Chapter Twenty Six
Catalina
I’ve gotten used to locked doors in Alexei’s house, grown accustomed to a certain curated experience of the rooms available to me.
Weeks ago, when I was at my most destructive, it was probably a safety measure.
Not just for himself and his staff, but for any valuables that he didn’t want ruined by a pissed off woman determined to cause trouble however she could.
It wouldn’t be wise, for example, to provide access to a restaurant-grade kitchen and its impressive selection of knives to a woman who might find herself tempted to stab you.
But after that day at the mall, the doors are open. The rooms are unlocked and available for my exploration.
Most of them, anyway. There’s one I came across that’s down a dark hallway that I suspect leads to the basement. It has a pin pad lock, and no one offers me the code. Based upon the way that the staff tends to avoid that general area, I don’t think I want it.
But what is revealed to me is incredible. Not just rooms where, like the kitchen, a locked door is more convenient than removing dangerous or valuable things found inside, but rooms where the value of the contents is the point.
Alexei is a connoisseur of art. And stolen paintings.
I hesitate to speculate at the value, but I know for certain that the fifty thousand dollars in books he claims I ruined?
That’s not even a dent on how much these pieces are worth.
There’s millions of dollars of art on the walls of this gallery, millions more in busts and statuary and artifacts of ancient civilizations.
I’ve seen museums with less impressive collections.
It’s a collection that seems to breathe, changing in bits and pieces at a time.
Sometimes a piece leaves the walls; sometimes I visit to find new works stacked carefully in a corner, awaiting a place on the walls.
Like I imagine a museum might rotate exhibits, except there seems to be no particular rhyme or reason for these changes.
I spend at least a few minutes every day in the gallery.
Some pieces are constants—paintings hung so high upon the walls that they’d require a ladder to remove safely.
Some busts and statues and antique jewelry pieces have pedestals of their own and sit protected beneath glass.
But I like hunting for the changes, trying to determine what has most recently arrived and whether it will stay.
He catches me one day with my nose pressed against the glass set upon a newly-added pedestal surrounding what I’m certain has to be an Imperial Fabergé egg.
“You like that one?” he asks.
“It’s beautiful.” But its jeweled surface is so delicate and ornate. Not the sort of art I would ever associate with Alexei. “Why do you have it?”
“What, I am not allowed to like art?” he asks on a huff of faux-offense.
He lifts his chin to indicate the egg resting behind glass.
“This one,” he says, “officially it is missing from records. It was made for Empress Maria Feodorovna in 1899. It survived the Russian Revolution, and fell into the hands of a private collector in the 1950s. Now it is mine.” He grins, one of those wolf-grins with too many teeth. “You want to use it?”
“Use it?” I choke.
“The inside is meant to hold small things, women’s things. Like bottle of perfume, maybe.”
For a half a second, I imagine this priceless, beautiful, bejeweled work of art clunking around in my purse, its incomparable form reduced only to the function of holding a perfume bottle. “Bite your tongue,” I tell him.
“Come, Katya. Many women would like this; to own a jewel made for an empress.”
“It belongs in a museum. How much of this stuff is stolen?”
“I did not steal, koshechka, if this is what you ask.”
Maybe not, but he bought at least one of these paintings from someone who did. “You’re almost never in here,” I say. “Why do you have so much art, if not to enjoy it?”
He shrugs. “I do enjoy, from time to time,” he says. “There are things I keep because I like. But for most of these things, is because art is easiest to move.”
Move? “I don’t understand.”
Alexei chuckles. “Say there is someone who owes me lots of money,” he says. “Fifteen million dollars for”—he catches himself—“certain things.”
Certain things. Certain illegal things.
“Now I have problem,” he continues. “Fifteen million dollars in cash for unspecified things will make government entities suspicious. Even a check for such an amount is suspect. The government will want to know what this is for, why I have been paid so much with no records.”
I guess they can’t exactly write guns or drugs in the memo line.
“So instead,” he says as he gestures to a painting hung low on the wall to his right.
For easy removal? “I sell this person who owes me money a painting. This one is inexpensive; only one hundred thousand when I buy. The man who owes me money, he buys this painting from me for the fifteen million he owes to me.”
“What? But that’s so much more!”
“It is what he owes me,” he says. “And art is unique in this way. It is worth whatever someone will pay. How can the government say this painting is not worth fifteen million? It is worth so much if that is what is paid for it. So in this way, I get my money. I pay taxes on my profit. And if the government asks, I tell them—the money is for sale of this painting.”
Hiding sales of illicit goods within fine art transactions. He gets a receipt of sale, and his dirty money is suddenly clean in the eyes of the government. “That’s diabolical,” I tell him.
“This is business,” he says. “Tax evasion is among easiest of crimes to prove. This is how many criminals are apprehended. Not because they are caught smuggling or running drugs. But because they do not pay the government what is owed. Me? I have receipts.” He shrugs. “Is victimless crime, Katya.”
Probably I should be more troubled by the thought of mafia money laundering than I am.
But even if this particular crime is more or less victimless, how much of the rest of it is?
A shiver slips down my spine as I think about that door with its pin pad that remains locked.
I haven’t seen Piotr for—a long time, now, I think.
I didn’t see him often before Alexei had him taken to the place he called the pit, but I think I’ve been sort of… looking for him. Noticing his absence.
Wondering what, exactly, it means. Knowing that even if I asked, even if Alexei deigned to answer, it might well be one more thing I wish I could forget.
∞∞∞
“I don’t think Anatoli likes me very much,” I say as I cuddle up against Alexei’s bare chest on the massive couch in one of the lounge rooms on the lower level of the house.
Alexei found me halfway through a documentary on the wives of Henry VIII, and even if it’s not something he’s terribly interested in himself, he doesn’t demand I change the channel.
But I did have to pause, briefly, when Anatoli came in for a brief, stilted conversation with Alexei in Russian. Two minutes maybe, and he didn’t look at me once.
“He does not,” Alexei confirms. “He thinks you are bad for business. Tomorrow he leaves for Moscow. He is annoyed I do not go with him for this.”
That’s right. Moscow is Alexei’s home; a significant part of his criminal empire is based there. “Why not?” I ask. “Don’t you have”—criminal operations to oversee?—“things that need doing?”
Alexei shrugs, and his fingers curl over my hip. “Anatoli can do these things,” he says. “I do not want to leave you behind.”
“Could I go with you? Oh, but I’d need a passport.” I’ve never been out of the country. “Maybe a visa?”
He slants me a chiding look, and I realize that if he did take me with him, it would not be an official, government-sanctioned visit.
No going through immigration and customs, no stamp for the passport I don’t have.
Probably he’d be traveling with contraband.
Drugs, or guns, or undeclared cash. “No,” he says. “I don’t want to take you to Moscow.”
Ouch. The brusque refusal is unexpectedly painful. Stung, I pull away from him, retreating to the far side of the couch. “Okay. Fuck me for asking, I guess.”
He makes a rough sound beneath his breath. Rolls his eyes at my sharp tone, and reaches out for me. “Katya—”
I slap his hand away. “You don’t have to be such a dick, you know.
” It’s not the first time I’ve said it, and I doubt it will be the last. More often than not, it’s almost playful.
This time it isn’t. This time, my voice is scratchy and tears sting my eyes.
I’m genuinely hurt, because—what? The mobster won’t take me to Moscow with him?
Pathetic. It reeks of an attachment I shouldn’t have. One I don’t want to admit to. I swipe the back of my hand over my eyes, disgusted with the sheen of tears. And then I slap his hand away again when he reaches for me once more.
“Fuck this,” he snarls, and rips off the soft throw blanket I’ve wrapped myself in, casting it to the floor. His fingers seize my ankle and drag me back across the couch.
“Stop!” I screech, kicking out at him with my free foot. Flipping over onto my belly, I dig my fingernails into the arm of the couch, mooring myself to the side I’ve chosen. “Let go!”
He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. His fingers tighten around my ankle. He mutters something in Russian that sounds foul and furious. And his free hand slices through the air and lands with a stinging swat on my ass. “Don’t be a brat, Katya,” he says.
It’s rough, grating. A shiver coasts down my spine as goosebumps rise on my arms. I know that particular tone of voice.
It’s a little angry. Mostly it’s turned on.
Worse still, I think I’m becoming conditioned to it.
Like a Pavlovian response I can’t control.
My nipples peak as the sting of the slap fades into a tingle. Heat blooms between my thighs.
Ugh. I kick my leg again, trying to shake his hold.
He lets me pull my legs beneath me to rise to my knees as I make for the opposite side of the couch again.
And then he releases my ankle only to grab my hips instead, anchoring me in place as he rises behind me.
His weight falls on my back, caging me in.
I’m trapped, pinned against the arm of the couch.
“Calm down, koshechka,” he says against the back of my neck, and indignation simmers along my skin at the condescension heavy in his voice.
“You misunderstand this.” One of his hands slips beneath me, cupping my breast. His thumbnail scrapes my nipple, and a satisfied laugh rumbles in his throat and vibrates across my nape.
“Oh, fuck you!” I buck, but I don’t have the leverage to throw his weight off, and the hand he holds fast to my hip only pulls my ass against the length of his dick, already hard beneath his jeans.
With his fingertips, he rakes the hem of my nightgown—a silky one that only comes to mid-thigh—up over my ass. His blunt fingernails graze my skin as he drags down my panties, leaving them tight around my thighs, constricting my movement further.
“I like when you are spicy, Katya,” he says in guttural voice near my ear.
“But I like best when you are soft and sweet for me.” He palms me between my legs, his fingers sliding easily through my wetness.
He muffles a groan against the back of my neck.
I can feel his dick throb against my ass. “Are you going to be sweet for me?”
“No!” My heart is hammering my ribs. I steel myself against the friction of his fingers as he rubs my clit in smooth circles designed to excite me further. And he chuckles as I grow wetter against his fingers anyway.
“So stubborn,” he says as I press my face into the arm of the couch to stifle my whimper as he slides his fingers inside of me. “Okay, Katya. I like you spicy, too.”
I hear the rasp of his zipper. Feel him as he positions himself, notching the head of his dick against my entrance.
A long, slow thrust, feeding himself into me an inch at a time until I’m a shuddering, trembling mess.
Struggling not to clench around him, not to rock back into him.
“So good,” he rasps in a thick, satisfied voice.
One hand pets my ass as if in praise. “There is nothing like your pussy, koshechka. So hot and wet for me.”
My breath saws out of my lungs as he slides out, then rocks back in just as slowly. It’s torture. It’s glorious. It’s infuriating.
“I don’t want to take you,” he says on another smooth stroke out, “because I do not want to be there myself. I have never liked it there.” Harder stroke in, pressing so deep that my toes curl.
“And I do not want you to see things you should not see.” Faster thrust. I’m panting, my lungs straining to draw breath.
“Things you do not want to see. I do not want to burden your conscience with these things I cannot control there as I can here.” His hand caresses my spine, gentle and soothing as his hips pound into mine.
“And I do not want to leave you,” he admits.
“So Anatoli goes alone. And I stay with you.”
That vicious knot of hurt in my chest relaxes. The resentment fades.
The pleasure mounts. Each plunge makes me desperate for the next. My fingernails scratch across the arm of the couch. “Alyosha,” I whimper.
“Fuck,” he utters as I clench around him. “You want to be sweet for me again, koshechka?”
“Yes. Yes.” His hips punch into mine, brutal stabs jabs that rock my whole body forward. A vicious climax shimmers just out of reach. I want it so badly.
“Come hard for me,” he says, and slides his hand beneath me once more to rub my clit.
I shatter in seconds, burying my face in the arm of the couch to smother my cries.
Alexei grunts something in Russian, slamming hard and deep until I feel his dick pulse inside me, the liquid heat of his come pouring into me.
I’m due for another birth control shot soon. Maybe I’ll ask Alexei to schedule one for me early, just to be safe.
I don’t protest when he drags me back once again as he lays back on the couch and nestles me up against his chest. More affectionate than usual, Alexei pets my hair and peppers kisses against the top of my head. It feels like an apology for hurting my feelings, even if it was unintentional.
This time, at least, Alexei is the sweet one.