Day 2
Vasily
I am not a morning person.
It works well for me most of the time. Organized crime is a 24/7 kind of thing. When I’m woken up at seven a.m. from my phone freaking out, I know it’s going to be a long-ass day.
I scrub my eyes to attempt to wake myself up, but I had to smoke way too much last night to get myself to sleep. The sight of Ana in ladies’ pajamas from my closet, watching me down slice after slice while she nibbled at a single slice of hers and then half a cannoli, was unsettling. Usually, I’ll have an edible to go to sleep, but I smoked a bowl instead. Now, my brain’s fighting to come back online.
I roll to my side and fish around in my night stand until I’ve got my morning coke. I snort it right off the little spoon I keep with it, tuck it back in the drawer, and roll to my other side to pass back out for another five minutes before it kicks in.
Ana is lying there staring at me. I’m not sure if the look is horror or just overload. She’s definitely been awake for a while, though, in that same ball she curled herself into on the ride home. When we went to bed last night, she was under the blankets, but now she’s divided us with them and is using my coat as a blanket again.
She’s shivering.
“Cold,” I point out, irritated that she would be so dramatic after I’ve already done my worst to her and she loved every second of it. How fucking stupid is she that she would think two extremely cozy layers of blankets would keep her off my cock if I demanded she ride it?
Again, not a morning person here. Just doing my best not to say all those words out loud.
“It’s cold in here,” she whispers, and I swear she’s chattering her teeth for effect.
I groan and flop onto my back to contemplate my ceiling for a moment. It’s not that cold in here. It’s just cold outside. Sorry this isn’t her perfect Phoenix. Suck it up, buttercup.
I need coffee immediately.
I grab my phone, flip through the string of texts from Artyom that make it clear I will be meeting the truck coming in from Sandusky, I will assist in unloading it, I will do inventory on it, I will settle the tab, and I will divide it out for the trucks coming in.
Yeah, he heard what happened last night. He’s pissed.
I toss my extremely warm blankets aside and roll my knees up to my chest to get the momentum needed to pop upright on my feet, windmilling my arms to get the circulation flowing. Ana continues to stare at me, but I keep myself calm as I pluck my coat off of her and wrap my blankets around her like a burrito. “I go work,” I say, my voice admittedly grunty. It’s been a really long time since I’ve had to be cordial with anyone in the morning.
Another reminder of why the fuck did I do this. This is one more person to deal with.
But then I go to yell to Dima to see if he got assigned this shit, too, and I remember he’s not here. So maybe that’s why I decided to keep her. I’d just had the best sex I’ve had in a long time— which is absolutely disgusting to admit to myself, but that’s the truth of it— and something in my brain was probably tweaking to the fact that I’d be home by myself for the next few days.
With only the voices.
Lurking.
In the bathroom, I shave off a line of oxycontin, just to make sure I’m even. Clear-headed. Pleasant to the people I need to be pleasant to. I take a quick shower, brush my teeth, and run a comb and some gel through my hair. When I was in middle school, having just had my entire life ripped away from me and been thrown into a desert, I tried my best to learn the language and behave in the classroom. But I had this one teacher who looked at my pale hair in a standard crew cut, nothing crazy, and said it made me look how I sounded.
Like a thug.
And it just stuck with me. I’m a thug. What’s the point?
I dress in jeans and one of my usual pastel shirts because I was once told it made me glow in the dark, and I like that, too. I don’t want to blend in. I want everyone to see exactly where I am, that I’m not trying to hide, that I don’t need to. I’m not a coward. By the time I finish up and pass through the bedroom, Ana is gone. I’m unconcerned by this, though. Security— men in our employ— have been notified that I have a guest who is forbidden from leaving. Most of the building is Russian, in some way connected with the Bratva. Everyone knows. She won’t get far.
In fact, she’s only gone as far as the kitchen. She’s standing at the coffee maker, one cup on the tray and another in the sink that was empty last night, half my cupboards open and all the refillable pods lined up. I smell faint but offputtingly stale coffee, and she’s giving me the most baleful look.
I raise an eyebrow at her, and she crosses her arms over her chest. I notice then that she’s changed from the skimpy pajamas into my shirt that she wore last night.
It’s cute on her. Give her a belt, and it’d be a fashionable dress.
“I can’t figure it out,” she says softly. “Your pods look funny, and the first cup I brewed tasted awful.”
I scan the chaos. She’s got all those pods and the creamer out. There’s water in the tank, and I can see the spoon she stirred the first cup with. I glance at it in the sink and see that it’s paler than I like but not awful.
The only thing that’s missing is the coffee itself.
“You replace coffee, yes?”
She gestures to everything she’s got out. “I’m not stupid. Of course I put a new pod in.”
“But you replace grounds?”
“I—what? Like, the grounds in the pod? How?”
I withhold any comment as I reach around her to flick open one of the inserts. “You dispose this.” Then I reach above her and grab the can of coffee that’s at eye level for me. I know she’s tiny, but it’s right on the ledge, plain as day. “And refill with this.”
Her expression turns peevish as she stomps to the trash can, attempts to empty the pod, and drops it right into the trash.
I snort.
She purses her lips and glares like she meant to throw it out in irritation, but I saw what happened. I nod to the trash can, and with a huff, she cringes and retrieves it, pinching it gingerly between her thumb and ring finger as though it’s diseased.
She hands it to me.
I could point out that she’s a big girl, she can handle this herself, but I don’t need to upset her any further. I rinse it clean and do the same for the second one she empties. I show her the measured scoop and fill the pods for her, making her at least start the machine.
“Am gone most of day,” I warn her as I get the kitchen back to how it was. “Food here. Breakfast. And leftovers.” I watch the way she nervously changes the pods even now that they do have fresh coffee in them. “You heat pizza on griddle, is best. Lower 300, top 425, leave until cheese melt. I send groceries, too. What you like?”
She shakes her head, and yeah, I definitely see wheels turning, but I’m not going to push it. It’s groceries. If she doesn’t like what comes today, I can ask again tomorrow. We’ve got a long road ahead of us.
“Diet?”
Her nostrils flare.
“I not call you fat. But not want for you ten pounds beef if vegetarian.” Not that I wouldn’t be able to get through ten pounds on my own in a couple of weeks, but I don’t want her starving, either.
“No, nothing like that. Oh, but I’m allergic to apples and strawberries. Kiwi, too.”
“Itchy allergic or throat allergic?”
At that, she chuckles, although the sound is far more anxious than it was when my cock was buried inside her. “Very much throat allergic. EpiPen, trip to the emergency room, all that.”
“Then no apples, strawberries, kiwis. If more, you call there.” I point out the intercom next to our door. I think the other units have them to talk to anyone needing to get buzzed into the building, but ours only goes to security. “You tell Igor, he tell me.”
Her eyes shift between the door and me and then down to my pocket, at the obvious rectangular imprint there. “Can’t I call you directly?”
“You, no phone, ovechka .”
She looks around as though to call me out, but we don’t have a landline here. I don’t know that we ever have. Too easily tracked. “Well, you could get me one.”
“Have nice day, ovechka .”