The Russian

by Isabella Laase

  A roar of laughter came through the open window as Luka picked Rosie up to swing her around in circles in an obvious victory lap. “She’s a great kid, Mom,” said Mia softly. “You shouldn’t have any regrets with that one.”

  “Yeah,” said Joy with a sigh. “I never lied to him though, Teddy understands there’s a possibility she isn’t his, but he’s okay with that. It’s the reason he left me, but he doesn’t want her to suffer, and who knows, it’s possible. She looks a little like his mother did at that age.”

  Joy pointed out the window. “When you were in the bathroom, that one asked me if you’d recently spent a lot of money on me. What’s that all about? The car? The appliances? What’s going on?”

  “What did you tell him?” asked Mia, her guilty gaze moving to the cupboard above the refrigerator, untouched since the day she and Vadik had shoved Luka’s cash up there. They’d fallen into a dangerous pattern; his constant nagging to spend the cash was accompanied by her consistent assurances that she was.

  “I told him it was none of his fucking business,” said Joy with a righteous scoff, “but is there something I should know about? Is he giving you a hard time about the trailer rent because I never wanted you to cover that in the first place. I always managed before, and I’ll manage again.”

  “No, Mom, really. Without paying the rent, you could afford a better car, and I sleep better knowing you have something reliable out there with the kids. Luka... Luka actually has more generosity than I’m comfortable accepting. Besides, this is all just temporary. He goes back to Russia in a few months.”

  “Don’t be a dumb shit.” Joy’s tone sounded like she was begging. “It’s not all about money, Mia. He obviously cares about you. If you haven’t learned anything from me, you should understand that when you find something good, you need a plan to fight and keep it.”

  “Sometimes,” said Mia sadly, wrapping her arms around her mother’s back to pull her into a hug. “Life just doesn’t work out the way we planned, does it?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  With no place to be and nobody to talk to, Mia stretched lazily across the big bed and kicked off the smooth sheets to let the breeze envelop her nude body. Mid-June’s display of leafy green trees and sunshine streamed through the open windows. Even her family didn’t stay in her thoughts for more than a minute or two. She’d made a point to talk to her mother on the phone every couple of days, and their recent visit had taken care of any face-to-face responsibility for at least another month.

  Luka wasn’t due back until tomorrow, and she’d sent a protesting Vadik home the night before with a small cough, a low grade fever, and dire warnings about the dangers of multiplying viruses. After making threats to find her a new babysitter, Luka had agreed she could stay alone until her next shift.

  “Just don’t do anything foolish,” he’d grumbled over the phone. “Keep the windows and doors locked, and call a taxi tomorrow if he isn’t better when you need to leave for work.”

  What Luka didn’t know, however, couldn’t hurt him, or her. When she rose, she opened all of her downstairs windows and doors to fill her morning with the summer sounds of birds, bugs, and late morning traffic. Standing at the heavy locked screen door facing the street, she saw nothing to justify his concerns, just a few kids running up and down the sidewalk and neighbors calling out pleasantries while walking their dogs or taking their daily stroll.

  She missed him, of course, and Vadik was always good company, but there was something special, something rejuvenating, about being on her own and after months facing their constant scrutiny, she’d missed that comfort. She ate when she felt like it, treating herself to donuts and soda at the corner store and took a long walk along the winding Genesee River to watch the powerful currents lapping at the old flour mills and abandoned Erie Canal aqueduct that defined the cornerstone of Rochester’s rich history.

  Her shift started at ten that night, but the warm evening was perfect for walking, so she left home early to detour through the center of the city. The jazz festival was in full swing, a fabulous, multi-performer venue showcasing free concerts and food trucks parked across blocks of city streets. Despite the cold winters in her hometown, the brilliant summers made up for the long hours spent indoors, and she wasn’t going to miss a moment.

  She’d received no texts from Luka during the night, but the next day, a stuffy-nosed Vadik waited for her when she came out of the hospital. “I hope you’re feeling better,” she said cheerfully, as he moved a small cardboard box to give her a place to sit. “There’s a lot of flu going around, and I sure didn’t want to see you in my ER this week.”

  “I’m feeling fine,” he said, his voice unusually flat. He negotiated the car out of the parking lot, but turned away from her house and headed toward the ramp for the expressway that led out of the city.

  “Where are we going?” she said, looking behind them in confusion. “I thought Luka was meeting me at my house tonight.”

  “Call him,” he said noncommittally. “He changed his mind and wants you out at the lake.”

  His cryptic answers were a far cry from what she’d grown to expect from him, but Luka didn’t answer his phone. Instead she received a text. “I will see you when you get here.”

  Vadik never took his eyes off the road, and she had to work to keep from her voice from trembling. “What’s going on? You’ve gotta give me something. Anything. Is he mad at me?”

  He wiped his runny nose with a tissue and shifted his weight uncomfortably. “I don’t get paid to get in the middle of these things, but yeah, he’s mad at you. The security team filed their report yesterday and said you left all of your bedroom windows open and the kitchen door unlocked on Monday night.”

  “They can tell that?” She was sure she’d checked all of the door locks as part of her nightly ritual, but she’d gone to bed after falling asleep on her couch. A little drowsy, she might have missed the back door, but Vadik hadn’t mentioned anything after Monday night. “What else can they tell?”

  ‘I don’t know,” he said unconvincingly. “You need to take it up with him.”

  Along with several other familiar-looking cars, Luka’s red Mustang was parked in front of the lake house’s multicar garage. Carrying his small cardboard box, Vadik led the way into the house and opened the unlocked kitchen door, causing her to frown. Apparently, it was fine for Luka to make a mistake, but when she did, her entire day was going to be ruined.

  Luka’s grumbling voice came from the dining room. “We are in here.”

  “It’s us, Luka,” said Vadik. “I’ll meet you in the city on Sunday.” Looking even more miserable, he dropped the cardboard box on the kitchen counter and left the house with a silent nod in her direction.

  She stood awkwardly in the kitchen for a couple of minutes, but something needed to break this standoff, so she joined them in the other room. With coffee in paper cups and a half eaten box of donuts, the four cousins sat around the dining room table that was stacked high with piles of papers.

  Luka motioned to a chair. “Sit. I need to finish this, then I will deal with you.”

  “Hi, guys,” she said warily, even more disturbed when nobody greeted her. “I noticed the back door was open. Guess you made a mistake, huh?”

  Anton, Yuri, and Slavic stared at her as though she’d lost her mind, but Luka reached to his calf and dropped his heavy semi-automatic weapon in the middle of the dining room table with a resounding thud. “Do you have four of these in your home, ready to use despite the fact you were sound asleep? Because if so, then you can afford to make a mistake. And we left the door open because we knew you were coming.”

  “Oh,” she said, unable to form a response that would give her the upper hand, but she struggled to take her gaze off the gun. “Can you put that thing away, please? You know I hate looking at it.”

  “No. I will not. Sit quietly. I said I would deal with you when I am finished.”

  “Can we just stop all of this drama?�
�� she asked, ignoring the warning signs that screamed at her to drop to her knees and beg forgiveness for something she didn’t totally understand. “I’m not some child who’s waiting for their father to take them to task. I’m sorry about the door. I made a mistake and mistakes happen. Why didn’t you just call me Monday night if you knew it was unlocked?”

  The cousins exchanged uneasy glances, but Luka kept his attention focused on the papers. “That is a good question. I didn’t know about it until Pavel got the report and called me last night, but it won’t happen again because the person monitoring the equipment was fired for not notifying me immediately.”

  “Fired? You mean, like, lost his job because of something I did?” Was he fired or was he punished? Luka’s world still held too many unknowns. The mental image of a beaten, bloody man was her worst nightmare, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask.

  “You didn’t cost him his job, Mia,” said Anton quickly. “He was hired to make sure all of our houses were secure, and he didn’t do it.”

  “But... but if I’d locked the door, none of this would have happened. Is he... is he alright? I didn’t mean to cause a problem, it was just a mistake. I’m sorry.”

  “Of course he is alright,” snapped Luka. “Just unemployed. And what about the bedroom windows? They were open all Monday night, and they were still open on Tuesday, along with your downstairs windows and your front and back door. Was that a mistake, too?”

  Forcing a smile, she wrapped her arms around his neck to give him a hug and stop the train wreck that was spiraling in front of her. “Everything turned out fine, Luka. Let me make you guys something to eat. If you have all the ingredients, maybe I can bake a sharlotka. I know you don’t want me frying anything.”

  Her weak chuckle tried to define the joke, but she faced a wall of silence. “You, uh, you forgot to give me the recipe? Remember? I asked for it the first time I was here.”

  Luka leaned away from her embrace and settled back into his chair with his arms crossed. “I gave you the recipe. It was with the money when I took you home that first night. That’s how I know you’ve never even opened the package. You’ve been lying to me for months, haven’t you?”

  “I... I, uh... must have missed it. I haven’t spent, you know, all of the money. I’m sure the recipe is buried in there someplace.”

  He shrugged as though the details were unimportant. “It was on bright orange paper wrapped around the money. You couldn’t have missed it.”

  “Well, yeah, I saw that,” she drawled, looking for a magical answer. “I just didn’t know that’s what it was. That’s still in the bag at home, and...”

  She stared at him, at all of them, their faces a mixture of pity, anger, and disgust to send the message as plain as if they were shouting at her with their fists raised in fury. She lowered her gaze to the floor. “You’re lying to me, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t lie,” said Luka. “I simply find an alternative truth. Anton, there should be a box from Vadik in the kitchen.”

  She continued to stare at the floor as Anton left the room, returning too quickly with the cardboard box and establishing Vadik’s complicity. Luka pulled out the money bag and several boxes of jewelry and other gifts from him that she’d put on the closet shelf in the third bedroom. The sapphire earrings were sitting on the middle of the pile, reminding her of the trip to Dallas where she’d felt like a princess.

  Dropping everything on top of the table, Luka said, “I asked Vadik if you’d hidden any pink bags in your house, and he told me it was above the refrigerator in your kitchen. The jewelry took him a little longer to find, but you don’t hide things very well, do you?”

  There was no recipe or orange piece of paper. He started to count the money, but their dire expressions made it clear they all knew what he was going to find. “You don’t need to count it,” she said quietly. “It’s all there.”

  “Did you even open this, koshka?” he asked.

  She shook her head. She’d hated the money from the beginning, but she’d loved looking at his jewelry, taking it out when nobody was around to admire its beauty and his generosity. She understood it must have hurt him to ignore his gifts, just as she’d known that not spending his money would make him angry, but neither decision was one she’d had any true control over.

  Despite learning to appease his dominance over the last few months, she still only understood one way to counter her guilt. “That was uncalled for, Luka. You invaded my privacy, and you tricked me into this whole admission.”

  “You lied to me, and you disobeyed me,” he responded, his tone rising. “And what did you do during your time alone these last few days? Did you take a taxi to work or are there more deceptions to declare during the one day you were trusted to be on your own?”

  She wanted to scream at him, reminding him she didn’t need his approval or his trust to stay alone. She was an adult, and she’d done nothing wrong, but the churning anxiety kept her from forming an argument, allowing the unspoken resentment to lay just below the surface.

  “Tell me the truth, koshka,” he shouted when she didn’t speak, “or I’ll beat it out of you with my belt across your ass.”

  “I walked, Luka,” she said, her eyes filling with frustrated tears that threatened to betray her like everyone else did today. “I went out earlier in the day, and I walked to work. It was a beautiful evening, and the temperature was perfect. I wish you had been there and—”

  “There are consequences for your actions!” he roared, cutting her off and slamming his fists on the table hard enough to rattle his gun and make her jump. He stood, pointing his finger at her and causing her to take a few steps backwards. “There are reasons why I don’t allow you to walk the streets alone, and I protect you with locked doors. No matter how hard I try, you are vulnerable, and it is my duty to keep you safe. If I can’t do that, I have nothing.”

  “Just stop. You’re overreacting, and you had no right to tell Vadik to go through my things. You gave that money to me and that jewelry too. They were in my house. Mine. And you don’t need to be such a bully in front of everybody. This is a private matter, so let’s take this conversation someplace else.”

  “You continue to defy me because my cousins are here?” he asked in disbelief, waving his hands at the three men. She returned his scowl, her temper burning with the unspoken words that would take this fight completely out of control, and he continued to shout. “Do you really believe I wouldn’t punish you in front of them?”

  “Don’t, Luka, not here.” She’d intended to plead with him but the defiant, demanding tone answered instead of the perfect submissive she wanted to be. In desperation, she moved toward the doorway, knowing she would pay for everything when he got her alone, but at least they would be able to talk.

  Luka grabbed her wrist, spinning her backwards. “Take your clothes off and show them how to punish you when your mouth runs away with your senses.”

  As the horror sank in, she wildly surveyed the room for an exit, a place to hide, anything to end this, but there was nothing except her ultimate trump card, telling him to take her back to the city and never see her again. She stared at him, evaluating what they’d achieved over these last few months and recognizing that she couldn’t speak what her heart refused to accept.

  Standing taller with her eyes filled with tears, she silently begged him not to do this. “Now!” he barked. “I’ve given you an order. You will obey me, or we will deal with this at another level which you will find even more unpleasant.”

  With no true options, she took off her jeans and shirt and folded them into a neat pile. Luka didn’t have to say another word for her to understand what was expected. She slipped the plain cotton panties over her bottom and pulled her sports bra over her head, adding them to the pile of clothes on the dining room table.

  Standing nude before them exposed every physical and emotional element of her being, silencing the last of her tenacity and opening up a vulnerable awareness she
’d never imagined. Their judgmental eyes assessed every imperfection of her body and her character. Even Anton’s expression was cold and calculated, but they were on his side, four doms acknowledging her pitiful attempts to live in their world. It might have been easier if they’d been strangers, but she cared for all of them too deeply to have them witness her shame. She worked hard to keep her hands to her sides and her trembling chin from betraying her, staring straight ahead and willing her eyes to see nothing but black.

  Luka returned to his business discussion, pushing more papers around the table and speaking in Russian. His tone remained flat, but the bulging veins on his neck continued to betray his anger. The breeze from the open windows blew across her nudity, her nipples forming sharp peaks and a layer of goosebumps decorating her skin despite the relative warmth on a summer day. She stood long enough to leave her legs aching, but she never moved. Never cried. Never said a word.

  When he came to her side, his endless temper had subsided, but his anger was still apparent. He wore a soft cotton t-shirt tucked into his jeans, showcasing his tattooed, granite muscles and powerful strength. Despite their original agreement to limit their relationship to a physical one, she trusted that he would never deliver more pain than she could accept. It wasn’t fear over his bodily discipline that left her trembling.

  He spoke without touching her, offering her no support or comfort. “Are you afraid, koshka?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice quivering, “and not in a good way. This isn’t fun.”

  He crossed his arms and tilted his chin, the effect forcing her to take a step back. “Stand still,” he barked. “Do you need me to take you upstairs to use some of Pavel’s equipment to finish this with their help?”

  “Nyet, ser,” she whimpered. “I’m just so very afraid, Luka. I’m sorry.”

  “At this moment, fear is an excellent emotion for you to have, but does this fear impair you or empower you? Are you reacting as my well-disciplined submissive who completes my bidding or as the general who pretends to be mine until the need to be independent returns? There are two of you, and I need to know who is going to be punished, because one of you will be and the other will be left unsatisfied.”