Page 80 of The Beauty Who Loved Him

Vaslav had always been better suited for warmer weather. His mother took him on a vacation to a private island in the Maldives when he was barely six, and a part of him never left those warm beaches. His mood drastically improved based on the temperature outside. There was absolutely no way to ignore the cold creeping into his bones when the snow started to fall from the wide-open skies.

The one thing he hated more than snow and cold weather was his migraines, but as he’d stopped self-medicating his constant pain, Vaslav was left with his ever-constant companion throughout many of his days. At least, while he rested lounging on the wide steps at the front of the house, the falling snow gave him something else to scowl about.

For the moment.

He could always get back to the migraines later, after all. It wasn’t like they would soon leave.

“Look at it,” he bitched under his breath. “All white and wet.”

Igor grunted where he worked at the rear of the parked SUV. “And cold.”

“And that and that, too!”

“Hmm.”

The inquisitive note from Igor had Vaslav sitting up on the steps. The thickness of his tweed coat was not nearly enough to keep him protected from the quickly plummeting temperatures, but he barely shivered when a good gust of chilly wind sent snowflakes dancing over the steps.

And him.

Fuck the cold.

He had other things to focus on now.

“What was that for?” he asked Igor. “That hmm.”

“Were you playing with the cash?”

Ah.

Vaslav fell back to the snowy steps, even more unpleasant by how much had managed to gather on the stone in the fifteen minutes that he’d been outside. “I may have broken a few bands here and there, tossed around some bills ...”

“A few?” Igor asked, leaning back far enough that Vaslav could see the way he arched an eyebrow in question. “More like damn near every one. In all six bags, Vas. I wondered why the duffels were lumpier.”

He didn’t see the problem. Checking the stacks upon stacks of bills served a purpose. More than one, even, and he didn’t intend on sharing them with Igor.

“Lucky for your accountant that I didn’t find anything wrong, no?” Vaslav returned.

Igor sighed, leaning back into the rear hatch of the SUV with a grumbled bullshit or something of a similar sort. Louder, he told his boss, “The neuroticism is getting out of hand. If you’re willing to talk to the doctor about other things, perhaps that’s something else you could bring up, yeah? I’m just saying. You could have picked rolls at random and checked, you didn’t have to check every fucking one. There’s a hundred million dollars here in various bills. Is this all you did for the week?”

Vaslav waved Igor’s nonsense off. He didn’t need to be reminded that he could have spent his week, and his current Friday night, doing a hundred other things than what he had and currently was. “I was bored, and had nothing else better to do.”

For a few too many nights.

He blamed Vera for that.

And her little friend, Hannah, too.

Just because Vaslav accepted the fact that Vera had a life outside of the one he created between him and her didn't mean he liked it. He was not particularly good at sharing things. Especially if said thing happened to be a woman he thought about for nearly every waking second of his days. She probably featured in a great deal of his dreams, too, when he was lucky enough to have them, but if Igor wanted to talk about things getting out of hand with Vaslav, this was a far better topic.

“It’s not normal,” he uttered.

The zip of bags followed Igor stepping back from the SUV and yanking the rear hatch shut. “What isn’t?”

“How often I find myself thinking about Vera.”

Or maybe it wasn’t healthy. That was a better word. Normal was a state of mind Vaslav hadn’t been able to relate to in decades, so perhaps that wasn’t the best point of reference.

“It’s all the time,” he added when Igor kept quiet, allowing his boss to speak. “About stupid things, too. How she’s put her hair today, or what she’s wearing. I even wonder if she’s eating!”