“You know what kind gets you, Clara? What being good does?”
His question and the feel of something hard pressing against my back brought me out of my memories. I couldn’t speak, the past threatening to overwhelm me despite my plan to do anything necessary to appease Nikolai.
He bent forward and I felt my stomach roil at the thought of him kissing me. But a kiss wasn’t what he wanted… at least not yet. Instead, he moved his lips to my ear. Dropping his voice, he whispered, “Lara learned the hard way when she allowed me to fix her a drink that night and then refused to be a good girl and step aside and let you take her place. When I lifted her up and held her over the railing, believe me, she was begging to swap places with you when I was kind enough to submit to her wishes and let her go.”
He ran the tip of his tongue along the shell of my ear, but it wasn’t that sensation that had my heart beat stuttering, it was the pure pleasure I heard in his voice and the realization of what he was saying.
“Ask Maxim Volkov what being a good comrade did for him when he was caught listening to my uncle’s plans to move a huge cocaine shipment. Spying on the all-powerful Grigori Petrov was not a wise idea. All it earned him was a beating to within an inch of his life… his face so fucking bloody he looked like he’d dunked his head in a can of red paint, and my hands…”
He paused, and I watched as Nikolai’s eyes changed, the look in them seeming to see something from his past, his voice shifting from a tone of amusement to one that almost sounded regretful, but I should have known better. Nikolai proved he didn’t know the definition of the word as he shook his head and fixed me with the same glare as before.
“When I was going to be kind enough to let him go with just a beating, I had to listen to my cousin, Luka, accusing me of being a pizda. A pizda! I had to shoot my own flesh and blood and made my very own family pay as well for the insult.”
Going to be kind. His wording had my heart threatening to stop. “And Maxim?” I asked in horror, almost sure I knew the answer.
“What the fuck do you think? Eavesdropping got him beaten – witnessing a murder, well, there’s only one solution for that little problem,” he said without an ounce of remorse.
His chuckle sent a wave of hot air against my ear, causing me to swallow down the bile that rose in my throat.
“Come to think of it, accidents seem to follow those in your trade. Being married to the most famous ballerina in all of Russia with a reputation of being as good and kind offstage as she was beautiful on it, didn’t keep Maxim from being turned into a speed bump on some fucking road in the middle of fucking nowhere,” Nikolai continued, his voice growing harder with the telling of this last story. “Doing what is necessary earns you the position of boss while kind gets you killed, Clara, and if you ever so much as attempt to deny me again, I promise you I won’t be anywhere near as kind or understanding as I was the last time you dared to question me. I promise you that your sweet little babushka will feel anything but good when I make you watch as I teach her the lesson you simply refuse to learn. Is that clear?”
I couldn’t have spoken if my very life depended on it. All I could hear was his confessions… not of ordering those horrid acts, or even attempting to call them accidents any longer, but of having committed every one of them himself. I was at the mercy of a man who had absolutely no hesitation in taking what he wanted and removing anything, or anyone, who stood in his way.
A cry managed to escape my closed throat when fingers dug into tender skin.
This made no sense. Nikolai never gave information without extracting some sort of price. Though one voice inside my head screamed at me to keep silent, the other demanded I know… I had to ask. “Why… why are you telling me this?”
He laughed again, the sound chewing into my soul like daggers. “Because evidently you are a very poor student and need some visual aids to drive the lesson home.” Digging his fingers deeper, he yanked my head back.
“You seem to have forgotten that when I ask a question, I expect a fuckin answer,” he said, eyes devoid of anything but evil boring into mine.
Pure terror ran through me, burning away any residual fog in my mind, allowing me to see clearly. This man had murdered Alek and Yuri’s father, and I had no doubt he’d do the same to anyone I loved.