My thoughts were interrupted by Viktor appearing in the doorway. The communist hammer and sickle tattoo on his shaved head caught the light. He got it in prison with a contraband sewing needle and burned rubber from his boot heel. I had more than a few souvenirs from the time I spent in the overcrowded cells of Butyrka. Ink and alliances included.
“Nikolay has become a problem again,” he told me in Russian.
The vor of mine had always made a sufficient amount from tax evasion and a used car dealership—or, more accurately, the brothel in the basement.
“He was arrested for pimping out a twelve-year-old girl.”
I bit down on my cigar, a lash of heat licking at my chest. Truthfully, I hated the prostitution business. I wouldn’t touch the industry with a ten-foot pole if I thought I could banish it from the streets of Moscow altogether. Even God couldn’t accomplish that, so I might as well capitalize on it.
But pedophiles . . . I loathed them most of all. Blood-stained sheets, cloying cologne, and the clang of coins on a grimy folding table. In prison, they were forcibly marked with a mermaid tattoo—that is, if they stayed out of my sight long enough to be inked before I beat them to death with my bare hands.
“Where is he?” I asked.
Viktor told me the name of a holding cell, one that employed multiple police officers in my pocket.
“Send Nikolay’s wife a sympathy card,” I said.
Viktor left without a word. Nikolay would be found hanged in his jail cell come morning.
I exhaled a smoke ring, eyeing the fake heart-shaped earring on my desk. My little vegan didn’t wear fur or diamonds. Her soft heart was unanticipated given her last name, but she also hid a fire beneath.
I wanted to see how hot that fire burned.
And then I wanted to put it out.
I wanted Mila, but I wanted her willingly. Her tears unnerved me. Even the shocked expression in her eyes after I gave her a light slap to the face didn’t settle right. Nadia would have been on her knees at my feet faster than I could blink, not giving me a look like I’d just strangled a baby humpback.
Apparently, I wouldn’t be able to slap this girl into submission, which made things a little more complicated. Especially because I couldn’t stand her apologies. They made me remember she was an innocent in all this. They made me feel like I had a conscience, and that wouldn’t do at all.
After last night, it seemed I couldn’t trust myself with her—not with her claw marks on my neck and the hot awareness of where she had the nerve to bite me. I’d leave her be for a few days, let the fire subside.
In the meantime . . .
Ivan rolled through my mind while I blew out a white cloud of smoke. A whisper of tension tightened in my body.
I wanted to find the man who had dibs on my pet when I was finished with her.
; kakistocracy
(n.) to be ruled by the worst person ever
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I sat on the window seat tapping my finger on the cold glass while trying to get the one lone rabbit in the wasteland of snow’s attention. He’d become my friend the past four days. The four days I’d spent locked in this room.
A middle-aged woman, owner of a tight bun, permanent scowl, and, apparently, one medieval black dress, delivered my meals three times daily.
“You can call me Yulia. I am housekeeper here. I do not like messes,” was how she introduced herself.
I didn’t respond, preoccupied with the perpetually locked door that finally lay open. I’d stepped toward it but froze when I saw a man standing in the hall with an assault rifle held across his chest. I imagined if I ran, a spray of bullets would follow.
By what I saw from the fixed bay window, I was on the second story of a remote house. Large and built of stone, with nothing but snow and trees surrounding it. If I shattered the glass and managed the jump without breaking my leg, I doubted I would get far with only a T-shirt and Elvis’s smolder to keep me warm.
I refused every meal the first day, receiving a look of condemnation from Yulia and a, “You are going to get in trouble.”
The second day, when I refused breakfast, she handed me a note.