Chapter 12 Roman
ROMAN
“Come on, Sash. Quit stalling.”
I’m pacing in the back court near the glass wall as my daughter kneels down to tie her shoes. The last few days she’s been climbing the walls being cooped up in the house. We both need some time outside.
It’s been a while since we’ve been at the racquetball courts. When she was younger, she used to sit on the sidelines and watch Mila and me play a few games. By the time she was twelve, she was challenging me to games.
It’s a good day to play as well. It’s early Sunday afternoon and the club’s closed tonight.
And as far as my extracurricular activities in the Bratva, all is quiet so far.
After seeing that strange person outside my property, I put Ares on getting eyes around my property in the hopes that he’ll show up again and I can find out who he is.
Whenever I think about it, I get a strange feeling in my gut. Like how it has to feel being in row boat in the middle of the ocean while sharks circle you. This feeling of being stalked is unnerving me. I have to get ahead of it before whoever it is decides to strike.
In the meantime, I’m here with Sasha. Everything going on is forgotten. Even the circumstances of her grounding.
Well, almost that, anyway.
Sasha stands up, a welcome smile on her face as she twirls her racquet. “Get ready for the heat, starik.”
I laugh. “I’m forty-four. Not eighty-four. I’m in my prime.”
“You’re an old, old, old man,” she jabs at me in Russian. “Practically in a walker.”
“I’ll show you old. Serve the ball already.”
She stands there, racquet twirling in one hand and the little blue rubber ball in the other. “Care to make it interesting?”
“You have no money. How interesting could it get?”
“I win, you’ll lift my punishment?”
“Not a chance.”
She snickers. “Chicken.”
Sasha’s a sly thing. She’s lucky I’m nothing like my father was. “You’re not going to goad me into letting you off the hook, Sasha.”
“Fine.” She thinks for a moment. “If I win this one, we get ice cream after this.”
“And if you lose, you do the dishes for the next week.”
“What? No.”
“You wanted to make it interesting. Who’s the chicken now?”
“Fine,” she says. “Ready?”
I take my position, leaning forward with the racquet.
She serves the ball, hitting it against the pockmarked white wall just above the dark line.
The ball comes back quickly and I hit it back.
Back and forth, we hit the little ball in this room that smells heavily of sweat and the rubber of the ball.
We get used the rhythm of movement and sound until I hit the ball hard and high. It hits the wall with a loud pop and sails over Sasha’s head. She swings and misses it as it lands behind her.
“Dammit,” she says.
“Tough luck, kid,” I say as I walk over to the ball. As I bend to pick it up, I catch a glimpse of long, shapely legs walking past. I stand up.
Ember walks down the hallway, wiping her face with a towel.
She’s wearing tight yoga pants that cling to every curve of her hips and her perfect peach of an ass.
Her sports bra covers up her tits, but only just barely as they jiggle when she walks.
Her long, pale gold hair is tied back and away from her sweat-covered, makeup-less face.
It’s amazing how much more attractive she is without even trying.
“Hold on a second,” I tell Sasha and open the door. “Ember!”
My voice carries like a boom against the gym walls. She starts and stops, looking over. There’s a moment of indecision, then she smiles and walks over.
“What are you doing here?” she asks me.
“Hello to you, too.”
Her face reddens a little and she says, “I just meant, I didn’t think you came to this gym.”
I smirk at her. “You think I was born with this body?”
Sasha clears her throat behind me, reminding me of her presence. I step to the side and say, “Allow me to introduce you to my daughter. Sasha. Sasha, this is Ms. Lorenzo. She’s the manager at the club.”
Sasha walks up and sticks her hand out, her eyes lifted brightly. “Hi.”
Ember shakes her hand politely. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
“You’re a manager at one of Daddy’s clubs?” she asks, a little tilt to her head. “It’s not the new one, is it? The strip club?”
Now my face is warm with embarrassment. I glance around and say, “Say it a little louder. I don’t think the front desk heard you.”
“Sorry,” she says. “It’s just I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a woman managing a strip club. No offense, but it’s not exactly the most feminist environment.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Ember says. “The women who work there make thousands of dollars a night sometimes and work their own hours. They’re pretty much independent contractors.”
“Really? I mean… really? But they have to get naked.”
“That’s their choice. It’s not exactly what I would do for that kind of money, but everybody’s different.” She gives me a side glance. “It’s legal, at least.”
Funny. She’s a comedian now. “Hey, Sasha,” I say, “why don’t you go get us some Gatorade or something from the vending machines? Give me a second with Ms. Lorenzo.”
“Okay. Nice to meet you!” I watch as she bops off, her crimson curls bouncing with every step.
“I didn’t know you had a daughter,” Ember says once she’s out of earshot.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
She nods. “So… does that mean you also have a wife?”
“Once upon a time,” I say, doing my best not to be obvious about how good she looks. Why does this feel like banter all of a sudden? If I didn’t know better, I’d think that she was flirting right now.
“Can’t say I appreciate your playing up how great strip clubs are to my fifteen-year-old daughter,” I say in an effort to shift the focus. “If you want to start recruiting teenagers—”
“I did no such thing,” she says, her voice lowering to an accusatory hiss. “She asked and I answered. That’s all. It’s not my job to keep her off the pole. That honor solely belongs to you.”
“Yeah, all right.” I want to be cross with her, but it’s not working. All I can think about is the next time I can get between her and those tight ass yoga pants. “So, you come here a lot?”
“Every chance I get,” she says. “You think I was born with this body?”
I raise an eyebrow. She is flirting. That’s… unexpected. I try to hide my smile, but she’s noticed. She tilts her head as she looks up at me. “What?”
“Since when are you so friendly?” I ask her. “I thought we had an understanding.”
“We do,” she says. “But I’ve been thinking maybe we should reevaluate our arrangement.”
“Reevaluate. What exactly does that mean?”
“Well, I’ve been kind of cold to you since…
you know.” She clears her throat. “I should try a little harder to work with you at the club. I mean, you’ve kept to your word about staying out of my way and the few times you have butted in, it’s been to defend either me or the dancers.
I’m not saying we should…” She pauses, glancing around to make sure we’re not overheard.
“I’m not saying that what happened should happen again, but maybe we can work on a little camaraderie between us. ”
“Hmm.” This is almost a complete hundred and eighty-degree turn. If it were anyone else, I might be a little more suspicious.
Ember is not part of my world, though. And maybe that makes her a little more sincere.
“You’re skeptical,” she guesses.
“You were very clear, Ember.”
“I’m not allowed to change my mind?”
I don’t have a response to that. I suppose she’s right, but…
“Why don’t we go to dinner?” she says. “Some night this week soon when we’re both off. We can talk over the job and what we expect from one another. Really get our heads on straight about things.”
“You asking me out, Lorenzo?”
Her face flushes and she laughs. “It’s just business. That’s all.”
“Right. Just business. If you say so.”
She gives me a flirty smile and says, “Don’t get any ideas, then. I mean that.”
Before I can respond, I spot Sasha walking back to us, three bottles of Gatorade in her arms. She walks up to me and hands me one, then turns to Ember.
“I wasn’t sure which flavor you’d like,” she says, “so, I got red and orange.”
“I’ll take the orange. Thank you.”
She hands it over with a smile. It suddenly occurs to me that I don’t remember the last time Sasha responded so easily to any woman who has ever come into my life.
She’s always the first one to eye them with suspicion.
This time, she smiles easily and stands a little too close to Ember.
It’s clear to me that she wants to know more about her.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Ember says to me. “See you at work tomorrow night. And nice to meet you, Sasha.”
“Same!” she responds brightly. We watch her walk away for a moment before Sasha turns to me and asks, “You like her, don’t you?”
“She’s just one of my employees,” I tell Sasha as I tear my eyes away from her ass. “That’s all.”
“That doesn’t answer my question, Dad.”
I nudge her back into the court. “Let’s finish this game.”
I blame Ember for making me lose. Her ass in those yoga pants is enough to drive anyone to distraction.
I watch the ball bounce twice on the floor and toss my racquet into the corner. “Good job, kid.”
“Thank you,” she says, bouncing over to me with the energy of a thousand suns. “I’ll take my payment in chocolate, chocolate chip, please.”
“You got it.”
We gather up our things and the wheels in my brain start turning.
Could Ember be someone I could seriously be with?
In a strange kind of way, she’s shaping out to be the perfect woman for me.
Beautiful, intelligent, sincere, and honest…
and Sasha likes her. That last one might be the most important thing.
As soon as the idea pops into my head, I dismiss it. She’s entirely too straight. I can’t imagine coming home late one night and having to explain blood in my clothes, or a hidden stash of money or drugs. She wouldn’t understand how important my relationships are within the Bratva.
She is, as my father would have put it, a muzhik. He wouldn’t have approved of her even being manager at the club.
I suppose he might have been right. If something ever happened there…
“Dad?”
I glance over at Sasha. She’s standing with her bag slung over one shoulder. “Yes?”
“Can we do this again next week?”
“Of course, kiddo.”
We leave. My mind wanders. This dinner is just business and no matter how attracted I am to her, she’s right. It needs to stay that way.
We walk outside and immediately, everything stops around me the moment I see my car. It’s sitting out front and it’s far too low to the ground. The tires are flattened completely.
“Oh, my God. Is that our car?” Sasha asks.
“Stay here,” I tell Sasha. I step off the curb and jog over to my car. All four tires have been slashed. I glance around the lot for anyone looking suspicious. No one does.
“Dad?” Sasha says in a scared, shaky voice.
“Just stay there.” I walk back over to her and pull my phone out of my pocket.
“Who are you calling?” she asks.
“Your uncle,” I tell her, and that’s all I say. When I find the guy who did this, I’m going to slit him from end to end.