Mikhail
A few minutes after having a server bring her a drink, I watch the young woman in the little black dress make her way to me like watching someone walk in a dream.
It seems like the corners of the room are fuzzy, and it feels like it takes twice as long as it should.
I watch the way she’s making her way toward me like an arrow on a path.
“Thank you for the drink,” she says in Russian. It has a rehearsed cadence to it that’s endearing. The American accent rounds Russian’s edges.
“You practiced that,” I tell her with a smile and sip my drink.
She lifts her chin—the gesture of an impetuous child. “Was it wrong?”
“No.”
“Then I’m counting it as a victory.”
“Small victories matter to students,” I say. She opens her mouth to say something, and I interrupt her, nodding toward her table. “You are celebrating.”
“I am.”
“What?”
“A job.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
“What kind of job?” She hesitates, and I raise my palm. “It’s okay. You can keep your secrets. I have some of my own.”
“Oh, like what?”
“If I told you, they wouldn’t be secrets,” I retort, and that earns me a real smile from her, wide enough to see that her teeth are unusually straight.
American. I look down at the drink in her hand, still mostly full, then back up at the dirty-blond hair framing her freckled, heart-shaped face. “Do you like it?”
“I haven’t decided. It may be a bit…mature for me,” she says, swishing it.
“How old are you?” I ask her, looking into her green eyes to watch for a hint of lies.
“Old enough to know that when a man asks that, I’m too young for him,” she says sharply.
I can’t help but laugh at her directness. “You walked over,” I point out, pointing my drink at her friend and the boy who has returned. They both quickly avert their eyes from us.
“To say thank you.”
“You said it.”
Her eyes don’t leave mine, the air charged between us, and I gesture to the leather seat across from me.
She looks back for one second at the pair she left behind and then tucks the little black dress around her tightly before sitting.
“I’m Taylor,” she says, like she’s placing a knife on the table between us and daring me to pick it up. “Taylor Hayes.”
I should send her back to her friends. She is young. American. Tipsy enough that her smile has gone loose at the edges, but not yet foolish. Still tracking every movement around her.
There is a difference. I have built a life on recognizing the small separations between weakness and choice, between fear and obedience, between a person who can be bought and a person who has not yet learned her price.
Taylor has not learned hers. That makes her interesting.
It also makes her dangerous. For both of us.
“Mikhail.”
“Mikhail,” she repeats, testing my name on her tongue. It should not affect me. It is a common name. A strong name, yes, but not rare. I have heard it from politicians, enemies, priests, my mother, men begging for their teeth. I have heard it shouted in anger and whispered in fear.
I have not heard it like this. Curious. A little drunk. Completely unaware that there are men in this city who would lower their eyes before speaking it.
This is why I come here when I want to be left alone.
No one in this room knows who I am. University students do not know what the governor of Moscow Oblast looks like.
They do not care to find out. If they do know, in this bar, they do not look close enough to recognize him.
They see the suit, decide I am too old and too serious for the place, and turn back to themselves.
Tonight, I needed that.
The driver lasted longer than I expected before admitting Orlov’s name, though not long enough to convince me he had told us everything.
By the time we let him go, there was still blood flecked inside the buttonholes of my cuffs and too much violence still coursing through me to return home and sit across from my mother as though I had spent the evening signing documents.
So, I came here to drink until the edge wore off. I gesture to the server to bring us another round, something she can hold and sip, not throw back like the vodka at her table.
Taylor’s eyebrow lifts. “You’re trying to get me drunk.”
“You are already drunk.”
“I’m celebrating.”
“Then I am helping.”
“That sounds like something a villain says before the third act.”
I pause with my drink halfway to my mouth, and she smiles, pleased with herself. She folds her hands in front of her on the table, waiting for my response. “It is just a drink,” I tell her, finishing mine and setting the empty glass on the edge of the table for the server to take.
“It’s never just a drink.”
“Good,” I say, glad she thinks so.
The server arrives with another two glasses. I hand one to Taylor and raise mine. “To your secret job,” I say.
“To my secret job,” she echoes.
Our glasses meet with a soft click. We drink. I look at her mouth when she drinks, which is a mistake.
Her lipstick is mostly gone now, worn away by vodka and laughter and whatever poor judgment made her slide into my booth. What remains is a faint stain at the center of her lower lip. I imagine pressing my thumb there. I imagine ruining the rest of it with more than my thumb.
Across the room, the boy she came with now watches us like he has swallowed glass.
Petyr, I think someone called him. He is young.
Broad-shouldered. Pale in the way men get when jealousy takes the blood from their faces.
His hands open and close at his sides, and I can see every thought moving through him.
He wants to come over. He wants to drag her back.
One of my men stands near the bar and another is seated close to the entrance, dressed casually enough that no one here has noticed either of them.
The man stationed near the bar glances at me, waiting for a signal I do not give.
Petyr wants to prove something. Men who want to prove something are the easiest to break.
Taylor follows my gaze and sighs. Something softens around her mouth, and I dislike that more than I should. Sympathy is not affection, but it can become affection if fed often enough. “He’s harmless,” she says.
“No man who wants a woman is harmless.”
Her eyes snap back to mine. For a moment, the music and voices around us seem to dull. Her fingers tighten around the glass I sent her. “Does that include you?” she asks.
“Yes.”
The answer sits between us. I wait for her to retreat behind a joke. She does not. Instead, she leans back against the booth, one bare knee shifting under the table as if she has only just realized she is in a dress short enough to test my restraint. The movement is small. Accidental, maybe.
Maybe not.
“I appreciate the honesty,” she says. “Let’s keep the honesty going. Is this a regular thing for you? Sitting in dark booths and sending mysterious drinks to women half your age?”
“Are you half my age?”
“I don’t know. Are you secretly eighty?”
“Careful.”
“That wasn’t a no.”
“I am forty-three.”
She blinks once, and I watch the adjustment her mind makes cross her face. If I had to guess, she really is half my age. Twenty and excited to drink legally in this country. Young enough that I should stand up, pay the bill, and walk away before I become the sort of man my mother pretends I am not.
Taylor looks at me over the rim of her glass. “I’m twenty,” she says.
I should tell her that she is too young. I should tell her to go back to Petyr and his open face and his clumsy desire. I should tell her to be a good student, to focus on her studies, to drink water before she sleeps. “Okay,” I say because I don’t want to say anything else.
Her breath catches. Quietly. Almost nothing. But I hear it. My body reacts before my conscience can make one final, useless argument.
The boy across the room starts toward us. I do not look at him. Taylor does. A flash of frustration crosses her face. “I should go handle that,” she says, but she does not move.
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
“Then just wait. It will handle itself.”
“No, it won’t,” she says, panic rising in her throat as he gets closer.
“It will,” I say. One way or another. When he makes a fool of himself.
Petyr stops beside the table. He looks at Taylor first. Then at me. Wrong order. “Taylor,” he says. “Anya is worried. She asked me to check on you.”
Taylor’s mouth tightens. “No, she didn’t.”
Petyr flushes. I almost admire the girl. She doesn’t let even gentle lies stand unchallenged. “This is not a good idea,” he says, dropping his voice.
Taylor’s eyes harden. There is the knife again. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”
“I’m not deciding. I’m telling you.” His gaze cuts to me, and whatever he sees there makes his anger sharpen into something closer to fear. He knows enough to be afraid, then. Not who I am perhaps, but what kind of man. Local instinct. Useful. “You should come back to the table,” Petyr says.
Taylor stands. For one second, I think she’s going to obey him. Instead, she sits next to me. I could do the childish thing and put my arm around her, look smug. But I don’t. I do nothing. I press my lips together and look at my drink.
“I’m fine,” she says.
Petyr’s hand twitches, like he almost reaches for her. I set my glass down. Softly. The boy freezes, and Taylor notices.
I look at him for the first time. “She said she is fine.”
His throat works. “This is between us.”
“No,” I say. “It was between you when you asked. It ended when she answered.”
Taylor looks at me then, and I cannot read her expression, but she does not tell me to stay out of it, and she does not move away from me. Her body is still near me, our knees almost touching.
“Fine,” he says, though there’s nothing fine in him now. “Do what you want.”
“I was planning to,” Taylor says. He turns and walks away. Her shoulders stay high until he reaches the table, and then she exhales. “You enjoyed that,” she says.
“No.”