Chapter Twenty One #2
Katya’s cheeks puff out in an annoyed expression, and she drops the medal to shove at my shoulder. “Please,” she says as she flops once more onto her back on the bed and sets about making herself comfortable once more. “You’ve never been repentant a day in your life.”
“For what should I be repentant, Katya?” I ask her, and I pinch her chin in my fingers to kiss the scowl off of her lips before she can begin to list my sins out to me. “Be a good girl for me,” I tell her, and she flips me off with both hands as I leave her.
∞∞∞
Piotr is intelligent enough to realize something is wrong immediately. Ivan, of course, is a goddamned fucking moron.
Ivan swaggers in late, more than half-drunk already. Like he has forgotten that Anatoli told him hours ago to be here tonight. Like he remembered only halfway through a bottle of vodka. Not just vodka, I think—the size of his pupils indicates he has probably also been snorting cocaine.
I don’t care, usually, what drugs my associates do.
But Ivan is one of my drug runners, and if this is how he presents himself to me on an average Tuesday night, I think maybe he has been helping himself to the product he is meant to move.
Probably not much, but theft is theft—though this will not matter after tonight.
Piotr sits quietly at my table as Ivan attempts to engage him in conversation, like they are equals.
He gives stilted, monotone responses, his jaw flexing with strain.
Ivan is fairly new in my employ; only six months or so.
But Piotr has come with me to Chicago from Moscow.
He has done good work for many years. He knows what it means to be called to this table at such a time.
I know he is replaying his actions, reflecting upon his offense.
It is two weeks after Katya’s little stroll through my house. I had the security tapes collected immediately, so that no one else would see them, no one else could tamper with them. Probably he thought his offense was not so great. Probably he thought, after all this time, he was safe.
Stupid fucking bastard. Orders were given; those same orders disregarded. No one fucks with what is mine. There is no time limit upon my wrath.
Anatoli stands silently behind me. I do not have to see him to know even he is pissed off with Ivan’s idiotic chatter. I reach for my gun—retrieved earlier from the safe in my office and tucked into my waistband—and slam it onto the table. “Shut your fucking mouth, Ivan,” I snarl in Russian.
Ivan jumps in surprise, but I think maybe he is too high to understand. He stares at the gun, but he does not grasp its meaning.
Piotr does. He begins to babble frantic apologies, something that mystifies Ivan, whose brows pinch together in confusion.
“You were warned,” I tell him, and my voice cracks over the room like thunder. Piotr flinches. Ivan stares in that same vacant, stupid way. “You were told you do not interfere with my business.”
Finally, he senses he has caused offense. His shoulders slump. A mottled flush climbs into his face.
“Two weeks ago,” I tell them, “you looked with lust at something that belongs to me.”
Piotr’s chin falls, his head bowed as if in acceptance of this. He understands.
Ivan does not. Maybe because he looks at every woman with a decent pair of tits with lust.
“Catalina Russo,” I sneer at him. “The woman whose tits you stared at, whose ass you leered at. The woman you fucked with your eyes in my fucking house.” My voice has risen to a roar that makes Piotr flinch again, makes Ivan rear back in his seat. “My fucking woman!”
Ivan stammers through the abrupt tightness of his throat, “I—I didn’t know—”
My lips curl into a snarl. “You didn’t know.” My head turns toward my shoulder. “Anatoli, you did not tell him?”
“Everyone was told,” Anatoli says. His tone is bored. Probably his head is down over his phone again. He is not offering Ivan the excuse he seeks. He does not care enough to intercede on Ivan’s behalf.
Piotr may be a different story.
“I made a mistake,” Ivan rasps. He is trembling. I would not be surprised to find he has pissed himself. “I won’t again.”
Fury jerks me out of my chair. My hands slam down upon the table before me. “You think you get a second chance to disappoint me, you worthless fuck?” My bellow reverberates around the room. “I will cut off your cock and shove it up your fucking—”
“Alyosha?”
My head snaps to the doorway, where Katya lingers uncertainly. I see she has rifled through my drawers again. She wears one of my shirts that is far too big for her and a pair of flannel pajama pants I have never worn, rolled up to her ankles so she does not trip over the hem.
I fucking told her to stay in the bedroom. And now I must shove my rage back down in my chest before it burns her. I duck my head and take a sharp, cleansing breath through my nose and sink down into my chair once again, slapping one hand down upon the surface of the table.
With the other, I thump my chest. “Come, Katka.”
She knows already that I am angry with her for disobeying once again, but she takes those first steps into the room anyway, because she is braver than she looks. Foolish—but brave. It is only when she takes note of the gun resting on the table, inches from my hand, that her steps falter.
“Come,” I insist again.
She made her choice already the moment she left the bedroom in direct opposition to my command. Now she must learn another harsh lesson.
Some orders are for her own good.