Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Alisa
I spent the next week looking over my shoulder, waiting for Dmitri to pop out of the shadows.
When a mark got a little handsy on a solo assignment, I almost wished for it. And then immediately dispelled that thought and dumped extra strong poison in the drink.
The man murdered my brother. It was a mantra I kept repeating to myself when I was secretly disappointed the shadows didn’t reveal him.
Every time I told myself I was relieved he was keeping his distance, something inside me rumbled its disagreement.
I ignored it.
Thankfully, Natalya had agreed to hang out with me. Relief from my own thoughts, and a dose of her cutting honesty was exactly what I needed right now.
After the doorman called up to Natalya, I headed into an oversized stainless steel elevator. I wondered if she even lived in this apartment building, or if she’d chosen it to throw competitors off track about the location of her actual home.
I’d known her my entire life and yet so much of her was unknown to me.
We sat together at the Pakhan’s meetings and traded laughs. But truthfully, beyond work and her wit I knew so little about her. We’d been trained from a young age to not trust each other. After all, we were all in competition for the same job.
But other than Gemma, she was the closest thing I had to a friend. And I sure as shit needed a friend to help set me on the right path.
When I opened the frosted glass doors to the meeting room, Natalya flicked her glossy hair over her shoulder.
“Your apartment has nice amenities,” I said, closing the door behind me. God, I wished my building had amenities beyond rusted over windows that were a workout to open.
Her lips pursed at my comment. My suspicions amplified that this was a random apartment building that she used to throw people off from where she actually lived.
Internally I sighed, wishing she’d let me in a little and show me her actual home. But at the same time, I knew exactly why she shouldn’t.
“How’ve you been?” I asked, settling into a hard wooden chair.
“Can’t complain, everything’s been steady. What about you?”
How could I even begin to explain what was going on with me? That the same man who’d murdered my brother had saved me after I’d been drugged. How he’d nonchalantly sipped his soup while recounting how high-pitched my drugger’s screams were.
But I couldn’t admit any of that to her. Rumors had spread that I’d slept my way to my ranking, and me sleeping over at Dmitri’s house would not help matters.
Still, I didn’t want to hold everything back. I’d been forced to smudge the realities of my work to Gemma for her and my own safety. I was finally around someone with whom I could have an honest discussion about work.
“I still can’t believe I’m partnered with Dmitri,” I admitted.
Natalya’s eyes lit up at his name.
“What’s he like?” she asked, leaning forward.
Her excitement put me on guard, but I ventured, “We haven’t had a mission together yet… But he’s not what I expected.”
“I’m so jealous of you.”
“Want to switch?” I joked, and that conflicted part of me made its piercing presence known.
“Do you know how lucky you are?” Natalya shook her head, perfectly glossed hair bouncing across her shoulders. “I wish that I was paired with him.”
“Why?” I asked. After all, everyone knew Dmitri’s brutal reputation.
“You know why. We all know Dmitri Novikov’s going to be the next Pakhan. It’s just a matter of time.”
She wasn’t wrong. Everyone knew he was the Pakhan’s heir apparent.
“God, I would fucking kill to be in your shoes, Alisa,” Natalya said. “You should be down on your knees earning his favor, not antagonizing him.”
“That’s not happening.” Even though my body sometimes didn’t seem to get the directive, it would be a really bad idea.
“Don’t be stupid, Alisa. You need to suck up to him and suck him off. Make yourself useful to him.”
My teeth gritted at the implication that the only useful feature I had was my sexuality.
Sometimes it stung how everyone I surrounded myself with thought so little of me. I was slowly killing my body for this competition, and I’d earned my ranking.
“I’m not sleeping with him,” I said, enunciating each word.
“If you don’t, someone else will.”
A text rang through on my phone, and I welcomed the distraction. For some reason, Natalya’s words left my stomach plummeting lower than the bottom of the East River.
My eyes widened as I re-read the text. My first mission with Dmitri.
An overnight mission.
“And maybe,” Natalya said, “that someone will be me.”