Chapter 9 - Mira
“He’s been asking for you.” The quiet, whispered words made Mira’s heart thud in her chest. She almost jumped out of her skin with excitement as she spun around to face Sarah, the only female servant she ever allowed to enter her room in the entire villa owned by her father.
He? Mikhail? As soon as the thought trembled through Mira’s mind, Sarah’s confused look registered, and disappointed realization dawned.
Of course, what had she been thinking? Mikhail wouldn’t ask for her here, because he didn’t know where she lived or who she was. And even if by some wild chance he did know who she was, he still wouldn’t turn up at her doorstep asking for her. He would be too busy running for the hills.
With a sigh, Mira returned her contemplation to the scene beyond her windows. It was a no-brainer that the he who Sarah referred to was the sixty-something-year-old man who she’d been watching as he cavorted like a teenager.
Her father was in an unusually joyful mood today, Mira thought as she peered from behind her curtains at the scenario out in the gardens. Her father was nuzzling the cleavage of one of his many women and laughing riotously as her huge bosom swallowed up his grinning face.
“Did he say why he wanted to see me?” she asked Sarah.
“No he just, um, grunted at me to go fetch you,” Sarah replied quietly.
Of course. He had yet to understand that Mira wasn’t a piece of furniture to be fetched or told to stand quietly in the corner while his lecherous friends ogled her.
Sarah cleared her throat timidly at Mira’s continued silence. “Um, he may have meant right away, ma’am.”
“Shouldn’t I at least give him time to finish?” Mira asked bitterly, nodding toward the scene below.
Sarah’s quiet reply sounded pained. “He already um…finished, ma’am. This is just…uh, afterplay.”
Mira sighed inwardly. Her father had the virility of a man half his age. He’d been known to fuck any of his legion of women in the open garden, by the pool, anywhere really, as long as he thought Mira wasn’t in the house.
She would have to go downstairs now, she supposed. No use mortifying poor Sarah more than she already had.
Her gaze drifted to a picture on her wall. It was a happy painting of a couple entwined in a passionate kiss on a beach with the sun washing over them. The painting had always struck her because of how real and lifelike it seemed.
But now, something about their intimate pose reminded her poignantly of her night in Mikhail’s arms. Unbidden, her nipples beaded into hard points as she recalled Mikhail’s lips on them.
She sighed as she looked down at her nipples, now visible against the thin cotton of her blouse. She had sternly ordered herself to forget Mikhail and his knowing gaze and expert hands. But try as she might, she couldn’t get her body to obey her. It seemed to have a mind of its own.
In the two weeks since their one-night stand, her entire body had been quivering with need for him.
Which is pathetic when one considers it objectively, she thought . I’m not even sure Mikhail is his real name. Plus, there are millions of people in America. How would I ever find him again?
Chicago was heavily populated. She stood zero chance of seeing him ever again, even if she returned to the same club.
“Which is a good thing,” she assured herself grimly as she jerked away from the windows and headed downstairs for another showdown with her father.
Lately, it seemed that every time she clapped eyes on him, they had hurtful words to say to each other. He always either wanted to bend her to his will or to let her know just how poorly he thought of whatever decision of hers he didn’t approve of.
Mira was dressed casually in a pair of white shorts, a pink halter top, and white flip-flops with her long red hair streaming down her back in cascading waves. But she didn’t care much for her appearance; she was too upset about the prospect of another fine morning which was about to be ruined by a yelling match with her father.
As she bounded into the lounge where her father was currently enjoying his half-naked, very buxom, flavor of the month, Mira kept her face as studiously blank as possible.
She made certain to make a clatter as she went toward them, knocking down a vase and pretending to stumble over a chair. She could have seriously hurt herself trying to give the old coot warning that he had company, she thought later with wrath.
Lazily, he released his lover and let her slide to her chair before turning the blast of his brilliant gaze on his daughter.
“Mira, my dear. Come sit by your father,” he said with such uncharacteristic bonhomie that she almost choked. Her father was never warm and gooey; he was cold and ruthless even to his lovers, and especially to her. But he could be charming when he wanted something.
What did he want now?
She searched his gaze and understanding clicked. Of course. He wanted to talk about the famous marriage and that’s why he was buttering her up so clumsily. Well, for once, she wanted to talk about the marriage too. She wanted to tell him where he could stuff it now that she was no longer a virgin, because last she heard, it had been a heavy requirement for whatever lecherous fellow he’d hoped to marry her off to.
She remained standing rather than take his offered seat. “I’d rather stand, Father.”
Just then, one of his men strode forward to whisper something to him, and all traces of good humor vanished from his face. “That Nikolai bastard! How did he manage to kill the men without coming into my dungeons?”
“A kill switch,” she heard the man mutter, after throwing an uncomfortable glance her way. “They all had implanted chips.”
Her father looked at her, too, then reined in his temper with visible effort as he looked back at his man. “Document all the information we were able to get from them. Then get me everything you can on Nikolai. It’s time to end that bastard once and for all. A curse on the day he was born!” he ranted.
The man nodded and strode away smartly without another word.
Mira had seen her father express varying degrees of emotions, including hatred, because after all he was Russian and could hold a grudge for a century. But never had she seen him show this much hatred toward any individual. This Nikolai was practically a curse word in her home; she heard the name every time something bad happened or was about to happen. Her father blamed him for everything. Even one time when she was much younger, about eight years old, she’d left the chicken coop open and all the chickens had escaped and caused a nuisance at her birthday party. Her father’s diatribe had blamed Nikolai.
Who was he? Mira would have to pay more attention to her father’s conversations with his men from now on. Whoever this person was, he was an interesting character. Her father had been after him for as long as she could remember, but it seemed the man was somehow able to elude her father.
He must be very masterful, intelligent, and brave enough to be crazy to have pulled off such a feat. No one ever escaped Oleg Dostoevsky. Mira had even heard whispers that sometimes the FBI covertly approached her father for help catching a dangerous fugitive they were after. He was that connected and powerful.
Who was this Nikolai person?
As though he’d heard her thoughts, her father glared at her. “Your suitor will be here at six p.m. sharp for the engagement. Get that simpering maid you love so much to do something nice with your hair.”
“Simpering maid…?” Mira demanded, choosing to focus first on the least upsetting of everything he’d said.
He waved a hand expansively. “The little girl that went to fetch you.”
She glared at him. “ Sarah is not a maid, simpering or otherwise.”
He frowned, his brows snapping together over his eyes; then he forced himself to relax back against the chair. “Whatever you say, Mira, dear. Just get ready.”
She stiffened her spine as she looked down her nose at her own father like one of those ancient aristocrats. “That said, I won’t be getting ready for any engagement.”
Startled silence reigned and then her father’s lover launched into a nervous laugh.
Mira threw her a disgusted look. “Whoever you are, this doesn’t concern you. Get lost.”
“Don’t you dare speak to her like that,” her father barked.
Mira turned to him. “We need to talk, Father. And believe me, you don’t want her to hear what I have to say.”
Her father stared silently into her eyes, not moving so much as a muscle. She took his silence to mean he was ordering her to speak, regardless of the presence of his lover whose name she didn’t even know. She would bet he didn’t know the woman’s name either; he changed them like shirts.
Mira shrugged. It was his funeral.
“Your friend wanted your little virgin daughter, didn’t he?” she asked.
“So?” he barked.
“I’m not a virgin anymore,” she announced, feeling a weight lift off her shoulders as she said those words.
Her father erupted from his seat as though his pants had suddenly caught on fire. “Say again?” he spat.
Trembling with a little trickle of fear, Mira nevertheless lifted her chin and stared him down. “You heard me the first time. I’m not going to be marrying your friend anymore. I’ve lost my virginity. Tell him to try the next virgin,” she finished with uncharacteristic bitterness.
Undiluted hatred flashed across her father’s face and Mira realized that her father truly despised her in that moment. She half expected him to hit her, but something inside of her told her he wouldn’t dare. No matter how incensed her father was, he never struck a woman, which was ironic given how ruthless he was as master of his Bratva.
“You little fool! You absolute nitwit! Just like your mother, you have no control over your pussy!” he spat.
All the color drained from her face at his reference to her mother. “My mother?”
“That bitch got what was coming to her,” he raged. “Just like you, she couldn’t keep it in her pants. You deserve a bullet in the face for this, Mira, but I won’t waste my bullets. Get out of my sight, you disgust me.”
Mira felt as if the ground beneath her feet was giving way. She felt as if all she had known about life was suddenly being turned upside down until her very world seemed to stand on its own head.
Through a very dry throat, she managed to force out the words, “Did you kill my mother?”
Her father started to respond, then he clamped his mouth shut and looked away from her, his entire frame taut with anger. Mira looked around and discovered that somewhere in the midst of the whole drama, his lover had slinked away without a word.
Without thinking, Mira grabbed her father by the lapels and gave him a rough shake. “Answer me, you heartless bastard. Did you kill my mother?”
“Go to your room,” he barked.
Two female guards materialized and yanked Mira off her father as effortlessly as though she weighed little more than a feather.
“Leave me alone!” Mira yelled, struggling against their grip as she strained toward her father, her fingers desperately clawing at the air as though she wanted to scratch his eyes out. “Tell me, Oleg , what did you do to my mother?” she yelled, using his first name as disrespectfully as she could.
She’d be damned if she ever called him Father again. He had killed her mother. He had robbed her of a mother’s love in childhood. He had…
Her thoughts trailed off as blackness swam before her eyes.
While struggling against the straining hold of the two women who were bearing her off to her rooms, Mira was also trying to reconcile in her mind the earth-shattering revelation that she had never had a mother’s love because of her own father. As they turned into the corridors leading to her room, Mira succumbed to the darkness and slid into a dead faint.