Serafin: Social Rejects Syndicate (Kings of Krakow Trilogy Book 1)

by Deja Voss

  9

  Serafin:

  I wait in my study, watching on my surveillance camera as she walks down the steps behind Maria.

  It looks like she’s floating, her hair tucked in a bun high up on her head, almost like a halo. My perfect angel. The dress fits her perfectly, managing to somehow cover every sacred inch of her flesh but accentuate her curves at the same time. I get hard thinking about what she has on underneath there.

  I laugh at the clunky combat boots on her feet, and I probably should’ve had a pair of shoes for her, but I like her this way. It’s who she’s always been, perfect with a hint of rebellion. Kept, but untamed. I’m not even hungry for the five course meal I picked out for us. The only thing I want to taste is her lips, her flesh, her pussy. I’ve been craving her since the day I met her, and now, after all these years I’m completely starved.

  I roll up the sleeves on my black button down and take a glance in the mirror. She hasn’t said anything about my eye yet, but maybe she’s just being polite. My parents spent a ton of money on plastic surgery trying to preserve my looks after the attack, but every day of my life since then, I’ve lived with the scars. Learning to see with one fake eye was difficult, but not impossible. It cost a fortune ensuring my new eye looks and moves just like my old one, but I can’t help but feel like a disfigured freak every time I look at myself.

  She still hasn’t seen the mangled flesh of my ankle and calf, she still doesn’t know I only have seven toes. Even with dim lights and a couple glasses of wine, it’s still clear as day I’m damaged.

  Maybe that’s why she left and never looked back. Nobody had any faith that I’d be able to pull through the attack, especially not without a lot of long term damage.

  Maybe she left because she was afraid that something bad was going to happen to her, too. This life isn’t for everyone, and if I can’t even keep myself safe, how could she expect me to protect her?

  Hypotheticals aren’t what I’m after anymore. I’ve had twelve long years to play out every maybe that popped into my mind. Tonight, I want answers.

  I watch as she nervously wanders through the dining room, her brow furrowing as she runs her fingers over the pictures of my late father and mother on the mantel. They never liked her, but they never had the chance to know her like I did. They were never willing to give her a chance. I wonder if my mom would change her mind about Mia if she saw her incredible painting hanging from the wall. The woman has an eye for art, her talent obvious. There’s something about that painting that makes me feel both sad and in awe at the same time, kind of like the way I feel when I’m with Mia.

  Except that painting is permanent.

  Mia could slip away at any minute.

  She slaps her hand over her mouth and gasps, jumping back a few feet when she sees it framed and hanging in the corner, a light shining down over it. That smile on her face is something I would spend every last dime I had to see forever. Knowing it’s my fault in the first place makes me feel human for a minute.

  I straighten my tie and walk down the long hallway, standing outside the room for a moment just so I can soak in her beauty. It overwhelms me. It catches me off guard.

  “Wow,” she says before doing a flirty catcall when she spots me. “You clean up nice, Serafin.”

  I walk over to her, taking her elbows in my hands and she shivers at my touch.

  “Are you cold?” I ask, knowing those aren’t goosebumps from the temperature. They’re mine. I gave them to her.

  She bats her long eyelashes. “Thank you for the beautiful dress. You really didn’t have to.”

  I guide her to the chair by the table, placing my hand on the small of her back. The way the dress hugs her ass, accentuating her every step makes my skin hot all over. I pull out her chair for her and she sits down.

  “I have been trying to buy you that dress for twelve years,” I say. “You wouldn’t let me back then. Now, you don’t have a choice.” I sit down at the table across from her and she leans in, her eyes getting thinner. She twists her lips into a smug grin.

  “So that’s how you get what you want? You take away people’s choices?”

  I uncork a bottle of red wine. I’m not a fan of the stuff, I’m more of a vodka guy myself, but the chef says this is the best pairing for the feast he made for us tonight. I slowly pour her a glass.

  “You have plenty of choices, misiu. Nobody locked you in that bedroom. You could walk out the door any minute. You could leave right now and you know it.” I bite my lip and smile, and she picks up her glass of wine and puts it to her lips, her eyes never leaving mine.

  “I’d only be exchanging one prison for another if I did that,” she says with a shrug. “At least this one has a private bathroom.”

  I chug down my glass of wine and stare at the ground. I know I haven’t exactly been around the last few days, but I’ve been trying to clean up the mess she made with Jakub and doing extra favors to make sure the cops stay off her trail.

  Plus, I was trying to save myself the heartache of her inevitable rejection, which she obviously is about to deliver on a silver platter.

  “I’m kidding, Serafin,” she says. “I appreciate what you’re doing for me. I don’t know why you’d want to after everything I put you through, but I appreciate it. I swear I’ll do whatever it takes to pay Jakub back. And you, too. For your kindness.”

  She reaches across the table and grabs my hand, and it all comes washing over me again. Her touch has always been a special sort of magic. It’s like when her fingers are on my flesh, she turns me into a better person, a kinder person, like being wrapped in a security blanket where the evils of the world just melt away. It’s fucking goofy, but even twelve years hasn’t been able to change that feeling.

  I squeeze her hand back, and I can’t help but imagine what it would look like with a giant rock on her ring finger. Mine. My leg travels under the table and I graze the inside of her calve with my foot.

  “You like my boots?” she asks with a chuckle.

  “They were an appropriate choice. If you knew what was going on in my mind right now, you’d probably want to kick my ass,” I say, licking my lips.

  It’s like a lifetime has gone by, but no time has gone by at all. Everything feels exactly the same as it did, but everything is different. There’s a whole world between us, but in this moment I feel closer to her than ever. She’s a totally different person, and so I am I, but the familiarity, the lust, the pure love in my heart I have for her is exactly the same.

  “Maybe not,” she says, raising her eyebrows. “The night is young.”

  I put my fist to my mouth and shake my head. In the worst possible example of bad timing, my chef walks into the room in his pristine black and red coat, followed by two servers with trays in their arms.

  Mia watches wide eyed as the servers set up food on the trays behind them.

  “Do you do this like… every night?” she asks in a whisper.

  “Only when he’s entertaining a very important guest,” he says, shooting me a wink. “Normally Serafin takes his dinner in his office. Or on the run.”

  One of the servers places plates in front of us with giant shrimp on a bed of greens with some sort of sauce drizzled all over it. Mia groans like I imagine she would if she was about to get off, and I smile politely as I dismiss them, hoping the next course brings more of that groaning.

  “Oh shit, do you want to pray or something?” she asks, clutching her fork in her hand like she’s planning on using it as a stabbing device.

  “You still do that?”

  She nods. “Maybe not as much as I should. I’d probably catch on fire if I set foot in a church right now.”

  “If you knew what was going on behind the scenes there, you’d probably be amazed they’re not all up in flames,” I say with a laugh. She swirls her shrimp around the plate, coating it in the decadent sauce and pops it into her mouth, closing her eyes as she chews.

  “You probably think I’m a low c
lass slob,” she says, laughing as she picks up another prawn on her fork. “I’m just not used to eating like this. That night I saw you at the casino, Janka and I were going to hit up the buffet after our job and stuff our purses with food to eat for the next week, and that’s living it up in my world.”

  “You put steaks and potatoes and shit like right in your purse?” I ask. “Just drop them in there?”

  She shrugs, crossing her eyes as she takes another bite. I hang my head and laugh. I hope she doesn’t think I’m judging her. I know exactly how privileged I am. I just think it’s hysterical she was going to run all over town with a bag of cooked meat.

  “You know you could’ve always reached out, Mia. You know I’d always be more than happy to help you, no questions asked.”

  She wipes at the side of her mouth with a napkin and rolls her eyes. We both start laughing so hard, chef Tymon looks alarmed when he comes in the room with the second course.

  “Am I allowed to ask what’s so funny?”

  “I just tried to tell Mia I wasn’t an obsessive compulsive control freak with a straight face,” I say.

  A laugh escapes his lips, and he hangs his head and blushes as the servers clear our plates and replace them with bowls of creamy truffle topped polenta. I’m not even going to tell her she’s about to devour eighty dollars worth of mushrooms. She’d probably try and put them in her pocket for a rainy day. God, I fucking love this girl.

  “I really do wish we didn’t go so long without each other,” I say as soon as they leave the room. “I’ve always liked taking care of you. I always wanted to spoil you. I always saw who you really were, Mia, a woman who deserved the world on a silver platter. I would’ve given you everything.”

  “I know, Serafin.” She sets her spoon down and leans over the table, studying my face. “And all I ever wanted was to be the kind of woman who didn’t need the world handed to her.”

  “You never had a fighting chance. You never got to put yourself first. You can’t rightly tell me you thought you were going to make a life for yourself working for minimum wage at the bakery eighty hours a week. You can’t rightly tell me that made you happy.”

  “It did. Those were the happiest days of my life, to be honest. The bakery didn’t pay well, but every night I knew I was going to be able to take home enough food that my brothers and sisters wouldn’t have to go hungry for another day. It was like hitting the jackpot. They got to stuff their faces with foods my parents could never afford to buy for them. I know it wasn’t healthy but at least they weren’t sickly and starving anymore.”

  I gulp, feeling the heat rising to my face. “You’ve always had a heart of gold, Mia. That wasn’t your burden to bear, though. If your father was a real man, you’d never be in that position to begin with. If he wasn’t such a lazy piece of shit drunk…” I trail off as soon as she starts grimacing. “I should’ve taken care of him when I had the chance.”

  “You were just a kid, too, Serafin. You shouldn’t have had to take care of anybody, but you took such good care of me. All the adventures you took me on, the movies we went and saw, the afternoons we spent in the parks and the museums and just running around like two careless kids, that’s what I lived for. I felt so light and free when I was with you. I didn’t want your money or your gifts, all I wanted was the way you made me feel like I wasn’t trapped in this existence my parents brought me into.”

  Her face gets all pink and splotchy, and she takes her napkin from her lap and dabs at her eyes.

  I feel like a huge piece of shit for making her cry, but I need to know the truth about what happened that night. If she really did love me as much as she said she did, why did she disappear without a trace?

  As if she can read my mind, she puts her hands on the table and leans in. “I should’ve told you this a long time ago, but I was afraid,” she whispers. “I tried to go see you in the hospital. Your parents wouldn’t let me in the room.”

  “They probably didn’t want you to see me like that, Mia. I was in really bad shape. I was mangled beyond recognition and they weren’t even sure I was going to survive. I wasn’t allowed any visitors for months. It was probably hospital protocol or something. It wasn’t anything against you.” It’s probably not the whole truth. My parents didn’t want Mia anywhere near me, even after I was well enough to have visitors. Every time I asked about her, they told me she was gone. Even Fabian and Rafal told me she disappeared without a trace, and I know they would’ve snuck her in if they had the opportunity.

  “They showed up at my house the next day with a lawyer, Serafin,” she says. “I came home from work and your parents and my parents were signing all these documents. I tried to stop them but I was a minor still. I had no say.”

  “What are you talking about, Mia?” The room suddenly feels a lot smaller. I stare at the picture of my parents on the mantel, the vein in my neck bulging out.

  “I’m not supposed to tell you this. I signed a document. If your parents knew I was here talking to you right now, they could take me to court.” She’s whispering, her hands trembling as she looks over her shoulder. “They gave me and my parents a lot of money to stay away from you. They paid for me to go to art school. They bought my parents a house in Sopat so long as they promised to move from Krakow and never come back. I’m not supposed to be anywhere near you.”

  I laugh out loud, waiting for her to tell me the punchline of this joke. My parents might be white collar criminals, but they wouldn’t have spent the last twelve years of my life lying to me, watching me fall into a dark depression over a woman they paid off. My father doted on me while he was alive, and my mother always wanted the best for me, even to this day.

  She stands up from the table, folding her napkin before placing it on her plate.

  “You’re not kidding,” I mutter.

  I don’t know what’s more painful, thinking she walked out on me, or finding out my life has been a lie. I don’t even know where to start unraveling this disaster. I grab my glass of wine and throw it at the wall across the room, watching it shatter to the floor.

  “You probably think I’m a monster, taking the money and abandoning you when you needed me, Serafin. I was only trying to do what’s right by my family. There was no way they would’ve ever got anywhere in this world without your parents’ help. Besides, we both knew your parents would never let you end up with a girl like me. It didn’t take a signed contract to make that obvious.”

  “Mia, do you know what that means? Do you understand how fucked up that is? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “I’m sorry,” she blurts out.

  She rushes out the room and up the stairs before I can stop her, brushing past the chef carrying another course of food. The sound of the door slamming echos through the whole house making me feel suddenly very alone in this world.

  It wasn’t her job to fight for me. It was my job to fight for her. I might not be able to change the past, but from this day forward, nobody’s ever getting in between the two of us again. Not her parents, not my parents, not Janka or her dead beat ex husband. If my father taught me anything, it was how to fix problems and make bad situations go away, and now, thanks to him, I’m going to be putting those skills to the test. Never again will anyone make Mia feel like she doesn’t have a choice.

  As long as in the end, her choice is me.

  10

  Serafin:

  “I’m so glad you called, love. I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages,” my mother says as she pulls her handkerchief out of her pocket and begins dusting off the picture frames on the mantel. “This is unacceptable. Whoever is doing your cleaning needs a talking to.”

  “Mom, stop,” I say. “Sit down. You want a drink?”

  I haven’t seen my mother in a few months. She spent the winter traveling the world with her other rich widow friends, sightseeing and cruise hopping.

  I know her life really didn’t start until after my father died, and somehow she looks even younger th
an she did at his funeral. I guess that’s what happens when you have nothing to be stressed out about anymore with more money than you could possibly burn through in a lifetime. Between plastic surgeries, spa trips, and six month long vacations, my mother is living her best life.

  It still doesn’t stop her from being a raging bitch towards the hired help, though, apparently. I always secretly suspected it actually makes her happy flexing her status over others.

  “I need to talk to you about something.” I motion for her to sit down at the table across from me, but she keeps pacing around the room, like she’s purposely avoiding a conversation with me.

  There’s no way she could know what I brought her here for. Mia is at her first day of work at Jakub’s office. I haven’t talked to her since last night, and only caught of glimpse of her getting in the town car this morning, her short black slip dress a little too over the top for my liking, even though it fit her body just right. All of Jakub’s secretaries wear the same thing, though. I know she wants to pay off her debt on her own, so unless there’s an actual problem, I’m not going to intervene with her work life.

  I am however, fully prepared to intervene with her personal life. Especially because it overlaps with mine in such an intricate and familial way.

  “Who did this painting?” she asks, spying Mia’s canvas on the wall. “It looks like you’ve finally developed a less macabre taste. Maybe you could replace some of those with more by this artist.” She points to my Gothic collection hanging nearby, Jan van Eyck’s Crucifiction hanging in the center, in all it’s macabre dead bodies and skeletal glory.

  “You’d like that? If I traded in my Fuseli for some more stuff by this artist?”

  “I don’t see why not.” She cocks her head as she studies the painting. “You can tell whoever painted this is a very well trained artist.”

  “I would hope so,” I say, trying to contain my laughter. “You paid for her schooling with my inheritance.”