by Nicole Fox
He leaves, trailing some unnamed fury behind him. The call must not have gone well, despite his jokes about me. I sit at my desk, still somehow shocked that he actually hit me. I call Stanislav, his accountant, and tell him the boss is in a bad mood and to be here within the hour. Once I’m off the phone, I start digging in the files again.
I find records of money moved from American accounts to some offshore. I find correspondence between Sergei and government officials. None of it immediately raises a red flag, not like the dental records and stories of missing people. There is some information about the shipping company manifests, and some documents marked confidential that detail additional shipments not on the official record. I don’t have time to look closely; I just make as many copies as I can. At five until one, I am just locking the drawer again when Sergei barrels back in.
One second sooner and he’d have caught me red-handed. As it is, I’ve managed to get open the drawer with Stanislav’s files in it. I pull the manila folder and hand it to him with a smile. Stanislav comes in shortly after, grunts a hello in my direction, and heads in to Sergei’s office, shutting the door behind him.
I sit down and let out a long breath. I am not made for espionage. This is too stressful.
I grab everything off the copier, realizing I left it all sitting out where Sergei could have seen it. Holy hell. He’d have killed me on the spot. Or worse. Probably worse, honestly.
***
Finn
I make sure I’m safely inside Selena’s apartment well before she gets off work. If she still has a tail, and I assume she does, then he obviously doesn’t need to see me going into her place.
It’s almost six before she gets home. She kicks off her shoes at the door and heads into the bedroom, just like I told her. She undresses, grabs some pajamas out of the drawer, and heads into the bathroom, starting the water.
She pads back out and grabs her purse, bringing it into the bathroom and shutting the door. When I hear the toilet flush a few minutes later, I go in, shutting us both into the tight space.
“Are you sure all of this is necessary?” she asks, gesturing to the steamy room.
“If he bugged this place, the steam will mess up any cameras and the water will cover up sound. It’s just a precaution. You do realize what kind of person he is, don’t you?” I ask.
“Yes, Finn,” she says, annoyed. “The kind who jacks off into his own coffee and makes his secretary drink it. The kind who slaps his secretary for making a smart-ass comment. I’m well aware of what kind of psycho we’re dealing with here.”
I’m sure my face mirrors the horror I feel. “He made you drink coffee he came in?” I ask, just to make sure I heard her correctly.
“That was after he made me wiggle around on his lap until he got hard, told me to take my shirt off, and jacked off in front of me,” I say. “I threw up more than once today.”
“Fucking psycho,” I say, more to myself than to her. “Anything else?”
“I made copies of a bunch of shit. I don’t know how much of it we can use, but I almost got caught.”
I look through everything. “Yeah, this stuff is just the tip of the iceberg, for the most part,” I say. “Without knowing what the additional cargo was, it’s hard to make any real connection to anything illegal. The offshores … lots of people have them. I need more, Selena. I need definitive proof of something big.”
“Well,” she says, pulling out something she’s printed off from the Internet and handing it to me. “There were these girls. Two of them went missing not too long ago from their jobs at a strip club. He’s got their dental records in his files. Why would he have their dental records?”
My stomach sinks as I remember my conversation with the waitress this morning. She didn’t share the girls’ names, but this sounds too close to be a coincidence.
“Man,” I say. “I had a conversation this morning with a waitress at a diner not too far from your office. She told me all this crazy stuff about two regular customers who work at a strip joint. They tangled with Kovolov; he had them do all this crazy shit and then made them sign a nondisclosure agreement. Of course, since they were telling the whole diner about what he did, I suppose they violated that agreement …” I raise my eyebrows so she can fill in the blank.
“So you think he had them killed for talking when they signed an agreement saying they wouldn’t?” she asks.
I shrug. “Maybe. I’ll see what else I can find out, but those stories seem very similar. You keep digging into the manifests, okay? There might be something there. But it’s got to be bigger than run-of-the-mill weapons or drugs. You know what I mean?”
She nods but bites her lip. Won’t make eye contact.
“Selena,” I say. I grab her face and make her look at me. “You have to go back and keep digging.”
“It’s just …” she starts. “He’s … I thought he was going to rape me today. I’m pregnant, Finn. I can’t …”
“You can,” I say. She closes her eyes and I say again, more roughly, “You can. And you will.”
“Please don’t make me go back,” she says, crying now. “I can’t go back. I won’t.”
“You will, Selena,” I say.
Selena is only in those tiny thong panties and that black bra and this argument is turning me on. I turn her around to face the mirror, our reflections blurred by the steam. I reach out and wipe some of it away, let her see her beautiful body, her tear-stained cheeks. My hands move to her belly, still so flat. No one would ever know she was with child and somehow, suddenly, I want very badly to see her swollen with pregnancy. I want to feel the child kick inside her womb. I want to see her smile at her baby.
What the fuck is wrong with me? Ugh. This is a mark, not a wife.
These fucked up feelings make me angry, so angry that I pull her thong roughly down her legs and bend her over the sink. I sink my fingers into her sweet cunt from behind and she gasps. My free hand moves to cup her breast, half out of her too-small bra, tweaking the nipple, making it harden to a pebble.
I move my fingers in and out roughly. She never says no. Her pussy starts out dry but gets wet quickly, soaking my fingers. I pull them out and taste her juices as she watches me in the mirror.
“You like that, Selena?” I ask, frowning.
She sucks on her bottom lip, her cheeks bright pink. She nods her head just slightly.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed to like it. I like your sweet pussy. I like the way you taste. I like when you come. But you can’t come if you don’t do what you’re told. I’m still in charge here, you remember that?”
She nods again, pushing her ass out toward me. I’m not even sure she knows she’s doing it, but I can tell from the way her nipples stay hard, the way her chest flushes, that she needs more. Wants more.
I undo my jeans and let them drop, my cock so hard already, just from touching her for those few minutes. I shove it into her and she cries out, half pain and half pleasure. She feels so tight around me, but I give no warning. I’m not gentle. I just fuck her, hard, bent over the sink, her hands grasping for literally anything to hang onto while I pump in and out.
“You want to come, Selena?” I ask.
“Unnngghh,” she moans. “Yesss.”
“Then tell me you’ll listen. You’ll do as told.”
“I don’t want …” she moans.
I slow my pace and slap her on the ass. “You want to come? Tell me.”
“Please,” she begs. “Please.”
“Please, what?” I ask.
“Please,” she says again. “I need to come. Please. I’ll listen. I’ll listen.”
I pick up the pace again and she cries out. “Say it again, Selena.”
“I’ll listen,” she says. “Please.”
“Come now, Selena,” I order, feeling her pussy quicken around me. She’s so, so wet. “I know you want it. Come for me.”
She cries out, says “Fuck you, asshole,” and then her sweet cunt clen
ches around my cock for so long that I feel like she might have passed out. When she finally sags, boneless, barely breathing, I finish, too, pushing my release up inside of her, feeling better than I’ve felt in a very long time.
She’s half-asleep as I pull off her bra and the rest of my clothes. I hold her up in the shower, washing her breasts, so swollen and sensitive. She moans every time my fingers brush her sweet nips. She moans when I lather her engorged clit, her wet pussy lips. She’s half delirious, tired, overwhelmed. I’d fuck her again but I’m not an animal.
At least not right now.
Chapter Eight
Selena
We both lie in my bed, spent from what was, by all accounts, the most brutal and most satisfying sexual encounter I’ve ever had.
Why did I like it? What about being bent over and fucked without warning would ever, in a thousand years, be satisfying to me? I think I’m losing it.
But it was satisfying. I liked it; just like I liked the way he spanked me and ate me out the night before. What the hell is wrong with me that I want this man like I do? He’s a brute. He’s probably a criminal—maybe not Sergei-level, but he’s certainly got some shady shit going on. He’s practically holding me hostage over debt that’s not even mine.
But here we are, naked on my bed, and I feel like I could fuck him seven more times and not be totally satisfied. I would want more. Of him. Of his body. Of his fingers and his cock and his lips.
I want him to kiss me. How messed up is that?
He’s calm now. Calmer than when I came home. I dare a look at him and find him staring at me. He doesn’t look happy, but he also doesn’t look upset. He’s really hard to read.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
“I’m thinking that I need you to understand that we’re in this together. That I trust you with this. That you should trust me. I’ll get you out of this mess. You and your baby can start over somewhere. I’ll make sure of it. You’ll be free when this is all over.”
“Those are big words, big promises,” I say. “Pardon me if I don’t take much stock in the promises of men. My husband made promises when he gave me his wedding vows and we know how that worked out.”
“Well, your husband was a piece of shit, and I’ve never lied to you,” he says.
My doorbell rings. I ordered pizza to be delivered, thinking if someone was watching the house, they would have to report back that I hung out in my pajamas and ate pizza alone all night.
I throw on my pajamas quickly and shuffle out to the door, accepting the pizza and taking it back into the bedroom. I make another trip, grabbing myself some water and a beer for Finn. We eat on my bed, not talking. I end up turning on the television just to fill the space between us.
After a while, I gather the courage to ask, “Do you … have someone? Like a girlfriend?”
He chuckles at this. “No,” he says. “I don’t make those kinds of investments in people. They always fuck you over.”
“That’s true,” I say, “But you never wanted to have, like, a person? Your person?”
“Sure, when I was younger,” he says. “Learned the hard way.”
“Got your heart broken?” I ask.
He grunts and turns the volume up on the television.
“Message received,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Conversation over.”
“Look,” he says, “I said we’re in this together, not that we’re friends.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say, shaking my head. “Got it.”
He dozes off a little while later but I can’t sleep. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to sleep again.
***
Finn
I wake up and it’s the middle of the night. I’m naked on top of Selena’s bed and she’s nowhere to be found. Fuck. My first thought is that she’s run off, disappeared. I throw on my pants and a shirt and wander her apartment, looking out the front window and finding the guy who’s supposed to be watching her for Kovolov totally asleep in his car. Great job, buddy.
I see the back door is slightly open, so I peek out, expecting her to be long gone, but there she sits, shivering in her flimsy pajamas, on the back stoop.
As I take a seat next to her, I take off my shirt and put it around her shoulders. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“No,” she says softly.
“Wanna talk about it?” I ask.
“I’m not sure where I’d even start,” she says.
“At the beginning, I suppose. We got all night.”
She nods and makes a sound that’s kind of like a frustrated laugh. “Well, I married Matt because I loved the idea of being married to a big Wall Street trader. I thought it would be so glamorous. And for a while, it was. For a few years it was really fun. We’d just get on a plane and fly to Mexico for a party. We’d fuck and fight and make up and drink ourselves into a stupor. Then we’d fly home. I’d go out with other Wall Street wives, we’d go to the spa, get our hair done, shop. It felt like, you know, the best life. For a while.”
“And then he started staying out later, not coming home at all,” I guess.
“Yeah. He’d call and obviously be out somewhere, drunk. Too drunk to drive home. Refused to use the subway or a fucking taxicab. That fucking car. I hate it,” she says.
“It’s not the car’s fault,” I say.
“No,” she says, resigned. “It’s not. But he’d just get in it and go. He’d just be gone. Wouldn’t answer my texts. One time he was gone for three fucking days. Three days. He showed back up and said something about he went out to Jersey for a party and his car broke down. I hit him. I punched him, and we ended up trashing half the house. Then we fucked and he said he knew he needed to get his act together. He promised he loved me, told me I could get a job if I wanted. Told me he wanted me to be happy. The next day he brought me this fucking bracelet from Tiffany’s. Fucking asshole.”
“When did he leave?” I ask.
“Maybe six months later?” She scratches her chin. “He got, like, manic. Manic? I don’t know. Kind of hyped up? I thought he might be on drugs and that might still be true, but now I think maybe it was panic. His debts were all closing in; he was getting closer to having to fess up to his addiction, the gambling, the spending. He yelled at me for buying a new purse, as if he’d ever given a shit what I spent money on before. And then he was just gone. Poof. Didn’t take hardly any of his stuff. Didn’t say goodbye. Just gone.”
“Do you have anyone else? Friends?” I ask.
“I mean, yes, no. My friends were mostly the wives of men he worked with. When he just ghosted on his work, they pretty much ghosted me, too. He’s on the blacklist for whatever shit he did at work. Embezzlement for sure, the FBI came looking for him. I passed the polygraph and they pretty much left me alone.”
“How’d you end up with Kovolov?” I ask.
“Well, my credit cards started being declined so I figured I’d better get a job and quick or I’d be moving back in with Mom and Dad. Which would not be awesome, for lots of reasons. I put in applications all over town, got no responses because, duh, I have no work experience. I wandered into his office, not knowing what they did, and he looked me over, made me turn a circle, and said I could start right away. Apparently, his last secretary quit without notice.”
“So you and your parents don’t get along?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “My dad thought Matt was a saint; my mom hated him. Neither of them think much of me. I’m a disappointment.”
“I know how that feels,” I admit. “Never feeling like you live up to your parents’ expectations of you.”
“Your parents still around?” she asks.
“My mom,” I say. “My dad died fifteen years back. I took over his payday loan joint. Grew it into what I do now. My mom thinks it’s an insult to his memory.”
“Was that a bit of personal information you just shared with me, Finn O’Hare?” she asks, nudging me with her shoulder.
“No,” I say, holding back a grin.
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“Next you’ll be telling me all about the love you had and lost,” she says.
“Never,” I say.
“You know, you are a human being,” she says. “You’re allowed a human emotion every once in a while.”
“Too messy,” I say. “Especially in my line of work. Can’t get soft or I’d be broke. Everyone’s got a sob story. Everyone needs more time, needs help, needs a break. I’m not in the business of giving breaks. I loan money, I charge interest, I get paid back. If it doesn’t work in that order, someone gets screwed or hurt. No room for emotion to cloud things.”
