And, well, let's not forget that whole 'I don't come until you come' rule with sex.
So it wasn't hard for me to accept that while Rus might have hurt or killed people, it didn't necessary make him a bad person.
The selling the women thing though? That was never going to sit right with me.
I didn't care what they tried to convince themselves that the women willingly signed up and it was a mutually beneficial situation, that it was a new type of arranged marriages. I called bullshit. They knew better.
It was human trafficking plain and simple.
It was no better than stealing a woman off the street and selling her.
But, yeah, I was pretty sure I was okay with Rus. At least for the short-term. He could have easily beat or raped me back in that hotel. Granted, I'd have put up a hell of a fight, but chances were... he would have overpowered me.
He didn't.
Not only didn't he even attempt to, but he had seemed insulted about the whole frisking thing.
He would only want me willingly.
And, well, there would be no willingness from me.
But that was just another hand I had to play.
I trained for it.
I trained to make and keep a cover.
The fact that I let those rules slide a bit with Repo was beside the point.
It would not be a problem with Rus.
I just had to sit tight and wait for my chance at getting away.
"How does Miami sound?"
It sounded like a seventeen fucking hour drive was what it sounded like.
"I could use to even out my tan," I said instead, giving him a smile that was at once flirtatious and shy.
Judging by the way his eyes got bright, he bought it.
I took a deep breath, and silently repeated a mantra in my head.
And maybe, just maybe, that mantra had something about Repo in it.
But I was just going to let that slide.EighteenRepoTo say we didn't handle the empty and trashed room well would be a bit of an understatement. K managed to punch a hole in the wall and I had frantically looked through the mess to try to find something that might have some kind of clue as to what had happened, who had been there, where they had gone, if she was hurt.
While I was glad I found no blood, I also didn't find a God damn thing else either.
After ten minutes, we made our way back downstairs, K twirling Maze's knife absentmindedly around in his hand, completely unconcerned about the people who watched him like he was a lunatic. We rounded the front desk where we had talked to the spineless shit earlier, the guy who had been easy to bribe for us and, well, likely for whomever had Maze as well. He grabbed the kid by the throat and pushed him through the office door behind the desk, almost slamming the door in my face in the process.
Apparently when K got angry, he got angry.
"Now you're going to tell me every fucking thing you know about the comings and goings in room 28B or I am going to take this knife," he said, angling it so the point was digging into the man's Adam's apple, "and I am going to start slicing off parts you've become attached too. And I won't be starting with fingers..." he warned.
"There was another man," the guy immediately rushed to say through clenched teeth, careful to not let his throat move too much as he spoke lest the knife dug in.
"Details," K demanded, slamming him back against the wall hard enough for his head to make a sick cracking sound.
"Tall, wide. Dark hair. Jeans, t-shirt. Nothing too distinctive except..."
"Except?" I prompted.
"He had an accent."
"Russian?" I asked.
"I don't know. I suck at accents. Maybe?"
"Ruslan," K concluded, letting his hand with the knife drop down by his side. "Maisy said Viktor only ever wore suits. Rus was the jeans and tee guy."
"Did you see them leave?" I asked the guy who was watching K like a grenade without a pin, like he might explode at any second. I had to say, I barely knew the guy, but that seemed exactly what K was when he was worked up.
He held up his hands when K turned his attention back to him when he paused to swallow. "Willingly! Willingly. I might be an opportunist, but I'm not a monster. I'd have called the cops if I'd seen a woman getting dragged out of here. He went up there for I dunno... maybe half an hour. When he came back down, she was right behind him out of the elevator. She... she didn't even look freaked, I swear. When he opened the front door for her, he put his hand on her lower back. Like they were friendly."
I felt myself stiffening a little at his words, my guts twisted in a way that made me both want to puke and haul off and hit something despite my crusted-up bloody knuckles. K said Maze had a crush on Rus. Maybe if he slipped her the right words she'd have followed him blindly, willingly.