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“Oh,” she grinned as she stuck her hand out to shake mine. “Janet. Janet Woo.”
I shook her hand. “I’m Katja Volkov.”
“You know, it’s none of my business, but I can’t help but wonder how you got mixed up with Maksim,” she said. “You don’t seem like the…like one of us.”
Sticking to the truth as much as possible, I said, “I have debt.”
She gave me a small nod of her head. “Well, I’ll be at Erato’s this Friday for their annual ladies’ night, so if you’re there, I can show you around,” she offered. “If you have debt, then I can tell you who tips well and who doesn’t. Plus, since you’re new, I can also tell you who to stay away from and who is actually decent to their dates.”
My throat was dry, but I managed to say, “Thank you.”
“Well, it was nice to officially meet you,” she replied happily. “However, I need to get back to my shopping.”
“Yeah, so do I.”
I watched as she wrapped her hands around her cart, then jetted off, leaving me to stand in a puddle of shame that I was never going to get free from. Maksim had taken me in front of an audience without letting me know, and what kind of monster did that? How many other people were going to randomly walk up to me, so that they can inform me that they’d seen me getting fucked by Maksim Barychev? He had ordered me to show him what kind of whore I could be, but that’d been for the audience, not him. When this was all said and done, I really was going to become a bratva whore, and I’d have no choice if I wanted to keep my grandfather at home with me.
I placed a hand on my stomach, doing my best not to throw up in the middle of the grocery aisle. I’d never felt so violated in all my life, and it felt like my skin was trying to crawl off my body with shame. Strangers had seen me at my most vulnerable, and they were bidding on me like I was an object to be used and played with, and why wouldn’t they think that?
I finished my shopping on autopilot, then went straight home to hide from the world.
Chapter 25
Maksim~
Something was wrong with Katja, but I didn’t know what. Granted, the woman was under a lot of stress, but this was something more. Though I had agreed to give her some space after the other night, it was beginning to feel as if she was purposely avoiding me, and the part of me that didn’t trust easily wondered if she had changed her mind. It also had me wondering if she’d been playing me this entire time. What if her decision to ‘double-cross’ Nikel had been the plan all along?
At any rate, after passing me over in favor of work for the third time, I had ordered her to accompany me to Erato’s, not giving her much of a choice. While I understood her not wanting her grandfather getting suspicious of her all-nighters, he would understand her going out with her friends on a Friday night, so she’d had no excuse when I had extended the request. In fact, the only reason that I hadn’t pushed it before tonight was because Artur had assured me that she really was working, often working late nights from home. Apparently, Katja was good at her job and was often sought after.
Nevertheless, unlike the other times, instead of sending a car for her, I’d had Jurik drive me to her house, so that I could collect her myself. The plan was to speak with her grandfather soon, so it was time to quit treating her as if she were an option. Things had changed between us, and as soon as Morocco got back to us with whatever he could find, I was putting a guard on Katja, then we could begin making plans for a small ceremony since her grandfather was unable to get around easily.
So, after collecting her, I’d had Jurik drive us to Erato’s, hoping that the crowd would tempt Nikel to come out, believing that he wouldn’t be seen. Once a year, Erato’s had a ladies’ night, and it was basically a buffet for anyone looking to get lucky. With Nikel believing that Katja was a bratva whore, I was really hoping that he’d be stupid enough to come out. Most members of the bratva knew what he looked like, so we had eyes everywhere tonight, though nothing was guaranteed. Truthfully, I regretted not contacting the Sartoris before now, and that was all Katja’s doing. Had she never come into the picture, we’d still be trying to figure this shit out on our own.
Regardless of whatever may or may not happen tonight, it was apparent that something was going on with Katja, and I was tired of waiting for her to tell me willingly. From the second that she had opened her front door to me, she hadn’t uttered a single word, and now she was sitting next to me, silent as a tomb, answering my questions with only a nod or shake of her head. She had even declined a drink, not even asking for water. She was simply sitting next to me in the VIP booth, staring at her purse like it had the answers to all of life’s mysteries.
“What is troubling you, Katja?” I finally asked. We were alone in the booth, so it wasn’t a problem to speak freely.
“The same thing that’s been troubling me for weeks,” she lied.
“Look at me when I am speaking to you,” I ordered.
When she slid her bright-colored eyes my way, I almost regretted asking her to do so. She was looking at me like I was a stranger, and I didn’t like it. It was nothing like when she let me inside her, and I was surprised by how quickly her distance was pissing me off.
“Now, I will only ask once more,” I warned her. “What is troubling you?”
“Usually, my grandfather is resting when you summon me,” she said, and whatever she was about to say, I hoped that she wasn’t lying, something that could easily be proven or disproven by one phone call to Artur. “He and Artur were in the kitchen tonight when I walked out of my bedroom, and when he saw the way that I was dressed, he grew suspicious.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked, already knowing that I was going to call Artur.
Her jaw ticked before saying, “Well, since I very well couldn’t tell him that Maksim Barychev was picking me up because I agreed to be his whore, so that he wouldn’t kill me for betraying him with a man that was clearly out of his mind, I told him that I had a date with a guy that I met during my last field call.” Though she probably wasn’t lying because she knew that the truth was only one phone call away, there was still something off about her story. “He wished me a good evening, and I guess I’m just tired of lying to the only person in the world that loves me.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that her grandfather wasn’t the only person in the world that loved her, but even I knew that it was too soon to tell her something like that. Even if it was true, there was no way that she’d believe me, and why should she? This entire situation was a fucking mess, and we were no better. Luckily for me, Morocco Carrisi was good at his job, so I knew that we’d have something in a day or two.
“If you would like, we can leave,” I said, offering a bit of an olive branch.
“Why?” she asked, her jaw still ticking. “Aren’t we here for the same reason that we go anywhere? Aren’t we here for Klive? Aren’t we here to draw him out?”
“There will be other opportunities to draw him out,” I replied evenly, confident that Nikel’s patience was running low.
