“I am not his plaything,” I snap.
She looks at me with raised eyebrows. “Hm, I can see that.”
I feel like a bug under a microscope. Before either of them can say anything that might get me fired, I march away from them.
I spend the next hour circulating around the room, offering drinks and canapes to every person in the room except for two.
Most of the men in attendance are older. Anton is one of the youngest by a good margin. I spot Lev and Yulian swimming in the crowd, too. Neither of them seem to notice me.
Most of the female guests ignore me and the other waitstaff entirely. Except for Queen Jasmine, as I’ve started calling her in my head. I can feel her watching me from time to time, though she makes no attempt to speak to me again.
The men, on the other hand, try to make conversation every chance they get. “Conversation” being a pretty loose term for repulsive attempts to pick me up.
“What’s your name, pretty girl?” one man asks me.
He’s mid-sixties if he’s a day, and he has an actual gold tooth. He looks me up and down like I’m the next hors d’oeuvre on the menu.
“Josephine,” I lie automatically.
“Beautiful name.”
“It was my grandmother’s,” I say, talking fast and angrily. “You would have liked her. She was about your age when she died.”
The confident smirk on his face withers and dies. He looks at me as though I’m a rat he would love to step on. Then he turns his back on me abruptly. The two other men standing beside him do the same.
I smirk, satisfied with my work there. But when I walk back to the drinks table to refresh my tray, Douglas appears right in front of me.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demands.
“Refilling. What does it look like?”
“You’re pissing off the guests.”
“I’m just serving drinks,” I say innocently.
“Not to my satisfaction,” he growls. “I get it—they’re a bunch of pervy older men who you have no interest in. You don’t have to fuck them, just flirt.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “My integrity is not for sale.”
“You’re confusing integrity and pride,” he says scornfully. “Stop acting like you’re better than this. Some of us feed our families with this job. I already told you once: don’t fuck this up.”
He succeeds in making me feel guilty before he stomps off as elegantly as possible. I refill my tray and step back into the fray.
Without even realizing it, I end up close to Anton. He doesn’t see me, though. He’s deep in conversation with Lev and Yulian.
It’s the first time all night that the three of them have converged. They’ve been on opposite ends of the room, working the crowd. Now, their heads are bent together and they’re whispering rapid-fire to each other. I catch sporadic snippets of their conversation.
“Where the fuck is he?” Lev growls. “He should be here by now.”
“You think he won’t show?” Yulian asks. “If he doesn’t, it would be a clear sign. To everybody here.”
“He’ll show,” Anton says, all confidence as usual.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I know the old man. He has no choice but to come. He’s toeing the line as usual. Trying to show up fashionably late to make a statement.”
“What statement is that?” Yulian asks.