Chapter 19 - Masha
Twenty minutes to get into a dress that was more of a work of art than clothing.
I would have been irritated if I hadn’t been so shaken by what had just happened.
What actually just happened? Despite deciding to get Anatoli under my thumb by means of seduction, I really had only wanted to get a handle on my nonexistent waltzing skills.
Next thing I knew, I was trying to get tiny silk-covered buttons through seemingly tinier silk loops without dislocating my shoulder.
There was no way I’d ask Anatoli for help, not when he had just about reduced me to a mass of jelly.
Who was doing the seducing here? I had to get it together, but it was difficult with those memories of what I knew he could do to me crowding in.
And it wasn’t torture that was at the front of my mind.
As he waited impatiently for me at the front door, I once again faltered, because he looked absolutely scrumptious.
I had never been one to swoon over any pop stars or actors, and I rarely even got a crush.
Just no time for anything like that, and I didn’t dare risk putting myself in a position of weakness, even with someone I could trust.
I couldn’t trust Anatoli at all, but it felt way too much like I was crushing on my captor, like a teenager with a super hot teacher who was all the hotter for being off limits.
It didn’t help at all to remind myself that he was almost twice my age, because that only added to the attraction.
One look at him in his dark suit that molded perfectly to his broad shoulder and lean waist had me stumbling on my strappy gold heels.
The look he gave me almost knocked me all the way out. Full of possessive pride, which should have pissed me off, but only made me tingle all over.
“You’re more beautiful than a starry night,” he said. Damn him.
“At least as sparkly,” I grumbled, referring to the matching gold and diamond set dripping from my ears, neck, and wrist.
He ignored my tone and reached out to touch the golden strand that rested against my exposed cleavage.
His fingers lingered a moment too long, and I stepped back.
If I were thinking straight, I would have used my wiles to make him forget the party, forget everything but me.
But I wasn’t thinking straight, and that was the problem. I wanted him too much for my own good.
The party was held in a ballroom at a secluded mansion in the country.
At least as big as any of my cousins’ warehouses, it was lit up with fairy lights, half the space for tables and the other half for a massive dance floor beneath a stage with a live band.
It was crazy inside, with everyone from big, scarred thugs to little children running and shrieking happily through the throng.
I recognized most of the family members who were present, but this party was for everyone, so it was full of bodyguards, trained assassins, all the way to the people who worked in the Ovinko’s bars and restaurants.
There had to be three hundred people there.
After Anatoli was whisked away for some important conversation, I found myself seated between a gaggle of his elderly aunts.
“Tell us how you met Anatoli,” one said in creaky Russian after introducing herself as Anatoli’s great Aunt Estrella. She said she was Italian by birth, but married into the family and had been living in Russia ever since.
“Oh, it’s not an interesting story,” I said, falling back on the cover story that we met while working on a project together. It was kind of true. “I’d much rather hear how you ended up here.”
The other ladies tittered and settled in for a tale they must have heard at least a dozen times.
“You may not believe this, but my Sergei kidnapped me,” she said, her powdery skin crinkling as she grinned.
It took me a second to remember to gasp.
“My father was the most powerful man in Rome at the time, but he was a tyrant with his sights set on Sergei, who was… well, not exactly doing business with Papa…”
“She’s a Fokin, remember?” someone piped up. “She understands exactly what he was doing.”
I smiled. “An attempted takeover?”
“Something like that. Oh, I hated Sergei with a passion when he tried to hold me for ransom to get what he wanted. Until, of course…”
“Until you didn’t,” I filled in. Why did this sound so familiar? My family was no stranger to such events. The only difference was the happy ending, because I was certain Anatoli wasn’t going to give me one.
She was about to continue when one of the uncles insisted on a dance, and we weren’t on the dance floor long before other uncles and cousins were cutting in.
Every last one of them plied me with questions, but I was a pro at dodging them.
When it was Josef’s turn, instead of trying to wheedle information about my family, he asked what Anatoli was up to in California.
A little devil in me wanted to tell more of the truth than I should, to undermine Anatoli and make him look weak. But somehow, I couldn’t do it, probably because it would go against the image I was supposed to uphold as a smitten bride. It had to be only that.
Wine, vodka, and fancy mixed drinks flowed like a river, but I was careful to only take a sip of every drink anyone thrust at me, setting the glass down at the first opportunity.
I was shockingly having a great time, but there was no way I’d let my guard down amongst all these Ovinkos and their people.
After dancing for so long that it felt like my feet would burst into flames, I finally got a chance to rest and fell into a chair out of the way to catch my breath.
With no one around, I slipped my shoes off and wiggled my toes, sighing with relief, and then looked around for Anatoli.
I spied him across the room, laughing with a group of people, looking completely at ease for once.
I closed my eyes, grateful to sit and be quiet for a moment.
The band abruptly stopped playing, and a second later, the place erupted with screams and the sounds of gunshots.
Solely on instinct, I flung myself behind the chair, trying to assess what was going on.
A group of masked gunmen swarmed the ballroom.
Somehow, an enemy group must have learned the entire Ovinko organization would be easy pickings tonight.
I was at the far end of the room, and well hidden now behind the chair. Between the men getting their wits about them to fight back, and the women either joining them or hustling to get the kids and old people to safety, it was utter mayhem.
The perfect opportunity to escape.
Staying low, I crept swiftly toward the doors, my heart pounding with elation that I finally had my chance.
All I had to do was get off the property and make my way back to the city.
If even a little luck was on my side, I’d have a phone in my hand in no time.
All I needed were my family in Moscow to know where I was, and help would be on the way.
All I had to do was keep moving, but as I was about to reach the doors, one of the masked men tossed a bundle of sea blue fabric to the floor a few feet from me. A familiar voice cried out, and I stopped, frozen by the fear in the voice.
Great Aunt Estrella held up her arm, as if that would shield her from the bullet that was about to tear through her skull. There was no time to think; I had to keep going before he was finished with her and turned to realize I was there. Why was I hesitating?
Why was I hesitating so long? I could honestly call myself a cold-blooded killer when the situation warranted, and I had seen dozens of people get taken out of the game.
But Estrella wasn’t going to be one of them.
Even if she was a so-called enemy, she was still an unarmed old lady.
Grabbing the nearest chair by the legs, I heaved myself up, swinging with all my strength toward the guy’s hand.
It hit with a sickening crack, sending the gun skating from his grip.
Before he could recover and break me in two, I roundhouse kicked him in the throat, ducked under his reaching arms to retrieve his gun, neatly rolling onto my back to shoot him in the chest. He went down like a bag of rocks, and Aunt Estrella threw herself at me.
There was no time for grateful hugs, and I helped her get behind the stage where the band and a few other people were hiding. At the last second, I handed the gun to Estrella, telling her to use it if she needed to.
“Stay,” she urged. “It’s safer back here.”
Shaking my head, I took off again in a low crouch.
That was my good deed for the day, now I had to save myself.
I wasn’t a few yards away from the stage when I heard a familiar click.
Whirling around, I saw another masked man with a gun, this one aimed directly at me, only two feet away.
There was no overtaking this guy with the element of surprise.
His finger moved toward the trigger, and I wished I wasn’t going to die like that, but there was no way I’d beg or grovel.
As I began to close my eyes, there was a flash of movement from the side, and just as quickly as he appeared in front of me, the guy was gone, thrown to the ground with a grunting thud.
Anatoli was on top of him, beating him senseless with his own gun before ending him with a bullet between the eyes.
I stood up, unable to run, because the next thing I knew, I was being hustled away, tucked under Anatoli’s sheltering arm.
He hollered for one of the guards to follow us and put me in one of the cars.
“Stay with her,” he ordered the guard. The man cocked his gun and nodded.
“No way,” I said, pissed off and wanting to join the fight now that one of those assholes had come within a split second of shooting me. “I can help.”
Anatoli gave me a look that was more furious than I’d ever seen before. Without deigning to answer me directly, he turned back to the guard. “She stays here. Keep her covered.”
So he didn’t believe me, didn’t trust me to help his family in this fight for their lives.
Or was he actually concerned for my safety?
It hit me then that he’d tackled that gunman at the risk of his own life, when it might have been altogether more convenient to let him do the job Anatoli was going to do eventually anyway.
Wasn’t he? Maybe he just wanted to do it himself.
Either way, I would have been dead if it weren’t for him. I leaned back in the car, overwhelmed and unable to come to grips with any reality where Anatoli actually saved my life.