Page 17 of The Beast of Moscow

Except long ago, Vera had learned her place in The Swan House. Sometimes, men came and went from the halls who did not like to be questioned or known. They were the same kind of men who let the tattoos on their body be their only warning for others to stay away.

Often, it was better to just do as one was told.

So, last Thursday, she had.

“I only want to know if he’s okay,” she explained to Feliks who had finally turned to look at her again. “You know how I am; I overthink everything and—”

“If you know what’s good for you,” Feliks replied, his tone cold and hard, “you’ll never ask about that man again. And you won’t stay later than you’re supposed to at the studio from here on out, Vera. I hope that’s clear.”

He didn’t give her the option to respond before he stood from the booth, dropped money to the table, and walked away without a look back.

So much for lunch.

“I only wanted to know if he was okay!” she called as Feliks shoved through the small restaurant’s front doors.

His response was the door swinging shut, and Vera desperately wished she could go back to her meal without the curious patrons now staring at her.

Damn.

6.

Vera.

Appropriate for a woman with the face of an angel, Vaslav thought, considering the name meant faith. Twenty-six. Born on December first in a New York hospital to a mother that died days after her birth.

Her family ties were certainly ... interesting. He had to wonder if the person who handed Vera an invitation to the infamous house of ballet in Moscow realized her connections to the New York mob.

Or rather, her father’s.

Vera Giana Avdonin.

He wasn’t at all surprised to learn that she had been practicing ballet from almost the time she could walk considering her ties to The Swan House. She never would have walked through those doors had she not been worthy.

Moscow, it seemed, was where the young woman’s life really began.

And possibly ended, in a way.

That was where things became interesting for Vaslav as he flipped through the file of information that Igor had delivered the morning before. As he wasn’t particularly a Monday person, he didn’t bother to indulge his curiosity about the woman who very well might have saved his life on that gallery floor until now.

Who knew how long it might have taken Feliks or Igor to find him had she not been a witness to his fall? A similar fall at the hospital had led the doctor to an interesting—or frightening—discovery that Vaslav hadn’t been able to forget.

“Something happened when he was on the floor—his blood pressure dropped to practically nothing. Had he been down just a couple of minutes more, well ...”

Vaslav shook off the doctor’s observations that just wouldn’t leave the back of his mind. Like everything else that had been said, or given as a warning, during his stay at the hospital; it was easier to ignore what he saw as a problem that couldn’t be fixed.

“You’ve seen it all, then?”

“Working on it,” he replied to Igor.

An easy lie.

He’d been through the file.

“It would have been easier, and faster probably, had she not been from the states.”

“Right, right.” His distracted murmur went unanswered that time. Not that he cared.

Vaslav didn’t even bother to glance up from the file on the desk he liked to keep in the den to properly greet Igor as he stepped further inside the space. While the walls of white plaster trimmed with gold flake and mahogany bookshelves in his larger office smelled like the cigars he’d once enjoyed frequently—although now, they only flared his migraines—the den on the bottom level of his three-level Federal Colonial-style mansion was where he chose to spend more time.