Chapter 8
ALINA
I didn't go straight home. I couldn't.
Every time I considered heading toward my dingy apartment, a man would get on the bus and eye me a little too hard, or the skin on the back of my neck would tingle in warning.
Was it Pavel having me followed?
Or was he watching me?
Was he lurking in the shadows, waiting until I was trapped in my apartment?
Were his goons hiding in the shadows instead?
Waiting for me to head home. Then they'd send word to their boss?
My skin crawled, and my heart pounded so hard in my chest I thought it was going to crack one of my ribs.
I got off the bus and headed to the Metro.
First, I took the yellow line down into Virginia.
Then I took the blue line back up into DC just to switch over to the red to take me to Maryland.
For hours, I rode that line back and forth until I got on the green and took that through DC again, connecting back to the red.
Over and over I got off at random stops and switched at different lines, crossing state lines through Maryland and Virginia back and forth seven, maybe eight times.
I wasn’t sure.
The count disappeared somewhere between the clammy heat of subway platforms and the numbing exhaustion seeping into my bones.
Every time I thought I might have been safe, I doubled back.
Dodging between train cars, I slid between doors at the last minute and then switched cars.
When I found an empty car, I stood in one of the cramped corners so I couldn't be seen through the windows.
I never sat down.
I never stopped looking around me.
Men like the Ivanovs didn't give up easily.
Thankfully, I knew the management office didn't have my real address. The second they told me the pay, and that I was not to see or hear anything, I knew I was taking a risk.
The pay was too good to turn down.
That didn't mean I had to be stupid.
The address I gave the management office was a PO Box on the other side of town.
Pavel wouldn't be able to find me that way.
But his men following me would make it all too easy.
By the time I reached my neighborhood, the sun was rising, and DC was waking up, ready for another day of greed, abuse, and power grabbing.
When I finally stepped off the platform and climbed the cracked concrete steps to my street, my nerves were frayed.
My hands were still shaking, and my legs were cramping from all the tension.
I had tucked the gun into the front of my waistband and pulled out my T-shirt to cover it. Which of course didn't really work to fully conceal it, but if I crossed my arms low over my stomach it wasn't as overt.
I wasn't about to attract police attention by being the crazy woman on the DC Metro with a gun.
That would make it far too easy for Pavel to find me.
For a moment in the middle of my travels, I had considered waving the gun around to attract attention and then allowing myself to be taken into police custody where I could explain to a detective or a police chief or whoever what had happened and turn over the weapon.
It was a nice little fantasy, pretending for a moment that I lived in a world where the good guys won.
Where someone would listen to me and take my story seriously.
Sadly, I lived in reality, where a woman was rarely believed over a man, and the Ivanovs probably had every single cop on their payroll.
No, making a scene, garnering attention, or telling my story was just going to make it that much easier for him to find me.
I didn't need to draw attention; I needed to fade into the background until he forgot about me .
I needed to stay alive.
I needed to stay on my feet, working to pay off my father's debts and my grandmother's bills.
Someone needed to take care of her.
My father had disappeared, so I was the only option.
She never let me down, and I wasn't about to do that to her.
The moment I stepped inside my tiny apartment, I shoved the door shut behind me and bolted every single lock.
When I moved into the apartment, it already had three deadbolts.
I had added two more and a chain for good measure.
Now, that didn't seem like enough.
After locking up, I dragged my tiny second-hand Ikea dresser against the door and looked around for anything else I could use.
On a whim, I stacked the pots and pans I found at Goodwill on top, as well as anything else that would make some noise if it fell.
It was a tower of sad, pathetic junk.
Almost everything I owned.
I looked at it, hollow desolation welling inside of me, and just sank to the floor.
The dresser wouldn't stop Pavel, but maybe it would slow him down?
If he found me, maybe that dresser with its mountain of clutter would make enough noise to give me the warning I needed to escape or fight back.
I took the gun out of my waistband and just held it in my lap.
For a moment, I lifted it away from my body, like it might bite me.
Before grabbing this one off of that desk , I’d never held a gun before.
I never even had the desire.
The closest I had come was maybe a paintball gun at Bradley Foster's fifth grade birthday party.
What had happened to that shy little girl who was afraid to shoot a paintball gun at her classmates?
Now she was sitting here holding a pistol that had been used to kill someone just a few hours ago.
I had witnessed a grisly murder and how did I respond?
By sucking the murderer's cock.
More tears burned behind my eyes as I grieved that innocent little girl who’d had such a bright future ahead of her.
That wasn't me anymore.
Somehow, I had become this.
A broken husk of a woman desperately trying to make ends meet and having to deal with mobsters and murderers and…
"Seriously, what the fuck just happened?" I whispered aloud, as if the gun could actually answer me.
The events of the night played in a vicious loop over and over in my mind.
Starting with the first gunshot.
The blood.
Pavel opening the door. Meeting his eyes.
His mouth on mine, the way he tasted of mint and coffee .
The strength in his hands when he grabbed me and the way I had let him?—
I gritted my teeth, swallowing down the shame burning in my throat.
I should have bitten him.
I should have clawed at him, fought him off.
Anything.
I should've done anything other than let myself drown in the moment.
No, it was so much worse than that. I didn't let myself drown in the moment.
Drowning in the moment would have been acceptable.
It would have meant I was forced to do something against my will, and I shut myself off mentally and emotionally.
Drowning would have meant I compartmentalized and hid my mind from what was happening.
That was understandable.
I could've lived with that.
I was just a girl trapped in an awful situation, and I did what I needed to do to survive.
Survival was acceptable.
What I did wasn't about survival.
I gave myself over to it, to him.
It didn't matter that I hated him.
I didn't want what happened, but I didn't fight it either.
I submitted to him, to his power.
My body responded in ways that it shouldn't have.
I didn't recoil from his kiss.
I melted into it .
Into him.
When he put me on my knees, warmth sparked between my thighs, then grew, spreading to my limbs.
No. That wasn't true.
If I was going to be completely honest with myself, I was aroused the second our eyes met.
My heart caught in my throat, some emotion that I should not have felt at that moment.
That was why it took me a moment to run.
That was why I couldn't escape that moment.
I was struck by him, by his handsome features, his air of dominance and power.
For a second, I was frozen in admiration for the man I saw in front of me.
He wasn't a coward who would sell his daughter and mother out to cover his gambling debts.
He wasn't a loser who would cheat on a woman and then throw her out.
Pavel Ivanov wasn't some little boy who would take from those he loved.
He was a man.
A warrior who would protect his family.
For just a moment, I allowed myself to fantasize what it would be like to have a man wrap me in his arms and tell me that everything was going to be okay. That I didn't have to worry. That he would handle everything.
That I wasn't alone anymore.
That just for one fucking second, I didn't have to be the strong one. The independent one. The responsible one. The one who wasn't allowed to buckle under the weight of all her problems .
That just once, I could hear someone else say “I got this” and be able to believe it. Trust in it.
When he had me cornered under that desk, I was scared, but I was curious too. I wanted to know what he would do to me and then, when he put me on my knees, I didn't fight him.
I preened under him calling me a good girl, and I leaned into it because some broken part of me wanted that praise. I wanted to show him I could be good, I could be worthy of?—
No. I shut that line of thought down.
It was just the adrenaline talking, and I refused to believe it was anything else.
The truth gnawed at my gut, and I needed to shut it up. I desperately needed to silence that insidious whisper in the back of my mind, the one that suggested I liked being dominated by a powerful man.
That wasn’t who I was. That was not who I wanted to be.
Maybe under different circumstances, maybe in a different life with a different man who wasn't so dangerous I could be that girl, but not like this.
If it were different circumstances, if it was any man other than Pavel Ivanov, then you wouldn't have reacted the way you did.
The voice in the back of my head taunted me with a truth that I refused to acknowledge.
I needed to forget.
I needed to shut that little voice up and pretend that none of this ever happened.
This memory, along with the other ones too painful to dwell on, would be locked in a vault deep in my mind to never be brought up or examined again.
Crawling across the cramped floor of my studio, I reached for the half-empty bottle of cheap wine sitting on the rickety nightstand. There was only one way to silence that little voice and to make sure that memory never came to the surface again.
The first gulp burned, my throat still raw from the way Pavel's cock was so rough and?—
The second gulp went down smoother, dulling the ache. By the time I finished the bottle, my limbs were numb, my eyelids heavy, and my head had finally stopped spinning with truths I refused to acknowledge.
Bright mid-morning sunlight stabbed through the broken blinds and my skull throbbed in protest.
I squinted at the clock.
The bright red numbers read 9:42.
Shit.
I was late.
I shot up so fast my stomach lurched. My head pounded from that ill-advised half bottle of cheap merlot. It was the wine. It had to be the wine. I refused to allow it to be anything else.
Stumbling to the sink, I choked down the last two aspirin in the bottle and swallowed them with a handful of stale tap water before wiping my face with trembling hands.
I could never go back to that cleaning job.
It was a death sentence, or maybe worse.
But I needed money.
Rent was due in five days and the last thing I wanted or needed was to end up on the street with Pavel hunting me like a dog.
So, I needed to show up for my bartending shift at Velvet Dreams, or as the girls and I liked to call it, Vomit Dreams.
It was the kind of place where the waitresses wore cheap satin corsets, thigh-high stockings, and heels that could double as weapons.
The dancers started in cheap Halloween costumes and ended up fully bare.
The only thing they wore off the stage was a lifeless haze in their eyes.
Hell, management took eighty percent of their tips.
There was a small part of me that had some respect for this strip club, though.
It didn't even pretend to be classy.
It knew what it was, and what it wasn't.
They never pretended the rules couldn’t be bent or broken for a price and did nothing to hide the fact that most of the dancers were strung out and just dancing for drug money.
The waitresses were like me, dirt poor and working a few jobs to make ends meet.
Some were runaways with fake IDs management didn't care to check, others were single moms trying to put food on the table while hiding from an abusive ex, or with a record too long for a nine-to-five.
I hated every second of working there, but it paid in cash and no one ever asked me questions, too afraid someone would start asking them questions.
This was the type of job that I needed. I once hoped that in a month or two I could quit this one and work solely as a cleaner but plans clearly had changed.
I needed to get to the club, get on the good side of my boss, and try to pick up extra shifts until I found something to replace that cleaning job.
I shuddered.
Getting on the bosses’ good side was never fun.
It meant making one of the managers think there was a chance I would let him fuck me in the office. If it was the other one, I would have to demean myself even more by boosting his delusional ego, convincing him in a cutesy, almost childlike voice that he was the big, important man.
Both options made my skin crawl.
Before I left, I grabbed a bruised apple from the counter. My stomach twisted at the thought of food, but I needed something to hold me through this shift, and probably the next.
If I was lucky, I might grab some maraschino cherries from behind the bar, assuming they were from a fresh jar and not already molding.
My stomach rolled again, acid rising to the back of my throat.
Half a bottle of wine on an empty stomach was a terrible decision.
Who would have thought?
I cast one last look at the gun, sitting on the nightstand by my bed. I could bring it with me.
God knew Vomit Dreams, and the neighborhood around it, definitely warranted carrying a gun.
I knew nothing about guns. How would I know if that gun was maybe special? Would someone recognize it? Was it some kind of fancy Russian deal that people would instantly know belonged to an Ivanov?
It was too risky, so I left it.
Instead, I grabbed a couch cushion off the futon I had dragged up from the corner and shoved the gun into a hole on the other side of it. I pressed it deep into the worn-out stuffing. Just in case.
Ignoring a fresh spike of pain through both temples and its accompanying wave of nausea, I pulled the dresser away from the door and slipped out. Cringing from the harsh clang from a pot which slipped to the floor that amped up that spike of pain.
It was fine.
Pain meant I was alive.
I'd survived.
If Pavel hadn't found me yet, that meant I was in the clear.
Right ?