONG TIME
ACE
I was checking on the guys in Frisco when Jack told me what he had done. That’s the only reason I didn’t rip his head off his shoulders. Things in the Bay were getting worse. We’d had three rounds of empty bets and the usual explanation (that the assets had been withdrawn because the feds were looking) was not very convincing. I suspected some of the guys were actually keeping all the monies. Also, if the reports were right, the Chinese in Atlanta were about to go on full retaliation mode, with some catastrophic digital book burning: they had developed a virus to wipe our accounts one by one. And in Chicago, a player had been kidnapped before getting to the poker table. Someone was starting to spill the beans about Little Vegas, and I could smell danger in the air.
I’ve never liked violence, and I like to run a peaceful business. Even when I started, as a nineteen-year-old bouncer in one of the
locations in Brooklyn, I very much preferred people to stay put instead of having to shove them out. And some years later, after being upgraded to collector, I wanted people to hand their signatures on their own accord, without having to break their legs. Now, twenty years later, I took pride in the fact that my run at the helm of Little Vegas had been the most peaceful of all... until that point. Now, things were turning sour. Maybe I had been a little too soft.
Anyway, this was not the moment to introduce a pretty foreigner in my life. First of all, the way she had appeared in the pub was suspicious. You can never be too careful in this. How did I know she hadn’t been sent by a conspirator? And even if not, at the very least, that would be a risk for her. Ending up in the middle of a global operation with shit about to go down everywhere. She had been at the right place at the wrong time.
And Jack Starr thought it would be a good idea to follow her and leave her my address.
Having your wishes carried out without even asking. That’s power. But at times it’s so inconvenient.
“Jack, are you out of your fucking mind?”
Jack didn’t even flinch. He sat nonchalantly on my desk and grabbed one of the almond-stuffed olives I had brought from the bottom floor. He spoke as he chewed, which irritates me to no end. That’s why he does it.
“Come on, Ace. You were about to start howling like a mad dog last night,” he chuckled. “I figured out that if you never saw that woman again, you’d end up committing suicide, probably killing us all in the process. Say it isn’t so.”
“Well, it isn’t...”
“Fucking liar,” he interrupted me, and grabbed another olive. “What are the news from San Francisco?”
I sighed.
“Bad news. That’s why I don’t need a pretty Russian snooping around,” I replied angrily. “Someone won a yacht. Someone won a company. Someone won a tenure. Someone won a bunch of high-yielding bonds. Only the tenure was granted.”
Sold: A Billionaire Bad Boy Mafia Romance Page 2
