things?”
I grinned back at her. She was right: if we got the parts,
neither of us would have to worry about rent for
months. Then I noticed something in the email and my
grin disintegrated.
“What?” asked Rachel.
“It’s tomorrow,” I said quietly. “At two.”
Both of us work in the same electronics store. I wasn’t
due to work tomorrow—my shift started in a few hours
—but Rachel was.
“Oh shit,” said Rachel softly. Both of us stopped
walking. “No. No, no, no…” Her shoulders slumped
under her leather jacket. I felt my chest constrict.
“These things are like getting hit by lightning. You
remember Natasha Liss? She got her big break doing
that commercial for washing powder.”
“There’ll be others.”
“Not like this! God, I could have danced the shit out of
this one!” She bit her lip. “I could just quit the store.”
“You need the money. What if you don’t get it?”
She bent almost double and let out a long, strangled
groan of frustration, drawing stares from passers-by.
“Argh! Why do you have to be so damn Russian and
logical all the time? You’re like a Russian Mr. Spock!”
I nodded sadly and rubbed her back. It wasn’t fair. She
deserved to get this part….
I closed my eyes. “I’ll work your shift tomorrow,” I said.
“You go to the callback.”
Rachel spun around and gaped at me. “What? No!”
I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “You worked
really hard for this. I heard you practicing in your room,
doing the allegro over and over.” I shrugged. “I
probably wouldn’t have got my part anyway. You have a
better chance, so you should go.”
“That’s bullshit! You’re a way better dancer than me!”
She shook her head. “No. I won’t let you do this!”
I put my arms around her and drew her close. My own
disappointment was swelling up inside me, but I
crushed it back down. “You’re going to go to that
callback,” I told her firmly, “and you’re going to ace it.” I
bent her forward and kissed the top of her head, then
ruffled her hair. “Da?”
“Da,” she said reluctantly. It sounded funny in her soft,
American accent. Then she threw her arms around me
and crushed my ribs. “Thank you, Irina.”
* * *
By the time I made it across town to our house, I only
just had enough time for a quick shower and change
before I had to head out to my shift. I hurried up the
path and ducked under sparkling icicles that hung two
feet long from the roof of the porch. Rachel and I had a
bet going on how long they’d get before the end of
winter.
Our place isn’t much. The clapboard is stained and
broken in places, it’s freezing in winter and hot in
summer and it’s not really convenient for Fenbrook or
anywhere else. But it’s cheap and lovably quirky: my
room even has an old, wrought-iron balcony I can stand
on when I’m having my coffee in the morning.
I raced inside, already peeling off my clothes. Naked, I
climbed into the shower and was just about to turn on
the water when the doorbell rang. Chyort!
I wrapped a towel around me, padded back to the door
and checked the door viewer. My heart sank as I saw
six-foot-plus of imperious suited muscle, topped with
hair as silver as a bullet.
Vasiliy. My uncle.
I opened the door. “You didn’t think to call, first?”
He waved away my protests. “I was in the
neighborhood.” He looked around and sighed, shaking
his head as he always did when he visited. “Why do you
live in this place?” He sounded genuinely confused.
“I like this place.” And we both knew what I meant by
that. I liked it because I could afford it without help
from him. We glowered at each other for a second and
then kissed each other on the cheeks.
I love Vasiliy. He helped raise me when I was young
and then, after my parents died, he took care of me.
Without him, I wouldn’t be alive today.
But without him, I wouldn’t have been in danger in the
first place. Vasiliy is the embodiment of everything my
family is famous for, everything I ran away from. He
isn’t in the Russian Mafia; he is the Russian Mafia.
“You’ll have to make yourself tea,” I said as I closed the
door. “I really need to take a shower—”
The door was pushed open again from outside. Chyort!
Vasiliy hadn’t come alone.
“You look fine as you are,” said Mikhail, grinning as he
stepped inside.
Mikhail is the epitome of everything I hate about
Russian men. He doesn’t have an ounce of Vasiliy’s class
or intellect, just lots of money. And while Vasiliy, even in
his sixties, is still a tough, good looking guy, Mikhail is
running to fat even though he’s only forty. His face is
always pink and shiny, as if he just ran up a flight of
stairs, and when he looks at me a chill goes the entire
length of my spine. It would be bad enough if he was
just Vasiliy’s business partner, but he’s more than that.
As far as Vasiliy is concerned, Mikhail’s going to be my
husband.
Mikhail’s eyes crawled over me. I pulled the towel
tighter around myself and wished I’d put my clothes
back on before I answered the door.
“I’ll make tea,” said Vasiliy. “You have your shower.
Then we can talk.”
I hurried off to the bathroom, feeling Mikhail’s gaze on
my ass the entire way.
It’s not a forced marriage, as such. Vasiliy won’t make
me marry Mikhail. He’s happy for me to choose a
man....as long as that man is Russian and a member of
the Russian mob. I know he’s doing it out of love: he
thinks only a gangster can protect me from our family’s
enemies. But that doesn’t stop my future feeling like a
prison cell being built brick by brick around me.
Back in Moscow, I’d been surrounded by gangsters—
suitors, in Vasiliy’s mind. That’s when I’d learned to be
cold, to keep pushing them away. I’d thought that I’d
escape my fate by moving to New York, but I’d only
made things worse.
I’d been in America only a few days when Vasiliy arrived
and told me about his new partnership with Mikhail, a
local bratva boss who needed Vasiliy’s money to
expand. By then, I’d enrolled at Fenbrook and it was too
late to change my plans. Now Vasiliy spent almost all of
his time in New York and visited me almost daily.
Escape? I saw more of him than ever. And here, instead
of a procession of suitors, there was just one: Mikhail.
No way was I going to marry that creep...but that left
us at an impasse, because no way was Vasiliy going to
let me be with an American. I was going to be
unhappy...or very, very lonely.
I closed the bathroom door, dropped the towel and
climbed back into the shower. The steaming water
slowly thawed me...and reminded me of a different kind
of heat.
Angelo...I silently mouthed his name. Just thinking
about him, remembering those brown eyes, made me
gently sway my hips in a circle as if being touched. The
whole thing was impossible, of course. I’d done the
right thing—the only thing—by pushing him away.
But there was something about him...he had a passion
that I’d never seen in a Russian man. Angelo was dark,
smoky lust and scalding anger. He was chaos to their
logic, impulse to their cold rationality. Angelo was red
wine and thorny roses and hot, hot blood. He was the