Chapter 24
Zoya~
A half an hour before my shift had been slated to begin, I’d gotten a text message from an unknown number, informing me that they’d be waiting for me by the curb when I was ready to head to work, and when I had walked out the front door, Kasimir’s black SUV had been idling in front of my house, and his driver, Yuri, had been standing next to the back, the door already opened for me.
Nothing was said as he’d driven me to work, but that had been from the utter embarrassment that I’d been feeling with all the memories from the night before, and even though I knew that Yuri would never say anything, I knew that he was fully aware of what Kasimir had done to me in the backseat, and that’d been enough for me to keep my head down the entire way to work.
Luckily, the diner had looked empty when Yuri had dropped me off in front, but I knew that I couldn’t keep my situation a secret for long if Kasimir was going to continue to be as insistent as he was behaving now.
I also knew that Yuri was going to be waiting for me when I got off work, something that everyone was going to see since we usually all walked out together.
“So, do you want to tell me why Kasimir Korolev spent so much money on you?”
I turned to see Marcelle walking into the back, and even though we weren’t supposed to be on lunch at the same time, she didn’t seem to care.
Granted, it wasn’t rush-hour yet, and we also had Leah and David on shift, but still.
If Lowell caught her, there’d be hell to pay because he was a stickler for the great customer service that Ruby’s was reputed to have.
“What?”
Marcelle walked over to where I was sitting down at the table, but she didn’t sit to talk to me. Instead, she remained standing as she repeated her question. “Why did Kasimir Korolev bid so much on you at the auction?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, and truth be told, I really didn’t. I mean, I knew what our situation was now, but all that Kasimir had said was that he’d wanted to fuck me like a whore, and whether that was the truth or not, I wasn’t about to tell Marcelle that.
“You spent the night with him, didn’t you?” she asked. “You didn’t ask him?”
At that, I stood up. “Did you ask the participant that you spent the night with why he chose you?”
“He didn’t bid half a million dollars on me,” she retorted, and that’s when it hit me that Marcelle was jealous of how much the men had been willing to pay for me, and I never would have ever imagined that Marcelle Jensen could ever be jealous of anyone, much less me.
“You say that as if I had anything to do with the bidding,” I said, refusing to let her harass me over something that I’d had no control over. “If you want to know why Kasimir spent so much on me, ask him.”
“You wouldn’t even have gotten that money if it hadn’t been for me,” she stated, ignoring my dare about asking Kasimir herself. “You wouldn’t have even known about the auction.”
So, it wasn’t jealousy but money that was fueling her attitude right now.
Marcelle wasn’t upset that I’d left with Kasimir, she was upset because of the amount of money that I’d made last night.
She’d signed up for the auction believing that she’d be a headliner, and in all honesty, why wouldn’t she believe that?
Marcelle was the epitome of a blonde bombshell, and she was never short of attention.
“Are you seriously mad at me because Kasimir paid so much for me?” I asked. “Seriously?”
“I’m saying that it’s not fair that you pocketed so much money when you didn’t even want to do it in the first place,” she fired back.
My brows jumped at that. “Fair?” I squawked. “How can you even say that? You have no idea how that night went for me, so don’t talk to me about fair, Marcelle.”
Now, while Kasimir had been everything that a woman could need or want sexually, she had no idea what she’d gotten me into when she had spoken to me about taking Montana’s place.
Where she never had to see her bidder ever again, I had spent the past couple of days packing up my stuff because I’d gotten the attention of an unconscionable killing psychopath.
The rest of my life had been altered in a way that I hadn’t ever expected, and she wanted to talk about fairness?
There was also the fact that I could very well be pregnant with the psychopath’s baby, and that’s another thing that I sure in the hell wasn’t ready for.
While Kasimir had mentioned marriage, I couldn’t put off being pregnant like I could put off a marriage proposal, and it was one thing to be carrying the baby of the man that you loved, it was quite another to be carrying a Korolev heir.
Then, as she folded her arms over her chest, she said, “I wonder what Stephanie would say if she found out that you attended under a false name.”
I laughed.
I couldn’t help it.
She really believed that getting me in trouble with Stephanie would negate the money that Kasimir had pledged, and little did she know.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I told her. “But feel free to contact Stephanie if you want. I’m sure she’ll be interested in learning that you were the one who had approached me with the plan in the first place, and that it was you who’d gotten Montana’s ID for me.”
She didn’t let that faze her. “I doubt that Stephanie is going to care about my part in all this as much as she’s going to care that you tricked Kasimir Korolev out of half a million dollars.”
Whatever this was, I wasn’t about to take her shit. I was so tired of being a pawn in my own life, and while there wasn’t much that I could do against Kasimir’s aggressiveness, I still had control over how I allowed others to treat me, and I wasn’t about to let Marcelle intimidate me.
“Look, I don’t know what this is, nor do I care,” I told her. “I am not going to play this game with you, so do whatever you want, Marcelle.”
“You think I won’t do it?” she challenged.
“I don’t care if you do,” I repeated. “Call Stephanie and tell her whatever you want.”
“I deserve half that money,” she blurted, finally revealing the real motive behind her attack. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d have nothing.”
Honestly, I’d laugh if she wasn’t serious about this.
Not only did Kasimir already know that I wasn’t Montana, but he hadn’t even paid me yet.
In fact, I wasn’t even sure how the payment worked when he was an actual Korolev and all the proceeds had gone to the family.
Yeah, the thirty-percent was supposed to have been paid immediately, but since Kasimir was a Korolev, I doubted very much that the rules had applied to him.
Granted, with me moving in with him now, I had no idea if he was even going to pay me the money, but truth be told, I wasn’t even sure if I still wanted it.
When I thought about it, it didn’t feel right to take the money from someone who was now a part of my life and not a one-night stand, never to be seen or heard from again.
Though I kept saying it, that was because it was true; I felt nothing but confusion whenever I tried to dissect this thing between me and Kasimir.
Confusion and attraction.
“Well, let’s be clear about something, Marcelle,” I said. “I am not going to give you any money, and if you want to know the truth, I haven’t even been paid yet.”
“You’re lying,” she hissed. “We all got paid in cash the same night.”
“Well, I guess the rules don’t apply to the Korolevs because I haven’t gotten paid yet,” I argued. “So, if that’s something else that you want to ask Stephanie or Kasimir about, be my guest.”
“You owe me,” she said, ignoring my dare again. “After everything that I’ve done for you, you owe me.”
I cocked my head at her, my lunch completely forgotten. “I didn’t realize that your friendship came with a running tab. If I’d known that, I would have never accepted any of your offers of help.”
“Don’t you dare accuse me of being a bad friend,” she spat. “I’m not the one being a stingy bitch and hoarding hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“Money that I earned by spending the night with Kasimir,” I fired back, even though the words sounded sordid on my lips. The words made me sound like the whore that I kept insisting that I wasn’t.
Using her beauty as a weapon, she said, “Well, maybe I’ll just find myself randomly bumping into Kasimir somewhere, and we’ll just see how much money he’s willing to part with for someone who actually knows what she’s doing.”
Now, while I was very aware that she was just being catty, her words had hit their mark.
Though Kasimir had spent the past couple of days saying very pretty things about commitment, was it even possible for men like Kasimir to be faithful?
I mean, while I wasn’t an expert on the subject, the movies always showed criminals surrounded by nothing but willing women, so how na?ve was I to not have considered that until now?
It was also bothersome that I cared. I was not supposed to care what Kasimir did. I wasn’t supposed to be entertaining our relationship as some kind of twisted love story. Kasimir was bored and using me as entertainment, nothing more.
“Have at it, Marcelle,” I told her, the words tightening my gut. “Your jealousy isn’t my problem.”
Yeah, right.