Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 64993 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64993 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
She shrugs. “I want to know. Would Ravil… kill me?”
The idea sends a lightning bolt of fear straight up my spine, like the mere mention of someone killing her makes my body revolt. What would Ravil have us do to someone like Natasha? Would he order us to harm her?
No. In the few years my brother and I have been with his cell, I’ve never heard him give orders to hurt a woman, even if she’s trouble.
“Nyet.”
“What would he do?” She stares down at the sandwich she still hasn’t eaten.
I consider. Not so much because I think she deserves an answer but because I haven’t thought it through yet, and I should in case it happens. “We’d have to flip you,” I answer her honestly when I realize the only answer.
She takes a tiny bite of the sandwich and chews. “Flip me how?”
My gut churns as I consider the way we might flip her. We could threaten her mother. Throw them out of the building. Find anything dear to her and hold it hostage. There are a multitude of ways to use fear rather than violence. Ravil’s practiced at the art of theatre when it comes to making things happen. We don’t actually have to break that many laws—or that many fingers although that does still happen often enough.
But I couldn’t stomach any of those things with Natasha. No, there’s only one way I would allow her to be flipped, but it would require something of me that I’ve sworn I won’t give.
I turn back to my screen and lie. “Pressure points.”
She shivers. “Like what?”
“Enough questions, amerikanka.” I turn back to my screen, popping the last bite of the sandwich in my mouth.
“Why do you call me that?”
“Why do you think?” I say with my mouth full, playing the part of the asshole again. It’s the only role that feels safe with her. I close out the search on her mother and start down the path I’ve been most looking forward to: antagonizing Alex.
“Are you judging me?”
I stop clicking keys and look her way. “What? No. Because you’ve become Americanized? Of course not. You grew up here. I admire how well you fit in, that’s all. Nobody would even know you’re Russian, except for your last name.”
She sits back, finally digging into her sandwich. “I worked damn hard at it,” she says. “It didn’t just happen because I grew up here.”
“Oh?” I give her a sidelong glance. I don’t want to get sucked into her story—don’t need any more fuel for my obsession with her, but I can’t resist. “Why? Were you embarrassed to be Russian?”
“Pamela Harrison,” she says like I should know who that is.
I swivel to face her. Now I need to know the whole story.
She licks a crumb of sandwich from her lips, and my dick twitches at the sight of her pink tongue. The memory of how she used it on me this morning is still fresh.
“She lived in my apartment building. We used to play together. It was the summer before fifth grade, and we spent nine hours a day together. And then school started. Someone made fun of my accent on the first day, and at lunch, Pamela pretended she didn’t know me. Turns out, I was just her fall-back friend—good enough to play with at home, but at school, I was Russian garbage.” As if the memory of it brought out Natasha’s fifth-grade self, I hear the trace of her former accent for the first time. “You know what the worst of it was? I was so lonely that I still played with her at home. I let her use me. I was her fall-back friend for two more years until I finally had enough backbone to cut her loose.”
“Pamela Harrison was a cunt.” I turn back to my screen and pull her profile up on Facebook. “This one? She’s an ugly cow—that’s why she was jealous. Not because you had a beautiful accent.”
Natasha lets out a small chuff of laughter.
It’s the first time she’s smiled or laughed since I dragged her here, and it does something squirmy to my insides. Dredges up guilt for taking away her smile, along with the desire to make her do it again.
“I will give her five parking tickets as punishment for her fifth-grade crime on our sweet Natasha,” I pronounce as I open the Cook County police department records and use my back door access to get in.
“What?” The ring of laughter in her voice makes it all worth it. “You can do that? Oh my God!”
“Is that enough? Or should we punish her more severely?”
“You can’t do that, Dima.”
I steal a sidelong glance and catch her smile, which lights the whole office.
I start filing the false tickets. “I can, and I will. She deserves it. You know who else deserves a pile of unpaid parking tickets?”