“I have to get going.” Niko cups my elbow as he leans in to kiss my cheek. His skin is warm and his cheek smooth as it retreats.
“You’re not staying for dinner?” I hate how disappointed I sound.
“Sadly, no. But I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
By his delivery, I’m not sure if that was a promise or a threat.
“Thanks for humoring him.” I shoot my date a tight smile rather than watch him retreat. Even if the rear view is almost as delicious. “Getting him a drink, I mean. I appreciate you not making a big deal out of him being … well, him.”
“No problem.” Alistair brings his glass to his mouth, pausing for a moment. “When Nikolai Vanyin asks you to get him a drink, you go. To Moscow for Moscow Mules, if that’s what he asks for.”
“You know him?”
He tips his own glass back, then nods. “I know of him. I work in the city.” At my blank expression, he adds, “His uncle is as rich as Croesus, Iz.”
“Oh.” He must bank with Coutts, which is where Alistair works.
“The family is said to be worse than the Medicis.”
“What do you know about his family?”
“I’m a banker,” he says to the tune of well, duh! “Though I expect if I were a policeman, I might know a little more. I do know the prime minister holidayed on the family yacht, and that if the press got a whiff of it, he’d be out of parliament and out of a job.”
“Are you saying Van’s family are criminals?”
“I wouldn’t dare. I like my limbs where they are and not in a sports bag buried in a field somewhere.”
“You have the worst sense of humor,” I reply haughtily because my brother doesn’t mix with criminals. “Whatever his family are or aren’t, Van is a businessman—a graduate of Oxford University. He recently donated over a hundred thousand pounds to a Hoxton animal charity!” Or at least, I donated it in his name after I’d sold his beautiful Aston Martin. I was sad to see it go, but I couldn’t in good conscience keep it. Besides, every time I climbed in it, all I could think of was him. It even seemed to smell like him. Powerful, expensive, and more than a little thrilling.
“I didn’t know you cared about education, Iz.”
“I don’t. Plenty of idiots attend university.” I might be looking at one right now. “Van can’t be a criminal.” He just can’t be.
“Then maybe Nikolai Vanyin is the exception to the family rule.”
And maybe Alistair the banker really is a wanker. Either way, I find myself going off his company very, very quickly.
10
Isla
“The prices are extortionate,” I complain, passing Tamsin her drink.
“What?”
“The drinks,” I say a little louder. “I’ll have to sell a kidney when it’s my turn to get in a round.”
“What do you expect on the opening night of London’s new it club?” she shouts back. I roll my eyes. I can’t believe I agreed to come. Opening night in the new place to be seen is more Tamsin’s thing than mine. That’s part of the reason I’ve decided to move back to Scotland. I’ve grown tired of partying like I’m still at university. I miss waking to cold mornings and the swirl of mist over the rolling hills. I miss the people and their lack of artifice. Working in an art gallery and pandering to pretentious pricks is wearing on my soul and dating a string of useless, privileged fuckwits is getting old.
So I’m going back. Next month, in fact. Scotland feels like a favorite pair of wool socks, comfortable and safe. The antithesis of this place, I think, glancing around at the velvet-covered walls and neon-feather bouquets in alcoves. I imagine the designers were given the word opulent as a creative direction, and whoever wrote the cocktail menu exorbitant.
“Give it a little while,” Tamsin adds, her gaze sweeping over the place. “We’ll have men fighting to buy us drinks when the place fills up.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.” My head slowly turns, following the progress of a woman wearing little more than a silky hanky. As is typical for Soho nightclubs, the place is teeming with women in similar states of underdressed. Slavic supermodel types, legs up to their armpits and boobs sitting under their chin. Like the one who just passed us by. She was trailing a twentysomething city boy, denoted by a sharp suit and a heavy waft of aftershave, his eyes glued to her bum. “Anyway, I prefer to buy my own drinks these days,” I add airily, ignoring the unpleasant ripple of residual ick that runs down my spine. “Being spiked once is enough for one lifetime.”
“Not every man is a creep.” Tamsin brings her glass to her lips. “What happened to him, by the way? Did you end up going to the police?”