“So why, for example, does K get to travel around but not Cassie? Doesn’t seem fair.”
He laughs. “Because K is big enough, ugly enough, and violent enough to take care of himself. Cassie would be a soft target. It wouldn’t be the same for you. I worked for K, and yes, I am sure I have enemies the same way he and Andrius do, but I wasn’t the leader the way K was. I wasn’t a legend the way Andrius was; still is if we’re being honest. My scalp is nothing as compared to theirs, and I got out before it got that way. Now Vasily, he’s the new K, and I’m sure he sleeps with one eye open. Me? I got out, and I’m building something new. I’d like you to be a part of that.”
“I’d like to still dance sometimes. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Dancers of my age, they often get fewer parts. Or they get injured, and then they must retire, or they become part of the chorus line of dancers. I don’t want that. I’d like to go out on a high. I’d like to teach, though, and I’d love to still do the odd show, maybe even a tour or two now and again.”
He twirls my hair in his fingers and kisses my neck at the side. “I can’t see that being an issue. If you wanted to tour, I would come with you. You’d be safe with me there, and if for some reason I really couldn’t, then I’d send one of the men we’re training to be with you. As for teaching, well you could run a summer school out here.”
I still in his arms, completely and utterly still. For a moment, I don’t even breathe because, damn, he always reads my mind.
Oh wow. “I had the same thought.”
He laughs. “Yeah, we’ll run a summer school training the baddest of the bad to be even badder, and you run one next door training up future ballerinas. It’s kind of epic.”
“It kind of is. And I could run it like a holiday company almost. You know, spend three months learning ballet with Madame Dasha Imanovich in Corfu, and visit the lovely old Corfu Town and palace of Achillean; that kind of thing.”
He turns my face to his. “Dasha, it could work really well. Tons of wealthy people holiday here, and I bet a lot of them would love for their daughters to have something worthwhile to do in the summer while they’re making business deals on their yachts.”
“And their sons,” I chide. “Ballet isn’t just for girls.”
“Of course,” he says with a smile. “You should think about it and make some loose plans. I could speak with Andrius, Reece, and K, see if there’s a bit of the land we’re purchasing that you could use.”
I frown at that because although it sounds wonderful, and I had the same thought myself, it’s hardly ideal when you think of the two businesses side by side. “I don’t think I can set up my dance school on the same land with men firing guns, Bohdan. That’s the only issue.”
“Firstly, the firing range will be very secluded and nowhere near the main buildings. Secondly, think about it. If you want to make it a super elite school, there’ll be nowhere safer for those kids than here.”
“I don’t know if I do want it to be super elite,” I say. “Ballet was my dream, and I was a poor kid in Russia. I’d like other poor kids to get the chance to experience it if they dream about it.”
He stands, taking me with him, and he places me on the table, sitting me on the edge as he stands between my legs and tips my chin up. “We could set up a foundation,” he says.
“What?”
“A foundation. We set it up and offer holidays, say ten places a year to kids from Ex-Soviet regions.”
“We?”
“I have money, Dasha. Some of it I’m putting into this venture with K, but I still have plenty left over. You have money. We could split the initial startup costs, and then you could use the money from the rich kids to run the scholarship side of things. You could run the whole thing overall as a nonprofit, and use the rich kids to pay for the poorer kids.”
He starts to pace, and I can see it, that sharp mind of his positively turning as he thinks and walks.
He turns back to me. “We could have a motto, something like ‘In dance all are equal.’ When the kids come here, they get a simple uniform, maybe a whole bag of clothes, dance clothes, and casual clothes, badged up with the school logo so that they’re all the same, right? That way, the poorer kids aren’t going to be intimidated dancing next to the rich kids carrying Hermes bags and shit. They’ll all leave that behind when they come for however long it is, and they have an intense ballet workshop with you over so many weeks.”
I can feel tears pricking my eyes because this could be awesome. It could work. Really work.
It would need a lot of tweaking and planning, but it could work.
“I think we might have something we could build with this,” I tell him.
He tips my chin up again. “I want to build something with you, Dasha. Let me.”
I nod, close my eyes, and fall into him. Into trust. Into love.
I let myself be vulnerable.
I pray I don’t come to regret it.
Chapter Twenty-three
Vasily
London
I meet Zoey at nine in the evening toward the end of my week in London, in a hotel bar. It’s a swanky, upmarket place where the drinks cost what a meal would in a less snobbish establishment.
She’s sitting at the bar when I enter, and she surprises me. Normally, she wears jeans, biker boots, and t-shirts. This evening, though, she’s wearing a slinky black dress. She’s sitting facing the door but turned toward the bar as she talks to the barman. I study her for a moment. Her dress ends just below her knees, and her feet are encased in high, black shoes with gold studs on the ends. I smile, that’s a Zoey touch. Her bag is black, also with studs on it. Her tiny waist is the focus of the dress as it is nipped in there before it hugs her hips. They’re slim too. Everything about Zoey is slender but not in a tiny, petite way. She’s slim but tall. Lean but toned. Her arms have definition. The woman clearly works out.
Normally she wears lots of silver, with chunky rings and bangles adorning her wrists and fingers. Tonight, she’s wearing a red leather bracelet with gold spikes on it, and a gold ring that I can’t see clearly from here, but it looks almost like barbed wire.
She takes the glass in front of her, sips at the cocktail and closes her eyes for a moment. Smiling, she nods her approval at the bartender, takes one of the olives on the stick, and pops it into her bright pink mouth.
Fuck me, she’s hot.
I walk over to her, and she glances up, sees me, and chews and swallows. “Hey there.”
“Hi.” I settle on the bar stool next to her.
Her voice is girly, breathy. It reminds me of Marilyn Monroe, but she looks like Lara Croft in a cocktail dress.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asks me.
“Vodka, your best, on the rocks.”
“How Russian of you.” Zoey smiles at me and sips her cocktail again.
“Not really. Russian’s tend not to have it on ice. I like it this way.”
Plus, I’m still babying myself as I recover from the gunshot wounds I sustained when the fucking Armenian’s broke into K’s home. I’m doing well, almost back to normal levels of functionality, but it will take me some time to get my fitness levels back to what they were. Neat vodka won’t help.