Chapter Seven #2
I grinned, in spite of myself. “Pole dance in the city’s most expensive club. Also, I read a lot.”
“What do you read?”
I shrugged. “Sci-fi, fantasy, weird nonfiction. Stuff about conspiracy theories, but the funny kind, not the ‘storm the capitol’ kind.”
He processed that, then: “Languages?”
“English. Some Spanish. I can read Cyrillic if it’s on a sign, but don’t ask me to pronounce it.”
He made a note, invisible but absolute.
I had a weird flash of all the times I’d done job interviews, and how this felt exactly the same except that I had already slept with the interviewer and he’d bitten me so hard it left a mark. “Are you building a file on me?” I asked, a little amused, a little nervous.
Vadim didn’t blink. “I already have one.”
That derailed me for a second. “Oh.”
He waited. I waited.
The bread was too good to abandon, so I kept eating while I recalibrated. There was no small talk. He didn’t care about the weather, or the World Cup, or any of the things people used to pad silence. Vadim’s presence pressed in from every side, even though he was the stillest thing in the room.
It was starting to get to me, so I switched tactics. “What about you?” I asked. “What do you do for fun?”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t have hobbies?”
“I have interests,” he said. “But they’re not fun.”
I snorted. “That’s the most Russian thing I’ve ever heard.”
His mouth twitched. I was pretty sure that, in Vadim’s world, this was the equivalent of an inside joke.
He finished his water, set the glass down, and looked at me in a way that made my scalp itch. “You’re moving in.”
Not a question.
I nearly choked on my roll. “I’m what?”
“You will move in today. Your current apartment is unsecured. Lin will arrange transport.”
I stared at him, mind racing. I didn’t even own enough stuff to fill a minivan, but that was not the point. “I have a job.”
He nodded. “Not anymore.”
“My landlord—”
“Is taken care of.”
I tried again. “My friends—”
His eyebrow raised a fraction. “Name one.”
He had me there. My best friend was Carmine, who had once told me he didn’t believe in breakfast as a meal.
I was running out of objections.
He folded his hands on the table. “This is non-negotiable.”
I tried to think of a reason to say no, but all I could come up with was, “I’m not going to be your…kept thing.” The last words hit the table like a pair of dice, and I waited to see if I’d won or lost.
Vadim tilted his head, genuinely curious. “What do you want, then?”
The question took me off guard. I stared at him, then at the bread, then at the window, then back at him. “I want—” My throat went dry, probably from the carbs. “I want to go to school. Like, actual school. I want a degree.”
He waited, as if this was not surprising.
“I have almost enough saved for a year. Tips and—” This was embarrassing, but I powered through. “—a jar under my mattress.”
“What school?” he said.
I told him.
He nodded, as if this was already settled. “Done.”
I was losing track of the conversation. “Wait, what do you mean, done?”
“You will enroll. Lin will submit the paperwork. Tuition will be paid in full, plus books and housing, though you will stay here. You’ll have a driver to campus. And security.”
“Security?” I asked.
“Non-negotiable,” he repeated, softer this time.
I tried to imagine what it would be like, showing up to class with a bodyguard. “People will notice.”
“They won’t,” he said. “Yuri is very discreet.”
The conversation had slipped so far out of my hands I wasn’t sure I’d ever touched it. “You’re just…doing this?”
He looked at me like he was trying to gauge whether I was mocking him, or just dense. “You asked for it.”
I wanted to argue. I wanted to say that people didn’t just buy each other educations, or futures, or houses. I wanted to say that this was all insane, and I wasn’t someone who could be bribed.
But the truth was, this was the first time in my life someone had asked me what I wanted, and then just… given it to me. No strings, no threats, no lectures about the value of hard work.
Just…done.
I finished the last of the bread. The butter dish was empty. I was too full, and too jittery, and too aware that everything I’d ever known about power and kindness had just been upended by a man who could have made me disappear with a phone call, but instead made me breakfast.
I stared at him across the table.
He stared back.
I thought: I am in so much trouble.
The world outside was so bright I had to shade my eyes. Or maybe that was just the way it felt to finally be seen.
Four minutes and seventeen seconds later, trouble arrived in a dress that cost more than my life insurance policy.
She entered the breakfast room without knocking, her heels clicking a staccato that probably had a name in Italian. She was tall—taller than me and she wore it like a crown. Chestnut hair, dark eyes, skin like expensive china. The kind of woman who turned heads and then collected them as trophies.
I was halfway through a piece of sourdough when she zeroed in on me, smile sharp and professional, like the greeting on a Christmas card from your bankruptcy attorney.
Vadim did not introduce her, but he did stand, which was apparently the highest compliment in this house. She took the seat beside him, not across, and helped herself to a slice of toast directly off his plate.
“I see you have a guest,” she said, her voice a strange mix of formal and something softer, almost musical.
“I do,” Vadim said. “He’ll be staying.”
She eyed me, then the bread, then me again. “How lovely,” she said. “I do hope you’ll be comfortable.”
I gave her my best pageant wave. “It’s already the nicest prison I’ve ever been in.”
She considered this, then, “Vadim only keeps the best.” She took a bite of the toast, chewed, and set it down with a precision that suggested she wanted to do violence to it.
Vadim watched the exchange with a look that was half “proud dad” and half “zookeeper observing the mating habits of captive predators.” He poured her coffee, black, and she sipped it without taking her eyes off me.
I knew this game. I’d seen it in the club, two men posturing over a girl, or vice versa. This was the version with actual weapons and no witnesses.
She finished her sip and finally offered, “Sasha.” No last name. Didn’t need one.
“Iren,” I said. “As in, ‘I run from danger,’ but I guess that joke doesn’t really work anymore.”
She gave a soft laugh, zero amusement. “You’re quite funny.”
I shrugged. “It’s the only defense that’s gotten me this far.”
Vadim seemed satisfied with the direction things were headed. “Sasha is family,” he said, tone neutral.
I caught the subtext: family, but not family. Or maybe family in the way that meant “untouchable unless you had a death wish and a really good will.”
“Do you also live here?” I asked.
She gave a micro-shrug, more Paris runway than “meh.” “Often.” There was an empty silence, the kind that usually comes before an ambush or a job offer. “It must be a difficult adjustment, coming from—where was it?”
“Uptown,” I said. “But not the nice part. More like ‘Uptown, Adjacent.’”
She smiled again, this time with more teeth. “Vadim is a generous host. He will see to your every need.”
I shot Vadim a look, eyebrow up, but he just sipped his coffee, unbothered. “He already has,” I said, letting it land.
Sasha’s smile wobbled, the first crack. She put down the cup, untouched, and shifted the conversation to him. “You have meetings today,” she said, a statement of fact.
“I do,” he said.
She rose, as if the act itself was the point, and leaned over to kiss him on each cheek. “You know where to find me,” she said. Then to me she said, “Enjoy your breakfast.”
She left, and the room lost ten degrees of temperature. Vadim did not watch her go, but I did. I wanted to be sure she wasn’t circling back with a knife or a cryptic comment.
When the silence was sure, I leaned in. “She hates me.”
“She does not hate you,” Vadim said, voice flat.
“She definitely wants me dead. Maybe in a river with cement shoes.”
“She is loyal to her father,” he said. “He died protecting me.”
I tried to imagine being loyal to a parent, let alone one who’d died for the Russian mafia. “That must have been tough,” I said, because I had no idea what else to say.
He accepted it as enough.
“Are there any other family members I should worry about?” I asked.
“None that matter,” he said.
I let that hang. Then: “She’s going to make this miserable for me, isn’t she?”
“Only if you let her.”
I rolled my eyes. “She looks like she eats people for breakfast.”
He considered that and then said, “She prefers lunch.”
That caught me off guard. I laughed, and he didn’t, but I could see the line at the edge of his mouth again. There was a rhythm to this. I didn’t know the rules, but I liked the way the pieces moved.
I looked at the table, at the half-eaten toast, the cooling coffee, the evidence of a life that was suddenly, violently different than anything I’d ever known. It was terrifying, and exhilarating, and if I’d had any sense I’d have run away screaming.
But I didn’t.
I finished my coffee, and when Lin came to clear the table, I thanked him, and he nodded with a look that said, “You’re not the first stray, but you’re the first one who might survive the week.”
Vadim lingered, watching me watch him, and I realized he was waiting to see what I’d do next.
I smiled, and this time I meant it. “So, what’s the plan? Do I get a tour, or is this the part where I’m locked in the tower?”
He considered. “The tower, if you misbehave.”
“I’ll try my best.”
He stood, and this time he waited for me to follow. I did, already planning what I’d say to Sasha the next time we met. It would be good. I’d have time to rehearse.
We walked through the house, the light always just ahead of us, the smell of bread trailing behind. I thought about what it meant to want something, and to have it given to you, and to live long enough to see what you’d do with it.
I hoped I’d get the chance.
If not, at least the toast was amazing.