8. Fyodor
CHAPTER 8
FYODOR
The lights change, dimming the audience and bar while illuminating the stage. My sons have packed the room tight with the dregs of society. Dark web creeps ready to piece and part these girls out for whatever uses they have. My skin crawls at being near them. The fact my sons are specifically appealing to them weighs on my gut. Don’t we have enough sins piled on our shoulders?
The announcer steps out. He’s from lower in the organization, but no one I would ever give an important task to. Maybe he’s friends with my younger son or just lacking strong loyalty to me. My senior men have taken issue with the turn in leadership. There’s been a lot of wondering and talking about their judgment and my own. If I were a younger man, I might do something violent to shut them up, but now, I realize how valuable loyal men are, even ones who occasionally talk shit.
The fool I wouldn’t trust with my groceries greets the room in Russian. His tongue struggles with the syllables he doesn’t often pronounce, but he does look Russian. Maybe he knows the curses his mother spat at him but not much more. He glances in my direction as if it was done for my approval. And while I don’t approve, I appreciate a show of respect—acknowledging who I am and what my presence means.
I nod at him ever so slightly, my opinion of him raised. He quickly switches to English and explains the rules for the evening, how winning bids are to be paid, and where to collect the winnings.
A frenetic energy passes through the crowd, and I’m tempted to go find my sons in the office to make sure they don’t have their noses in a line of blow. It’s been a while since I’ve caught them using or heard word they were, but it would be foolish to trust them completely. Then again, someone needs to pay attention to what’s going on out here, and it’s not them.
The kid announces the first girl for sale tonight. “Twenty-seven, natural blonde, clean.”
A middle-aged woman with a nasty look on her face leads a shaking, strung-out “natural blonde” onto the stage. This must be the “experienced hand” they borrowed from a friend who trades skin. My spies still keep me informed, so the boys are careful with what they tell their men, but I still find out. Her posture threatens violence, which doesn’t seem necessary given her state. The girl’s eyes slide incessantly back and forth, unable to keep her attention off the woman for too long. Despite them admitting she’s in her mid-twenties, she’s dressed to appear like she’s in her teens. She would be an attractive woman if she got the help she needs. Unfortunately, that won’t be happening here.
An uncomfortable feeling lurks in my gut. Something about selling people doesn’t and never has sat right with me, but my son’s words echo in my head. How exactly is a nuclear bomb better? I decide that it isn’t as I drink and consider the kind of men I’ve raised them to be, the kind of man I have been. Have I changed? I certainly haven’t shaken the weight of my sins.
The shaking junkie only goes for twenty thousand. A look of extreme fear flashes across her face. Whoever put her up for sale was expecting quite a lot more, but she shouldn’t worry about them now. Her old pimp, or whoever put her up tonight, can’t rightfully lay a hand on her anymore. She’s not their property. The handler grips her upper arm, digging her nails into her skin as she urges her toward the stairs. She drags her to the bottom before stuffing her into a room to the left.
A man younger than my sons, with grease-slicked hair and a distinct lack of sun exposure, stands and walks off to meet her, impatient. The desperation is part of the reason these events disgust me so much. Not one single person in here—the girls or the men—isn’t pathetically desperate. I’d rather be dead than be one of them.
Two more girls sell. These go for a hundred and then two hundred thousand dollars. I’m not paying much attention to anything but my drink and where my sons have gone off to when they finally emerge from the office. They’re high, but as long as it’s just weed, we don’t have anything to fight about. I’m itching to go over there and see if they’re using again, but the announcer says something that catches my attention.
“Twenty-two, ballerina, virgin.”
Ballerina is the word that gives me pause. There isn’t a serious ballet I’ve missed since I moved here. My eyes leave my glass as a familiar form slowly ambles her way onto the stage with two booted casts. It’s clear she isn’t prepared for this much physical effort, and the woman handling them has to support her one arm to get her to the middle of the stage.
Sheets of blond hair spill over her shoulders and down her back. Icy-gray eyes, sharply beautiful Russian features, the poutiest lips, and a shape you would kill for a chance to run your hands over.
Though I admit the shape standing in front of me doesn’t match my memories perfectly, there’s no doubt. That’s Katya Stepanova. I’ve spent the past three years watching every show she’s performed. She started out a state over, and while it wasn’t planned, we relocated at similar times. I’ve saved her show bills. I have her signature and can’t wait to watch her move. I’m a fan of this woman. Does that make me more desperate than the men around me?
They can’t have her.
My first wife loved the ballet, and I used to take her as often as I could just to see the joy on her face. After her death, it became a sort of private memento to her to sit in a box with an empty seat beside me and watch like we used to.
The city has changed multiple times since her passing, and I still maintain the tradition. And I didn’t mind. The dancing had grown on me, even to the point of having favorite dancers and going out of my way to see certain shows.
What’s happened to her since the last time she performed? She’s clearly unwell. Other than her injuries, she’s so thin you could snap her like a twig. Her lovely, fair skin is sallow and nearly clear from a lack of nutrition. As I watch her, an intense rage simmers deep inside me. Who the hell did this to her? My first thought is her boyfriend. I’m murderous as I try to understand.
As prima ballerina, her show bills always feature a small biography, and last I knew, she was in a very long-term relationship with her dance partner, Pietro. What the hell happened to her legs, and how did she end up here? Did he do something to her? I’ll fucking kill him.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and type her name into a search engine, quickly finding it’s unnecessary to kill Pietro since a drunk driver did that a little over two months ago. She was clearly injured in the accident, but what the hell else has happened to her in that intervening time?
“Her hymen is intact,” the announcer notes as he looks her over with more interest than he gave the others. This knowledge fills me with an even deeper sense of dread. She’s too damn innocent to be up on that stage in a dress made to show her off like a piece of meat.
She and Pietro were serious, so for her to still be a virgin means she very intentionally chose it. To have that auctioned off feels...
What the hell have my sons done?
“We’ll start the bidding at?—”
“Ten thousand,” someone calls. A murmur passes through the crowd as someone recognizes her.
“Grizzly accident, but her pussy still works,” someone whispers to his tablemate, and it takes all my self-control not to go over there and choke him to death, pop his fucking eyeballs out, and leave them on the table as a statement for anyone who thinks they can touch her.
“Twenty thousand,” another dead man speaks.
“Katya Stepanova.” Someone speaks her name at full volume, and conversations break out across the room. She’s the hot ticket; she’s what everyone wants. There’s an expression of confusion on the faces of everyone in charge, the announcer, the bitch pushing them around, my damn sons. Did they not realize what they did? Who they have on their stage?
“Fifty.”
“One hundred.”
Katya wears a hauntingly beautiful expression, one indicative of deep, life-changing pain. Katya loved Pietro. She danced around him like he was the center of her universe, even when she was the star. It was a beautiful thing to see, painful too, reminding me of the way my wife once looked at me. The complex feelings of sympathy and grief are compounded by the similarities in their looks. Katya’s coloring is so similar that if I let my vision blur, I can pretend they’re the same.
She’s so beautiful, but I never knew a grief-stricken Sne?ana, and Katya’s loss spills off her like noxious gas. So the difference is impossible to ignore. My heart throbs for her, and it’s been so damn long since I’ve felt this way I can barely breathe.
Every girl who has been on the stage tonight has looked terrified, wishing they were anywhere else. If I were a better man, I might even feel for them, but there isn’t much of any feeling left in me. Not after I lost my wife slowly to cancer, not after I killed the second bitch I almost loved, but this pretty ballerina who’s about to go to the sharks?
What kind of man could kill without conscience and sell weapons of mass destruction but then still fucking feel? I should feel nothing for any of them, and I don’t , except for my favorite ballerina.
Her face is empty. Her petal lips sit softly, not hinting at any emotion but resemble the flesh of the apricots I used to eat as a boy in the south of Russia. Her red-rimmed eyes are exhausted and maybe even sickly, but they don’t reveal any weakness. Her only expression is a pinch in her brow from the brightness of the lights shining on her, but her body wobbles like she’s about to tip over from the effort to stay standing.
“Six hundred thousand.” I don’t see who speaks, but maybe they all need to die just for being here.
Something unfurls in my stomach as I watch, and I’m not sure what it is. Soft, light eyes, so goddamn pretty. My cock thickens, and I’m surprised at myself. I don’t have a problem getting hard, but I’m fifty-seven years old, so I usually need more than looking at a woman to get me ready. I’m rarely angry and turned on at the same time anymore. I can’t remember the last time I needed to use sex to prove something to anyone, but that’s exactly what I want to do.
I’m a man, and men need sex, but I’m not so young anymore to be ruled by it. I’ve had it often enough with many different beautiful women, but that’s not what this is about. I can’t put my feelings into words, English or Russian. All I know is that none of these disgusting, pathetic men can own her because she belongs to me. But it’s not something sexual. My throbbing cock disagrees with my rational assessment.
Her hymen is intact. I could tear it apart while she moaned and cried all over me. I could swallow her moans and force her to take it until she was coming and begging for me to stretch her out again. I stop myself in my tracks.
Something as precious as her virginity wasn’t saved for the likes of me, but damn, do I want it. She’s nothing like the scared and desperate women before her. She’s a star. This isn’t the stage that Katya Stepanova belongs on, and neither is my cock, no matter how much I want her there.
I don’t get why her fate suddenly matters to me when nothing else does, but the idea of leaving her makes me feel sickly guilty. Is my cock just doing an amazing job of convincing me to act, or is this right?
The lights change, revealing one lone tear has streaked its way down her cheek.
I can’t leave her.
“One million,” I finally say, not sure where the most recent bet landed.
“Two,” someone answers.
Her face still lacks any fear, but the slightest interest crosses her expression as she hears the numbers. Why should she care how much we pay? She isn’t going to see any of it. The tear disappears beneath one swipe of her hand.
“Three.”
Grumbles kick up all around me. People are pissed I’m not keeping to the smaller intervals specified at the auction’s start. Do something about it , I challenge every one of them silently. I don’t need to waste my time to make them feel like they had a chance. I would have killed everyone in this fucking room, my sons excluded, to get ahold of her if that’s what was required of me.
But no one counterbids.
“Sold! For three million dollars…”
A profound expression of relief crosses her face. Who was she afraid of disappointing? Who does she think is going to hurt her?
My sons’ stares burn into my neck so hard, I’m finally forced to acknowledge them standing behind the bar with varying looks of disapproval. This may not be my finest moment, but they have a long way to go before they have room to say shit to me about anything. The younger one is simply surprised to see a fish fly, but my eldest is angry.
I could guess his reasons, but frankly, they don’t fucking matter either. He’ll have to learn that giving over the reins to him does not mean he’s in control of me. I shake my head at the both of them, telling them not to start shit with me now. I have business to attend to.
Be grateful for your fucking cut.
The adrenaline of a shoot-out won’t make my hands shake, but buying this girl has my palms wet. My gaze returns to the stage where the ballerina I’ve bought myself stares toward me. The handler grabs her arm and tugs, throwing her slightly off balance. If she were sturdy on her feet, she could easily handle the force and would likely follow her, but with her legs in the casts, she loses her center of balance and falls sideways, hitting the stage hard.
The bang echoes through the room, and the surrounding men stare at me, taking their cue from me on how to respond, but all I see is the expression of deep pain on her face. She makes a soft noise, but the fact she didn’t shout means she’s tougher than many of the men I know.
My legs carry me out of my seat and toward the stage before I make any conscious thought to go to her, but I won’t let her lie there in pain. Three million fucking dollars and years of watching her dance. I didn’t plan this, but I can’t help the fact it all makes sense to me.