Chapter 10 Taylor #2
“All the fun, for sure.” I laugh mirthlessly. It’s been so much work, with ballet training every day. Unrelenting. “I can’t remember when I last had fun.”
He nods slowly. “What did they promise you?”
Then it’s like a dam has burst. We talk about what happened to us. I don’t censor myself, and I don’t think Kon does either.
He listens intently as I tell him about how stupid I feel that I believed them it would be a well-paid ballet apprenticeship. How ashamed I was when I realised how I’d been duped.
Telling him these things is a relief I didn’t know I needed. Kon doesn’t judge me for what has happened, and isn’t shocked.
He nods in understanding when I say that I have all these complicated feelings, because despite the lack of freedom, I’ve been privileged.
The ballet is one of the best in the world, and had an equality that’s almost unheard of.
I performed principal parts that I would never have been able to otherwise.
We did innovative new dances and classics.
And although we were all for sale, we set our part of the price, and a lot of us put it so high that we were never sold.
Well. I wasn’t until Kon. He must have paid a fortune.
He doesn’t interrupt, but whenever I trail off, unable to keep telling a story, or my throat closes with emotion, he picks up.
He tells me about being poor in Moscow. His parents and their messiness that left him not orphaned, but alone all the same.
Volk gave him a job, and a sort of family, just like the ballet did for me.
He ended up in London on a revenge mission against the Harlesden mafia boss who had cheated the Volk Bratva. But instead of returning to Moscow, he stayed. Against the wishes of Aleksandr.
And it occurs to me that he risked instant death by coming back to Volk.
“And in London?” I ask eventually. “Afterwards?”
It’s as though maybe what happened to Kon could be a parallel for me. If I understand how he managed after Volk, I can too.
“It was messy at first.” His lips twist at the recollection. “No one in Harlesden, or London at all, trusted me.”
Oh. That’s not auspicious.
He recounts without emotion how he built the Harlesden bratva with the same techniques that had worked on him. A sense of brotherhood, a promise of the profits being shared, and total disregard for the law. “But I don’t prey on kids, and my men stay with me because they know I’m fair.”
“But ‘fair’ includes violence if they step out of line?”
Kon folds his arms. “Is that a rhetorical question?”
“What’s a rhetorical question?” I ask cautiously.
“A question that doesn’t require an answer, usually because you already know the answer. For instance, one would be ‘is Kon, the mafia Kingpin, making a joke?’ No. Obviously not. I already told you. I do not joke.” His icy eyes twinkle though.
And the answer to whether Kon uses violence when necessary is obvious. I already knew.
It’s been hours on the plane now, and everyone has found a place. It’s quiet, with just burbling conversation, but there are still constant interruptions for Kon and me. It feels like every person on the plane wants a bit of Kon, and he deals with them all with focus and clear-sighted grace.
He tells me about his home in Harlesden, London, the apartment he had in Moscow, and how he loves Russian candy. I don’t correct him that in British English they’re called sweets, and when my gaze dips to his gold tooth, he shrugs and says that he’s better about sugar now. No more fillings.
“The strawberries and cream ones kept me sane some days.” He’s slightly wistful.
“It was books for me,” I reply. “The guards would sometimes, if I begged, go to the book swap corners that some hotels have, and pick me up whatever was in English and closest to hand.”
“What books did you read?” Kon asks, with all the appearance of being interested, and I list everything I can remember. He hasn’t read any of them, but he listens.
“I’d love to choose books to read,” I say wistfully, and Kon stares at me as though he’d die if he looked away. “Read in my own space, without anyone else around.”
I tell him about the hotels we stayed in. Four to a room, always mixed up so you couldn’t try anything because there wasn’t the friendship and trust built up. Yevgeny encouraged snitching.
No privacy. The most you ever got was in your own head.
We can’t be far from London now, and with proximity comes doubt. What will my sisters think of me? Will they even want to know me when they realise that I’m not their innocent sixteen-year-old dancing sister anymore? That I’m more than a little torn by life.
Hearing about Kon’s life in Volk and afterwards makes it all easier to cope with. The loss, the years with my sisters I’ll never get back. The relationship I’m not sure they’ll want if they know me again. It’s been a long time since I saw my sisters, and I let them down.
Because if Kon survived Volk, and is rich enough that he has a private jet, kind enough that he rescued a whole ballet company, and drop-dead gorgeous to boot, there must be hope for my modest ambitions.
My friends safe and free, to see my sisters again. Money to buy my own books occasionally, and a bit of fun and laughter in my life.
Kon stops in the middle of a story about Harlesden when a man he calls Vadik hovers nearby, wanting to talk with him.
He seems to be senior in his organisation, maybe just below Kon himself.
Mostly they speak in Russian, far too fast for me to catch more than the occasional word.
But when he dismisses Vadik, Kon doesn’t return to our conversation like he has all the other times, instead looking serious.
“So what happened to the restaurant?” I ask. Not because I’m that invested in the story, but because I really, really like talking with Kon. I’m starving for more of him.
He shakes his head, and glances out of the window, then back to me.
For the first time, there’s heavy silence between us, and my heart drops to my feet like iron.
Seconds tick by, and my bottom lip wobbles. What should I do? Am I dismissed? I guess that’s it, I should go and sit somewhere else that I don’t belong.
Kon lets out a deep sigh.
“I’m sorry,” he says abruptly. He doesn’t meet my gaze and a muscle ticks in his jaw. “About last night.”
I’m not.
I nod and raise one shoulder as though this is nothing to me. I don’t know if I can speak.
“I shouldn’t have…” His brow furrows.
This was so much easier when our bodies did the talking. When his heat and weight were over me, and I could pretend I was giving in. Being forced.
What’s wrong with me that I liked that?
“Things got out of hand.” He studies a point on the carpet.
“It’s okay.” Look, I managed to say something. Ten out of ten, me. “It’s me that should be thanking you, and maybe apologising as well,” I say awkwardly. “For paying for the night with me, for everything you risked, for coming to rescue me and for getting us all out.”
Kon’s brows dip low, looking down at the floor. “You’re welcome. It was nothing.”
“I guess you were paid.” Probably a lot of money. I wonder how Hayley and Payton managed that, and a wave of guilt crashes over me that I made this even more difficult and expensive by insisting all the girls were saved. This is just a job to Kon, I suppose.
“No. I did it because I was the one in the Maths Club who could.”
Oh wow. That’s… I don’t even know what to think. He did it for his friends, I guess.
“That’s some club,” I say with a confused laugh.
“And because I didn’t care if I lived or died.” His gaze strokes over my face like a caress, his expression soft even as he says bleak words.
“I’m sorry.” That’s so sad.
He shrugs.
I hate this for him. Kon should be happy. He’s a good person. To say he went above and beyond is like saying dancing en pointe is different to walking.
The stewardess begins an announcement about soon landing in London, and butterflies take flight in my tummy. I nearly miss seeing Kon shrug.
“I found my life,” he says under his breath, so softly I tell myself I imagined it. Because it’s such an odd thing to say.