We turned so many corners and went up and down so many short flights of stairs that I soon had no idea where we were or what floor we were on. The house was a complete maze of dark wood paneling, and the fact it was night, with the only light coming from occasional wall lights, didn’t help. Vasiliy strolled through the darkened hallways, oozing calm confidence, while I could only stumble nervously alongside.
The room he took me to had no windows, just a drinks cabinet, some chairs and a table with a chessboard. Vasiliy closed the door, sealing us in. And in that moment, the mood started to change, the beginning of a subtle but important shift. I frowned, because I couldn’t put my finger on it. It felt familiar and yet wrong.
“Do you play?” asked Vasiliy, waving at the chessboard as he poured me a drink. Vodka, of course. I hadn’t asked for one, but I didn’t feel as if I could refuse. He was a difficult man to say no to. I hadn’t had the full force of his personality turned on me until now, but I could feel the power radiating off of him. Maybe it was breeding or maybe it was something he’d acquired through his rise to power, but the effect was the same: I practically wanted to curtsey.
“A little.” I’d played with my dad, when I was young, because he’d enjoyed it. And then never since the crash, for the same reason. What the hell was going on? I’d been expecting him to try to push me away from Luka. Not this.
He handed me a glass filled with ice and vodka. “We used to be champions, before your computers beat us. It would amuse me if we played, while we talked.”
Amuse him? I couldn’t tell whether he was mocking himself as an old-fashioned Russian, or mocking me. I nodded.
He knocked back his drink—some sort of expensive whiskey, I noticed, not vodka. And then he looked at me as if expecting me to do the same, so I did. The vodka seemed to expand in my mouth, sending burning fumes straight up my nose and down into my lungs. But when it hit my belly, its heat melted a little of the fear.
He sat down across from me. He was black and I was white. He moved a pawn and said, “You are very beautiful.”
I sort of coughed on the tail-end of the vodka fumes and looked up at him in amazement. Did he really—”Th—Thank you.” I groped for one of my pawns and moved it.
Vasiliy moved another pawn, quick and precise. “I can see why he likes you. You are everything he’s not.”
I reddened and stared at the board, playing for time. I moved a knight, not even thinking about strategy. The mood was completing its shift, now, slotting into a place that was definitely familiar and definitely wrong. Very wrong.
“His other girlfriends have been…”—he shook his head dismissively—“vacuous whores. But you. You are intelligent. You know your own mind.” He reached behind him and, as he twisted, I saw how broad his shoulders were, how his chest still had the same powerful swell as Luka’s. His hair was shot through with silver, but most of it was still black.
He picked up the bottle of whiskey and poured himself another glass, as if to reassure me that he was drinking, too. And then he grabbed the vodka bottle and went to pour me some more.
I instinctively put my hand over my glass.
He grinned at me, took my hand and lifted it off and down onto the tabletop. Then he poured me another vodka. He kept smiling at me the whole time and I found myself shyly smiling, too, even though alarm bells were ringing in my head. What the hell is going on?!
“And you are American,” he said. “Most American women do not like Russian men. They find us too…” He paused. “What is the word? Too chill?”
“Too cold,” I said quietly. I had an awful suspicion that he’d known the right word damn well. He was just trying to appear klutzy to put me at ease.
“Cold. And, if the men are like Luka and me, from the Brotherhood, then we are cold and dark, yes?” He indicated me. “And you, you are warmth and light.” He wagged his finger. “You should not be attracted to this.”
His eyes. His eyes were gleaming just like Luka’s.
And, suddenly, I knew what the mood had shifted to. Seduction. He was seducing me.
No! That’s crazy!
I knocked back my second vodka, feeling the pleasant warmth throughout my body, now. When I was brave enough to meet Vasiliy’s eyes again, there was no mistaking the look there. He wanted me. I could see it as clearly as if his thoughts were projected onto the wall behind him. He wanted to pull me up out of my chair and hurl me down on the table, chess pieces scattering across the floor. Pull up my dress, rip off my panties and—
I drew in a labored breath and stood up, staring at him. The mood shattered in an instant.
He smiled. “Interesting. For a moment there, I thought I was going to get to fuck you.”
And the truth washed over me, scarcely less disturbing than what I’d been imagining. It had been a test. One I’d passed.
He looked at me and then at my chair, indicating that I should sit back down for whatever round two would bring. I stood there indecisively for a moment...and then sat down. Whatever happened, I needed to get on Vasiliy’s good side. If he had a good side.
He smiled, as if glad I’d decided to play. “You suit the dress,” he said, waving his hand vaguely at the bodice. “You suit beautiful things. Some of the other girls, they only like my son because he can give them nice things. But you, I think...you want something more.” He moved his rook and then smiled at me again. “I think you want to get inside his head.”
Shit—
He leaned forward, the muscles in his forearms bulging as he braced his hands on the table. “You are an American and you are getting close to my son. So either you are in love with him or—”
SHIT—
“You are a spy for the C. I. A.” He said each letter very clearly and precisely.
I stared at him in horror.
“Are you a spy?” asked Vasiliy.
“No!”
“Are you in love with my son?”
“I—”
He suddenly leaned across the table, our faces almost touching. “What is it?!” he snarled. “What’s between the two of you?”
“I—I really like him! He likes me! He’s helping me—”
“It can’t have started like that! How did it start?” When I didn’t answer, he slammed his fist down on the table, the chess pieces jumping and falling. “HOW?”
“Sex!” I said, my voice high and tight. “It started with sex. He—” I flushed. “He—” I couldn’t meet his eyes.
“WHAT?! What does he do?”
“He...he’s rough with me,” I croaked, squeezing my eyes shut in humiliation. “He holds me down!”
“And I bet that makes you drip right down your thighs,” said Vasiliy.
I opened my eyes and my hand flashed out before I knew what I was doing. It cracked across Vasiliy’s cheek, leaving a red handprint. My eyes widened and I froze there, waiting for the inevitable retribution.
“Good,” said Vasiliy, and sat back in his chair. He rubbed his cheek. “You hit well, for a little American thing. Make sure you do that to him, if he steps out of line.”
I stared at him, utterly confused.
“I had to see if you were telling the truth,” said Vasiliy. “If you really had feelings for him. I’m sorry.”
I drew in a long breath. It had been another test. And in the shaky aftermath of the adrenaline, I realized it was my out-of-control feelings for Luka that had saved me. If I’d just been acting, he would have known it. “How can you live like this?” I asked in a ragged voice. “Suspecting everyone. Searching your own son for bombs. Interrogating everyone in case they’re a spy?”
He sat back in his chair and stared at me. “It’s no life,” he said. “No life at all. And that is why you should leave my son.”
I swallowed. Now, we’d come full circle. This was the conversation I’d been expecting to have when we first walked into this room. Only now, things were much more complicated. Now, I knew that he had his suspicions about me, even if they’d been allayed for the time being.
He lifted his hands and indicated the house. “Look at my beautiful, expensive prison. When I die, Luka will become the main target. And he and you will live like this, too.” He nodded at my stomach. “When you give him a child, you’ll have to drive him around in a car with bulletproof windows. Until he’s old enough to go to boarding school—then you’ll send him to England and see him every few months. Are you ready for that?”
I felt as if I wanted to be sick. I didn’t know which was worse: the future he was painting or the knowledge that it was all impossible because I was going to betray the family before any of it happened.
“We have enemies, Arianna. The CIA—they’re a corrupt bunch of bastards. The Russian authorities want us behind bars. The rival gangs want our business.” He looked me right in the eye. “They’d kill and gut Luka, if they ever got their hands on him. But you, they’d do worse to.”
I nodded slowly.
“This is not a game. This is not exciting or dangerous or just like in the movies. This is real. If you stay with my son, I worry that you will be killed. And that you will get him killed.”
I opened my mouth to tell him that I would never hurt Luka. And then realized that that would be a lie. I was going to hurt him in the worst way possible.
“If I have learned anything, since his mother died,” said Vasiliy, “it is that trying to get Luka to do something is impossible.” He gave me a look that was almost friendly. “Boy has head like a bull.”
“Just like his dad,” I said softly.
He smiled at me. “As you say. So. You will have to be the smart one. You will have to break up with him.”
The sick feeling I got in the pit of my stomach wasn’t horror at what he was saying. It was the creeping knowledge that he was right. I wasn’t cut out for this life. Even if I could survive it, I couldn’t be sure I could change Luka and save him from the darkness that had made his father into this coldly calculating machine. And even if there could in theory be some happy ending for the two of us, the whole thing was impossible. In days—maybe as soon as tomorrow—I’d betray him.
I nodded my assent to Vasiliy. He refilled my glass for a sad farewell toast.