Vasily
Vasily
The truck takes hours to sort through. I swear Artyom told the driver to pull over in the middle of the night and rearrange everything so it’d be impossible to inventory. When one of the skinheads from the Blazing Hell MC swings by to pick up a crate of Yeezy counterfeits and sees the mess I’m dealing with, he even gives me his thermos of biker coffee.
Yeah, that’s coffee with cream and sugar and meth.
Yeah, I drink the meth.
It gets me through the Gucci and the Rolex, the Adidas and the jewels. Through the bootleg DVDs— I don’t even know where that market is, but they still move, so we still move them— and finally make it down to the computer supplies. Integrated circuits, networking equipment, semiconductors. It’s where our best money comes from these days, as long as we can move it.
It’s a different beast entirely from selling a Balenciaga for $300 to someone who knows deep down inside that it’s far too cheap to be real but looks authentic enough that their friends won’t know. These guys need to be mixed into batches of authentic supplies and sold wholesale to suppliers who will then unknowingly include them into their builds. Some of them are made with inferior supplies, but the ones that are most profitable are the ones that have extras added on.
The sort of extras that steal bank accounts and social security numbers.
I don’t deal with any of that, though. Way above my pay grade. I’m paid to get them distributed, and by the time I get the last crate divvied up, I feel like I’ve done my job.
As I’m packing up, I get the message from Igor that Ana’s on the move. I smile at the message and get a ride back to that side of town. By the time I’m a couple blocks away, Igor lets me know she’s at the pawn shop and they’re stalling her there to give me time to collect her. I tell him to have Gregor take her to the office so she’s not just standing there where everyone can see her.
According to Igor, she tried to go back in as soon as she left the apartment.
The only thing I asked of Igor was to make sure she didn’t do anything that couldn’t be undone. Now that she appears dead set on selling that monstrous cross of hers, I really do need to intervene.
She gives me the most baleful look as I fasten it back around her neck, thank Gregor for entertaining her, and lead her back to the apartment. The docile lamb that she is, she doesn’t even attempt to stab me. In fact, she puts both hands on my arm like she’s relieved that she’s being brought back. She’s silent and tense, but I would expect nothing less.
There’s a normalcy in this to me, a peace I haven’t felt in a long time simply from her finding some comfort in holding onto me, but I don’t expect her to feel the same.
I’d like to have a couple hours to hang out at home. Help Ana with the groceries and make lunch, see what will keep her from pawning the only thing she has of value. But my phone buzzes as I’m unlocking the door, which means the next part of my day is visiting with Artyom. I call Igor to meet her in hopes that she’ll feel more comfortable knowing who’s on the other side of the intercom, an actual grandfather who still keeps Korovka candies in his pockets for me because they were my favorite growing up in Russia. Then I head back out.
There are three restaurants Artyom’s willing to eat at in the few blocks we consider our territory in Flagstaff. The shadow of my apartment complex looms over me as I enter the family-owned Greek joint across the street.
Artyom is like a mirror reflection of myself, except he’s not what I am. He’s what I should be. His hair, every bit as pale as mine, is short, well groomed, shaved cleanly to frame his face, and combed forward in a classic Caesar. His skin is even and unscarred, his nose straight. His hands are steady enough to do surgery.
I’m one of the few people who know that dirty little secret of his, that he likes to play in the blood, keeping his victims alive for hours so every one of the thousands of cuts continues to ooze.
His freshly manicured nails drum on the surface of the table as he levels a clear blue glare on me. He’s silent for several long seconds, doing his best to intimidate me, but he’s my big brother. He overused that when we were children. When he gets tired of my lack of response, he fists that hand and slams it down hard enough that his gyro plate hops off the table and Alex has to grab the glass soda bottles to keep them from toppling.
“Why do you fuck everything up, Vasya?”
I shrug and take the soda that had been in front of him and guzzle it, then snag a piece of lamb right out of his pita for good measure. “I did what you asked,” I point out to him. “You said nothing about what I should do afterward.”
“I didn’t tell you to start a war with the Mafia!”
Always so dramatic. Tony the Bitch isn’t going to start a war with me. “They know where she is. She’ll be returned to them no more harmed than what’s already been done.” By me, but again I remind myself I wasn’t in control of my actions. I was Artyom’s tool.
Artyom settles back into his seat and goes silent again. He’s the smart one. The calculating one. He knows that I don’t hurt women, not in the bedroom, that I don’t have that same taste for violence some of the other men have. I don’t know why he’s doubting me, but I can see it in his face.
“You plan to return her, then?”
I frown. “I said I’d return her, and I will.”
Artyom’s eyes are unflinchingly on mine as his chest rises and falls against his favored black polo shirt. The rest of the room goes stagnant around him. The restaurant is mostly a large, open area, booths along the wall and four-top tables in the middle, but Mr. and Mrs. Chaconas long ago set up a private area for us in an annex to the kitchen to get out of a protection debt owed to us. Usually, the cooks are banging around enough to drown out our voices— not that it matters when they speak mostly Spanish and we’re speaking Russian— but I swear even they go silent.
“What else would I do?”
“You don’t keep women, Vasya.”
My eyes shift between him, Alex, and Kostya, and even though I drank that coffee hours ago, I’m wondering if there was something else in it because I must be hallucinating this. They’re agreeing with him, like I’ve got some habit of kidnapping women, forcing myself on them, then tossing them off in the desert. This is the first time in my life I’ve done anything that wasn’t fully consensual, and only because Artyom forced me to.
It wasn’t exactly consensual on my end, either.
“I don’t know what rumors are going around about me, but I will fucking kill whoever started them.”
“Hey, hey, hey, hey!” Artyom barks out. “I wasn’t saying anything except it’s been a long fucking time since you’ve even had a girl stay the night, so I’m really goddamn confused about what you’re doing here. What were you thinking? What are you getting out of this?”
I don’t have an answer, but my track record makes it easy for me to let my eyes glaze over as I stare at the void around us. I just have to pretend I’m too fucked up to get my words out or think my thoughts. I’ve always got stashes tucked away in my pockets, any time I’m in the restroom or around the corner from the gang is an opportunity for me to get myself fucked up again. And my eyes are eternally bloodshot. Maybe something’s just hitting hard enough that I’m on my own astral plane.
Maybe the voices are drowning Artyom’s voice out.
But then Artyom says, too plainly for me to ignore, “I need you to look me in the eye, Vasya. I need you to look me in the eye right now and promise me something.”
The only major physical difference between us is where Artyom spends his time with the books, I spend it in the gym, so I’ve got him by forty pounds. But his tone is enough for me to swallow as I meet his eyes.
“Promise me you don’t think she’s Brooke, man.”
I don’t.
But fuck me.
It’s hours before I get home. That truck was Dima’s job. I don’t know who would have done it if I hadn’t been punished, but not me. I still have to do my job checking in on the Calaveras de Oro and collecting payment from some of the places we keep our eyes on. I have to break up a turf dispute between a couple of pimps; I end up coated in glitter when I have to separate two of their girls, who’ve decided to claw each other’s eyes out.
I bring home claw marks.
When I get home, I don’t bother to turn the lights on. I can hear Ana sleeping, her breathing deep and even, from the back of the apartment. I’m glad she’s getting some rest.
I grab Ana’s pizza box from the fridge and finish it off in the dark. My eyes are still adjusting as I head into the living room, phone in hand to turn on the TV with the remote app, and slam right into the sofa, a good six feet from where it was this morning.
She rearranged.
Awesome.
I didn’t need those toes anyway.
I shouldn’t be mad at her, but it’s a stupid, petty thing to do. The place was fine. It’s not like she’s ordering new furniture or needing to make space. She hasn’t asked for anything even hinting at her hobbies.
I grumble as I give up on the TV and head to the bedroom, intent on waking her, after all. But when I get to my bed, I find it cold, empty. And yeah, from here, I can’t hear her breathing anymore.
Where the fuck is she?
A quick search of the apartment finds her in Dima’s bed, looking all comfy and cozy like she doesn’t get that she just jumped from the frying pan right into the goddamn fire. Dima’s had his share of girlfriends he’s kept his nose cleanfor, but in between? He’s the one Artyom would need to be concerned about “keeping” women.
My brain stutters there as two conflicting urges fight to control my body. I want to yell at her for thinking she’s going to sleep anywhere but my bed. I want to carefully scoop her up so she doesn’t wake while I move her to the correct bed. In the end, I stare at her for a few minutes, quietly allowing the sludge that’s been building up all day in my brain to coalesce into a clear thought.
She’s not Brooke.
The fact that she and Brooke are both the same age and build— or what Brooke was when she was in my life— is incidental. A convenient coincidence that means she can wear the clothes still in my closet if she wants, although she’s back in my shirt.
I will not let the fact that Brooke also loved hanging out in just my shirt cloud my thoughts. It’s a girl thing. Dima’s girls do it too. We’re big guys. I don’t care what women wear, but if they insist they need to be in itchy, restricting clothes all day, it makes sense that they want to hang out in tents when the only one around is the guy they get naked for.
No, now that I’ve been forced to come up with a reason to have Ana here, I think it’s pretty clear why I did this.
I want to experience having a girl of my own again. Just a taste.
I want to chill out on a snowy day with a girl at my side. I want to laugh with a girl over something boring and silly like coffee pot operation. I want to pretend I have an opinion on what she wears on a night out and touch her way too much while she’s distracted complaining about her best friend, whom she currently hates but will be besties with again in a week.
I want to come home to a girl curled up in my bed.
I pull the blanket away and smack Ana’s ass, enjoying the way she gasps as she sits up.
“You sleep my bed. No here.”
She scowls at me, sleepy enough that she’s forgetting to tone it down. I sympathize. “What difference does it make?” she huffs.
“Is not my bed. Go before spank again.”
She continues to pout as she attempts to gather up the blankets, but I snag them right back so I don’t have to do Dima’s laundry. She’s got a death grip on that pillow, though, and I don’t fight her on that. I do have to strip the blankets down before she has a chance to launch herself onto my bed, and then she curls up as tightly as possible around that pillow on the very edge.
I let her have that as I get myself ready for bed. Last night, I slept in an undershirt and joggers in deference to her, but tonight, I strip down to my usual boxer briefs. Since Ana’s curled away, she doesn’t even notice. And she lets out the saddest, whiniest no when I hook her by the waist and drag her all the way back to the middle of the bed.
Another huff from her, and she tries to resettle like she’s going to go right back to sleep.
So I reach down to her thigh to inch the hem of the shirt up.
This time, when she says, “Vasily?” there’s a fear to it. She thinks I’m going to force her onto my cock again. I could. And thinking about this has already gotten blood flowing that way. I’m already stiffening.
But that’s not what I’m going to do. I’m not going to force myself on her again. It wasn’t ever a possibility, but now that I have this idea of why I’ve done this, I have a plan for what to do moving forward. So yes, the fact that she’s tensing too much is an indication that she doesn’t want this, but what I’m doing is all about making her happy. That’s what I want.
I want to make someone happy.
I shush her softly and lean into her, letting the scent of her fill my nostrils. It’s not the same scent she had yesterday, now that she’s used the toiletries I nicked from Dima’s bathroom. I can’t say I like it as much, but it’s still a pleasant feminine scent. I’m not picky.
I have to shush her again as I find the apex of her thighs and dip my middle finger into the crevice there. “Won’t hurt, promise,” I murmur at her whimper.
“I don’t . . .” she starts, only for her voice to trail off with a resigned sigh. She knows she can’t stop me.
What I’m doing is wrong, I know this, but she will enjoy it.
I stroke her carefully, paying attention to the way her body tenses and relaxes. Her spine shifts against me. Her fists clench. She makes soft sounds as she attempts to breathe evenly, but when her moisture wicks up to my finger at her clit and entices me further down, she suddenly slaps at my hand, pushing me away.
“Please, Vasily,” she whimpers. “I’m not . . . this isn’t . . . I’m a good girl. I can’t do this again.”
Ah. This isn’t about her being my captive, not entirely. This is guilt. I was raised Orthodox, but I’m sure it was a different sort of experience than what she went through as a Catholic. If our church here in America ever attempted to tame Kseniya in the way these Mafia men imprison their girls with their warped play at Catholicism, I don’t know if she would have survived. She’s a good person, but she doesn’t respond well to restrictions.
“This my sin, not yours,” I tell Ana now.
“It’s both of ours.”
“No, ovechka . Cannot be responsible for feel. God judge me only.”
The way her body curls this time, she’s tightening, but she’s moving into me, sinking in so that I can tuck myself around her better. “Do you really believe in God?”
“ Da. ”
“Then why do you do—?”
I finish her question by dipping my finger back in but staying on her clit this time. “This?” I ask with a kiss on her cheek.
“You know this is wrong,” she says.
“Mm, my God not your God. My God? He want me take care of you.”
“Like this?” she whimpers, but as she does so, I push that finger right back down, making her pitch change and end on a gasp. She digs her nails into my forearm, and although the roughness of them has me worried she’s going to draw blood, she doesn’t push my hand away this time. She holds it in place.
“Let me worry of God. He not judge what you can’t prevent.”
Her ragged sigh is another fight brewing, but once I have two fingers buried in her cunt, my thumb on her clit, and my other hand on her nipple, the best she can do is hold me until her protests melt into pleasure. Her body rocks unbidden, her cunt floods.
She grinds on that pillow as she comes. It dampens against the back of my hand. I debate whether I should give it back to Dima, just to mess with him, but no, it’s ours now.
For a long, peaceful moment, we are simply a man and a woman in a warm, pleasant embrace. We are a unit together. But once her orgasm fades, her body goes tense all over again.
Yesterday, this climax signaled the next step, the debt collection. But there is no debt tonight, just a kiss on her cheek, a “Sleep well, ovechka ,” a cigarette on the porch, a cold shower, and a gummy before I wrap myself back around her sleeping body.