Then, the bullet.
The bullet entered the scene from the right, drawing a slow, straight trajectory toward her left eye. She didn’t notice it —no time for that, no time for anything, although for me, the scene was unbearably slow, a split second extended over what felt like a month.
And then suddenly the face was Van’s face, exploding in slow motion as the bullet entered her eye and burst into her skull, blood and flesh flying away in all directions. Time caught up to speed as the world became a red mask of death, and I fell backwards, trying to scream, but unable to do so.
My heart raced as I felt my body falling down fast, faster, faster, into a dark hollow full of smoke and torn cards. I dove into a pool of dark viscous water. It was freezing cold, and even with my eyes open I could see nothing. I tried to swim but I felt weak; my body in the dream had barely any muscles, and I was pushed around and down by the current, feeling how the liquid filled my lungs as I tried to breathe.
The water screamed. It screamed with Van’s voice.
That voice was still ringing in my ears, raping my ears, when I woke up. It was the voice of danger.
I could never have her. The danger was there, it was black and cold and shrieked in horror everywhere. Being with her meant killing her. It had happened with Rhonda and it would happen with Van.
The air was hot in my room, but I felt a chill biting at my bones.
15. MIRROR, MIRROR
VAN
Present day
I haven’t left the city. Not for now, at least.
I don’t know if I feel safer now or less safe than before. Ace is no longer here to protect me, but was he actually protecting me? I’ve given this idea many twists and turns in the last few days. Or, rather, in my last few sleepless nights.
I know what a rich jerk is capable to do. What if the incident in Brooklyn was all a simulation? What if he hired a few guys to give me a scare, so that I would fall right into his arms as my savior? He didn’t even wait a day to kick me out. He already had what he wanted: one more girl for his never-ending tally.
At times, I feel bad for thinking that way, and I remember how mad he got when Vassily started hitting on me in our meeting. That day I thought he actually felt something for me, something else besides physical attraction —but aren’t these guys incapable of such a thing? Was it not something more like defending his prey from the other predator? Men are assholes, and this is the worst kind of man, the most assholish of them all.
I’m confused. But I’ve never been the kind of woman who lies to herself. It’s not so much that I’m confused as that I’m hurt. Yes, hurt, because I love that asshole. There’s not much to be confused about. He acted just like I thought he would act from the first time I saw him. It’s his nature, the wolf with its head turned to the forest.
And yet... I feel that I’m being unfair. Am I just a stupid girl for feeling that he could be sincerely trying to protect me? Maybe he got scared. Maybe he’s right and keeping away from him is the best way to ensure my safety.
In any case, I have to accept that we won’t be together. And it’s hard. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the touch of his lips on my skin, making it shiver and bristle. I can pretend that he’s in standing right in front of me with his clear, serene eyes. I can dream he’s going to come and rescue me somehow.
* * *
“You forgot your brother.”
Misha’s words sound slurry and opaque. He’s been drinking, for sure. And maybe something else. He didn’t even say hello. You forgot your brother, that’s the first thing he said when I took the call.
“Misha,” I say, my heart already aching. “How are you? Where are you?”
“You forgot your brother because you’re a whore,” he says. “You have a good life in America, while I’m stuck here.”
“I-I don’t...” I begin, but it would be hard to explain. He keeps talking mechanically, hopelessly, with something like broken glass in his voice. I don’t even try to guess how he will pay for this call.
“You should have come back,” Misha says. “There’s no money here, there’s no job, there’s nothing.”
“I thought... What happened with the modelling thing? Did they...?”
“Shut up, bitch,” he cuts me off. “Don’t judge me. You’re happy there, sure? Are you happy with your American money?”
“Just as happy as you,” I snap angrily. “You got forty thousand American dollars from selling your sister.”
His next words come out loaded with drunkenness and hate. They hurt.
“You’re just a whore,” Misha says. “You’ve always been a whore. You never loved your family, only money. I hope the fucking is good.”
“Don’t say that, Misha, sweet brother,” I implore, already crying, because his words hurt like knives in my chest. “You know I love you above all.”
“Then why don’t you help me? Piotr says you are with a rich guy now. He’s forgotten me too because he’s a pakhan now. But you? How could you forget your little brother?”
I wipe the tears with the back of my hand. It’s too much heartbreak for just a few days.
“Please, Misha. I’m not with him anymore. I don’t work for him. You have to believe me. Please.”
“Liar,” he spits, and his next words become incomprehensible, no more than a slurry chain of sounds. Then his speech becomes intelligible again. “You’re lying, whore. I hope you die.”
“Misha, I have no money. I would help you if I could. Please...”
“Then come back and help me,” he says, his voice suddenly hard and clear. “There are some rich men here too.”
* * *
I look at the young woman who gazes at me from inside the mirror. She looks sad, broken. So broken I wonder how she’s still alive.
Maybe this is you, I think, as I get sucked into the whirlpool of despair behind those dark eyes. Maybe you’re just a whore after all. Maybe this is what you always were.
It’s me, right here and now, but it’s also me, a frightened girl back in Arzamas.
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
who’s the saddest of them all?
Going back... Going back would be the worst failure. It would mean going back to being nobody. Just a pretty doll for my brother and his friends to show around. Maybe worse.
What does Misha want from me, exactly? I shudder when I think how much he seems to have changed. I’ve seen him through the bulletproof glass separating the prisoners from the visitors. Being in prison changes you, that much I know from experience. Some of his friends who ended up in jail before him came out different, even more jaded and cynical than before, and willing to do anything, sell anything. He got out, then he got in again. What happened in the two years I’ve been away? How much more has he changed?
The broken girl stares at me from the mirror. I seem to myself, as in a dream, an accidental guest in this dreadful body, Anna Akhmatova wrote once. The face I’m looking at is beautiful, but dreadful. The body... I undress slowly, drinking the image of my own presence in front of me. A body as beautiful as any other, with mounds and curves, with delicate lines and mistifying shadows, not perfect, not ideal, but beautiful, and yet dreadful too, a body full of sorrow and heartbreak.
A body that can be sold and bought.
Would Misha sell me? He already did it once, after all.
16. A REVEAL
ACE
“I got something for you.”
I study Pip’s face in search of any signs of enthusiasm. I find none. If anything, he looks regretful, as if he feared my reaction to what he’s about to tell me. He’s carrying a big yellow envelope and nothing else.
I wave my hand at the couch and I pour two glasses. I choose the couch on the opposite side of the small table and take a sip.
“Well...?”
“Two things,” Pip says. “The easy one and the hard one.”
“I have a feeling that you’ll start with the easy thing.”
“It was t
he Bratva. The guys in Brooklyn. The ones who tried to kidnap your girlfriend.”
“Anything related to her?”
I don’t know whether I hope the answer to be yes or no. No would mean that she told me the truth, and I want to trust her. Yes would mean that the best way to protect her would be to bring her with me again, since the danger does not come from me, but from someone in her past.
Sadly, Pip can’t give me a yes or a no.
“We don’t think so,” he says, “but we’ll keep asking. What we can confirm is that Vassily Zhurov is with them.”
Which probably means that he didn’t come here just to play poker. Interesting. Now I have a genuine motive to hate his guts. Also, it means that Van is a terrible judge of who’s lying and who’s telling the truth. Well, she can’t be perfect, right?
The question that remains is whether the Chinese and the Russian mob are working together or they just happened to hit both at the same time. Stranger things have happened in this business.
“That was the easy thing,” I say, gulping half my glass of scotch, and use it to point at the yellow envelope. “Let’s talk about the other, shall we?”
Pip clears his throat as his hands play nervously with the envelope. He’s even sweating slightly, if my eyes don’t deceive me. He takes a big gulp too, emptying his glass. I pour him a new one.
“We had to dig pretty deep to make the connections,” he says, “and we discovered something we were not looking for.” He slides the envelope over the table and I reach for it. Inside I find some documents and pictures.
Pictures I didn’t expect to ever see.
“Who took these pictures?”
“They did.”
“They who?”
“The players. The ones who wanted to take you out. The ones who hired her.”
“Why?”
“Security, I guess. If things went wrong, they could just send them to you as their revenge.”
Rhonda is in all the pictures. In all of them, she’s in company of dead people. I know that because I killed them all.
They killed her, so I tracked them down and took my revenge. They fell one by one. The only thing I never found out was who had sold me out to them. Until today.
“Do you know what this means, Pip?”
He nods.
“Say it.”
“Rhonda is the one who sold you out.”
He’s courageous, I have to give him that. If Harlan was not in line for helming Little Vegas, he would be my choice. But he’s young and he has plenty of time.
“Why do you think she did it?” I ask, looking at the papers as if they were written in Korean. It’s all there, the proof that she betrayed me. Why, indeed? The reason is always the same.
“For money,” Pip answers.
I wonder if she had ever loved me. Maybe she did. Maybe there was a time when she was actually willing to fly away with me, share a life together. But by the time the pictures were taken, she had already agreed to tell them where we were going, so that they could take me out. Only she trusted them too much, and they decided to get rid of her as soon as she outlived her usefulness. It happens every day.
“How did you come upon this? This is not what you were looking for. It has nothing to do with the Chinese or the Russian mob.”
Pip clears his throat again.
“We... I. I investigated the girls.”
The girls. Of course. I didn’t see it coming.
“Which one?”
“Veronica.”
It’s been six years since it all happened. I guess some people don’t need clothes to hide their secrets.
“Fire her, please.”
I gulp down the rest of my whiskey, and pour some again for both.
“What do I tell her?”
“Nothing. It’s all right.”
“Should I—”
“Pay her well. She deserves it.”
I can’t think about Veronica right now. I don’t ask Pip to go, either.
I don’t know how to feel about all of this. My tough guy mask is in shreds now. Feelings and ideas race inside my head, colliding with each other, as I try to make sense of it all. If Rhonda betrayed me, does that mean that Van would betray me too? And if I couldn’t protect one, does it follow that I can’t protect the other? If I had discovered that Rhonda was selling me out, I’d have gotten out of the business and nobody would have ever found me, plus she might still be alive. But should I even care that she is dead now that I know she never loved me?
I don’t know. I’m lost. I guess I should distrust everyone now, but for some reason the contrast between Rhonda and Vanina becomes clearer and clearer.
Pip Glover stays with me for ten years. Or at least that’s how it feels until the sun goes down and our glasses cease to reflect its dying orange glow.
I’m beginning to think I did everything wrong.
17. A FACE IN THE CROWD
VAN
Sometimes I read those emails again. The first messages we exchanged before I came to America.
From Steve: Hey, did I tell you that you have the prettiest voice I’ve ever heard? I didn’t understand a word in the song, but I fell in love with the way you sang. I play that file several times a day.
My reply: You’re so kind! You’ll soon hear me sing in person. I’m improving my English so maybe I’ll sing one of the songs you like!
Steve, a few days later: Hey, I was thinking that once you’re here, you will need some new clothes. First thing we’ll do is going out and buy the nicest ones we can find!
Me: You’re so sweet! I don’t need any new clothes. You can just cover me with your kisses and that will be more than enough. xoxo!
We both sounded equally enthusiastic, but his emails were so sincere and my replies so fake... I tried, I tried so hard, and he never saw through it. Sometimes I hated him for being so stupid. How could he imagine that I would love him from afar if I had never even met him? But I recorded myself singing in Russian so that he could hear my voice, I pretended to be eager to feel his hands tenderly touching my face, and god knows what else. He swallowed hook, line and sinker.
Well, you could forgive him for swallowing the hook. My picture on the website was truly gorgeous. Misha always said that I was the prettiest girl in all of St Petersburg, even before we first went downtown. I always considered my face pretty unremarkable, but I had had really played up the best aspects, curling my hair and accentuating my cheekbones. The rest, though... could he not notice how fake it all was, how desperation shaped every word he read?
Even so, he won me over, I think when rereading those emails. I really tried, for him. I listened to him, I laughed with him and I laughed sincerely, discovering all the things that made him funny and interesting. I was kind to him, I had all the fun I could have and gave him all the fun I could give him, and I embraced our relationship with something somewhat akin to passion, even though the sex was frustrating. I thought I was starting to actually like him... could I love him if given enough time?
But time was not enough. Money ran out, his confidence ran out, his insecurity kicked in, and he started blaming me, shyly at first, then with more overt rancor. I saw his despair kick in again, surely even stronger than before meeting me, reinforced for this new, monumental failure. He took up drinking, he stopped working hard. He became a shadow of his former self.
There were no more emails by then, of course. It was all brief text messages, where are u and who are u wit and even wont wait 4 u bitch. I even kept those, and I still reread them whenever I feel like hating myself a bit more.
When Steve broke up with me, he was the one who was crying. Four months later or so, he rented a nice car, fed the exhaust through one of the windows with a hose, and put himself to sleep forever.
Did I destroy him? Am I a bad person? And if so, is Ace my punishment?
I don’t feel like I’m bad, not after all that’s happened. But I can hurt people. My despair and sorrow have been devastating we
apons.
Am I being punished for that now, roaming the streets of Manhattan without a goal, having been promptly discarded by the man I love? I know I should leave, but I just can’t... There’s something inside me that tells me to wait a bit more, to keep the hope alive. And that’s even worse. Because, as long as it’s alive, that hope will hurt.
* * *
I take the subway in Woodhaven Boulevard. Sometimes I walk and go down in Forest Hills, other times I take it in Newtown or Elmhurst. I get off in Lexington or the Fifth, and then walk, trying to absorb the beauty of a city under the sun, far away from dimly-lit pubs and poker tables half seen through cigarette smoke.
There are lots of people waiting for the subway today. I don’t look at any of them. I let my sight wander between the tracks, following the gigantic rats that dwell under the city streets.
I start, surprised, when the train finally comes. I let myself be pushed inside by the pointless crowd. I stand among all of them, just an anonymous person. When the door is about to close, I turn around and look outside.
I see a familiar face.
It’s been years, but there can be no mistake. I know him.
A sudden chill goes down my spine and freezes me in place, invading my arms and legs and turning my face pale with fear. For a second, the only thing I can do is just stand there paralyzed, my eyes wide open, staring at him. When he steps forward, the door still open, I turn to my right and rush ahead, pushing people aside, in a desperate attempt to put distance between him and me.
The doors close and the train starts to move. Did he enter the car? I don’t look back. I keep advancing, pushing people out of my way, paying no mind when they puff and swear. Away, away from him, is the only thing that my brain registers.
I change cars once, then twice, walking on the platform and getting inside the train again. I don’t know if he’s there. I don’t know if I’ve been able to lose him. I don’t know what to do.
Sold: A Billionaire Bad Boy Mafia Romance Page 7
