Selena

 

Thankfully, morning sickness passes before Sergei comes into the office. I throw up the milk and breakfast bar I ate at home, then dry heave for fifteen minutes before I can finally stumble back out to my desk. Thank God for the peppermint candies I keep in a bowl on my desk.

 

When Sergei comes in, he’s wearing sunglasses that only barely cover the two black eyes he sports, courtesy of one Finnegan O’Hare. He’s got tape on his broken nose, too. He looks like shit.

 

He looks at me over the top of his sunglasses. “I didn’t expect to see you this morning,” he says.

 

“I’m so sorry about last night,” I say. “That guy … I told you Matt owes him money. He’s crazy. Took me to his apartment, tied me up … I managed to get away when he fell asleep.”

 

I show him the marks on my wrists from the zip-ties. He touches them lightly and his jaw clenches.

 

“I acted like an animal last night, Selena,” he says. “I want you to know I find you attractive. I do want to fuck you; I won’t lie about that. But I was a brute. Too much to drink maybe. Will you accept my apology?”

 

“Of course,” I say. “I just … I really need this job. I just want things to go back to normal.”

 

“Well, as much as I’d like that, too, Selena, I see what kind of man your husband did business with. And now I am involved, whether you intended for me to be or not. When someone physically assaults me, I strike back tenfold.”

 

My stomach clenches. I’m so nervous, I can hardly breathe. Sergei takes off his sunglasses and says, “That fucker is dead. But I’ve got bigger fish to fry right now. Hold my calls until after lunch. We’ll talk more then.”

 

I nod and he heads into his office and shuts the door. I can hear him on speakerphone, multiple voices in Russian coming through, so I don’t know what the point of shutting the door is. It makes me more nervous, somehow, than I think I would feel if he left it open so he could watch me.

 

But since he’s got the door shut, I wander over to the filing cabinet. There’s a locked drawer that I stumbled across on one of my first days. Sergei laughed it off and said it was for personal files, like dental records, but I wonder …

 

I use a letter opener to jimmy the lock and rifle through the papers. He wasn’t joking, there are some dental records in there … but not his. They seem to be for other people. I make a couple of quick copies and then shut the drawer. I’ll try to get more when he leaves the office.

 

In the meantime, I do a web search on a couple of the names and find all of these people listed as missing. Two are women who worked in a local strip club. They’ve only been missing for a few weeks. I print the article and shove it and the copied records into the center pocket of my bag as my heart beats wildly in my chest.

 

I work at my normal pace. That’s what Finn told me to do. He told me not to try to be more efficient, or to try to impress Sergei because it would make him suspicious. Best to just do what I always do, at the pace I always do it. I make a few calls on his behalf, to clear his morning calendar, and then reschedule a few meetings for him. I make coffee at ten, his usual time, and knock on the door of his office. All the voices continue from the conference call he’s on. I set his coffee on the desk and he pulls me down onto his lap. I freeze.

 

“This call is boring,” he whispers in my ear. “Move your ass a little.”

 

“I’ve got …”

 

He puts his hand on my breast. “You work for me. You owe me for that motherfucker last night. Wiggle a little. I’m bored.”

 

I honestly feel like I might throw up, and I’m sure it’s not morning sickness at this point. But I need to make him trust me, so I wiggle my ass in circles, feeling his cock get hard underneath me. He moves his hands to my hips and guides me, whispering how much he likes my ass, how much he wants to fuck my ass.

 

I’m terrified. Is he going to ask me to bend over right here, while he’s on this call, and try to fuck me in the backdoor? I’ve never done that. Ever. Matt and I had a decent but very vanilla sex life. It’s not that I wouldn’t get kinky with someone; it’s just that it wasn’t something Matt ever wanted. And I don’t want my first time to be with someone who makes me want to heave under circumstances that could be classified as rape.

 

Someone says Sergei’s name and his attention is back to the call. He answers in Russian and lets me get up. He doesn’t let me leave, though. No, he pulls his erect penis out of his suit pants and strokes it, hitting the mute button on the phone.

 

“Watch me, Selena,” he says. “Take off your blouse.”

 

“I’ve got work to do, Sergei,” I say.

 

“Just take it off,” he says. “Watch me come.”

 

I bite my lip. This is humiliating. But the alternative is making him angry. He doesn’t seem to want sex right now, so maybe I can do this just to keep him happy. I take off my blouse and stand in just my bra, skirt, and shoes. His eyes go dark at the sight of my black bra, with my breasts so ample and spilling out.

 

“What a sight,” he says, still stroking himself, picking up the pace as the voices on the phone continue to talk. He hits the mute button again and speaks in Russian. Everyone on the call laughs and he hits the mute button again. “I told them my beautiful secretary is half naked and watching me cream in my coffee cup.”

 

I feel my cheeks go hot with embarrassment. I try to look away but he orders me to watch him, so my gaze snaps back to him, cock in hand, as he pumps his hips, a determined look on his face. It’s not just determined; it’s violent. It’s dark. I can tell that creaming into his coffee cup isn’t all he’s thinking about and I feel my stomach clench with nerves.

 

When he comes, he spurts right into the coffee I just brought him, laughing. “I would rather it was those luscious tits,” he says. “But such is life. Perhaps next time.”

 

“Would you like a new cup of coffee?” I ask.

 

“Yes,” he says.

 

When I wander over to take his cup, he puts his hand on my wrist. “You drink this one.”

 

I open my mouth but I’m not sure what to say. His grip on my wrist gets tighter, rubbing against the marks from the night before. I make a tiny noise of pain and Sergei levels me with a look that says to drink the coffee, or this pain will be nothing.

 

I take the coffee and sip it. He smiles and releases my arm. “Get the fuck out of my office now.”

 

I do as instructed and shut the door behind me. I hear Sergei say something else, and everyone laughs again. This is sick. He’s sick. What the fuck?

 

I feel the familiar stab of panic and anxiety start in my stomach. I take several breaths, trying to calm myself, but I can’t. My vision goes spotty and I have to put my head between my legs as I take deep, centering breaths to get through this panic attack.

 

Sadly, I’ve been having these attacks more and more often since Matt left. The side effect of having to be a grown up and take care of myself. I feel so stupid for letting Matt stop me from having a career, from managing our finances. I’m smart enough for both, but I let him treat me like I wasn’t. And now, the reasons he kept me in the dark are crashing down around me, piling up and I feel like I’ll never unbury myself.

 

As I start to calm a bit, another wave hits me when I realize how much I drank last night. Several drinks, because I thought if I didn’t drink with Sergei, he’d wonder why and I’d have to tell him I was pregnant. Not something I want him to know, as I’m sure he would find a way to use it against me.

 

I’m already starting this out the wrong way, making the wrong decisions. What kind of shitty mother knowingly drinks alcohol like that?

 

It’s nearly noon before I’m done mentally flogging myself. I run to the bathroom and throw up again, breaking out in a cold sweat. I want to text Finn. I don’t want to text him. I think about grabbing my purse and making a run for it. Going as far as I can and finding some anonymous job somewhere.

 

When I come back into the office, it’s just as Sergei opens the door and storms out of his office.

 

“Where the fuck were you?” he demands.

 

“I was in the bathroom,” I say.

 

“I called for you,” he says.

 

“Well, get an intercom in the bathroom, then,” I say.

 

He slaps me across the face, a sharp, quick thing that feels like a blade. I put my hand up, feeling the heat where the blood pools underneath, my mouth open in shock.

 

“I’m going for lunch,” he says. “Call Stanislav and have him here when I get back.”

 

He leaves, trailing some unnamed fury behind him. The call must not have gone well, despite his jokes about me. I sit at my desk, still somehow shocked that he actually hit me. I call Stanislav, his accountant, and tell him the boss is in a bad mood and to be here within the hour. Once I’m off the phone, I start digging in the files again.

 

I find records of money moved from American accounts to some offshore. I find correspondence between Sergei and government officials. None of it immediately raises a red flag, not like the dental records and stories of missing people. There is some information about the shipping company manifests, and some documents marked confidential that detail additional shipments not on the official record. I don’t have time to look closely; I just make as many copies as I can. At five until one, I am just locking the drawer again when Sergei barrels back in.

 

One second sooner and he’d have caught me red-handed. As it is, I’ve managed to get open the drawer with Stanislav’s files in it. I pull the manila folder and hand it to him with a smile. Stanislav comes in shortly after, grunts a hello in my direction, and heads in to Sergei’s office, shutting the door behind him.

 

I sit down and let out a long breath. I am not made for espionage. This is too stressful.

 

I grab everything off the copier, realizing I left it all sitting out where Sergei could have seen it. Holy hell. He’d have killed me on the spot. Or worse. Probably worse, honestly.

 

***

 

Finn

 

I make sure I’m safely inside Selena’s apartment well before she gets off work. If she still has a tail, and I assume she does, then he obviously doesn’t need to see me going into her place.

 

. She undresses, grabs some pajamas out of the drawer, and heads into the bathroom, starting the water.

 

She pads back out and grabs her purse, bringing it into the bathroom and shutting the door. When I hear the toilet flush a few minutes later, I go in, shutting us both into the tight space.

 

“Are you sure all of this is necessary?” she asks, gesturing to the steamy room.

 

“If he bugged this place, the steam will mess up any cameras and the water will cover up sound. It’s just a precaution. You do realize what kind of person he is, don’t you?” I ask.

 

“Yes, Finn,” she says, annoyed. “The kind who jacks off into his own coffee and makes his secretary drink it. The kind who slaps his secretary for making a smart-ass comment. I’m well aware of what kind of psycho we’re dealing with here.”

 

I’m sure my face mirrors the horror I feel. “He made you drink coffee he came in?” I ask, just to make sure I heard her correctly.

 

“That was after he made me wiggle around on his lap until he got hard, told me to take my shirt off, and jacked off in front of me,” I say. “I threw up more than once today.”

 

“Fucking psycho,” I say, more to myself than to her. “Anything else?”

 

“I made copies of a bunch of shit. I don’t know how much of it we can use, but I almost got caught.”

 

I look through everything. “Yeah, this stuff is just the tip of the iceberg, for the most part,” I say. “Without knowing what the additional cargo was, it’s hard to make any real connection to anything illegal. The offshores … lots of people have them. I need more, Selena. I need definitive proof of something big.”

 

“Well,” she says, pulling out something she’s printed off from the Internet and handing it to me. “There were these girls. Two of them went missing not too long ago from their jobs at a strip club. He’s got their dental records in his files. Why would he have their dental records?”

 

My stomach sinks as I remember my conversation with the waitress this morning. She didn’t share the girls’ names, but this sounds too close to be a coincidence.

 

“Man,” I say. “I had a conversation this morning with a waitress at a diner not too far from your office. She told me all this crazy stuff about two regular customers who work at a strip joint. They tangled with Kovolov; he had them do all this crazy shit and then made them sign a nondisclosure agreement. Of course, since they were telling the whole diner about what he did, I suppose they violated that agreement …” I raise my eyebrows so she can fill in the blank.

 

“So you think he had them killed for talking when they signed an agreement saying they wouldn’t?” she asks.

 

I shrug. “Maybe. I’ll see what else I can find out, but those stories seem very similar. You keep digging into the manifests, okay? There might be something there. But it’s got to be bigger than run-of-the-mill weapons or drugs. You know what I mean?”

 

She nods but bites her lip. Won’t make eye contact.

 

“Selena,” I say. I grab her face and make her look at me. “You have to go back and keep digging.”

 

“It’s just …” she starts. “He’s … I thought he was going to rape me today. I’m pregnant, Finn. I can’t …”

 

“You can,” I say. She closes her eyes and I say again, more roughly, “You can. And you will.”

 

 

“You will, Selena,” I say.

 

Selena is only in those tiny thong panties and that black bra and this argument is turning me on. I turn her around to face the mirror, our reflections blurred by the steam. I reach out and wipe some of it away, let her see her beautiful body, her tear-stained cheeks. My hands move to her belly, still so flat. No one would ever know she was with child and somehow, suddenly, I want very badly to see her swollen with pregnancy. I want to feel the child kick inside her womb. I want to see her smile at her baby.

 

What the fuck is wrong with me? Ugh. This is a mark, not a wife.

 

These fucked up feelings make me angry, so angry that I pull her thong roughly down her legs and bend her over the sink. I sink my fingers into her sweet cunt from behind and she gasps. My free hand moves to cup her breast, half out of her too-small bra, tweaking the nipple, making it harden to a pebble.

 

I move my fingers in and out roughly. She never says no. Her pussy starts out dry but gets wet quickly, soaking my fingers. I pull them out and taste her juices as she watches me in the mirror.

 

“You like that, Selena?” I ask, frowning.

 

She sucks on her bottom lip, her cheeks bright pink. She nods her head just slightly.

 

“You don’t have to be embarrassed to like it. I like your sweet pussy. I like the way you taste. I like when you come. But you can’t come if you don’t do what you’re told. I’m still in charge here, you remember that?”

 

She nods again, pushing her ass out toward me. I’m not even sure she knows she’s doing it, but I can tell from the way her nipples stay hard, the way her chest flushes, that she needs more. Wants more.

 

I undo my jeans and let them drop, my cock so hard already, just from touching her for those few minutes. I shove it into her and she cries out, half pain and half pleasure. She feels so tight around me, but I give no warning. I’m not gentle. I just fuck her, hard, bent over the sink, her hands grasping for literally anything to hang onto while I pump in and out.

 

“You want to come, Selena?” I ask.

 

“Unnngghh,” she moans. “Yesss.”

 

“Then tell me you’ll listen. You’ll do as told.”

 

“I don’t want …” she moans.

 

I slow my pace and slap her on the ass. “You want to come? Tell me.”

 

“Please,” she begs. “Please.”

 

“Please, what?” I ask.

 

“Please,” she says again. “I need to come. Please. I’ll listen. I’ll listen.”

 

I pick up the pace again and she cries out. “Say it again, Selena.”

 

“I’ll listen,” she says. “Please.”

 

“Come now, Selena,” I order, feeling her pussy quicken around me. She’s so, so wet. “I know you want it. Come for me.”

 

She cries out, says “Fuck you, asshole,” and then her sweet cunt clenches around my cock for so long that I feel like she might have passed out. When she finally sags, boneless, barely breathing, I finish, too, pushing my release up inside of her, feeling better than I’ve felt in a very long time.

 

She’s half-asleep as I pull off her bra and the rest of my clothes. I hold her up in the shower, washing her breasts, so swollen and sensitive. She moans every time my fingers brush her sweet nips. She moans when I lather her engorged clit, her wet pussy lips. She’s half delirious, tired, overwhelmed. I’d fuck her again but I’m not an animal.

 

At least not right now.