2. Maxim
2
MAXIM
Two weeks later
“Please don’t cut my neck,” the voice of the man in the background on the other end of the phone is faint, but has an unmistakable note of terror.
I’m in my armoured car, having just pulled up close enough to a Lazy Bean café to be convenient, but not noticeable, and finishing up a grizzly part of my trade. What to do with a thief?
“Pakhan,” the Greenwich man who is holding a knife to his carotid artery says, using my Russian honorific, “Should I kill him now?”
I don’t give a shit, but I have to get to see my girl before it’s too late and she’s finished work and left. The last two days there was business with the London Mafia Syndicate that I really couldn’t avoid, and I’m feeling the emptiness of not having seen her.
It’s as though I can feel her slipping away. What if she forgets about me?
I look over towards the window of Hayley’s café. There’s nothing very special about this Lazy Bean, after all, there are almost two hundred in London. But the presence of the small woman in a neat apron, with her dark-brown hair beginning to come loose from its bun, elevates it to the centre of my world.
Hayley Love.
The girl who is far too sweet and innocent for me. Who I’m pretending to be a cuddly bear of a man for. A good boss who checks in on the new manager of a small and quiet café in a commercial area of Greenwich, my mafia territory. I’m even saying that I’m a boss who ensures his young, and relatively inexperienced café manager has personal training and support.
I’m masquerading as a decent man, if tattooed and enormous.
I should… Try.
“Give him a scare, and some scars to remember us by, and let him live,” I mutter.
“Pakhan?” My man is shocked. He wasn’t asking about the end result, only the timing. Now, or later.
“You heard me,” I snap, and hang up.
Attempting to be a man who deserves a sweet, good girl like my malishka is difficult. It’s going to take time, and compromises. But I’m determined. I’m not going to kidnap my girl, even though I seriously considered it when we first met, and not just because there are rules about that for the London Mafia Syndicate. Rules I never imagined would be an issue when I joined, because I’d given up on the hope of companionship and love.
I’m going to woo her. Slowly but surely, I will make her life better, until she eventually falls in love with me.
Admittedly, I’m not sure how the stages between providing her with a charmed life and her loving me and being my wife work exactly, but I have time to figure these things out.
I feel lighter when I see her through the window of the coffee shop.
“Hi Mr Zaitsev,” she chirps as I walk in and close the door behind me. There are a couple of stragglers and when they look up, I give each of them a glare of “Now is the moment to leave”.
They empty their cups and gather their belongings.
“How was your day?” I ask as I turn to Hayley. She’s at the counter, and looking at her is like gazing straight into the sun. It’s almost too much, but I feel a rusty smile emerging from my face. She smiles back and my heart glows, as though I’m a very specific solar panel that can only be charged with her .
Despair is part of the Russian condition, but Hayley changes everything. It’s ludicrously unlikely that she, a beautiful and innocent woman almost half my age, will fall for a growly immoral bratva boss with a heavy accent. But apparently, I believe miracles are possible now.
“Good! We took more than last week, from fewer customers.”
Excellent. So the people I’ve paid to come to this café and buy the most expensive coffees are working to reduce her workload and increase her job satisfaction, worked.
“Oh, and the obnoxious guy I told you about hasn’t returned!”
That’s because he’s dead.
No one upsets my secret girl.
“I’m glad to hear that.” I wonder what detail of her life I can subtly extract today? I hoard the glistening secrets she shares with me as though I’m a dragon. She’s my treasure.
We talk for a few minutes about work. She tells me about the dishwasher being a bit temperamental as she loads it for the last cycle of the day. I’ve repeated to her that she doesn’t need to make it perfect, and offered someone to help, but she’s insistent that it’s not busy enough to justify another member of staff at the end of the day, and since she’s the manager, she’ll do it.
And I guess I’m still a bit selfish, because I love having this time with her. Just the two of us.
“I’ll get the door,” I tell her when she tells me the café is officially closed, and then pull down the blinds. When I return to the counter, she has the cash takings for the day, and we sit at a table, me doing the second count so she doesn’t have to.
I do it very slowly, and never find an error with her totals. I wouldn’t care if I did, but she’s so diligent. It’s adorable. I almost feel bad that the Lazy Bean cafés are designed as a money laundering and illegal product distribution system rather than real businesses.
“Did you watch the end of that series?” I ask as we’re working, and she replies that she did, and then we’re talking about her favourite characters, and god but it feels so good. It’s not the level of intimacy I’d like, but she’s chatting easily with me. As though we’re friends.
There are a few minutes after everything is done when we’re just there, relaxing, talking about carefully impersonal topics.
I want to ask about her family. About what sort of house she likes, and maybe how she needs to be touched to make her moan with delight. Every thought in her head, and all the secrets beneath her clothes and under her skin. I can never get enough of her.
All too soon, I have to force myself to be a good boss, and not keep her late. Do I imagine the flash of disappointment when I mention we should go?
She locks the café door, and I don’t tell her it’s utterly unnecessary. No one would touch anything of mine in Greenwich.
“Goodbye, malishka,” I say softly, for her ears only. I call her baby girl in Russian, and she doesn’t know what it means.
She meets my gaze and smiles, and my poor heart squeezes, as though by making itself flat it could slip between my ribs and go to her. Where it wants to be.
“’Bye, have a good evening!” She turns and walks away, and I force myself to do the same rather than watch her until she’s out of sight. Or follow.
I don’t glance backwards. Too much attention would put her in danger from my enemies.
Until I see her again, I’ll accept the lonely hole in my chest.
My secret girl.