“Fuck you,” Jasper screams.
Bohdan hits him hard on the thigh with one of the legs, and Jasper cries out. “Does it hurt?” Bohdan asks, all solicitous. “Want a doctor?”
“You’re dead.” Jasper turns to me, his eyes burning with hatred. “I mean it, Dasha. You are dead.”
Bohdan throws the wooden legs to one side and grabs Jasper in a neck lock, arm tight around my husband’s throat. “You better hope not. You better get up and pray every single day that nothing happens to your wife because if it does, then I’m going to make it my mission to track you down and kill you. If she gets hit by fucking lightning and I witness it myself, you’re still dead. Comprende?”
Jasper splutters and chokes, and I think he tries to eke out a yes. It’s hard to tell. A gasp has me turning to the door, and I see my mother looking on ashen faced.
“You can come with us,” Bohdan says to her, barely sparing her a moment’s glance. “I highly suggest you do because I doubt you’re safe here. Or you can choose to stay. Up to you. I’ll book three tickets to Athens for as soon as possible, and Dasha can send you a message with the flight times and where to meet us. I suggest you go and pack and be sensible about this, but if not, then I wouldn’t trust this piece of shit.” He throws Jasper away from him, turns on his heel, and walks calmly past my mother and out of the room.
“What about my dog and the cats?” I ask Bohdan.
He turns to Jasper and says, “Harm a hair on their heads, and you’re dead.” Then to me he adds, “We can take Mr. Bojangles with us. I’ll see if I can get it sorted. I’ll organize for someone to pick the cats up and foster them until we’re able to get them to wherever you’re going, Dasha.”
I turn to Jasper who is still panting and red, and I smile. “Leave, please; I would like to pack.”
“You’re going to pay,” he whispers.
Then he’s gone, and I’m weirdly calm. Oddly so. I’ll have to let my understudy take over the lead role in Swan Lake, and even that doesn’t upset me. I’ll call tomorrow and tell Madame I have an injury. Peacefully, I pack and something strange takes flight in me. It’s a kernel of something I’ve not felt before.
Freedom.
Chapter Twenty
Vasily
London
I miss my friends. Thinking it makes me sound pathetic, but it’s the truth. I’ve just called Bohdan to talk, but he is up to his neck in this woman he’s obsessed with. The ballerina. Not only have all my friends fucked off out of the game, but they’ve all fallen for women too.
I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose. I ought to be in Moscow, but instead I’m back at Bridge Tech. Outwardly, my reason is that I want to hire a couple of the IT guys to come work for me. I need people who know how to get into other folks’ business. It’s nothing that K wasn’t going to do. Deep down, though, I know that’s not the reason I’m here.
Ever since I got shot when everything went wrong for Konstantin, my ex-Pakhan, I’ve been reevaluating. Nothing on the scale of what Konstantin has done because, frankly, in my opinion, that fucker has lost the plot. He’s left the Bratva life behind and all his underworld business assets, and that’s just fucked. Luckily, he’s left it to me.
The object of my interest and the real reason I’m here walks across the courtyard as she does every day, from what I’ve seen, and hugs that damn tree. I’m skulking in a corner, smoking. I’ve managed to get down to one cigarette a day now. I don’t think Zoey has seen me, but then again if she does, she pretends she hasn’t. I’m intrigued by the girl. I want to fuck her, perhaps more than I’ve wanted to fuck a woman in a long time. She’s a mix of hard and soft, which intrigues me. Her beauty is undeniable, but edgy too. Her style is hot. She’s wearing biker boots with studs on them, black skintight jeans, and a black The Strokes tour t-shirt. Her hair is down, and her makeup is dramatic as usual.
I don’t only want to fuck dear Zoey, though; I’m intrigued by her. I’ve got the oddest instinctive feeling about the woman. Something is off about her, and I don’t know quite what it is, but I’m determined to find out. Every time I see her out here, she hugs that tree, and she’s so sad. Deeply, soul-destroying levels of sad. I see it in her big eyes, and I think Zoey has lost something so precious it has blown a hole in her. The other intriguing thing about her is her awareness of the environment. If you watch her for a long period of time, the way I do, you notice it. I’ve only seen that awareness in a few other people; namely Andrius, Konstantin, and the British Special Forces guys.
It got me wondering if Zoey had served, which got me digging. What I found raised my suspicions. There’s something too perfect about her story and her background. Call me paranoid, and I am, but I’ve got Damen looking into her. It’s a sixth sense I have about people sometimes, and with Zoey, that sixth sense is ringing all my alarm bells.
I have wondered whether to tell K, but tell him what? That I’ve been skulking around his legit businesses despite clear orders not to? That I’ve been obsessing over Zoey despite him telling me numerous times to leave her alone? That I have a hunch? A stupid hunch probably, and one that nothing I’ve found in my investigations so far backs up? No, I need evidence if I’m going to go to him with this.
She gets up from the bench where she’s been sitting in the weak late-afternoon sun and walks toward me. I put my cigarette out and step out from the shadows right in front of her. As I thought, she doesn’t flinch or jump. No, she knew I was there all along. Zoey watches her environment.
“Hi,” I say.
She smiles at me.
“Listen, I don’t do this often, but do you want to get a drink later this week, before I head back to Moscow?”
I’m expecting her to say no, so it surprises me when she nods with a fleeting smile. “Sure. That would be nice.”
Oh, I don’t want to be nice. I’d like to do very bad things to Zoey and have ever since I first saw her in this damn courtyard. This is, however, also about getting to know some more about her. Damen is looking, but so far he hasn't found anything. I might just simply be paranoid, but last week Zoey went to Corfu for a few days to meet with Konstantin and an old friend of his called Maxim, a talented artist.
K thinks Zoey and Maxim can make a breakthrough on a project that is struggling to take off, and they spent a few days in the sun being all creative and shit. I want to know if she’s someone we should be wary of.
If Damen finds anything, K will be the first to know. I also don’t know how well K would take me sniffing around his legit business, and his legit employees, but I don’t want to have to stop sniffing around Zoey.
I like the way she smells.
**
Zoey - London
Why did I say yes to Vasily? I’m already playing a supremely dangerous game and then I go and say yes to an invite for drinks, which most definitely means sex to someone like Vasily.
It’s not as if I’ve been asked to keep tabs on Vasily. He’s nothing to me, or it seems to the people I work for. Work for being a loose description of the whole fucked-up situation.