Page 18 of The Beast of Moscow

It was darker.

Fewer windows.

The floor got so cold in the evenings that it gave him some relief when he was desperate enough to get down on it and press his forehead or cheek to the shiny, cherry oak hardwood. If anyone ever caught him, he always said he was praying.

Who dared to call him out on the lie?

The flat screen television that took up a good portion of one wall was turned on only to watch the news or monitor his outdoor security cameras. There were none inside the house. He slept on the rose-colored couch beside the matching chair and loveseat that sat in the middle of the room meant for conversation more often than he didn’t.

Connected to the rear of the den was a hallway that led to a bathroom on the left and a small stairwell on the right that could take him straight up to his master bedroom through a private door. There was a separate entrance and exit, and guns hidden behind the molding of every shelf. Even a safe was built into a cement box beneath the section of floor in front of his desk where a Persian rug and a set of chairs kept it hidden. What else did he need?

Vaslav sometimes even found peace in here.

“There’s quite a bit of information once she was here, yes?”

Vaslav rubbed his tongue along the edge of his front teeth, sucking in air before replying, “I can see that.”

He didn’t offer anything else because Igor likely already knew every piece of information inside the file. No doubt, he’d take his time to flip through the images of the sixteen-year-old ballerina who had been on the cusp of being practically a public figure from the moment she stepped foot on Russian soil.

She’d been featured in magazines. Perfect to the public and loved by the city. A star by the time she was eighteen.

The newspaper images of her in costume, on a stage or for promo, were not good enough for his liking, but he didn’t say that out loud. He bet she’d received the culture shock of her life on top of being a teenager while being given freedom and a life like few others would ever have or experience. Never mind at that age.

Yet, she never even stumbled. The pressure never got to her, or so it seemed on paper. Laid out like this, like a puzzle that wasn’t complete, Vera became all too interesting to Vaslav.

“You’re sure this was her—she’s the one?” Vaslav asked.

Igor shrugged. “Apparently so. The gallery was part of the studio they use for her free classes to poor children. That wasn’t too hard to find. I didn’t even need to go to Feliks for that. It’s only her affiliation that even gains the place any donations.”

Right.

Because The Swan House hadn’t done anything meaningful in the world of ballet since the disaster that had been their final showing of what had been called In the Stars. According to what Vaslav had already learned from his file. Igor didn’t know it, and his boss wouldn’t offer the information, but Vaslav had already rifled through each document, image and even the thin USB card at the back. In fact, if he turned on the television that he’d connected through to his laptop on the desk, Vera Avdonin would still be mid-air on the screen. Ready to fall straight down through a latch door that would have been opened in the middle of the stage as she finished the scene with what was known as a fouetté arabesque jump.

One might think a trick like that would be well practiced. Timing would have needed to be impeccable, no room for error. He believed it probably was because they’d run the ballet for months with guests flying in from all over the world, but on the last time, the door apparently didn’t open in time.

A man on the crew had been later blamed, and unsurprisingly, fired. Then, he put a bullet to his head and quietly washed-up dead in the canal. Quietly, because there hadn’t even been a paper printed about it, only a notice of death by the family.

If Vaslav turned on that TV, and pressed play by hitting the enter key on his laptop, Igor would see that he’d already watched the moment when Vera had shattered her ankle in front of thousands before falling through the floor like she had been meant to all along. From every angle that had apparently been recorded that night.

He had little to no interest in discussing the puzzle he had already put together himself from the information Igor provided.

Igor took the unspoken hint from his boss before he raised a brow when Vaslav offered nothing else, asking him, “Are you satisfied, then? Hell, you even have her current address.”

“Hmm.”

“God, what?”

Fiddling with the onyx oval ring set in a twenty-four-karat gold band around his middle finger, Vaslav took another glance at the stack of papers he would soon burn about Vera Avdonin. Some of it, he hadn’t given as much focus as he had others—like her nightlife in Moscow, and the rumors the rags had printed as she was on the cusp of her womanhood.

That time was long gone for her, he bet. Youthful abandon quickly became a thing of the past when in seconds, life-changing moments stopped someone right in their path. That type of thing had a way of making a person rethink everything.

Still, from the newspaper shot of her waving from the private jet that had flew her into Moscow for the first time, to the one showcasing her behind a row of preteen girls all in matching tights and leotards that was taken only a year earlier, her smile never changed. The fact she was pleasing to look at didn’t hurt.

She was a classic beauty—every image, even the grainy ones—allowed him to appreciate that. Almond-shaped blue eyes and almost-black hair that she had always kept long until her accident.

After that, she’d sheared it off for a bob. One that accentuated the angular line of her jaw and small chin. Every picture left her looking doll-like. Perfect, maybe air-brushed milk and cream skin, small heart-shaped pink lips. Even her tiny nose with a thin bridge and not a freckle in sight was turned up ever so slightly at the tip so that she had one of those faces.

An expression even when she was still. One that seemed to stare right out at someone, or through them, without even trying.