Chapter Four
Toni awoke feeling disoriented and completely uncertain where she was. The windows appeared to be on the wrong side of the room. It was like her bedroom had been flip flopped. That and it had suddenly grown to mythic proportions. It was like viewing her snug bedroom in a fun house mirror. She struggled to sit up in bed, turning her head so quickly that her neck creaked in protest.
Awareness dawned slowly. She remembered the fight with her father, going to the bar, and then meeting Dimitri and his oversized companion Ivan. Yes. She was at Dimitri’s home a dozen or more miles from her father’s house. Her mother was dead and Dimitri was claiming that her father had seduced his younger sister.
She shook her head. The shot of vicious anger that thrummed through her veins at the thought of her father disrespecting her mother in such a way made her almost lightheaded. Toni threw her legs over the side of the bed and got up. She reached for a pair of soft sweatpants that Mrs. Urevich had brought for her to wear. Pulling on a T-shirt next, she padded to the bedroom door and listened. It was silent in the hallway. The numbers on the digital bedside clock read 3:45. There was no light seeping through the crack under the door. She turned the knob and pulled it open just a bit to peer out into the hallway. There was utter and absolute silence.
Toni entered the hall and left her door barely ajar. She crept along, her footfalls muffled by the thick runner in the hallway. She found the stairs and carefully descended from the third floor to the first. The winding path down the steps was creaky and almost spooky. She tried to test each step in an attempt to avoid the dramatic noise a squeaky step could cause. There was no need to wake anyone up. Especially not if she intended to go snooping in Dimitri’s office.
It felt ten degrees cooler down on the first floor. Toni shivered in her babydoll T-shirt. Feeling her nipples harden, she crossed her arms over her chest to hide the telltale response. She was reminded of Dimitri’s words earlier that night. He’d had no right to bait her in such a way, yet she couldn’t deny that she had responded. Or rather her body had responded without the consent of her brain. She would hope her brain was a little smarter than that at least. The man was a criminal, like her father. And like her father, Dimitri couldn’t be trusted.
Toni walked past the kitchen and a formal dining room that didn’t look as if it saw much use. The furniture was draped in sheets. The living room was full of the dark shapes of overstuffed furniture. A huge flat screen television hung on the wall. It gave the appearance of an enormous gaping black hole. She padded into the living room. There was very little in the way of personal touches. A single lonely photo sat on a sofa table. She picked it up, gazing at the three people depicted there.
The one in the center was Dimitri so she could only assume that the other two were his siblings. She recalled him telling her to steer clear of his brother Anatoli, but she had no idea what his sister’s name was and maybe it didn’t matter. Toni stared at the photo, taking in the long pale, blonde hair and laughing eyes. She was a beautiful woman. Of course Toni’s mother had been attractive, but this young woman in the photo was exactly that. Young. Toni’s mother had aged gracefully, but she had aged. She had worried about it sometimes. She’d whispered to Toni that her father didn’t like older women. He didn’t find them attractive even though he wasn’t getting any younger himself.
Toni set the photo back on the table, marveling at the double standard that seemed to exist between men and women for such things. Men grew older and people simply called them distinguished. Women got older and they were hags. Yet it made no sense to think that the smiling blonde woman with so much life ahead of her would somehow managed to be seduced by Boris Rustikov. Her father wasn’t a great looking man. He was a little paunchy and his hair was thinning. Yes it was difficult for Toni to see him as anything but her aging father, but she truly couldn’t imagine him being on object of fascination for a woman who appeared to have so much going for her. Where would they have even met?
A light went on. The intensity of the bulb briefly blinding Toni and making her hold her hand up to protect her eyes. She couldn’t see who else was in the room with her, but she had a feeling it wasn’t going to matter.
“Snooping are you?”
The unfamiliar male voice made her anxious. Could this be the infamous Anatoli? If so she was doing a terrible job of avoiding him. “Not snooping. I couldn’t sleep. I thought I would get a drink of water.”
“The kitchen is back there.”
“Yes. I realize that.” Her eyes finally cleared enough for her to recognize the other man in the photo. The one that was not Dimitri. “You are Anatoli. Correct?”
“Yes.” He accompanied his one word answer with a penetrating gaze from his dark eyes that made her feel like a bug about to be squashed.
She cocked her head to one side, wondering exactly how deep this man’s animosity ran and whether it encompassed her whole family, or just her father. “You’re the one who advised your brother that I would be of better use in pieces on my father’s doorstep, correct?”
“Yes.” His lip twitched. Amusement perhaps?
She swallowed. Her mouth suddenly felt dry. “It wouldn’t matter to him, you know. If I was dead, you would just take the guesswork out of what use I could be.”
“Excuse me?” He took a step closer. “You’re trying to tell me that your father wouldn’t care if someone killed you?”
“Not really. I’m more trouble than I’m worth to him. I’m a girl. Surely you can grasp that.” She intentionally turned around, giving him her back and showing him she wasn’t afraid even though her shoulders twitched with nervousness. She picked up the photo again. “What is your sister’s name?”
“Katya.”
“Katya,” Toni repeated. “She’s very pretty. I cannot imagine what she saw in my father.”
Anatoli snorted. “I’ve asked her that question many times.”
“And the answer?”
“She simply says I would never understand.”
“Someday I’d like to talk to her,” Toni murmured. “She must have had a reason.”
“What does it matter?” Anatoli demanded.
“If you knew the reason, you might better understand what it was my father got out of the liaison.” Toni shrugged. “Then you would really know how to hurt him.”
DIMITRI WATCHED HIS brother and Toni from the shadows in the hallway. He considered Toni’s suggestion and wondered why they had never pursued that particular possibility before. Perhaps Katya was able to throw them off the topic by simply telling them that it was too painful to recall her reasoning, or that it no longer mattered. Neither Dimitri nor Anatoli were particularly fond of hurting her feelings. Maybe they’d been too soft with her up till now.
“Why don’t you really know how to hurt him?” Anatoli asked Toni, his voice deadly quiet. “He is your father. Dimitri seems convinced that you can help us gain our revenge against him. What use are you if you don’t even know what he wants or what would motivate him.”
Dimitri thought to intervene. He didn’t want Anatoli hurting Toni just because he was angry at her father. But Toni apparently had it under control. “I just told you how to find the answer to your question. Would you have ever figured that out on your own? Maybe. But most likely not. So I’ve already helped you. Who is to say it won’t happen again. And as to what motivates my father? Of course I can answer that.”
The way she held herself was almost regal, even now when Dimitri could readily sense that she was nervous. He couldn’t help but be impressed by the presence of mind she seemed to maintain at all times. She was so much more composed than he would have anticipated from someone who was obviously in her early twenties.
Dimitri stepped into the room. There was no sense hiding in the hallway anymore. “What is it that motivates your father?” he asked quietly.
She turned to face him, her expression inscrutable. “My father is like a tiny animal that puffs out its feathers to try and look twice its size. He’s not a particularly strong man, or even much of a leader. But he will be more brutal than necessary just to prove his masculinity. He will fling money around to show he’s wealthy. He is insecure and desperate to prove to anyone and everyone that he is the biggest bully on the playground.
“That’s a highly exploitable weakness,” Dimitri mused. “So what you’re saying is that hurting his image is the best way to hurt him.”
“Exactly.”
Dimitri glanced at Anatoli. He could see the wheels turning in his brother’s head. It was apparent that they needed to find a whole series of ways to make Boris Rustikov look weak and ineffectual as a leader. Even if it just involved making him look foolish in public. So simple, yet as Toni pointed out, it could have a profound effect on the way a man viewed himself.
“If you’ll excuse me, gentleman?” She turned around, obviously on her way back to her room.
“You want to talk to my sister, don’t you?” Dimitri threw the question out, even though it really wasn’t much of a question. He already knew the answer.
She paused, looking at him with a hooded gaze he could not read. “Yes.”
“Tomorrow,” Dimitri decided. “You can speak to her then.”
“Thank you.” She gave a nod and then left the room.
Dimitri gazed at Anatoli. It was very obvious that the two of them were on very different wavelengths when it came to their thoughts on the topic of Katya. Yet now they had a common purpose of sorts. Surely this would make things better between them.
“If you were Boris Rustikov,” Dimitri began slowly. “What would make you feel foolish?”
“Impotence,” Anatoli answered immediately. “Or at least an inability to pick up women. Think about Kayta. She’s young and beautiful. The man has just lost his wife. His daughter ran away. He’s going to want to establish some sort of dominance over women. Even if it is only in his head.”
“Perfect,” Dimitri muttered. “So we find out where he’s hunting and we do everything we can to dissuade the feminine population from accepting his advances.”
Anatoli snorted. “That shouldn’t be hard. Look at the guy. I still can’t imagine how he ever gets laid to begin with.”
“Yeah?” Dimitri said wryly. “Perhaps the person to ask about that is Katya. Obviously he used the right line on her.”
“I still don’t get that!” Anatoli stabbed his fingers through his hair in frustration. “How does a beautiful woman like our sister ever fall for an ugly old fart like Boris Rustikov?”
“Perhaps that’s the most important question that we haven’t looked at yet.” Dimitri knew that wasn’t going to be the case any longer. He was going to find out what Boris had said to Katya in order to seduce her, and then he was going to use it to crush him.