Chapter 19 Ember
EMBER
At least he made an attempt to say no to having the meeting at the club.
I feel a little guilty for eavesdropping on him. I don’t even know why I did it. One minute, I was lying in bed waiting for him to come back. The next, I had my ear against the door.
I realize how hypocritical it is to be angry at Roman for conducting business at the club. Especially now that I’m fully in bed with him. My only concern has been Rastelli and the FBI getting wind of it. The minute they find out about this…
I look down at the text that Rastelli sent me two days ago.
I’m supposed to meet up with her this afternoon with ‘something’, as she’d put it before.
She’d made it clear that I need to do my part if I’m going to be safe when they come for Roman.
I wonder how safe I would be if I told her that we’re lovers now.
That he’s wrapped himself around my heart in a way that I will never get untangled.
If I were to think about it logically, I could divorce myself from the situation by ratting Roman out.
I could rely on Rastelli to keep me safe when it all goes down.
The only problem is that I don’t believe her.
The more and more I think about it, the less safe I feel with that option.
Maybe it’s because Roman and I have gotten closer.
I don’t know. All I do know is that talking to Rastelli no longer feels like the right thing to do.
I can’t tell Rastelli about this meeting. In fact, I can’t even be in this position anymore. I feel dirty even meeting up with her like this.
I get out of my car and walk up to the diner’s door.
Meeting with her on the outskirts of town is even more taxing now that Roman has a handle on my schedule.
Right now, he thinks I’m at a doctor’s appointment.
I had to lie and tell him it was my gynecologist just so he didn’t ask too many questions. I hope he couldn’t tell I was lying.
As usual, it’s dead in here. There’s a couple of people in the booths on the other side of the room, but the section where Rastelli and I meet is as empty as usual. Rastelli sits in her spot, drinking her coffee and facing the door. The moment we make eye contact, she smiles in that motherly way.
“You made it,” she says as I sit down. “I was starting to wonder. You’re about five minutes late.”
“Traffic,” I say without looking up. There’s a cup of coffee on my side of the table already. I glance up at her expectantly.
“Thought you could use it,” she says. “I always start to crash around three o’clock. Consider it a courtesy for the work you’re doing for me.”
I sigh and push the cup aside. “Listen, I’m not going to waste your time today, Rastelli. I don’t have anything for you and, frankly, I think you’ve got the wrong person to be your snitch. I want out of this arrangement.”
Her smile drops slowly, morphing her face into a menacing glare. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I just said. I want out.”
“There is no ‘out’,” she says. “You have an obligation.”
“I can’t do this anymore, Agent Rastelli. It’s too dangerous. If Roman finds out—”
She sighs. “I already told you, we would protect you. You’re in no danger from Roman Orlov.”
She sounds so convincing. I hate it that she seems to wholeheartedly believe the drivel she’s shoveling.
“How? How would you protect me? What happens if I find something and he finds out what I’m doing before I can get to you?
You can’t do anything to protect me from him. I don’t think you ever could.”
She narrows her eyes. “Have you been made? Is that where this is coming from?”
“N–No,” I stammer. I didn’t expect her to call me on that so quickly. “I just don’t want to do this anymore, okay? It’s not worth it.”
“Your staying out of jail isn’t worth it?” She’s studying me carefully now, her fingers tapping the table. The sound is like the tick of a clock. “That’s an interesting take. Why don’t you just tell me what’s really going on?”
“I did. I’m afraid—”
“No, that’s not it. It’s something else. What’s the real issue, Ember?”
I stare at her. She’s reading me like a book and it’s making me uncomfortable. Does she see the truth? Are Roman’s handprints all over my body right now? Can she tell that I’m not the same woman I was when she first approached me?
It doesn’t matter. It’s like I’ve heard Roman say before. They don’t know anything unless we tell them and I’m not telling her a fucking thing.
“Uh-huh,” she says, sitting back in her chair when I don’t answer.
“I see what’s going on. I asked you to get closer to Roman Orlov…
and you did, didn’t you? A little too close, perhaps?
” I clench my jaw angrily and she snickers.
“Honestly, I knew that might be a possibility. The weird thing is that I can’t blame you. He is quite attractive.”
“Look,” I tell her, “I just don’t want to do this anymore, okay? I’m not some undercover agent. I wasn’t trained to do this kind of thing, and frankly, I think it’s kind of irresponsible to drop me in the fire like this.”
“Oh, but I disagree,” she says, her smile returning and brightening her eyes like lights.
“You’re his girl, now. You’re perfect for this.
Much better than one of his brothers. One slip of the tongue during pillow talk and we’ll have everything we need to lock him up.
” She slides her cup of coffee to one side, placing her hands on the table and leaning into me.
“Do you understand that you currently have everything that we need to get a guy like Roman Orlov? I mean, if you blew him really good, I’ll bet he’ll sell out his entire bloodline to you. ”
I scoff. “Now you’re being vulgar.”
“Am I?” She leans in a little more and whispers, “I’m not the one fucking a Bratva boss, am I? That’s a new low in the world of relationships, incidentally. I mean, what would your father think?”
“Leave my father out of this,” I growl.
She sits back and grabs her cup of coffee again, sipping it while eyeing me carefully.
“Ember, I thought that because of the way you were raised, you’d understand how important it is not to get corrupted by these guys.
Good dick is not a good reason to completely abandon your morals, and I can tell you, it rarely works out for the best. Your man is not a good guy.
He’s barely a decent one, if we’re being honest.”
I have to clench my jaw tight to keep myself from swearing at her. What the hell does she even know about Roman, really? All she knows about him or the Bratva is whatever is in one of those manila folders on her desk somewhere.
“You know, Bratva men treat their women like shit,” she goes on, taking a sip of coffee.
“It’s in their culture. It’s a part of who they are.
The best case scenario for you if you continue this relationship with Roman Orlov is that he’ll eventually get bored with you and end up screwing every girl in that little club of yours.
The worst case is that he’ll end up beating the shit out of you on your wedding night. He’s not a good person.”
“You don’t know him,” I say. “You don’t know anything about him.”
“I know the kind of man he is. I know what he’s done. You are screwing a monster, Ember. A rogue beast. Do the right thing and help me cage him before he wreaks even more havoc on this city.”
“This conversation is over,” I say, getting up. “Don’t contact me again.”
I turn to walk away and nearly run over the woman who just walked in.
“Whoa,” she says, grabbing my arm to stop me. We meet eyes and cold recognition hits me as her dark eyes widen.
“Oh, my gosh. Ember?”
“Natasha,” I spit out through a forced smile. “Hi. Um, hi.”
She takes a step back, a big, warm smile on her face. “What are you doing all the way out here?”
My mind scrambles. “I could ask you the same thing,” I retort.
“Oh, I’m meeting my guy here.” She pauses and looks over her shoulder at Rastelli. My stomach drops. “Friend of yours?”
I’m speechless. I’m standing next to the damn table. I can’t even fake that I don’t know her.
Rastelli waves politely. “Hi, there.” She stands and walks over to Natasha, putting her hand out to shake it. “I’m Michelle, Ember’s cousin.”
“Cousin… ?” Nastasha shakes her hand, but she’s looking at me suspiciously. “I thought you didn’t have any family in town.”
“I don’t,” I say, my mind spinning. “Michelle’s just in town for the weekend.”
“Right. Big tech convention in town,” she says. “Thought I’d meet up and catch up.” She nudges me as though I’m supposed to laugh at that lame ass joke. I don’t. I just keep smiling like an idiot.
“Okay,” Natasha says, looking from me to her and back again. “That’s cool. Well, don’t let me interrupt.”
“Oh, you’re not.” Rastelli pulls out her wallet and puts a few dollars on the table to pay for the coffees. “I was just leaving. Lunch break’s over. I’ve got to get back to the hotel. Call you later, Emmy.”
Rastelli pats me on the shoulder, then walks out of the diner.
“Emmy?” Natasha laughs. “Since when are you ‘Emmy’?”
I can’t seem to speak. That whole exchange looked suspicious as fuck. I can’t even deny it. I swallow hard to get my voice to come back. “Never. What ‘guy’ are you meeting out here, anyway?”
“My plug. Weekend’s almost here and I’m out of za-za.”
My face feels like a hot flash. And now with Natasha meeting her weed dealer here just minutes after Rastelli was just sitting behind me… I feel like I’m going to faint.
“Hey,” she says, touching my shoulder. “Are you okay? Your face is really flushed.”
“Listen, I’ve got a real problem. Do you have a second?”
“Sure,” she says. “My guy’s usually late, anyway.”
I lead her outside. I can’t risk saying anything while in the diner. Who knows if those customers in there are even real customers?
“What’s going on?” she asks anxiously. “Is everything okay?”
“No. It’s really, really not okay. I think I fucked up. Bad.”
“So, talk to me. What happened?”
I don’t even know where to start or even how for that matter. I just blurt it out. “Michelle isn’t my cousin. She’s FBI.”
Her eyes get as big as saucers. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
“No.”
“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?”
“Keep it down. Jesus,” I hiss, looking around the parking lot.
She gapes for a few seconds, her mouth moving soundlessly. Finally, she puts her hands on her head and says, “What in God’s name are you doing talking to FBI?”
“They picked me up one night like a month, month and a half ago. They know who Roman is and what he does and… and they wanted me to get close to him and tell them what’s happening at the club so they can build a case against him.”
All the blood drains out of her face. “You’re a krysa, Em!”
“A what?”
“A rat! A snitch!” She stops herself, her mouth slamming shut. Then she sighs and says, “Jesus on a pogo stick.”
“I know this is bad.”
“It’s really bad, Em. How much have you told them?”
“Not a lot. Hardly anything.” I pause, crossing my arms across my chest as my nerves shake within me. “But… but last night, I learned about something big with Roman—”
“Don’t tell me!” she barks. “For fuck’s sake. Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know about it. Please tell me that you didn’t tell that agent.”
“No, of course not. In fact, I just told her that I wanted out. I can’t do this anymore.”
“Let me guess. She’s not trying to let you go. She got something on you?”
I shake my head. “I mean, just guilt by association. She’s pretty intent on getting Roman and she’s going to drag me down with him. What am I going to do? Roman and I have gotten really close. I can’t do this to him.”
“Even if you weren’t very close, you can’t do it to him.” Her pale shade is turning a yellowish green color. She suddenly looks like she might vomit all over the parking lot. “You don’t want to know what the Bratva do to krysa. Secrecy and unity… it’s huge. You cannot betray him.”
“Hey, I don’t like what you’re implying,” I say to her. “He’s a lot of things, but he’d never—”
“He’s Bratva,” Natasha says, urgency in her eyes. “That always comes first. No matter what. If he finds out you snitched, no amount of head is going to save you—”
“I didn’t snitch.”
“It doesn’t matter. If he finds out you were even talking to the FBI, the kindest thing he’ll do is dump your body someplace he can visit once a year.”
I shake my head vehemently. I can’t believe that he would do that to me. I just can’t.
“A year ago,” she says, “there was this girl that used to work at the club. She’d only dance every once in a while, you see, because she had a boyfriend that was Bratva. She didn’t really do it for the money. She just liked to dance naked, I guess.”
“Tash—”
“And one day, she got into this huge fight with him about… I don’t know.
It doesn’t matter. But the next day, she came in talking about how he made his money dealing and pimping girls out, you know, because she was pissed at him.
One of the last things she said to us was that ‘it would serve him right’ if she went to the police.
We didn’t see her again the next night or the night after that.
After about a week, pieces of her washed up on the beach—”
“Stop,” I say firmly. My palms are sweaty. They feel damp against the sides of my chest as I hold myself. “I get it, okay? You don’t fuck over Bratva.”
“You don’t. Not ever. No matter who you are.
” She pauses, chewing on her bottom lip as she regards me with genuine concern.
“And if you are really trying to get away from that agent, then you need to work harder at it. You need to get away from her and bury all knowledge of your ever meeting with her. Salt the earth if you have to.”
I hear her. A deep fear grows in my stomach. I feel like I’m going to throw up. “I’m not going to see her again,” I say. “Today was the last time.”
“Good. Keep it that way.”
I can’t believe he would hurt me… but something like this is a violation. I can’t ever let him know that I’ve crossed the line.