Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Alisa
The Pakhan seemed to accept my statement. He peeled his attention away from me and continued down his list.
But I could still feel the eyes of half the room focused on me. They already thought that I slept my way to my ranking, what would they think now?
And how the fuck was I going to survive working with Dmitri?
Natalya nudged me when the meeting blessedly came to a close.
“What the hell was that?” she muttered.
She wasn’t wrong. I’d wanted to snatch back my words the moment my accidental protest left my lips.
Before I could answer, Dmitri gripped my arm and yanked me to a standing position. His eyes narrowed on mine before he leaned towards me.
I was intimately aware that only a plastic chair separated our bodies from each other. A shiver ran down my spine when his cold breath hit the shell of my ear.
“Don’t get yourself killed before our first assignment.”
Before I could even come up with a response, he strode away without even a backwards glance.
Natalya was looking at me like I’d lost my mind, and maybe she was right.
“I can’t believe you’re actually coming out with me!” Gemma squealed as she searched through her closet. “You never do!”
I leaned back into her fluffy pink papasan chair and stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stickers lining her yellowing ceiling. I couldn’t believe it either, but not for the same reason.
I should be requesting another solo assignment for the evening. But after that headache of a meeting, I wanted to forget everything to do with the Bratva.
Pretend that I was just Alisa tonight. Someone normal.
“How about this?” Gemma said, holding up a slinky black dress for me to try on.
Gorgeous. Too bad it’d show off the bruises that my father had decorated me with. With a sigh, I picked up my drink sitting on Gemma’s chipped nightstand, and dragged myself to the closet.
I plucked a long-sleeved sequin dress from her closet.
“You’re going to sweat to death,” she said with a raised eyebrow.
“Then let’s get so fucked up that I don’t care,” I said, laughing for the first time today.
A half hour and a shot later we shouldered our way up to the bar at a Chelsea nightclub.
“Hey,” a blond guy said, looking us both up-and-down like we were pieces of meat.
“He’s cute,” Gemma whispered.
I tilted my head and appraised the guy. During all of my previous one-night stands, my trusty pink vibe waiting patiently at home always ended up being the highlight of the evening.
Maybe this time would be different. As I stared at his dilated eyes and bulky shoulders, I waited to feel some heat. Anything.
Nothing.
With a sigh, I turned towards the bartender to order the fruity drinks I never got to drink when I was on assignments. The blond guy wrapped a sweaty arm around me. I shoved him off.
“Feisty,” he said. He smiled as if I was playing hard to get instead of severely uninterested.
He had no idea how accurate that descriptor would be if he dared touch me without my permission again. He wouldn’t be smiling then.
Gemma winked at me before moving in between the two of us, shielding me from his attention. I smiled at her while the guy glared at her, completely unaware that she was doing that for my sake.
The moment we had the drinks in hand, I hauled Gemma to the dance floor.
“So,” she yelled over the pounding music. “Any guys with potential?”
I shimmied against her, glad that the dress covered all of my bruises.
“Potentially disappointing,” I admitted.
No man had ever made me come. For some reason I kept trying, hoping the next one would be different.
I wasn’t holding my breath anymore.
“I’m going to grab some shots!” Gemma said after we’d sweated out some of the alcohol on the dance floor.
I shrugged and kept dancing. Nearby, a girl was giggling into a man’s ear. He said something back, and her lips cracked into a huge smile that encompassed her entire face.
Her expression was so open, so eager. I wanted one night of that. Setting aside all my anxieties, my walls. Just fun.
“Shots!” Gemma hooted, handing one over to me. “Let’s have some fun!”
With a smile, I clinked my plastic glass against hers and knocked back the drink.
“Thanks for coming out with me,” I said, throwing my arms around her.
Gemma laughed. “Anytime girl, I wish we could hang out more.”
Me too. But I didn’t want to think about the future, or why I shouldn’t be going out with her. I just wanted to dance, and hang out with my best friend.
A few songs later, my shimmy had turned into a stumble.
“What was in that drink?” I said, alarmed at how slurred my voice sounded. Mentally I counted back through the drinks we had. I’d grown up with alcohol, I should not be this drunk after so few drinks.
“What?” Gemma asked with a giggle, falling back into a random guy’s arms.
Before I could respond, a large hand circled around my waist. With a startling amount of effort, I swiveled my head towards the source. The blond guy who’d tried to hit on me earlier.
He smiled at me, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Good to see you again,” he said.
I tried to push his arm off, but it was like my body was moving in slow motion and I was shoving at concrete. Alarm bells echoed in my brain. Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
“Get off me,” I slurred, and tried to step out of his grasp.
He ignored me, and his arm tightened around me. When he ground his erection into my back, I thought I was going to throw up.
My eyes snapped to the person who’d given me my drink: Gemma. Was she working with the Italian mafia or our rivals at the Morozov Bratva? Had she slipped something in it?
I shook my head. No, I was being paranoid. And if her dance moves were an indicator, she’d been drugged too.
I closed my eyes, and focused on the symptoms quickly debilitating me. My stomach sank as I realized this was some new street drug that I hadn’t developed an immunity to.
And I couldn’t just pick one of the antidotes I’d packed in my purse just in case. The interactions to an unknown drug would be just as likely to set my heart into aFib as reduce the symptoms.
On the plus side, the man’s tank top revealed that he didn’t have a single tattoo. But even if he wasn’t part of the underworld, he’d either been behind my drugging or preyed on girls who were inebriated.
Either way, I needed to get out of here.
Gemma’s eyes were lolling back into her head, and the guy behind her kept dancing against her.
Fuck. I needed to save both of us, and it felt like a herculean task just to turn my head. The blond’s erection grew as I tried to take a step away from him.
Nausea bubbled up my stomach and hope along with it. After all, what guy wanted a girl who was puking?
“I’m going to throw up,” I said, clutching my stomach and turning my head back to the guy.
Instead of recoiling like I’d hoped, a smirk crossed his face.
“Get out of the way, my girlfriend’s going to puke,” he yelled, tugging me along with him. All I could do was stare at him as he practically dragged me across the dance floor.
“No,” I tried to enunciate, but no one could hear me over the pounding music.
I grabbed a random hand in the crowd. A bewildered girl turned towards me when I refused to let go.
“P-please,” I said.
“I’m sorry, my girlfriend’s really drunk.” The guy patted my head condescendingly. “Her best friend called me to come pick her up when she said she didn’t know what city she was in.”
“Get her some water,” the girl said, and turned back to the guy she was dancing with.
My shoulders slumped as the guy wrenched me across the room. I could barely keep my head up at this point. There was nothing I could do.
No one was going to save me.