by Black, Paula
Unfortunately, so was Konstantyn, and his trademark glare was in place, along with an added layer of pissed off. The warm-up went off without a hitch. My body felt loose and relaxed, and I was so preoccupied with my proximity to Konstantyn, I was able to ignore Gracie’s stony silence.
When the music started, he crooked his finger in my direction, and without thinking I stepped forward.
“Not you. Her.” He singled Gracie out.
“I want that one gone,” he said, looking to Raider, but pointing at me.
What?
I must have looked like I’d been slapped, but I couldn’t fix my expression, not with the way Konstantyn’s face looked so serious in profile. He wasn’t joking.
Even Gracie, who clearly wasn’t speaking to me, threw me a confused look that darkened to a mixture of sympathy and surprise as his words rumbled through the studio.
Raider shot a questioning glance in Konstantyn’s direction. When the Queen of dismissals was hesitant, something was very wrong. “But he asked for her, specifically, when I showed them yesterday's footage. There’s not enough time to teach a replacement the routine,” he said, fluttering his hands nervously.
“You heard me.” Konstantyn growled and snapped his fingers in my face. “I want her gone. Now.”
I refused to let his terrifying imitation of Raider reduce me to tears, but as I stared into his remorseless gaze it was a struggle. How I’d ever thought those stupid green-flecked eyes were beautiful, I’d never know.
I left with as much dignity as I could, furious and battling with the brim of angry waterworks. In a race to get out of the locker room before I lost the war with my tears, I changed back into my street clothes and contented myself with slamming the door loudly on my way out.
All I’d worked for, gone, because some asshole was embarrassed about his job moonlighting as a sex-worker. I fumed my way in the direction of the Underground, cursing Lazarenko for taking away the only connection I had to my brother’s death. He’d dumped me right back where I’d started.
Headlights flashed along the pavement and I stepped away from the curb as a car drove up alongside me. Inside my pocket, I laced my house keys between my knuckles, just in case. Probably someone just got lost, I hoped, but no, I wasn’t that lucky, and it was meet an asshole day after all.
The driver rolled down the window and a cloud of marijuana smoke assaulted my senses. A heavy trance beat pounded from altered speakers, vibrating the air. Not a lost tourist. The car was full of gang-bangers. I discreetly tucked my bag under my right arm. They’d really picked the wrong time to mess with me. The mood I was in, I was tempted to self-defence the crap out of them.
“Hey pretty lady. You out here all alone?”
I ignored them and kept on walking, but the car crept along, keeping pace. The circular Underground sign was lit up in the distance, and the underpass was completely deserted. Shit. I kept my eyes front, and concentrated on not looking like a victim.
“Need a ride? I got a seat for you, right here.” I cut him a glance but immediately regretted it when I saw his hand was cupping his crotch. He pumped his hips, leering, his mouth split in a wide grin. They were hardly more than kids, but some of the kids on these streets were feral. I knew, I’d grown up with their older siblings, many of whom were doing time.
I quickened my pace, spine stiff, tensely waiting for them to park and make good on their lewd suggestions. They didn’t. Their laughter howling, the engine cranked over in a rumble of revs and they sped away in a cloud of stinking exhaust fumes.
I slumped. Idiot kids.
Still, I watched until the tail-lights of the car disappeared before I slowed my pace to something less like speed-walking.
For a Friday night, it was quiet. There were no stumbling drunks, just a few sleeping homeless people who didn’t bother to stir as I passed. With the cool London evening biting at my exposed skin, I gathered my sweater around me and hustled towards the entrance to the Underground.
As I turned the corner, I was expecting the draft of cold wind that buffeted me. I was not expecting the large hand that clapped down on my shoulder. A scream lit from my lips, adrenaline surging through my blood as a strong grip spun me around and backed me into a graffitied wall. The face of my attacker dropped the scream from my throat and anger bubbled up instead.
“Jesus Christ, you scared the hell out of me, you asshole!” My hands pushed at the brick wall of his chest, punching when he didn’t budge. “If you’ve come to apologise, you can just fuck right off. I am not letting you make my day any worse.”
Of course, the alternative was that he’d come to kill me, but I refused to think about that.
“You walk home alone, at night?” Konstantyn gruffed at me, catching my fist before it could hit him again.
I wanted to punch the disapproval right off his face. “What business it that of yours?” I glared at him, and lowering my voice to mimic his accent, I reiterated his words, “I want that one gone.” I shrugged. “Those were your exact words. Excuse me for obliging you.”
He had the gall to pin me in a surly, irritated stare and I flexed my fist in his grip.
“I’m trying to do you a favour,” he said. His accent growled all his r’s and I absolutely did not like the way that sounded.
I was the one growling now, annoyed at myself for liking his voice and annoyed at him for being an ass. “A favour? You had no right to take this away from me. I earned my place.” I prodded him with my free hand, punctuating each point. “So I caught you moonlighting in that club.” Poke. “So I humiliated you.” Poke. “Guess what? You deserved it. That’s no reason to kick me off the crew.” All my earlier fury came flooding back as I remembered what he’d really cost me.
“Chort! If the devil is powerless, send him a woman,” he muttered.
I ignored him, refusing to flinch when he braced his impressive arms either side of my head. “Why are you here?” he demanded.
“I’m attempting to go home, if you’d just get the hell out of my way.” I tried, unsuccessfully, to push past his brick-house muscle bulk.
“No,” he insisted. “Why are you here?”
I tipped my chin up and sounded like I meant it. “I want to dance.”
“Bullshit.” His nostrils flared like he could smell the lie on me. “You followed me to the club last night. Why did they send you?”
“Why did who send me?”
“Your bosses.”
Bosses? What the hell?
“Why do they send a woman into the wolves’ den?”
“You have a problem with my gender? A misogynist as well as an asshole, then. Well that figures.”
He shook his head, those dark irises glinting with green as he got in close. “You want to see woman-haters? Go back to that club, Neva. They will fuck you ‘til you bleed and they will dump your broken body on the street like the garbage they think you are.”
His intimidation techniques couldn’t work on me, but those words made my soul flinch.
“What are you saying?” I stammered, cursing the wobble in my voice. “You know something.” The description was too close to home for me to ignore, and I was jumping on him for information.
“As I say, I do you a favour. Go. Far away from here. Tell whoever sent you that their little rat was flushed out of the sewer.”
“Nobody sent me. I’m on my own.” That was the truth. Detective Dalton had been clear, he would never condone what I was doing, but I regretted the admission even as it left my mouth. This man was bad news. Revealing I had no back-up was a dumbass move, and now my talent at blurting out thoughts under pressure was liable to get me killed. Speak in haste, repent at leisure. “I’m not afraid of you,” I lied.
“No?” His brow arched, his arms flexing either side of my head. “Then you are a fool. I am a dangerous man.”
That, I didn’t doubt. Lazarenko knew something, though, and I was rattling along the track of my own adrenaline and desperation.
“Did you kill my brother?” Tensed to duck and run at his reaction, I pulled out the photograph and thrust it towards him like an accusation.
His brow furrowed as he snatched the picture from my hand and straightened to his impressive height. This wasn’t the direction he’d expected our conversation to take.
There was recognition in his eyes as he stabbed at the image with a fingertip. “This man is your brother?”
“He was.” I nodded, rubbing my arms against a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. “His broken body was dumped under a bridge, just like this one.” I looked around at the dirty walls, the windblown litter and the bright graffiti, and anger swelled, thinking of my baby brother. “Like so much garbage,” I said, paraphrasing his earlier threat. When I managed to look back at Konstantyn, I was beyond angry. I was seething. “The pathologist found traces of four different class-A drugs and seven different types of semen in his body. Daniel had bruises and ligature marks all over, he’d been tortured, ripped open. And you want to know what else? He had a new mark on his body, a fucking peace sign, on his neck, just like the one on your arm.” I stabbed at the scar like he’d done with the picture. “So I ask you again, did you kill my brother?”
I was met with calculating, stony silence. His eyes narrowed on my face, and I got ready to run.
“You come with me.” Konstantyn rumbled.
Oh God. I’d been right!
My heart dropped into the acid pit of my stomach and I started to scream, torquing around him and darting for civilisation with a full holler in my lungs. His hands wrapped my wrist and snatched me back, gagging me with his palm. I kicked back at him, fighting for my life, for real this time. No fluid dancing, my movements were designed to hurt, and he cursed as my heel connected with his groin, his arm banding under my breasts to crush the air from my lungs and cage me.
“I am not your enemy,” he growled over the pounding thunder of my heartbeat. “You will come quietly, if you want to know who killed your brother.”
CHAPTER NINE
The man knew something about my brother’s murder, and that was all the bait he needed to hook me. After months of frustration and dashed hopes, I clung to the strong arm of hope he offered.
Might he be luring me to my death? Quite possibly, but one thing I knew with unerring certainty: if Konstantyn Lazarenko wanted me dead, he could have taken my life there and then, under that graffiti-painted bridge. And if I walked away? I was condemning myself to a lifetime of doubt. Four and a half months of not knowing, stretched to an eternity.
And so I took the gamble and stepped off the kerb that had me following him down the street with minimal protest. Following was a loose interpretation of what was really happening. It was more that he had a death grip on my arm and was all but dragging me down the street. At least I wasn’t screaming anymore.
“Where are you taking me?” I shook my arm in his grip and tried not to look like I was tripping after him.
I didn’t expect him to answer, so when his voice broke the silence of the night, I thought I’d imagined it.
“To a place where it’s safe to talk. I have evidence, I will show you.”
Uh huh.
The dingy warehouse neighbourhood didn’t exactly fill me with hope. My mind ran images of an industrial space adapted into a torture chamber, where he could tie me up and nobody would hear me scream.
But that was the thing about London. You could turn a corner and move from a slum to a millionaire’s enclave. Or vice versa. Victorian terraces to steel and glass modernity in a few footfalls.
My nose crinkled as we rounded a corner and the stagnant, brackish smell of the river Thames drifted to meet us. Warehouses dissolved to urbanisation along the riverfront, and Konstantyn’s hand dropped from my elbow to my wrist. He wasn’t hauling me along anymore. His eyes were straight ahead, his grip a firm pressure that told me he’d chase me if I ran. He’d softened the choke chain, but he still held my leash. Bastard. I still hadn’t forgiven him for humiliating me.
We pushed through glass doors into a tall apartment building, and were greeted by a security guard. The uniformed man gave me a smiling once-over that said he thought Konstantyn was getting lucky. Yeah. Right. He was more likely to get bashed in the head with the nearest available blunt instrument.
I kept that in mind as he hustled me into the glass elevator.
He leaned against one side with a nonchalance that had to be feigned. No one could be that calm, and when his eyes met mine, I saw that he wasn’t. He was strained and angry and, if I was going for broke and guessing everything? I’d say he was scared.
Ever the mastermind of tense silences, Konstantyn wasn’t the one to break this one. I brushed my hair over my shoulder and leaned on the glass, watching the numbers go up. “So, are you going to talk to me?”
“Not here.” He stared up at the ceiling and I followed his eyes to the red flashing light of the security camera. We rode the floors in silence after that.
The doors pinged open and he led me down a minimalist corridor to a black door, then ushered me inside an equally minimalist apartment.
I hesitated on the threshold as he toed off his shoes and padded inside.
“What is this place? Your apartment?” I asked, holding back.
The danger had registered from the start, but now that I was about to be closed into his apartment with him, I was double-doubting my own intelligence.
“Leave the door open, if it makes you more comfortable,” I heard him say, “but make your decision and stop wasting my time.”
I had to remind myself I was doing this for Daniel. I’d thrown my stake in the pot. This wasn’t the time to back-out. Besides, security had seen me with him. We were caught on the CCTV in the elevator. He’d be stupid to do anything. Right?
Right.
Leaving the door wide open, I kicked my shoes off beside his and padded into his apartment. Eyeing the rooms I passed for a potential ambush, I made it to the living space without anyone jumping out at me. When I walked over the threshold, he was behind the kitchen counter, bent over rummaging for something, and I took the opportunity to look around. His place was open-plan, huge and sparse in the extreme, with black, white and chrome shining from every surface. That didn’t impress me as much as the giant wall of glass. The whole front of his apartment sported stunning views of the river, all the way down to London Bridge, which twinkled with lights in the darkening evening.
I didn’t want to turn away, but then I felt him at my back, and turned, expectant. Konstantyn motioned for me to take a seat on the leather sofa. His face was unreadable as he placed a bottle of Nemiroff vodka and two shot glasses on the table between us. He tipped the bottle towards me, and I was tempted, but I shook my head. I needed clarity, not liquid courage. He shrugged and poured himself a drink, reclining in a way that showcased the breadth of his shoulders, the thick power in his arms.
Christ, he could snap me like a twig if he really wanted to. I’m an idiot.
“Tell me what you know,” he said abruptly.
I arched a brow. “I thought you were the one answering my questions.”
He shook his head and poured himself another shot, his dark eyes concentrated on me when he sat back. “First, you talk.”
“Okay.” Daniel’s story was on public record. What did I have to lose? I gathered my breath and my thoughts, and half-wished I’d taken the drink he’d offered. Crossing my legs up under me, I leaned towards him. Not knowing what he wanted to know, I started from the beginning. “My brother, Daniel, was just twenty years old when he...”
I cleared my throat and tried again. “He was a dancer: nightclubs, stage shows, video, TV. You know, whatever paid the rent.”
Konstantyn nodded. Any dancer understood that.
“Then last year, he got an invite to audition at Vinyl Scratch Studios, and won a part dancing in a Beastrider video. He was made up about it, went on their European tour, got invited to lots of private parties. He was j
ust a kid. He was star-struck. At first he kept in touch all the time, but later, communications between us dried up. He hardly answered my texts, started keeping really late hours, and never hung out with his old friends anymore. Some nights he wouldn’t come home at all. I hoped he had a new boyfriend, but I was worried, you know? It was so out of character for him. Then I got the note –”
Konstantyn raised a questioning brow.
“It was slipped under my door. Written in his handwriting, it said he was sorry, that he’d gotten into trouble with some very dangerous people, and that he had to go into hiding for a while. He said I mustn’t try to find him, or to go to the police, or they’d kill him. He said I should just sit tight, burn the note, and when the time was right, he’d find me.”
“What did you do?”
I cradled my head in my hands and exhaled roughly. “I did what he asked. For five days, I agonised over that note. I sat by the phone waiting for him to call. I dialled the police a hundred times, hanging up at the last moment. Finally, the phone did ring, but it wasn’t Daniel. They’d found him, like I told you.” My laugh was bitter, remembering my horror when they broke the news that he was dead. “None of the DNA in his body was traceable to any known criminal or sex offender. No witnesses came forward, and all the police leads led to nothing.” I shrugged through the pain of remembering. “They hinted at a drug-fuelled sex-orgy gone wrong.” I choked a little, beating down tears.
Konstantyn pushed a shot glass towards me and this time, I downed the thing, hissing at the burn.
“The police lost interest, but I can’t let it go. My brother’s killers are out there somewhere. When I heard Beastrider were auditioning again, I thought I could infiltrate his crowd, get people to talk where the police couldn’t. Somebody knows something. Daniel would never have done hard drugs, not after our mother... Anyway, I can’t accept that any of this was accidental.”
