Page 61 of Cruel Demands

“It responds to authority,” he tells me.

Across from him, Viktoriya looks up from her computer. “No. It responds to clownery. That’s why it likes you.”

Dima presses a hand to his chest. “You think I’m funny?”

“I think you’re a performer.”

“As long as you’re watching.”

Their eyes hold for half a second too long before Viktoriya looks back at her screen with the corner of her mouth tilted upward. Dima looks pleased with himself.

I notice Mikhail reflected in my monitor, standing near the central desk and speaking to a department head while looking directly at Dima’s arm braced along the back of my chair. His expression doesn’t change.

I have a feeling people notice, but no one says anything. When five o’clock rolls around, I don’t notice. I’m staring at my computer screen until the words blur, trying to force a piece of administrative Russian into my vocabulary and going over its etymology in my head when Viktoriya says in English, “You are going to burn a hole in the monitor.” Her English accent is staccato, her voice hardened.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “Was I glaring?”

“With passion.” She stands and comes around the desk, her purse hanging loosely from her wrist against her thigh. “This is good. The computer deserves hatred.”

“No, I was just trying to figure out what this word means.”

I point at the screen, and she bends over my shoulder to squint at it, her hazel eyes narrowing. “Ah, yes. That word means it is five o’clock and you should come get a drink with us.”

I glance at the clock and sigh. “I know, but I was late today, and I think⁠—”

“I pronounce your punishment over, American,” Viktoriya says, swirling her hands over my head like she’s knighting me.

I drop my head into my hands. “No, I don’t think it should be. I’m pretty sure I also broke the scanner.”

“Oh, no, I did that months ago. It works if you kick the side.” She smiles slyly without showing her teeth and loops her arm through mine, tugging me up from my chair and closing my laptop. “Come. We all go out after work. You need a drink. I can tell.”

Dima looks over the top of his monitor. “She diagnosed me with the same condition yesterday.”

“You have it every day,” Viktoriya tells him.

“That sounds serious.”

“It is terminal.”

He smiles at her in a way that makes her look down at her purse to hide her own.

I do need a drink. And a friend. Anya and I are still bruised from this morning. If I go straight home, I’ll sit on my bed and think about Mikhail calling me Miss Hayes like he doesn’t know the taste of my skin and then telling me I should have used what happened between us as leverage like I don’t know the taste of his. If I don’t go straight home, I’ll still think about it, but at least I can do it with a drink in my system.

Half an hour later, the place Viktoriya takes me to isn’t like the bar I frequent with Anya and Petyr. This one is louder and warmer and packed with young professionals spilling out of loosened work clothes and into the relief of being off the clock. Music pulses beneath the conversations. Glasses clink. Someone shouts over a table near the wall. The vibe isn’t desperate. It’s fun. I’d almost forgotten what a fun vibe felt like.

Viktoriya orders for both of us, and I let her, deciding that following her has already gotten me this far. “You’ll like it,” she promises, handing me a drink. “Sweet, but not childish.”

“That feels targeted.”

“It is.”

I take a sip and find that her targeted attack is correct. She pulls me by the elbow to a table full of people I was introduced to earlier. She introduces me again, and I know I’ll forget their names again, but I smile and say hello and repeat their names in my head to try and commit them to memory anyway.

Katya, a blond woman about my age with blunt bangs and silver hoops in her ears. Alina, tall and dark-haired, wearing a burgundy shirt with the sleeves rolled to her elbows.

Dima gives me an exaggerated look of offense when Viktoriya introduces him a second time. “I sit beside her,” he says.

“She was distracted,” Viktoriya tells him, sliding into the seat directly across from his.