Chapter 4 #2
I spun in Nicolai’s arms, reaching up, drawing him down because the grief of us ending was too much.
Nicolai’s arms tightened, and he lifted me to reach his mouth.
The wall was against my back. His mouth was on mine, warm fresh mint on my tongue, and I grabbed him around his waist with my legs and over his shoulders with my arms. His arms were around my back and under my butt, easily holding me.
He kissed me, and my whole body melted against him, wiggling and desperate. If he had spun us and tumbled me on the bed, stripped my clothes off, and taken me, I would’ve said yes, yes, yes.
But knocking rattled the door, and we both jumped. He lifted his mouth from mine. “Go away.”
“Mr. Romanov, a bellhop has brought up the cash you ordered. He says he has to hand it to you or be directed otherwise, personally,” Ueli’s voice said.
He sighed. “That’ll be the twenty thousand I ordered for you.”
Oh, it wasn't just twenty bucks. “Twenty thousand dollars? Jeez, Nicolai! I can’t walk around with that kind of money. What if I get robbed?”
He shrugged and gently released me, letting me slither down his body. “Then pay yourself back by taking out a cash advance on my credit card.”
I flippin’ gaped at him. “Cash advances are so financially irresponsible.”
He chuckled, squeezing his eyes shut before lifting his face like he was looking up into rain. “I suppose they might be considered so. Come.”
“Wait, aren’t we going to talk about this?”
“There’s nothing to talk about. I am fucking helpless around you, and so you must leave me.”
The waves of his admission rolled through me, and I didn’t know what to reply because, him? “You? Helpless? You project everything except helplessness.”
“When it comes to you, I am absolutely helpless. And if we are talking about anything else, I am powerless. Or I should be. Or I must be.”
I leaned against the wall, my hands behind my back. “You sound really certain of that.”
Yeah, my theater friends told me I should be a therapist. Jimmy’s family told me I should work for them for peanuts and then be a tradwife.
I had listened to the wrong people.
“I don’t want power,” Nicolai said. “And I’m not just saying that so that I don’t get a target on my back, or a bigger one, at any rate. When someone like me is given power, people die. It’s not worth it. I’m not worth it.”
“You’re really considerate when you’re working with your security guys, though you hold your own and don’t get pushed around. You seem to work well in team situations. Why shouldn’t you have power, as you put it?”
“I am genetically predisposed toward violence.”
“You killed anyone?” I asked before I considered whether I really wanted to know the answer. Being a therapist was hard.
“Not personally.”
“Otherwise?”
“I suppose not,” he said with a gentle chuckle.
“But that’s what people in my family do.
When Tsar Nicolai II was threatened, he ordered his guards to kill his own people outside who were doing nothing more than protesting because he was afraid.
He would not listen to advisors. That is the action of an evil, evil man. ”
“But you wouldn’t do that.”
“Maybe I would.”
“You’re throwing me out with, maybe, a bundle of cash and a no-limit credit card because you think I might be in danger from being around you. That is not the action of an evil person.”
“Ah, but the things I would do to keep you safe, Lexi. That’s where the danger lies.”
“And the world is full of evil people in power. I mean, look around at the, you know, fascist hellscape run by pedophiles. You’d be better than those guys.”
“The last tsar killed millions of his own people.”
“And then when your family was out of power, Stalin did way worse.”
“Oh, Lord. Hoisted by my own history.”
“Evil people win when good people do nothing, and that includes when good people think they shouldn’t.”
“But I’ve seen what happens when my family takes power. We aren’t good. No matter what guidelines are in place, we use that power for evil. I am not to be trusted.”
“You are not your family. You’ve made sure of that your whole life. And if you’re worried that somehow evil is genetic, take good people with you. Fight the evil, and have good people there and listen to them about what is moral and just and fair and kind and merciful.”
“’Tis better to rule a kingdom of nothing than to destroy civilizations or ruin people’s lives.”
I wanted to shake him. “’Tis better to be the person I know you can be and fight back.”
More knocking on the door.
Ueili’s voice, “Nicolai, are you all right?”
“Fine,” he called back. “Philosophical discussions will have to wait, even if this is the most fun I’ve had matching wits in years. My friends are drunkards. Come on, the lawyers and the courier and my security staff await us.”
I followed Nicolai back out to the living room, probably with my mouth hanging a little open and a confused wrinkle between my eyebrows like I was an idiot, where Ueli was standing by the door with a man wearing a baggy black suit.
The guy held up a fat envelope to his shoulder height and waggled it at Nicolai.
“You may hand it to Ueli,” Nicolai said, and the guy handed over the envelope.
My pride wanted to refuse Nico’s money.
My stomach didn’t want to eat crackers and pressed turkey snack packs for the next six months or longer.
If he offered me the money or some of it, I would gratefully thank him.
Footsteps stomped in the hallway outside, and the door eased open because the Black Suit with the money envelope probably hadn’t shut it right.
Ueli tossed the envelope on a side table, and he, Dusha, and Black Suit turned toward the door, reaching under their suit jackets.
“Expecting someone?” Ueli asked.
Nicolai stepped toward me. “No. No one.”
And then the security guys were holding guns, all pointed toward the floor in front of their toes.
I dove behind the couch.
The lawyers rolled in around me.