“Tell them you’re my wife,” he said.
Her eyes widened. “Is that necessary?” Her voice rose to a squeak.
“Yeah,” he said grumpily, but he couldn’t explain to her why.
It was hard to put in words. Calling her his wife created a barrier of privacy, illusion though it was. If the desk clerks were judgmental, suspicious women, or horny, dirty-minded men, or any combination thereof, calling her his wife would quell their inevitable speculation as to why a woman might meet a man at midnight at a hotel.
The fact that their speculation would be balls-on accurate was entirely beside the point. It was still none of their fucking business.
He didn’t want to thrash through all that jealous bullshit with her, though, so he retreated into a growling sulk. “What, do you not want to claim me as a husband?” he snarled. “Foul-mouthed, tattooed lowlife that I am?”
Her lips pursed in an attempt not to smile. “Not at all,” she said. “I’m just surprised. You actually said the W word and the H word.”
He acknowledged that with a shrug. “I’ve got too much else to be scared of right now,” he said dryly. “Later for that, OK? When I finally manage to kill the filthy son of a bitch, we can celebrate by having a big, screaming argument about my commitment issues. Sound good?”
She snorted. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“But for now…” He fished around on the floor next to the bed for the string of condoms, and stood up, tearing one loose. She sucked in a breath as he rolled it over his cock one-handed, grinning at her.
“Just what do you think you’re going to do with that thing?” she demanded. “Nick, you have got to be kidding.”
He lifted up the covers and slid between the sheets, gathering her hot warmth into his arms. “I’m not doing anything,” he said innocently. “It’s just, you know. A precaution. In case of…accidents.”
“Accidents? Hah,” she quavered, and cried out as he rolled on top of her and entered her, in one long, hard, relentless shove.
“Oops,” he murmured. “Sorry. I was afraid this might happen.”
She exploded into giggles, and the little shudders vibrated through his body, particularly the part he’d just slid inside her.
Hugging him, squeezing him. God, he loved to make her laugh.
Chapter
17
Z hoglo flipped through the printouts of the information that Mikhail had downloaded on Rebecca Cattrell. It was enough for his purposes. Address, place of work, employment history, driving record, banking and credit card information, tax data, medical records—a wealth of detail that bordered upon the tedious. The age of the Internet and the services of a competent hacker had rendered this cat and mouse game almost too easy to be entertaining.
Almost. He was sure he would manage to glean some enjoyment from the proceedings. He had been delighted to discover the existence of a brother and sister. The parents were long gone, but younger siblings would do nicely for the eventual mental torture part of his game. Almost as well as children of her own would have done.
He studied the color-printed photographs of the siblings. Attractive young people, both of them. The resemblance was striking. The girl, Caroline, studied art at Evergreen State College, and worked as an artist’s model for the drawing classes. Posing naked in front of crowds of degenerate artists, the wanton little slut. He wondered if she would be as appetizing naked as her voluptous older sister. He was looking forward to making the comparison. Caroline seemed more delicate and waiflike than her older sister, but had the same big, startled green eyes. As did the brother, Joshua, who studied mechanical engineering at University of Washington, and worked at an electronics store at a nearby mall. Both of them within easy reach. Good. Very good.
He chided himself inwardly. He really did not have the leisure to indulge in dangerous games like this. He had important business to conduct during his stay here. Vast sums of money to be made. If the Cattrells had come from a large, connected family who would have raised a fuss at their disappearance, he would have found an alternate way of unloading his vindictive impulses.
But they were a gaggle of wretched orphans with no money, no status, no powerful friends. They answered only to each other. Perfect.
Ah, how he enjoyed staging elaborate games of emotional torture. It took art to make the punishment fit the crime so perfectly, and he was a consummate artist. And speaking of punishment. He turned to Pavel, who was skulking by the door as if poised for escape. He gestured the man closer with an imperious wave of his hand.
“I have a job for you, Pavel,” he said.
“To collect the brother and sister?” Pavel guessed hastily. “I’ll leave immediately. I’ll need to take at least two men—”
“No, not yet. Not quite yet,” Zhoglo cut in, impatiently.
Pavel’s eyes dilated in alarm. “What then, Vor?”
“I think it is now time for you to visit your dear friend. Ludmilla,” Zhoglo said, slowly and deliberately. “You will be offering her a very lucrative contract. To provide sexual entertainment for myself and incidentally, for my employees, during our sojourn here in Seattle.”
“Vor, I do not believe that Ludmilla had any connection with—”
“Then you are a fool. Fools should stay silent, and listen.”
Pavel flinched and subsided, like a whipped dog. Zhoglo resumed his light, musing tone. “You will go to Ludmilla. By now, our enemy will have arranged to be watching and listening. This is good. You will speak to Ludmilla privately, at great length. You will speak of very large sums of money. Of ongoing contracts. Greedy, self-interested whore that she is, she will put her fear aside in hope of profit. She will offer you liquor, and you will indulge—to the point of inebriation or at least the appearance of it. You will confide in her what happened. How the Vor is so angry with you, so cruel to you. She will be horrified. She will try to comfort you. Perhaps, out of fear, or guilt, she will even fuck you.”
Pavel’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut. “Vor, I do not wish to—”
“What you wish, Pavel, is of less than no interest to me,” he said. “The woman must be, what, in her fifties? Is she attractive?”
“Late forties,” Pavel said tonelessly. “And yes. She is attractive enough.”
“Ah, good.” Zhoglo gave him an encouraging slap on the back. “Fuck her, then. It will relax you. You are too tense, my friend. Keep in mind, you must stay with her as long as possible, to give our enemies time to organize themselves. So they can follow you back here.”
“Here?” Pavel’s eyes goggled. “But Vor, no one knows that you are here. Is that safe? If I—”
“Safe? No. Nothing that I do is safe,” Zhoglo scoffed. “I did not earn ten billion dollars being safe, my dear Pavel. Safe bores me. Boredom makes me testy.”
“But…but the police—”
“The federal police will give me no trouble. I have an understanding with them. They are not the ones who stabbed me in the back, Pavel. I wish to know who did. I wish to eliminate my enemy.”
“Yes, of course, but—”
“And I want Solokov,” Zhoglo went on, almost dreamily. “I want him to watch what I do to the pretty Rebecca. Just as she will watch what I do to her precious little brother and sister. It is all about watching, you see, Pavel. They watch Ludmilla and you. They watch us. We, in turn, watch them watching us. And we push them around the game board as we see fit. You see, eh? How this game is played?”
Pavel looked miserable. “Yes, Vor,” he muttered.
But Zhoglo wasn’t finished with his flight of fancy. “This is the part of the fight where the two opponents circle each other, study each other, looking for weaknesses. It’s stimulating. And ah, yes, Pavel—on the subject of stimulation, you being the expert whore-goer among us, do you have any other source of beautiful call girls in this city besides that traitorous bitch Ludmilla?”
Pavel looked perplexed. “Yes, Vor. Several. But I thought—I thought you wanted your enemies to follow—”
“I do. That has nothing to do with this,” the Vor sighed. “This is a separate matter. Not for their ears. Find me a girl. Extremely beautiful. Blonde, if possible. Fresh and innocent looking. Under twenty. Intelligent enough to play an amusing charade for us.”
Pavel cleared his throat, nodded. “Yes, Vor. I know just the girl.”
Zhoglo gave him an approving smile. “I thought you might. Get her for me immediately.” His face took on an expression of mock sadness. “Poor Marya. Does she know of her worthless husband’s weakness?”
Pavel swallowed. “Ah, no, Vor.”
“Not that I have anything against whores, of course. My own mother was a whore, or so I was told. And oh, yes. That reminds me. Speaking of mothers and whores, Mikhail, would you open that video conferencing connection again? There was something I wanted to show you. Were you aware that your wife was trying to desert you, Pavel? With Misha? She had gotten almost as far as Cracow when my men caught up with her and brought her back.”
Pavel’s face, already pale, turned a sickly gray. Zhoglo smiled inwardly. The fool, after all the expensive mistakes he had made, the money he had cost. Thinking he could wiggle out of his punishment. Thinking he could whisk his wife and his remaining son out of danger.
No place in the world was beyond Vadim Zhoglo’s reach.
“I had them bring Marya and Misha to my home so that my men could keep them safe for you,” Zhoglo soothed. “Rest easy. They are my pampered guests. I had Mikhail establish a video conference, as I was sure you would want to reprove the cowardly bitch. Abandoning you in your time of need. The perfidy of women. Mikhail? Is the line open?”
“Yes, Vor. One moment, while Aleksei calls the woman to come to the computer,” the man said.
The digital image disintegrated into a muddled soup of pixels, and then slowly resolved into the image of Marya Cherchenko, holding her little son on her lap. Her eyes were hollowed, her mouth flat and pale in her thin face.
How odd the way perceptions changed, Zhoglo mused. He had remembered considering Marya a beautiful woman, but now she looked drained, almost old. Skin stretched over her bony face, her hair dull and lank. The way of all flesh, he thought, with a flash of melancholy.
The little boy was likewise miserable. His eyes were enormous in his pinched face.
Pavel stared at them. They stared back.
“Papa?” the little boy whispered.
Zhoglo looked on, well pleased, and wiggled his fingers in the pockets of his finely tailored linen pants. The other men in the room all had the studied blankness one might expect, as they watched their colleague’s punishment. But he could feel the general level of tension in the room. It was very high. The same thought, in all the men’s heads—he could see it as if it were stamped in neon on their foreheads. This could be me.
He made sure that these moments were public. His men needed to know what would happen if they failed him. If they did not give their best, and more than their best, in his service. Each of those men were desperately grateful to be in his good graces right now. Eager to please, to ingratiate himself. Each would bring any hint of betrayal to him, and lay it at his feet, like a cat bringing a dead rodent to its master.
Just as it should be. Everything in its proper place. The boundaries that he established kept these men safe, supported their families, gave their world structure.
He was, after all, responsible for sustaining his slice of a vast shadow economy. Without him, tens of thousands would starve and die.
Fear was a useful tool. He had learned that as a child on the streets of Kiev. A leader had to be cruel and ruthless. To use fear like a surgical instrument to remove rot before it spread and killed. It was his responsibility to wield that tool. Indeed, it was his sacred duty.
And if he also enjoyed it, well…who would begrudge a burdened, hardworking man of business an occasional small pleasure?
“Are you having an affair, Becca?”
Marla’s sharp voice made Becca jump. The cell phone in her hand thudded down on to the computer keyboard with a rattling clatter. “Excuse me?” she asked, flushing hotly. “What makes you say that?”
Marla rolled her eyes, her lips curving into a tight, mirthless smile. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Could it be the fact that you’ve just checked your cell phone for text messages for the tenth time in the past eight minutes? Or maybe the fact that you got to work today at 10:25 A.M.—”
“I told you, Marla, I had to rent a car! I called you this morning to let you know! The place opened at nine, and it took forever to fill out all the paperwork!”
“Or could it be the ninety-minute lunch hour?” Marla continued, as if Becca had not spoken. “The one that involved a trip to the mall, and a stop at…” She leaned over and neatly snagged the shopping bag out from under the desk, where Becca had tried to discreetly stow it. “Ah. I might have known. Victoria’s Secret. And what have we here?” She pulled out a handful of intimate items, labels still dangling from them. A flesh-toned, ribbon-trimmed bustier, an insubstantial matching garter belt, long stockings with embroidered back seams. “Good God, Becca.”
“That is private!” Becca yanked her lingerie back and stuffed it into the bag. “It’s none of your business!”
“Well, when you start taking advantage of office time to run your own extremely personal errands, I’m afraid that it is.”