Chapter 16
Nikolai
It’s hot in the warehouse. The sort of heat that makes the fabric of my shirt cling to my frame like a second skin. Ivan and I walk down the center of four long workstations.
There are rows of women sitting naked save for their clear plastic aprons as they measure and package in near silence. A few of them have headphones in but they have to leave them here. None of them look up as Ivan and I walk past, and I only recognize a couple of them. The ones wearing the headphones. The rest trade in and out, looking for a quick buck here or there. It’s not the sort of life where people working this low on the totem pole tend to last very long. Yet, for now, they serve an important purpose.
“Any word from the Italians?” I ask the stoic man beside me, periodically checking the workstations I pass. A door at the far end of the warehouse opens, allowing cold wind and snow flurries to enter for a brief moment. Daniel, my man, nods to me and exhales hot air through his cupped hands before turning to jog up the metal stairs to the office.
“Nyet,” Ivan says as he leans over the shoulders of one of the girls to double-check the measurements, always the height of a professional, before he turns his focus back to me.
“I suppose I’m going to have a chat with my Ivy League Brain of an assistant then, make him get things moving a little faster. I want pressure applied to this deal. Send some men over to make it known that my price is an expiring offer. I need an answer by tomorrow the latest. Or, tell them that I”ll just think bigger, and maybebuy their supplier. That ought to get their feet moving.”
I stop, pause, and turn to Ivan. “Actually, I like that better—get Rolf on the phone, I want him to get with the accountant first thing tomorrow morning and buy the supplier anyway. That way it doesn’t matter which way the Italian pricks fall. Done will be done.”
Ivan pulls his phone from his pocket, already wrapped in a waterproof bag so that no product will get into any of the nooks and crannies available. He’s a very cautious fellow. We start back down the lines as he texts away. “It is done,” he says by the time that we reach the stairs.
“Good.” We ascend into the office, where my tech guy is seated behind multiple monitors, having finished his smoke break. He switches between web browsers covered in code, security camera feeds, and who knows what else, though his bid on a lamp on an bidding site catches my eye. I didn’t peg him for the sort of man who liked luau décor, but I don’t comment on it. I tap him on the shoulder, and he returns a brief glance to Ivan and myself. I”ll never understand how he can focus on everything at the same time. What I do know is that he is the best in the business, and I pay him accordingly.
“No changes in the missing person’s cases, Captain,” he says, his American accent otherwise out of place in a setting like this. He pushes his round spectacles up the bridge of his nose and spins dramatically around in his desk chair. The worn, cracked leather groans in protest, matching the squeal of the metal of the base as it turns. He steeples his fingers in front of his face for further effect. “I’ve cross checked with all Nevada police blotters, FBI missing persons, the stations in the areas surrounding their London home and those in Spain—Peter’s last known location—still nothing.”
“Nothing,” I repeat. I know he’s correct. He’s the most thorough person that I have. He searched everywhere. “You are still keeping tabs on him?”
He shrugs. “As much as I can. He’s a slippery fellow and I still haven’t managed to get into the damned search engine satellite feeds, American, Russian, Japanese, or British—I think I want British the most. You know that they can track people by the shape of their ears? It’s insane.”
He calls all of his gadgets and computers toys and I have a feeling that he’s hinting at wanting to purchase a new one. I sigh. “In the new quarter, then we will talk. Until then, find him.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” and just like that, Daniel turns around like we don’t exist and goes back to typing away, already back into work mode.
Ivan and I are leaving, and I know that he’s already sending people to check the Spain properties and see if they can’t get more specifics on Anya’s father. How can he not have made a move? It’s too quiet. He must know that I have her. Is he really unconcerned with what I might do to her? As far as he knows, I’m mailing him pieces of his daughter at this very moment. Even if I previously misunderstood Anya’s relationship with her father, there is no excuse for allowing a slight this personal against him to go unanswered. Certainly not after he attacked me. He should retaliate.
I slide into the back of my car, and Ivan pulls us away from the warehouse and back toward my home. Anya and I are going to need to have a little talk. I need more information, and I think I know just how to get it from her.
Anya is right where I left her, more or less. She’s moved up to the second floor with a whole tea service with a steaming mug of herbal tea resting on the small table beside the recliner that she’s curled upon. A strand of hair falls down over her face, and she has one sleeve-covered hand pressed against the lower half of her face, her other hand curled around the open top of the book that she’s lost in. She doesn’t even look up. As I approach, her eyes widen, but she appears to be about three-fourths of the way through the book she”s reading; I can”t make out the title from this angle, but she”s engrossed.
I shouldn’t like the way that she looks right now.
I slowly pull the book from her hands, and she starts sputtering sounds of reluctance the moment that I do. I’m half tempted to snap it shut and lose her place, but I flip the ribbon down into the correct page before snapping the book shut. She actually looks forlorn. It pangs something deep in my chest to see she looks almost like she fits in here, as if this were her house.
I wanted to share this home with Helena. Even if she liked the apartment downtown better. She liked the night life. She liked to be able to go out and party until the wee hours of the morning. She liked the flashy things that I could offer her, I suppose it makes a good deal more sense now. She never loved me; she was just using me the entire time. She just wanted to get as much bang for her buck. The money, cars, jewelry, anything she wanted. I had been so blind, I thought that I was in love. I will not make that mistake again.
Anya watches me put the book down on the tray beside her and uncurls her legs. She scoots to the edge of the chair as if she was somehow expecting me. “I didn’t realize it was dinner time already,” her eyes are bright, alight with all of the emotions she had summoned with her reading. I don’t answer her, but give her half a nod of my head instead.
“I’m… well, I’m glad that you’re here, actually. I didn’t thank you earlier for what happened on the plane. You didn’t have to do that; I mean I know that I’m just a prisoner here and all.” She rolls her shoulder. “Still, just thank you for not letting me do what he was getting at.”
My knuckles brush over her cheek, my thumb trailing over the bone there, curving around the natural shape of her face until I can slide her hair behind her ear with a nod. I would not allow him to harm her. He should have known better than to even speak to her. No matter what his intentions were, or might have been, they were terribly misplaced in the whole thing.
“I can’t tell you how long I was just walking around looking at the titles of the books here, this is as far as I got and I think that I was looking for hours,” Anya says.
Is this how she is with people that she tolerates? The vitriol is gone. She’s not fighting me at all. No sarcastic remarks or biting retorts, just conversation. I should stop this. I should end this before she has a chance to get the wrong idea here. “Did you get to pick any of these yourself?”
I nod. “I had a great many titles added over the years, I had the repair booth installed the same time that I had the pool installed… just in case. There are other security measures in place to keep the books safe, of course, in the event of a leak somehow,” I add. It had actually been a rather fun little puzzle trying to figure it all out during the renovations. David must have generated a hundred different scenarios on his computer about all of the ways that things could have gone wrong, and we had to account for each and every one of them.
“Which books are your favorite?”
I nod over to a small section three shelves away. “Philosophy.”
“Seriously?” Anya places her hands on my calves, looking up at me. She needs to be careful about that or I’m going to want to repeat my office right here and now.
“Da, Nietzsche’s a personal favorite of mine. Not Russian, but he is good enough.”
“Will you recommend a book or two for me to read maybe? If we’re going to be staying here long enough for me to read them that is.” Anya lowers her gaze for a moment and then looks up at me through her eyelashes. She’s not just asking for a book. She’s asking how long we will be here, if I’m planning on allowing her the freedom to come back to the library again, and if she’s going to live that long. None of those are questions that I plan on answering.
“Perhaps.” It is the best answer that I can give her right now.
“Okay.” She says, and tilts her head into my touch.
I trace the curve of her jaw with my thumb, around the point of her chin until I run over the shape of her lower lip with my thumb. I run the pad of my thumb over the blunted edges of her teeth, opening her mouth for me. Fascinating how in such a short time, we have come this far.
She allows this—she could bite me, but she doesn’t. She could pull away or push me away from her, but instead, her tongue licks the tip of my thumb hesitantly. I inhale deeply through my nose. She parts her lips ever so slightly, and I slide my thumb inside. The blunted surface of her teeth scrapes over the callouses of my thumb, and her tongue swirls over the appendage. She rolls her hips forward on the chair, enticing me. Her knees slide apart, framing me with her body. Her eyes lock onto mine.
Anya pulls her hands from my legs to her knees, running a line up the insides of her thighs until they disappear under the loose, soft fabric of her sweater. I can visualize the way her hands cross over her flat tummy, the light pink of the fabric bunches over her arms as she slowly starts to lift it over her head.
“What are you doing?” I ask softly. Not that I want her to stop. This is exactly the way that she should greet me for allowing her so much liberty over the course of the day.
“Repaying you, sir.”
The honorific is enough to have my dick aching to leave the uncomfortable confines of my pants. She pulls her sweater up and over her head, and I grab her by the throat the moment it’s off of her. I force her to her feet, pulling her closer to me so that I can kiss her. Anya uses the chair to step up, and wraps one leg around my waist. I grab her ass and help her up as she wraps her other leg around me. I spin toward the second-floor railing that she was sitting beside and rest her on it.
Anya breaks the kiss only long enough to look down and instantly clambers to be closer to me. “No!” she gasps as her arms wrap so tightly around my neck it almost suffocates me for half a moment. “Please! Please, Nikolai… not here.”
I look down to the first floor, and then back to her. “What’s wrong?”
“Please! I don’t like heights! Please!” Her eyes are scrunched tightly shut and she has a vice grip around me.
I glance down once more. “You would hardly even break a bone falling from this height to the carpets down there. You have nothing to be afraid of.”
She shakes her head insistently. “Just because you’re scared of nothing! Please! Can we just?—”
“No.” I cut her off. “I thought you liked the fear?”
“Not this kind of fear!”
“How is it any different?”
“It just is! Please! Nikolai.”
Her small frame is trembling, I can hear the raw terror in her voice and it’s making my dick even harder. Just recently, I was in a slightly similar situation with an entirely different woman. If Helena hadn’t fallen to her death, then perhaps Anya wouldn’t be here now. I press her closer to the ledge, her center of gravity shifts as her ass dangles over the edge. She yelps in fear, pulling me closer, holding me tighter as if she thinks that she will fall at any moment.
I remember being begged like this before, Helena pleading with me in her final moments. I had no mercy for her then. Anya’s father was responsible for all of that. Perhaps it would be poetic for Anya to die similarly. Not that this fall would kill her. I see red. Triggered by something so small, and all I can see is red and my need for revenge. Perhaps Anya has gotten too comfortable? I felt almost intimate with her just a moment ago… close to her. I can’t have that.
“Please,” Anya breathes into my neck. It sounds like she’s crying.
I snap out of it.
I shake my head and step back from the railing. Anya drops off of me immediately, her tears leaving small tracks down her face.
“What the fuck!” She shouts and hits at my chest. She pushes me with both of her small hands. “What the fuck are you playing at!” She hits me again as if that will somehow help her to understand why I did that.
I don’t have a good explanation. I don’t care if she understands or not. “Fucking asshole! You can’t just treat people like that! What is your disfunction!? You really spent too much time alone in this huge ass house if you think that is an okay way to treat people! I was being nice to you!”
“You mean you were forgetting your place,” I say as my eyes narrow.
“Oh, I get it, big macho man!” Anya wipes her face with her sleeve and takes a half step back to put distance between the two of us. “You didn’t get hugged as a child? Your daddy used to beat you, so you’re too emotionally fucked up to know when somebody is being nice?!”
My hand is on her throat, the distance between us closed before I can blink. My temper flares and I force her back to the railing once more. Only this time, I don’t use it as a perch for her pretty ass—I bend her backward over it. “Want to say that again, sweetheart.”
Anya has a vice grip on my arm, and on the railing that she’s bent backward over. She’s grabbing my wrist hard enough that it actually hurts a little bit. She starts to yelp, and then to cry. I think she would be screaming if it weren’t for the way I am choking her.
“You don’t exactly have room to speak on family do you, sweetheart.” I lean down over her, tears freely flowing over her face as the terror of possibly falling overwhelms her. “Your father either doesn’t know that you’re missing, or he simply doesn’t give two shits about you. I don’t think he would care if I threw you over this balcony and watched your brains decorate my library floor. He certainly didn’t give a shit when that happened to the last bitch that he left in my hands.”
Anya’s eyes find mine, and I can tell right then that she has no idea what I’m talking about.
We’re locked in a battle of silent wills for a long moment and then she does the unthinkable. She lets go. Not of the railing, but of the grip that she had on my wrist. Her hand is shaking violently as she holds it up in surrender to me. “I’m-I’m sorry,” she splutters, panting.
I wrench her upward. I grab her shaking wrist and twist it behind her back. Anya nearly stumbles from the sudden changes in direction. She’s walking as if she’s dizzy or lightheaded, and I have to guide her. “Where-where are we going?”
“I’m taking you somewhere for you to learn your place.”