4. Konstantin
FOUR
Konstantin
Sierra looks good wearing one of my shirts.
It is, of course, far too large on her, which means it hangs off her shoulder and goes down to mid-thigh.
It’s a compromise. Nikolai and I would appreciate keeping her nude, but New Bristol Februaries aren’t warm, and we really can’t risk our new captive’s nipples freezing off.
Or for the other men to get too many ideas. It’s one thing to show her off while we’re supervising; it’s another entirely to trust everybody here to be smart enough to keep their hands to themselves.
They’d regret it if they laid a hand on her, which is a fact they’re more than aware of, but people are occasionally stupid.
She tugs at the bottom hem of the shirt, as though trying to pull it down even more, but all that does is make it drop down lower across her chest. It displays the bandage over her brand, and I smile grimly when I see it.
I cannot wait until it’s ready to be displayed to the world.
I cannot wait for her beloved brothers to see pictures of her marked up this way, for them to know there is no rescuing her now. This is what they get for betraying us .
Nikolai enters the small entertaining room. “So, Adrian says he can get something for her to use in a few days. He’s busy right now, with the… you know, the thing.” He glances at Sierra.
The thing . Nikolai is probably referring to some of the online scams or gambling websites we run. Not my preferred type of criminal activity, but all of that was in place before I became the de facto leader here.
That train of thought threatens to anger me. I can’t worry about everything that was , or what should have been . I’m in charge now. My predecessor, Matvey Petrov, is in a federal prison, thanks to Sierra Winters’ family.
I bury the anger and nod toward the coffee table, where a tray of finger foods has been set out. Breads, crackers, salmon, cheeses, caviar, olives… a decent spread for a light lunch. “Sierra was telling me how she loves to serve the men in her life,” I say.
She bristles, and I smile indulgently at her. I’m discovering that baiting her is almost as enjoyable as running my hands down her lovely body.
Almost.
“What, do you expect me to feed you, too?” she retorts.
“That would be nice,” Nikolai says, flopping onto the couch across from me and spreading out like he’s in charge. When I raise a brow at him, he sheepishly sits up.
“Too damn bad,” she says, but she casts a wary look at me.
“Be grateful I don’t make you cook,” I say to her. There’s an appeal to a woman who cooks naked for her men, but I am quite certain she would never manage to cook the Russian foods I enjoy. I give her a pointed look. “You said you would do anything. But you are above serving food to us?”
“I’m above a lot of things you want me to do,” she says, her voice scathing, but she pads over on bare feet to the spread of food. “What can I get you, Master ?”
“Watch your tone,” Nikolai says, and while he sounds mild, I recognize the threat in it.
I wonder if she notices it too .
“Crackers with caviar on them,” I say to her, smiling widely. “Maybe if I’m full, I’ll be too tired for other activities.”
Nikolai snickers. “And I want some of those olives. You can feed them to me, zaya. Maybe Kotya’s right and we won’t care about other things.”
She doesn’t look convinced.
Still, she crosses over, getting two small tiny plates and getting our snacks. She brings mine to me first, then awkwardly goes to Nikolai. He opens his mouth, and she pops an olive into it. Before she can pull away, he grabs her wrist and holds her in place, licking her fingers obscenely.
“You taste good,” he says in approval.
The look of disgust she gives him is priceless, and I laugh. “We’ll train you to enjoy us.”
Sierra seems like she’s about to make a retort, but she keeps her mouth shut instead.
Nikolai grabs her by the back of the neck and pulls her close, kissing her, and she lets out a muffled sound of indignation. “Go kiss Kotya. He’s the boss.”
I open my arms for her, making space on my lap. The armchair is sturdy enough to hold both of us easily.
Sierra does not, of course, try to sit. She bends down to get her lips closer to mine, her eyes furious.
I smile at her. “Come on. Just a few centimeters left between our lips.”
“Not enough,” she mutters, but she leans in and kisses me. It’s a chaste kiss, not nearly enough, but it stokes hungers I have mostly been able to ignore. I’m too busy to find a regular woman, and I wonder why I didn’t think of this particular solution before.
Normally when we share women, it is the kind who get paid, or the ones who think they can get a nice permanent arrangement with access to a nice house and endless gifts. None of us want that kind of trouble.
But keeping a woman like Sierra means we have constant access, and with the three of us, there’s always somebody to keep an eye on her or to keep her occupied .
Three of us.
Only two, right now, and it hasn’t been three of us for over two years. I keep forgetting that, because Yuri was such a constant in my life. I’d personally chosen him to come with me to the United States and be my right-hand man. He was the only person I could trust back then.
Now I have Nikolai, at least, but I am always reminded of Yuri’s absence.
I press my hand to Sierra’s stomach, and one of Yuri’s diatribes comes to mind. “ Why shouldn’t you have heirs? Just because your old man said so? Fuck him.”
I shake that thought away.
“So, Sierra,” I say once she’s skittered away, “why don’t you tell us about yourself? You love your mamasha. You were studying computers at university.” I pause there. “Shouldn’t you be taking classes? Or are you doing them online, like all the students these days?”
“I’m on winter break,” she says warily, picking up a piece of bread with some cheese on it. She takes her time chewing — stalling, most likely — before she says, “I’ll need to return to my classes when they start again.” She eyes us warily. “That is, if my gracious and benevolent overlords allow it.”
Nikolai cracks up laughing. “Benevolent. That’s cute.”
I enjoy the salty caviar while I watch Sierra. “Go back to classes? Why would we let you do that?”
“You don’t want anyone getting suspicious, do you?” she points out. “If I’m still attending classes, there’s no reason for the police to get involved. And…” She eyes us both for a moment. “You know the New Bristol police favors the Pavones and Crescis. Might be annoying.”
I scoff at that. “If they were real criminals, they wouldn’t associate with law enforcement.”
Of course, even at home in Russia, it’s gotten to the point where it’s better to lie low and bribe or blackmail the cops rather than have everybody arrested for daring to spite the wrong man. Corruption is everywhere—but the Americans sure like to sit on a high horse, when their government officials are just as corrupt as ours.
Sierra shrugs, but her words seem chosen carefully as she replies, “It doesn’t change the fact that they could be an inconvenience. This way, no one can report me missing.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say instead. My phone buzzes with a new text message, and I pull it out as I continue, “When do your classes start again?”
“In two weeks,” she says. “I’m learning a lot of the more advanced methods of hacking this final semester. It’ll help me, and I can ask a lot of questions I might not be able to get away with anywhere else, too.” She flashes me a smile.
“I don’t have time to babysit her,” Nikolai grumbles. “Maybe when Yura returns…”
“Yura likes learning,” I agree. I look down at my phone and frown. The text I received is from my brother in Russia, in cyrillic.
Papa wants update on P
Well, our dear old Papa can keep waiting. There is nothing to update regarding P—Petrov.
With the time difference between New Bristol and Moscow, this means that Roman is texting me on a Saturday night when he should have had much better things to do. Why isn’t he with one of his many mistresses?
I angrily text back, I’ll send word when there’s word to send.
That probably won’t satisfy Roman or our father, but it’s all I have for now.
I look back at Sierra. If she can get us access to her father’s accounts, if we can get his secret weapons stash—and the secret cash he’s sure to have stashed around too—that would be something concrete I can deliver to my father. It would be more than Petrov ever managed to do, whose English is so shaky he needed me to interpret most of the deals he brokered.
Sierra eyes me right back. “Do I want to know why this… Yura is in prison, Kotya?”
Nikolai sits straight up, glaring at Sierra. “ We call him Kotya. You call him Konstantin. Got it? ”
Looking startled, she nods, holding her hands in front of her in surrender. “Sorry. Still learning the nicknames. I’m not trying to piss you off. I just don’t know anything about Russian. So is Yura a nickname too?”
“Yes. It’s Yuri normally.” Nikolai’s expression relaxes. “We’ll see if he’d let you call him that. He does like dark haired girls.”
Sierra scowls and looks back at me. “So why is this Yuri, Yura, whatever, in jail?”
“He got taken in when a deal with your brother went south, two years ago,” I say. “Seems like your family always makes trouble for us.”
Her features instantly go wary, and she falls silent for a moment before mumbling, “Well, that explains a lot.”
“Does it, though?” Nikolai asks. He gets up, prowling over to her like a panther, and grabs her chin. “He is going to be…” He pauses, considering. “Well. He’s either going to fuck you like an animal, or he’s going to try to kill you.” He flashes her a grim smile. “Which do you think will be better?”
Sierra meets my gaze.
I glance back steadily. There’s something in her eyes that I can’t decipher. “Don’t ask me. I don’t care which of those you choose.”
“Great,” she mutters. “For what it’s worth, I don’t have a fucking death wish. And I can’t help you if I’m dead.”
“Ah, zaya,” Nikolai says. “I didn’t say we’d let him kill you. You just might need a doctor when he’s finished with you. Of course, that might be true of him fucking you, too. I’ve seen what he does to women he hates much, much less than he hates you.”
“No need to scare her,” I say, grinning. “Yura only sometimes maims his targets.”
She shakes her head. “Can I go back to my room now? I need some time to process.”
“What is there to process?” I ask. My phone buzzes again, but I ignore it. Instead, I pat my thigh. “Come sit with me. We can eat more. Tell us about yourself, Sierra.”
Nikolai releases her, and she takes a step back. “My whole life just got upended, and now I need to contemplate the fact that I’m probably going to be beaten senseless for something I wasn’t even at fault for,” she says, almost deadpan. “There’s a lot to work through.”
Sierra drags her feet as she returns to my lap, but she comes to me all the same.
“I’m a college student. I used to have a life. My family ran a gang until recently, when it was absorbed by another mafia group. What more do you want to know?” she asks.
I stroke her back through the t-shirt. “Why your family’s gang is now with the Crescis, for example. I thought your family hated them.”
“They do. Especially now.” She squirms at my touch, trying to inch away from it, but I pull her closer to me. “I don’t really know. It happened right after…” She bites her lip, and I consider kissing her, being the one to bite that lower lip instead until it swells beneath my teeth. “Right after Pa died and Sean went to prison. My brother Kyran didn’t want to take over.”
I’ve heard some rumors about her brother, who is now consigliere to the Cresci family. If I had defected to the enemy like that, I would already be dead.
I guess Russian men know more loyalty than American ones do.
“What a shame for you, then,” I say, trailing one hand under her shirt. “No more men to protect you from us.”
“So you haven’t talked to Kyran or Cresci,” she says, sounding a little surprised as she squirms in my lap, grabbing my wrist and trying unsuccessfully to pull it back.
I snort in amusement. “Why would I? Your family screwed us over twice already, and I don’t trust Cresci any more than I do the Winters. He seems to have come out quite well in this whole fiasco.”
It was a weapons deal with the Winters, although our original trading partner had been Silvano Cresci. Only somehow the Winters stole Cresci’s shipment. What should have been a smooth deal ended up with everybody arrested, including the former leader of our faction, Matvey Petrov.
Maybe I should be thanking the Winters, since their fuck-up is why I’m now the “intermin” leader .
Her expression is dark as she replies flatly, “Yeah. I guess it’s good one of us did.”
Nikolai smirks at her, his eyes going to the bandage on her chest. “Yep. Because you sure as hell didn’t.”
“I’m aware of that,” she snaps at him, trying to get up out of my lap. I place a hand on her thigh, pulling her right back down.
My hand rests on her thigh, large and imposing. Something stirs inside me, thinking of how fragile she is.
Of course, my phone buzzes again, several times in quick succession. I let out a frustrated sound and let go of her thigh to stab at the phone.
Several texts from my brother, and another from my father.
“Fuck,” I say. I get up, arm still around Sierra. She squeaks as I lift her up.
“Kotya?” Nikolai asks, quirking a brow at me.
“My father wants me to call him. The same bullshit, I bet.” I walk over to Nikolai and drop Sierra onto the couch with him before swapping to English, “Enjoy the rest of lunch. You can give Sierra the tour, Nikolai. Make sure she understands which parts of the house she does—and does not—belong in.”
I don’t miss the way she perks up at that, but I don’t have the time or inclination to caution her again. If she wants to get herself into trouble, I don’t mind punishing her.
Nikolai takes the none-too-subtle hint and grabs Sierra by the wrist, pulling her up. “Let’s go.”
Sierra glances at me, frowning as she examines me. I don’t know what she sees, and I don’t have time to wonder, either.
The call with my father is far more important than our newest acquisition.