EPILOGUE #2
I should ask him to teach me. We wouldn't tell Svetlana. She'd never know I understand.
I close my eyes. The anger in his voice is my favorite lullaby.
Yeah. Life is good.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's annual charity gala is, according to Svetlana, "a strategic obligation for the maintenance of our philanthropic facade".
Dante said there would be people from network security summits, bankers, and front-company CEOs who pretend they don't launder money.
He told me to smile, pretend I don't hate all of them, and, if asked, to flaunt that I'm responsible for their digital infrastructure.
It would make a lot of people uncomfortable and would be a power play. That's the official version.
The unofficial version is that Dante wants me where he can see me.
At night, Luca takes me to a Volkov mansion where Svetlana and Dante are getting ready.
I find them in the bedroom—Svetlana is inside a huge closet with sliding mahogany doors, and Dante is finishing adjusting a solid-colored tie in front of the mirror.
Besides the cigarette, the room smells of expensive perfume; a strong mix of plum, from her, with something of black pepper and smoke, definitely his.
I stop at the threshold. He sees me in the mirror's reflection.
Luca had given me a very expensive suit to wear before I came, and Dante's eyes sweep over my body, assessing the suit, the fit.
I lean against the wall. I admire him. He's always beautiful, but for public events, he looks especially delicious.
The closet door slides open. Svetlana emerges in a long, tight black dress that molds her body like a malevolent queen.
She's still putting on an earring, a large ornament with a generous polished diamond.
She walks in a hurry to the same mirror Dante is using, but she stops midway.
She sees me, stops adjusting the earring. Frowns.
She walks quickly towards me. She drops the earring on the dresser beside me and her hands fly to the top buttons of my shirt—I'd left them open. I don't like collars; they suffocate me.
She immediately fastens them.
"Hide that shit," she says with a grimace. I look down.
Ah. The marks.
Purple and yellow bruises mingle with teeth marks on my collarbone. Souvenirs from the last few nights. I think they're beautiful. Svetlana, clearly, disagrees.
"We need people to take us seriously tonight," she says.
I shrug. "I like to keep them curious."
She gives me a dry look. "You'll be surrounded by corporate spies and undercover federal lawyers." She tightens my collar forcefully. "This can't show."
I smile. "By 'this', do you mean my neck or my psychological problems?"
"Both."
She steps away, grabs her earring, and goes to the mirror. Dante is still there, and he hasn't said a thing the whole time, but his gaze follows me in the mirror—when Svetlana touches me, when I speak, when I smile.
I cross my arms. "Are you going to give me orders too, boss ?"
He pulls a black suit jacket from the back of a nearby chair.
He approaches. And puts it on me. I extend my arms to help him, shamelessly enjoying that his hands are on me again.
He adjusts the shoulders of the suit, slow, firm, possessive.
He fastens the lapel of my jacket with military precision. My body heats up.
"Fix that collar," he orders. His hand goes to my collarbone, and instead of hiding it hastily like his sister, he gently pulls the shirt fabric, just enough to cover the marks. The touch lingers too long.
That hand. The same one that pulls my hair while he undoes me. The same one that squeezes my neck and suffocates me until my vision darkens. The same one that grabs my hips and leaves them bruised, the same one that holds my thighs and opens me up as if wanting to tear my skin.
Fuck. He's just fixing my clothes. But I search for any sign that he's going to throw me against this dresser and rip this suit off before we even walk out that door.
He knows the effect he has on me. Of course he knows. He knows that a simple touch like this makes me fantasize about being fucked against this very mahogany wall, with his sister waiting for us in the next room.
His breathing becomes heavier. He's going to?—
Dante's hand, which was on my lapel, suddenly tightens. His fingers dig into my shoulder, a painful grip that pulls me back to reality.
"I can feel your fucking hard-on against my leg," he growls against my ear, low enough for Svetlana not to hear. "Get yourself together. Now. Or I'll leave you locked in this room until the fucking event is over."
His threat, whispered and dirty, is a gallon of gasoline thrown on the fucking fire.
The heat in my groin intensifies. The promise of being locked in here, punished by him.
.. is the most exciting thing I've heard all night.
Get yourself together, he says. Impossible.
The only thing I can think about is how hot it would be to be disobedient.
I take a deep breath, trying to force air into my lungs, trying to force the blood away from my cock. I straighten my posture, forcing my muscles to obey. My face is burning. But Svetlana is here. And the event.
Dante lets go of me and steps back, the mask of the Volkov Don perfectly in place again. He turns to the mirror as if nothing happened.
I peek at Svetlana in the reflection. She didn't hear the whisper, but she saw the touch, my reaction, Dante's corrective grip. The expression on her face is one of deep, weary disgust.
She turns away from us, trying to salvage a shred of professionalism for the night. She picks up a pair of prescription glasses from the dresser—from a collection of five different frames. The frame she chooses is thin, gold, and a style a '90s executive would wear.
I watch her put on the glasses. The image is so offensive to my aesthetic sense that I can't hold back.
"You're not going to wear those, are you?" I say.
Svetlana glares at me. "Pardon me?"
"That frame," I say, approaching. "It screams 'middle-aged accountant in crisis'. You're a fucking Volkov. You look like you're about to present a spreadsheet at an HR conference."
Svetlana could kill me with her eyes.
"My choice of frames is not open for discussion, Leonel. Especially not by you."
"Didn't you say we need to be taken seriously tonight?
" I retort, stopping beside her in front of the mirror.
"No one's going to take a woman seriously who looks like she's about to present the quarterly financial results using Microsoft PowerPoint from 2003.
That black frame in the case is infinitely superior. "
She remains silent. Her eyes dart to Dante's reflection, waiting for him to intervene, to put me in my place.
I look at his reflection too. Dante doesn't move a muscle, but I see it. He's enjoying this. There's an almost imperceptible lift at the corner of his mouth.
Another one of my lessons learned: I can bust Svetlana's balls. It's fun, because she can't do anything about it as long as Dante is on my side and my work for them remains impeccable. She definitely hates me.
I decide to push a little more. "Dante, tell her. The black frame. Wouldn't she look much more like someone who would kill you with a pen?"
Dante shrugs at our reflection.
"That's between you two," he says, with an undercurrent of amusement only I can recognize. "Just figure it out quickly. We have to leave in ten minutes."
He takes a cigarette case from the inner pocket of his suit. He won't defend me. And he won't defend her either.
With a sound of pure frustration, she rips the gold glasses from her face and throws them on the dresser. She picks up the case with the frame I pointed out.
She puts them on. The difference is immediate. The sharp, minimalist design accentuates her features, transforming her from a "competent executive" into a "woman who could order your death and then calmly have dinner".
She glares at me.
"Satisfied?" she says, obviously pissed.
I smile. "Much better."
Dante, from the corner of the room, releases a cloud of smoke, his eyes still on us, appreciating his new family dynamic. Svetlana's expression, however, tells me that if there wasn't an important gala, she'd be testing the durability of my skull with one of her stilettos.
This week, I felt like an 18th-century monarch.
All because of this event, an older man with round glasses was sent to my tech bunker to teach me how to act, because Svetlana deemed my mannerisms unsuitable for high society.
He listed some rules for me. Don't stare too much, but maintain eye contact.
Don't interrupt, even if the person is stupid.
Always hold the wine glass by the stem. No slang, no swearing, don't touch anyone first, don't speak openly about politics, religion, or money, and greet with firm handshakes.
Etiquette is nothing more than violence disguised as courtesy.
He said, "You can be passive-aggressive, but not with sarcasm.
With elegance ." He was a very sane man.
Svetlana spent the entire ride reviewing every single one of those rules. She said I couldn't embarrass them. She'd surely prefer Dmitry in my place, but he's somewhere in Eastern Europe, speaking Greek with some ambassador from the Orthodox elite.
Being abroad solving primarily social and moral problems is his natural habitat.
I found out Dmitry speaks six languages fluently—Russian, English, French, Italian, German, and Greek.
And he's almost there with Mandarin because, he said, with China's economic growth and its ties to the underworld of smuggling, cryptocurrencies, and technology, it's important.
I had doubts about why Greek , but Dmitry considers it a moral obligation.
According to him, any man who quotes Greek tragedies must, at the very least, read them in the original.