Page 95 of The Beast of Moscow

Vera didn’t move an inch, not even when the flight attendant strolled down the aisle of the rocking jet. “For what?”

“You make it harder when I have to explain.”

“Apologies are useless if you don’t know what you’re apologizing for.”

Vaslav scrubbed a hand over his mouth as he watched the scene outside the now-taxiing jet. “Your passport, for starters.”

Her heart dropped.

But then his gaze swung back to her, and he added, “I know I was unnecessarily mean to you, but what good is saying sorry if it’s going to happen again, Vera?”

“You could try not to.”

Vaslav laughed a dark sound, shaking his head. “You don’t have any idea ...”

“You could fill me in?”

Sometimes having a conversation with this man felt like the blind leading the blind; she had no idea where he was going, or if he even knew.

“You mean, prove how awful I really am, yeah?” he asked.

Vera’s brow furrowed as she bundled the soft blanket into a ball in her lap. “I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t,” the man muttered. “You were collateral. Depending on how the Italian reacted—or what he tried to bring into the meeting to test how far he could push me—I had you.”

She blinked. “What?”

Not once had he mentioned the fact he believed she’d overheard his meeting. In fact, after the early-morning call to Igor, she focused on packing and arranging their things while Vaslav hid under a blanket, in total darkness with as much silence in the apartment as was possible, until they had no choice but to leave because the car arrived. She didn’t even message Hannah for breakfast like she’d promised to.

Something else she would have to explain.

Surely.

“What, did you think I’m stupid?” Vas asked her.

“I never said th—”

“You had to be listening. How else would you be so fast to get to the kitchen, hmm? How long?”

Vera refused to drop his hard stare. “I was trying to pee.”

For a second, she thought he might crack a smile.

Instead, he stuck the proverbial knife deeper than ever into her heart. “Your father controls major international ports in New York that Mario Messina uses to get a great deal of his product into the United States. Whatever their personal connection or private business dealings are to make that possible, well, I didn’t give a damn. But you see, I had you—a good enough connection to your father that just the knowledge I could use you as leverage would be enough to ensure the Italian didn’t cross the line ... Frankly, I didn’t need much else. Not that the meeting swung that way in the end, after all. I didn’t need to leverage you.”

“Collateral,” she echoed.

He grunted under his breath and looked upward when the seatbelt light blinked on again for no apparent reason as the state of the plane hadn’t really changed. “Useful was the word I used to you, actually.”

Disbelief swept through her.

How could she forget?

“Useful,” she parroted.

Not kindly, though.

“And just how would you have used me as collateral to that man?” Vera decided to ask.