Page 52 of Bratva Sacrifice

“Oh. Um.” My straw produces a harsh sucking sound as my drink runs dry. “I think I’m done,” I say. When I realized where we were headed, all I really wanted was books. There’s tons of stores around, but I haven’t really given much thought to any of them. Turns out, even with unlimited mafia money at my disposal, I still don’t know what to buy.

“Okay,” he says, and he begins leading me off again. Notably, not in the direction of the car.

“Where are we going?”

“Is my turn,” he says, as he casts his empty coffee cup into a trash can. He’s pulling me toward a lingerie store with single-minded determination.

My cheeks burn as I drag my heels. “I’m not trying on underwear here!”

“Who says you have to try on here?” he asks, and his hand tightens around mine. “But you will try on. For me, in private.”

I’m going to die of humiliation. He strides into the store like he owns it, and we’re surrounded by soft music and headless mannequins dressed in frothy lace lingerie that leaves little to the imagination.

Alexei’s left hand is firm on mine. He lifts his right hand and beckons to a saleslady, who comes rushing over to help.

“I want polka dots,” he says, and tilts his head to me. “In her size.”

Chapter Twenty Five

Alexei

I’m not coming out!”

I jiggle the handle of the bathroom door, behind which Katya has been locked for the last fifteen minutes. “Koshechka, I will tear down this fucking door.”

She wails pitifully, “I look ridiculous!”

“You let me be judge of this,” I tell her. I jiggle the door handle again. There is a rustling sound behind the door. Probably she is tearing through the bags full of lingerie, searching for something else that makes her feel less ridiculous. “Katya, open the door.” I shove my hand into my pocket, hunting for my pocket knife.

“No!” she cries. More sounds behind the door, with greater desperation. I flick open the knife, use the edge to turn the screws. The door handle falls off into my hand. She does not even notice the sound above the rustling of the tissue paper. She does not notice me pushing open the door.

She is buried nearly to her knees in mounds of tissue paper, between sheets of which all of her new lingerie was once carefully packed. Upturned bags litter the floor. Dozens of panties stretch across the floor, tangled together like a net. A mound of bras is piled upon the closed lid of the toilet. A single thong dangles from a lamp above the countertop.

Katya is bent over, rooting through another bag. At last she withdraws her fist, which is clenched around a ball of silk, significantly more substantial than those items she has already discarded. One of her new nightgowns, probably. Even with its thigh-high cut and its thin shoulder straps, it might as well be a nun’s habit in comparison to what she is wearing.

“Hah!” she declares triumphantly as she holds it aloft like an athlete brandishing a first-place medal.

“That one is for sleep, Katya,” I tell her.

She shrieks, whirling around so quickly that sheets of tissue paper become airborne, floating up around her. Her face burns with embarrassment as her lips purse into a pout. “You,” she seethes, shaking her little fist full of wrinkled silk at me, “are such a dick!”

This is true. But today, I am the dick she chose.

Maybe she thinks I do not know this. Probably she did not know I watched her today in the bookstore, watched her realize I had left her alone. That I could see her even when she could not see me. That I watched her consider her options, each of them crossing her face as they crossed her mind. And still, when she thought the option was there to run—she stayed. For three minutes while she waited for me to return to her, she stayed. By her own choice.

Of course she says nothing to me of this. But she will, I think. Eventually.

With a vicious growl, Katya throws the silk in her fist at my face. “I told you to stay out!” she huffs as I bat it away.

“Nyet. You said you were not coming out.”

“It’s the same thing.” She folds her arms over her chest. Over her breasts, which are covered—barely—in tiny scraps of violet lace. “You didn’t have to—to take off the door knob!”

“I told you I would do this. Where are your polka dots?” She dances away as I reach for her, nimble as a deer. The bathroom is large; she has plenty of room to maneuver. In her bare feet, she steps right across delicate silk and lace. I cannot do the same in my boots unless I want to ruin all this new lingerie she now owns before there is the chance of seeing her wear it.

“I don’t know,” she says as she attempts to dart past my outstretched fingers back into the bedroom. “I couldn’t find them.” The panties she wears are more nothing than lace. Less fabric even than the bra. I manage to hook one finger through the waistband and drag her back. “Alexei!” she gasps as I catch her around the waist, lift her off her feet, and throw her over my shoulder.

And then screeches as I pinch her ass, for which her panties offer no protection whatsoever.