by Deja Voss
“No, a man … a boy gave it to me… a long time ago. It was very expensive back then. Trust me, he told me all about it. I’m sure it’s worth even more now.”
“He sounds about as creepy as your ex husband. Real men don’t rub how much stuff costs in your face.”
Serafin wasn’t creepy, he was just… a lot. More than I could handle in my younger days. He showered me in expensive gifts, not because he was trying to show off his wealth, but because he was trying to show me how much I was worth in his eyes, trying to make me feel I was worth that much. At least, that’s what I told myself.
“Is it somebody I know?”
Janka might be my best friend now, but she has no idea where I came from.
My life before Serafin’s incident was something I never spoke of to anyone.
Back before art school when I was basically a peasant, working my ass off at the bakery, barely passing high school, and just trying to support my alcoholic father, my chronically ill mother, and my six siblings.
His parents paid us off to keep our mouths shut about that night. They gave my parents enough money to retire quietly in the country side. They put me through art school. I had to promise I would never go near their son again, which was painful because deep down, I truly loved him, but he was just a boy. Just a crush. Just a temporary teenage fixation. My family was supposed to be forever.
Then I divorced a police officer and they washed their hands of me faster than I could snap my fingers.
Maybe the smell of the perfume is making me sentimental but I reach for a tissue from my vanity and try to dab my mascara before it starts running down my face.
“Was he hot? Or was he just rich and trying to compensate?” She flops down on my bed and kicks her bright red high heels off over the edge, resting her chin in her hand like she’s waiting for story time to start. Janka lives for juicy love stories. She eat sleeps and breathes drama and gossip.
“We were just kids, Janka. I don’t know if he was hot. Back then I thought he was, but maybe that’s because he was the only person who ever paid attention to me.”
“I bet he was so hot. And he had good taste in perfume. What the hell? Why did you break up with him? Was he secretly gay? Did he cheat on you? Did you cheat on him?”
“He had a dark side,” I say.
She raises her perfectly penciled on eyebrows and I just shake my head.
Her phone begins to vibrate her way across my bed with a loud angry siren sound blaring from it. “We better get going,” she says.
I fix my mascara and spray my head down with another blast of hairspray. I go to my closet and pull out a long blue wool peacoat and button it all the way up. It comes almost down to my ankles. There’s no way I’m traipsing the streets of Krakow looking like a slutty disco ball.
She fixes her tight black mini dress in the mirror. It barely covers her ass cheeks, and when she bends over to turn off my curling iron, I can see her bright pink lace panties. I know she doesn’t plan on showing them to our client, but Janka never leaves the house without sexy lingerie on. She says you never know what might happen. Whether she’s going to the grocery store or the gym that woman is always ready for a wild time.
I wish I had an ounce of her adventurousness. I’m sure there’s not one person on the planet that would be impressed with my blue cotton boy shorts.
I dump everything out of my big messenger bag, making room for whatever I can pilfer from the buffet and the mini bar in the hotel room, and I grab a little wad of cash from the coffee can I keep tucked in the back of my closet for emergencies. I know dumping it into a slot machine is probably not the most responsible thing to do, but hopefully this job will pay out nicely, and if it doesn’t, hopefully I’ll hit the jackpot.
We both do a shot of vodka straight from the bottle.
It’s the only way I can live with the reality that is my right now. I’m broke. I divorced a powerful man who took everything I had to my name away from me, including my reputation and career.
I’m a thirty year old woman living with a roommate doing con jobs to make a living.
I’m a big old loser living day to day, hand to mouth, and I’m fully aware of it. I’m also a drunk. It’s the only way I can slap this shitty fake smile on my face and roll out of bed.
I know it’s going to get better. I just need to save up enough to get a place of my own. As soon as I can get out of this toxic environment, maybe I can will myself to be a little less toxic myself.
It doesn’t even burn anymore, it just makes me warm enough inside that I’m ready to go. I push open the door to our apartment and look down the grim gray hallway that reeks like old cigarette smoke and feral cats while Janka locks the door behind us. She grabs me by the hand and I don’t love the way she’s teetering as she steps. She’s the one with all the details of the job. I need her in control and laser focused.
“You gonna be alright?” I ask.
She takes off running towards the steps without missing a beat. Maybe I’m just being paranoid. She flips her long black hair over her shoulder and smiles her knockout smile, and I nearly trip over my feet trying to catch up with her in my clunky boots.
“I’m gonna be a lot better when we get back here with a fistful of cash!”
Fistful of cash is a good start. I’m gonna need a lot more than that to get back on my feet, though. Fistful of cash, slot machine jackpot, divine intervention… I don’t know what, but as we slide into the back seat of the black town car waiting out front for us, I can’t help but feel like tonight might be the night where I finally get lucky.
3
Serafin:
“He’s a fucking disaster.” Jakub Pawlak paces back and forth, dabbing at his forehead with a bright yellow silk handkerchief. “Nobody can get him under control. It’s only a matter of time before he fucks up beyond belief and ruins it all.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, man,” I say, trying to feign interest as I watch his client, Fillip, the lead singer of the most popular rock band Onyks, wander through the casino taking drinks out of people’s hands and chugging them down. Everybody seems pretty amused by his antics. “It’s not my job to rehabilitate them, Jakub. I just clean up the messes they make. Nothing I’m seeing here suggests he’s doing anything but living like a guy who has more money than God and less brains than a rock.”
I could care less about this cocky little prick making an ass out of himself. It’s what rock stars do. Jakub should know that, he’s an agent. He’s one of my best and oldest clients, though, so I’m doing my best to humor him.
“You want me to have security grab him?” I ask. “Bring him back here and I’ll rough him up a little bit? Is that what you’re asking me to do?”
It’s been a long time since I got my hands dirty. Ever since I inherited my father’s position as a King, I barely have to take a shower and brush my teeth. Jakub asked for me personally though, and I figured I owed it to him. For old time sake. To make sure he stays our client and doesn’t start looking for other options. He’s put a lot of money in our pockets over the last fifty years because the man seems to always represent some of the worst of the worst, and I don’t want to see that go elsewhere.
“No, I’m just asking you to keep an eye on him. Maybe get one of your guys to follow him around? There’s been some disturbing allegations coming from some of my sources lately, and I just want to make sure we stay on top of it.”
“You know how this shit works, Jakub. What sources, and what allegations?” I need to know exactly what I’m working with. We can fix a lot of things, cover up a lot of shit, but there are some things that are completely off limits, no matter what kind of cash gets thrown our way.
“You’ve known me long enough to know I would never put you in a situation that violates your ethical standards, Mr. Mazur.” He rolls his eyes at me, reminding me just how low my ethical standards are. I didn’t invent the game. I didn’t make the rules, I just play by them. “I promise, it will be
well worth the effort.”
Putting one of my men on babysitting duty for this scrawny weirdo doesn’t exactly sound like a lucrative gig, but I promise him I’ll make good on it. I watch the wall of security screens for another minute, when something catches my attention out of the corner of my eye.
A woman with long black hair and a dress so short it barely contains her ass approaches Fillip. Janka has been on my radar for a long time. Her history of petty crime has gotten her tangled up with some of my clients on more than one occasion. Wherever she goes, trouble follows.
I just didn’t expect that trouble to come in the form of a woman who looks eerily like Mia.
I move closer to the screen, thinking maybe I’m just seeing things. Even though I have adapted pretty well to only having one eye thanks to that night some goons came and shook me down to get revenge on my dad, I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to believe what I’m seeing. Or maybe it’s because I’ve dreamed of this day over and over and don’t want to admit it to myself that it could truly finally be happening.
She hugs her arms around her body tightly, closing herself off from the conversation going on in front of her, looking over her shoulder like she’s waiting for something to happen while Janka throws herself at the nerdy rockstar. It’s definitely her. I can tell by the way she bites her lip. I can tell by the way she looks exactly like I remembered her that night, like she hasn’t aged a day in the last twelve years.
I want to go and grab her away from that seedy scumbag Janka, but before I can blink, she’s wandering over to a slot machine and fishing around in her purse and pulling out a wad of cash.
Janka and Fillip exchange phone numbers and a dramatic kiss, and she disappears from the view of the cameras, but I’m only focused on one thing. The one that got away. The only woman I ever came close to loving. The woman who broke my heart beyond repair. My little misiu.
*“You ready, man?” Fabian sneaks up behind me, jarring me from my thoughts. “The limo’s waiting.”
“I don’t feel like it, Fabian,” I say. “Not tonight.”
“Yes, tonight,” he insists. “It’s your thirtieth birthday for fucks sake. You never go out with us. We rented Club Taboo for the night. Magda and the girls have this whole fucking thing all planned out for you. Who skips their own surprise party?”
“Who calls it a surprise party when I already know about it?”
“At least act surprised when we get there.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He looks disappointed, and I feel like shit. I don’t like disappointing my best friend. I haven’t felt like doing anything with him lately. Ever since he started hooking up with Magda, I’ve found myself doing whatever I can to avoid him. Seeing him in love just reminds me of how I’m destined to spend the rest of my fucking life alone. I feel bad for him, knowing someday he’s going to end up just like me, or worse, just like my parents.
“Fine, I’ll meet up with you in a little bit. I promise,” I say. He doesn’t look too confident in me, shaking his head and shoving his hands in his pocket.
“What are you looking at anyway?” he asks, walking over to the wall of screens. “Jakub got you on babysitting duty?”
I can’t tear my gaze away from Mia. She takes her time with the machine, swiveling in her stool, flagging down waitresses and sucking down cocktails like she’s dying of thirst. I don’t like seeing her out there all by herself. Something inside me still wants to protect her after all these years. Guess it’s better than seeing her out there with a man.
“Is that… holy shit…” Fabian mutters. “I knew she was back in Krakow, but I really never thought we were going to run into her.”
“You knew she was back in Krakow?” I ask, clenching my fist by my side. I never spoke much of Mia after I went to the hospital. I kept waiting for her to show up, Lord knows I was in there damn near a year, but she never did. I figured it was for the best. Still, Fabian knew how much I loved that woman.
“It’s called social media, ya geezer. Maybe if you got a smart phone instead of whatever that is you’ve been carrying around for the last fifteen years you’d know she was freshly divorced and living in an apartment in the city with her best friend Janka.”
“You should’ve told me,” I growl.
“Why? Are you gonna do something about it or are you just gonna shut everybody out for another year while you lick your wounds and bark orders from your house?” He pats me on the back with a twisted smirk on his face. I flick him off because I know he’s right. “Go ask her to come to the party tonight. It’s no big deal. There’s gonna be enough people there if things aren’t going good you can just disappear and she won’t even notice.”
I always had a feeling I would run into her again someday, but dragging her to some sex club filled with sleazy strippers my brothers hired to entertain me for my birthday doesn’t exactly seem like the best place to talk about what happened all those years ago.
Then again, maybe it’s exactly what I need to do to make her feel the hurt she made me feel. Make her feel jealousy or rage, let her see what she lost out on when she walked out on me when I was at my worst. How rich and powerful I am. How I own this fucking city.
Too bad Mia was never the type of woman who fell for that.
“You better go get her,” he says with a nod. “Looks like she’s leaving.”
I breathe a sigh of relief as she moves down a couple seats and sits down at another slot machine.
“This is a terrible fucking idea,” I say.
He winks and zips his jacket up. “That’s what birthdays are for.” He slaps me on the back and walks out the door.
4
Mia:
I dig at the bottom of my purse, hoping to find a couple more random crumpled up bills to stuff in the slot machine, doing everything in my power to resist the urge to just pull out my credit card. I probably should’ve just waited in the lobby for Janka to give me the signal, read a magazine or something to pass the time instead of giving in to my addiction.
The cocktail waitress hasn’t come by in awhile, but she’s probably on to the fact that I’m just here for the free drinks. It’s obvious by the crappy tips I’ve been leaving her that I’m no high roller.
I pull out my cellphone, thinking maybe I should text Janka and make sure everything is going alright, and as I go to pull up her name, I feel a hand on my shoulder. I swivel in my stool and maybe it’s the drinks but it takes my brain a minute to process what my eyes are seeing.
He’s much more muscular than I remember, his arms straining up against his tight black t-shirt. His hair is shorter, stylishly trimmed and spiked just a little bit in the front, like he’s going for the just rolled out of bed look but in a sexy way. He has a five o’clock shadow that only enhances the cut of his jaw. Maybe he wasn’t ‘hot’ back when we were eighteen, but he’s definitely a sight to behold now, and yet, everything in me is telling me to run away.
“Serafin?” I whisper, staring into his eyes, trying to contain my shock. I always knew there was a chance I’d run into him when I moved back to Krakow, but the city is so big, and I rarely go anywhere. I didn’t think it would happen so soon.
“It’s been a long time, Mia,” he says. God, his voice is much deeper than I remembered, much richer and sexier.
“Yes.” I am completely at a loss for words. Everything about this man standing in front of me is overwhelming. Feelings from the past start flooding through me like jolts of electricity, from the way he always cared for me and spoiled me, to the fateful night where I watched him get attacked in an alleyway before my eyes, to the day his parents made me sign a piece of paper saying I’d never come within ten yards of him, and I’d never speak of what I witnessed that night.
“I know that smell,” he says.
“Vodka and tonic? I’ve had a couple,” I say nervously, hoping that cracking a joke will make the air in this room feel a little less heavy.
&
nbsp; “No, the perfume. Haven’t smelled that in ages.”
My heart races. The perfume he bought me. “I always liked it. You always did have excellent taste, Serafin. You spoiled me rotten.”
I can’t tell by the expression on his face whether he wants to kiss me or kill me. My heart is racing so fast, I don’t know if I want to run away and pretend like this never happened or if I want to fling myself at him, fling myself back into the place I was before we split and I was just some innocent flirt working at the bakery.
I know the kind of people his family are. I know they’re killers, dangerous, wealthy, and powerful. Getting tangled up with Serafin is like playing with fire, and my life is already like living in a house that’s burning down.
When he wraps his arms around me and hugs me tight, we’re the only two people in this room. The ringing sounds of the slot machines, the shitty band playing covers from the 1970s, the murmur of the crowd, it all fades away. It’s just him and I against the world, just like it used to be…
and I feel like I’m going to be sick.
I pull away as I stand up from my stool and smooth my jacket. I’m suddenly hot and cold at the same time. I feel like I’m being stabbed in the stomach, but my heels are too high and my legs are too wobbly to run. I want nothing more than to stay in this moment and pretend like everything is alright, but my body is rejecting it on every level.
“How are you? How have you been?” I ask, trying to act like a normal human being who has their shit together, and not somebody who can’t figure out up from down.
“It’s been twelve years, Mia. I don’t think small talk is gonna cut it.” He stares right through me like he can’t figure out if he hates me or loves me, and I don’t blame him. We are well past the point of niceties, and in this moment I want to go off the deep end with him. Sink to the fucking bottom. I want to know everything and rip my heart out and hand it to him all over again, even though I know that’s probably the worst thing for me.
