Chapter 13 - Darya
I wonder what it says about me that I wasn’t nervous after he fucked me and left me in a tub, but seeing him the morning after an unforeseen heart-to-heart is what has my nerves wriggling like a can of worms.
Even when I steel my shoulders and keep my head high, it just feels like a front. Like a performance I’m putting on, but without my heart in it.
Looks like it’s on Anton to follow the status quo and kindly pretend the “Library Incident”, as I’ve been referring to in my head all morning, never even happened.
“Good morning,” he greets me lightly, taking a sip from his cup.
So far, so good, I think.
“You look unfairly good,” Anton drawls, eyes flicking up from his newspaper. “Especially for someone who got as little sleep as I did.”
Well, so much for that expectation.
“I have fantastic genetics and an even superior sense of style,” I say imperiously, nose upturned in a sanctimonious “Of course I do,” that I hope will quell this disconcerting friendliness he’s putting on.
Instead, he smiles at me, exhausted but untroubled. “Can I pour you a cup?” he asks, gesturing to the cup at the place-setting.
I refuse to squirm. Offering him a blasé smile in return, I say, “Depends on what’s in the pot.” I gesture to the teapot by his elbow.
“Tea.”
“I’m a coffee kind of girl. Black as tar, atrociously sweetened.”
Anton raises his brows at me in an expression I’m growing disturbingly familiar with. He looks, I swear, almost fond of me. “If you’d let me continue, you’d find out much sooner that I’m referring to the carafe of coffee I had prepared for you.”
This is why sleep is important. You don’t sleep enough, and suddenly, you’re stupid and don’t see perfectly obvious things sitting right in front of you.
The tips of my ears warm. I sink into the seat by his side because this dining table is too large to justify walking all the way across it to sit at the other end of the table. It feels indecently close, though it isn’t.
“Then yes,” I harrumph. “Pour away.”
Even to my own ear, it isn’t a great cover for how out of balance I feel right now. This isn’t helped at all by the fact that he folds his newspaper and offers it to me before he does it. From the positioning of his fingers, I can tell he’s reading the Business section.
“We can share,” I say, fighting not to sound strained. “I’ll take the Lifestyle and Culture section.”
“Separate them. I’ll pour your coffee.”
This is so weird—the thought flashes in my head like a big, bright neon sign.
Weird, because it isn’t. In fact, it feels eerily natural to sit here, bathed in the morning light, and split the paper into sections to share.
To take the cup of coffee he extends, the same way Filip or one of my siblings might, yet nothing like that at all.
The only part of it that’s really out of place is the look on Anton’s face, approximately three minutes into falling into a comfortable silence as we eat and read. He thinks so loudly, it practically screams for me to look his way, despite my concentrated efforts to do no such thing.
It would be rude not to, however, when he blurts, “Would you like to accompany me on today’s mission?”
Did he just—? My brain glitches.
“Yes,” I say, like I’m running out of time before he can realize what he’s offered and changes his mind. “Just let me get dressed.”
“You’re already—”
I’m out of my seat and out of the room, my coffee in hand, before he gets another word out. There’s got to be a better outfit than this sweater and cigarette-pants combo for this situation.
Over the years, I’ve been entrusted with spearheading many events for the Yuri Bratva.
I’m aware of the machinations of this world.
But never have I tagged along on a mission before.
Nevertheless, I’m more abashed than I thought myself capable of when we roll up to the location—after I’d gotten dolled up in a sexy little powersuit of my own to match Anton’s.
The location, more specifically, a tarmac runway that currently houses a private plane.
I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that it belongs to my husband.
Of course, I’ve traveled privately before. We Yuris are hardly a commercial-flight kind of family. I suppose when I imagined a Bratva mission, I wasn’t expecting to be on a flight.
“This is beginning to feel like an abduction,” I mutter darkly, just as Anton opens the car door for me. I hop out of the SUV in a huff, able to get in his face in the teetering high-heels that encase my feet. “Where are you taking me?”
“Your birthday was two weeks ago, and you were entrenched in wedding planning,” he says, like that’s a completely normal thing for him to know about me. A fact that I’ve never shared with him. “I thought a trip to New York for a belated celebration could be fun.”
My mouth twists before I smooth it out, under the guise of fixing my lipstick. “So, there’s no Bratva business?”
It frays my patience when I see the corners of his mouth twitch. Amusement glimmers in his eyes, the milkiest of greens in the afternoon sun painting his chiseled face as golden as his hair.
“Whatever else you may think about me, I wouldn’t lie to you,” he says. “There are just two reasons. There’s business, and I thought you’d appreciate some one-on-one time with your little sister.”
“Then why the hell do you look like you’re trying not to laugh at me?” I demand, teeth clenched.
For the second time today, he gives me that suspiciously fond look.
I don’t know what the hell to do with it.
It doesn’t help much once he answers, “Because I surprised you by knowing your birthday, and you lingered on that fact for approximately point-five seconds before you got pissed I’m not taking you on business.
It’s—and I’m sure you’ll try to kill me with a look for this—fucking adorable. ”
He isn’t wrong.
Adorable? The plan to weaken him with poison over a period of time is looking more and more attractive by the second. “I only accept acknowledgment of my birthday with cake and/or presents,” I snap, stomping past him into the plane.
I angle my face, careful not to allow him a glimpse of the preposterous, helpless grin that takes my mouth hostage.
***
I’ve only been to Viktor Zakharov’s penthouse in New York City once before. Considering he’s been my sister’s husband for a year now, that’s an egregious oversight. That said, at least my sister gets to call home a place that’s distinctly her grungy, industrial-leaning taste.
It bothers me that I don’t know whether that’s because their tastes are so well aligned or he made the concession for her sake.
But it’s hard for that weight on my chest to last past the elevator ride. All it takes is being spit out of the vestibule, and a silver-hair blur is launching itself at me with a high-pitched squeal, and the familiar smell of my baby sister’s perfume floods my senses.
“Fuck yes,” she howls into the top of my head, her gangly limbs roping me to her bony body. “Look at you, in your boss bitch ‘fit!”
Not even my eyes watering, overwhelmed by this sensation of coming home, can keep them from rolling at my sister’s limited vernacular. “You’re so uncouth,” I grouse, and hug her back just as hard, until we’re swaying in place together. “I missed you so much.”
“Didn’t they see each other yesterday?” The son of a bitch my sister has chosen for my brother-in-law fails to adequately whisper.
“Eat my ass, baby,” Nadya says, taking a hand off me, presumably to flip her husband off.
Still uncouth, but I approve of the sentiment enough not to chastise her for it. I give her another squeeze.
And I do not let Viktor Zakharov ruin the moment by his leering at my baby sister and saying, “Later.”
It pleases me more than I’ll admit to find Anton shooting him with warning daggers before I can do it. “Knock it off,” he growls and harshly gestures to him to the side. “Leave them alone. You have your wife all the time. We’re only here for forty-eight hours. Let them bond.”
I’ve got zero interest in the involuntary look that must splay itself on my face. I forcibly shake it off as soon as I feel my sister looking at me. “Yeah, this is my birthday present, apparently. Quality time with my baby sister.”
“Yeah!” Nadya cheers. “Let’s doll up and go out. Or, like, I’ll doll up, because you’re all sexy and shit already. As your treat, I’ll even let you pick my outfit. Come on, Medusa. Please don’t turn my eternal slampiece into stone.”
Oh my God. I really need to stop encouraging her by laughing at the awful things she says.
***
What about me strikes my sister as “dressed for a nightclub”, I can’t say.
But I’ve never been able to entirely understand this person I’ve loved since she was born.
This unpredictable person, whom I always forget, drives me insane and tries to talk me into making horrible choices, like a very cute cartoon devil on my shoulder, until we spend a prolonged period of time together.
This time, it’s been long enough apart that I don’t put up enough of a fight when Nadya drags me over to the bar and plies me with cocktails. At least not until the drinks really start hitting me.
But I’m grateful to have the sugary liquor in my system—less so to have it in my mouth to choke on, but I digress—when Nadya casually asks, “So, are you getting railed within an inch of your life by Daddy Zakharov?”
“Nadya!” I shriek, horrified, my entire face searing red. I must be past tipsy, though, because I burst into high-pitched giggles right after. “Oh my Gooood!”
“Holy fucking shit,” she gasps back, her eyes going so wide I worry they’ll bug right out of her head. “You did! You so, so totally did, didn’t you?”
I have to bury my face in my hands. That’s the only way I can admit, “A little bit.”
“He was staring at your ass when we were hugging,” she points out. “Did you fuck on the plane on the way here?”
I drop my hands to frown at her. “It was a forty-five-minute flight, Nadya. And he’s my mortal enemy, in case you’ve forgotten.”