Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Victor
The meeting runs three hours longer than it should have.
Not unusual considering the death of a senior board member – but that doesn’t make it any less inconvenient.
There is a protocol to follow, stability to re-establish.
And every board member acts just as I expect them to, or at least I think they do. I’m too distracted to care.
The head of each family in my organization is present tonight.
Seven of them around the table in the private rooms above the Onyx.
As well as Mikhail’s children. His death has sent a ripple of shock through everyone – because the death of a senior member in the Pakhan’s own nightclub is more than a little suspicious.
My mind is half a city away, though, with Alex Riggs in her small apartment, wondering what I’m missing while listening to the board debate.
There’s still a single listening device in her apartment, just the one behind the bookshelf.
The one I’m choosing to ignore. The one that I told myself I would leave just in case.
I’d much rather be listening to whatever is happening in that small apartment than sitting at the head of this table, carrying out my duties as Pakhan. Listening to the grievances and accusations of my cousins, the pretentious louts acting as if Mikhail’s death was my fault.
“You should have acted faster,” his eldest son says. He is thirty-four and has his father’s facial structure, but none of his patience. “Pavel brought you evidence weeks ago. If you had moved on it—”
“If I had moved on it immediately,” I say, cutting him off, “without board consultation, without giving Mikhail the opportunity to address the accusations against him, I would have been doing him a disservice.”
He looks at me, opening his mouth and closing it again. He doesn’t have an argument with that.
Across the table, Pavel sits with his hands folded in his lap, expression carefully calibrated between remorse and righteousness. He’d been holding this expression for two hours now. And I had to admit, it was a very solid performance.
“He was corresponding with families who have actively worked against this organization,” he pipes in. Quietly. Still carefully holding the expression. “The evidence is well documented, the transfers to several shell accounts. I presented my findings, and acted to protect—”
“You took matters into your own hands,” Mikhail’s daughter accuses.
She is the sharpest of his three children, and the way she is currently looking at Pavel tells me she already has suspicions of her own.
“You acted independently before anyone could confirm the evidence that you provided. Including the Pakhan.”
“The Pakhan was waiting for the next board meeting, it would have been another week,” his voice raised now, defensive. “Do you know how much damage a traitor could do in that time?”
“He was our father,” the eldest says defiantly.
“He was a liability to the infrastructure of this organization,” Pavel counters. “I’m sorry to say that those two facts describe the same man.”
The silence that follows makes the air feel stale. I watch them watch each other. Watch the recalibration on Pavel’s face, the debate over whether he needs to say more to reaffirm his position or if he’s made his point.
“You—”
“That’s enough,” I say. I don’t raise my voice; I never need to in these rooms. When I speak, they listen.
“Mikhail’s death is under review. The evidence Pavel presented has been logged.
Additional review and verification are underway.
” I look at my cousins. “Your father will be buried in honor, not marked as a traitor. His position will be held open pending further review. If the evidence does not hold, there will be repercussions,” I look at Pavel, “and one of you will be voted into his place on this council.
If it does hold, the board will discuss if action beyond the loss of your family's seat is appropriate.”
Pavel meets my eyes, nodding, having the decency to look adequately forlorn. “Of course.”
The remaining matters of business are attended to in relatively short order — territorial updates, revenue reports, and a shipping contract renegotiation that still needs to be resolved.
I manage to only check my phone twice. From across the table, David notices both times and says nothing, but his sly smile gives it away.
By the time the room clears out, I have a headache behind my eyes and a short temper as a result. Pavel is one of the last to linger. He pauses at the door, turning back to me.
“Victor.”
“Not now,” I tell him, waving him out.
David stays behind, closing the door behind Pavel before sitting back down across from me with his laptop open.
“The eldest son has been doing his own inquiries,” he tells me. “Informally, of course.”
“I know,” I say, rubbing my eyes. “We’ll keep an eye on it. He won’t find anything we don’t, he’s not that smart.”
He’s quiet as he shuts his laptop.
“You were distracted tonight.”
“I was present enough,” I say. “They needed to feel heard more than they needed an actual response. And the rest — well it will sort itself out in time.”
He looks at me for a moment. Not arguing, which means he disagrees but knows better than to press it tonight.
“Go home,” he says as he stands. “I’ll send you the summary in the morning.”
With a simple nod, I follow him from the room and do exactly that. Only now home to me is 4D.
I stand at the window with two fingers of scotch in my crystal glass and look out over the night lights of the city. Then I take out my phone and do exactly what I’ve been telling myself not to do all night.
The feed from the bookshelf device is clean and clear. I put in one earbud and listen. I need to know that she is where she should be and doing nothing that requires my intervention before I can think about sleep.
I listen to the sounds in the apartment; it’s quiet, not in an empty way, just in that late-night meandering way. I hear the sound of someone filling a glass with liquid in the kitchen, and then a door. Then the sound of the shower starts.
The water runs for eight minutes. Then shuts off.
I should put the phone down. Stop listening. Instead, I pour another finger of scotch into my glass.
The feed continues quietly for a few minutes, and for a minute, I think she must be asleep. Then, just as I’m preparing to put the phone down, the sound changes. A small, involuntary heavy breath. And I go still.
Bozhe moy, I recognize that sound. I set the scotch down.
I hear it again, heavier this time, nearly panting.
She is quiet about it, the way she is about most everything she does — controlled, the sounds she makes are small, well hidden from the child sleeping just a few doors away.
But I can hear her. I can hear every small thing about her pleasure, the shift of the sheets, the change in her breathing, the cadence of its building.
I should absolutely put the phone away, stop listening. But I still don’t. My eyes close, and I imagine what she looks like in her bed as my hand grips the arm of my chair.
Her breathing is faster now. The sounds she makes are still small, but they are less controlled, slipping past her lips in small gasps, and the sound lands directly in my body.
My hand moves to the belt at my waist, unclasping it, then to the zipper beneath.
Lost in the sound of her, my hand moves beneath the restricting fabric, following her cadence.
And a small moan of my own escapes my lips.
I hear her shift in her bed, the small moans that escape, all of it. Her breathing grows heavier, and my hand moves faster on my shaft as it does. That’s when I hear it. The single word that completely undoes me.
“Victor.”
Soft. Breathless. Said in a way that she’d never say to my face, without the sharp distance she maintains. And I lost it. Completely. Entirely. With none of the control I’ve spent thirty-three years building around myself able to fight it.
I sit in the wreckage of my own composure for a long moment afterward and listen to her breathing slow as she comes down from her own climax. I think about how this has got to be the most undignified thing I’ve ever done, which says a lot given my occupation.
She says something else, too low, too quiet for me to catch. Then I hear the shift of her bed once more, and the change in her breathing as she falls asleep.
I sit in the dark, recovering what dignity I can muster before moving to the sink and pouring the rest of the scotch down the drain. As I shower, all I can think of is her, and when I lie down to sleep, my mind is filled with the soft sounds of her release and my name on her lips.