I know how you toil in the shadows
30
“I thought I told you to have the Fedoravs push out that shipment.” I lightly badgered Johnny, who stood close by my side at the railing overlooking the pool. When I say lightly, I do mean lightly. When he wasn’t being thralled, I still had to act the gentle housewife I was supposed to be.
Johnny’s brown eyes narrowed at me for only a moment before peering back at the blue water below, where his boys splashed about. He spoke in a hardened whisper. “Pavel is no longer in charge of the trade.”
Gentility eluded me and I wailed, “Then who is? You know what this could do to us if they steal the market out from under us with this shipment, right?” I’d reached my wit’s end with the conversation that’d already gone on too long and happened too many times.
Johnny didn’t break composure, though I could see him turning red. “Ksava is in charge of it. We already agreed to offer our assistance, so drop it already.”
I calmed, reflecting on the newfound info. “Ksava? His wife? This could work out well, actually. I’ll handle this the way it should have been handled from the get-go.”
“The hell you will!” Johnny screamed, grabbing ahold of my wrist and pulling me in close. He seethed, finally forfeiting any and all of his strained poise. “I know you’ve been running around here acting as if you own this place and call the shots, but I’ve had it up to here with your shit. You are my piece of ass, and that’s all you need to be. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll step off that fucking high horse and get back on your pretty little knees. Do you understand me?”
With his thick fingers almost doubling around my wrist, I was in a position most human girls wouldn’t have been able to escape. Thus, I was probably supposed to cower and fear incurring any more of his wrath. But I could snap him in two like a twig. I could drink his blood and eat his heart as a snack. He had nothing over me. He was a peon—he was mortal. I would never fear him again.
Locking eyes with me, he immediately let go, my thrall having hit him before I ever opened my mouth to say, “Hey, Johnny, fuck you.” It wasn’t the first time I’d thralled him and then told him those exact words, but it was still justifying to say to his face.
His dead eyes steady on mine, I whispered for his ears only, “I’ll never kneel to a piece of shit like you. And in truth, I do call the shots, so it’s you who needs to get on your fat little knees and ask me for forgiveness.”
As my obedient dog, he knelt on both knees and gave the most convincing of apologies, calling me “his beautiful” in the process.
I continued, “I’ll be going to teatime on Tuesday with Ksava’s group of ass kissers, and you are perfectly content on letting me go. You’ve even asked me to attend the event in order to brown nose the Fedoravs before next month’s shipment.”
He nodded vehemently, pawing at my hand until I let him take it, only to pour kisses over it.
Johnny’s behavior once he was thralled was always a little peculiar to me. Though I was melding his mind to my will, he still seemed coherent enough to pander at me—sometimes reaching for my hand or kissing at me innocently. Maybe that was the way I wanted him to be, and it came through my thrall. Maybe it was something else—I really wasn’t sure. Curious, I added a question, “Do you love me, Johnny? I demand that you tell me the whole truth.” I laced my thrall with the clearest intention of wanting a factual answer.
Johnny nodded, his eyes widening. “With all my heart. You are my everything, Leanne.”
I wished those words gave me the heartening, joyful response I wanted them to, but they couldn’t. I wanted them to be true because I needed his love, but it still wasn’t enough to fill the void in my heart.
It was, however, enough to keep my sanity—at the very least.
Teatime with Ksava Fedorav was a pitiful excuse for “quality time with the girls.” And yet, many of the wives of other rich men joined the group every Tuesday for golf and drinks. They were really only ever showing off their money or attempting to bolster their husband’s images, which was a pitiful display of dependency I loathed to see from other women. But I wasn’t one to talk. I was, after all, playing that exact same part—putting on the exact same facade. Unfortunately for them, underneath that facade I was the kind of monster they could never dream of becoming.
At the head of this game of charades they called a tea party was Ksava, the mafia queen herself. Ever since taking over Johnny’s affairs, it seemed like Ksava had her grimy mitts all over everything I had my eyes on. Even operating outside of Creswell’s border, Ksava was single-handedly pushing the Roufes off the top spot in the Creswell area with the hold she had around her husband Pavel’s balls.
I did have to hand it to her though, she was doing what I’d been doing, all without the help of supernatural vampiric abilities. The woman was a true testament to female power, and I revered that in her, but it meant she was a continuously pesky thorn in my side. She was the kind of trouble I couldn’t put up with any longer. She was mortal, and mortals deserved to do my bidding or suffer the consequences.
Politely, I took Ksava off to the side, her bodyguard obediently following us to a private corner of the country club’s deck. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, Ksava, I just wanted to ask you a couple questions about that shipment next month.” Tenting my hands meekly, I played my part the way I was versed to do.
“Right.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm, obverse to the polite smile plastered over her face. “I don’t wish to talk shop, darling. Let’s let the boys soil their hands with such matters.”
My innocent mask crumbled enough to squeak out a smirk and respond, “And what? Let them have all the fun?”
“It’s not a wife’s place to meddle in their business.”
“Oh, come on.” I exaggerated an eye roll for her. “I know you meddle plenty, Ksava. I know your secrets; I’ve seen your activities in the shadows.”
Ksava pointed her chin up and down at me, making it obvious how she looked me over despite cat-eye sunglasses concealing her gaze. Through thin pursed lips, she countered, “That’s a glass house you throw your stones from, Leanne. I know the kind of secrets you keep and how you toil in the shadows.”
“You don’t know shit, Ksava.”
“I know enough to know I’m not afraid of you. Your weakness is when Johnny finds out his little trophy bitch is exactly the kind of immortal monster he loathes.”
My heart dropped quick, but not as quick as my hand snagged the sunglasses off her face. Before I could thrall her, she snapped her eyes shut and her bodyguard pushed me away from her with a grunt. As if he had the ability to actually stop me, the large, suited man kept a tight grip on my shoulder, keeping me separate from Ksava.
She laughed, the natural fear she should have felt for me eluding her. “I don’t fall for the dirty tricks of blood suckers.”
That made my blood boil—not only her laugh or her statement, but that she was justified in it. She knew I couldn’t rip her to shreds right here and now like I wanted to, because it was too obvious of a kill. Somehow, she knew my secret, which meant she could blackmail me into submission, despite my power over her.
If Ksava knew I was immortal, then others could know, too. She’d use that against me, making me fear using my abilities in the open. She thought she could neuter my immortal eminence. Blinded by her own arrogance, Ksava thought she could corner me without my vampiric abilities.
What she didn’t account for was how much I’d learned at Johnny’s side. Though the Roufes had been known to employ the assistance of immortals in recent years, their merciless perseverance built their supremacy long before they had the prominence to invite immortal aid. They’d built an empire among an otherwise immortal dominated city, and they did so with their own bare hands. As would I.
Thinking like a Roufe, I eyed the gun in the bodyguard’s hip holster. “Fine,” I snapped. “Then I’ll kill two birds with one stone—thrown from my glass castle.” In the blink of an eye, I grabbed it and cocked the weapon in Ksava’s direction. With a silencer screwed onto the barrel, the weapon was long, and it closed the distance between us, the metal only inches from Ksava’s forehead.
Her brows twitched, eyes shooting open but never looking into mine—only staring cross-eyed at the barrel above her brow.
Before her bodyguard could stop me, I’d caught his gaze, hypnotizing him into stalling his advances.
Ksava’s bold disguise wavered, her voice breaching alarm. “Wait, Leanne—”
Maybe she planned to plead for her life, but I would never know, because I’d already pulled the trigger. The silencer did very little to deaden the sound in such close quarters, and I had to refrain from doubling over in pain. Her bodyguard still stood motionless, now smattered in Ksava’s blood.
Looking into his eyes and reaching for his soul, I asked him, “Why’d you do that? Were you threatened by her power? Did you wish it to belong to Pavel like old times?” Playfully, I leaned into him. “Or was it some fucked up love affair? The two of you, barred in a forbidden relationship. After a falling out, Ksava threatened to tell Pavel about your affair. He’d certainly kill you with such knowledge, so to get away with it, you’d have to kill her yourself. A true crime of passion… How spicy.” I gave him a wink, handing over the weapon into his readily thralled hands. “Here, take this,” I insisted. “You pulled the trigger, after all.”
Dropping my smile, I screamed, feigning fear as I ran from the bodyguard. Other women noticed the commotion and ran themselves, familiar with this kind of situation. The other women had bodyguards of their own, and they were ushering us toward safety. As one of those innocent bystanders, I cried fake tears to the wives of killers who weren’t afraid to clean Ksava’s blood from my face. Nobody suspected I’d killed Ksava myself. Thus, I’d gotten away with murder—not that I didn’t do that on the regular.