“You don’t know where we are going, you can’t drive the ship; what is it you do around here, Mr. Oleg?” I teased.
Too bad Katie hadn’t been here. She knew how to piss a person off and spoke her mind while I hid my thoughts behind mental walls. Looking at Oleg, she’d make a quip about his weight. He had a powerful physique half hidden beneath a beer gut. A prominent double chin softened his jaw line. He’d shown himself to be more than a standard issue thug, but she’d still obliquely call him stupid.
“I’m a good soldier, Ms. Marciano,” he replied flatly with not even a hint of change in his expression. “I follow Mr. Lebedev’s orders.”
I wasn’t Katie. Sure, I could envision how she’d piss Oleg off, even conjure the words she’d speak, but I wasn’t her. When it came time to say them out loud, my mouth just wouldn’t comply. Whether it was out of fear of getting hurt or because I wasn’t as much of cold and calculating bitch as Katie thought I was, it forced me to find a new tack.
“Do you enjoy working under Mr. Lebedev?” I asked, fake innocence filling my voice.
“He pays well,” Oleg answered but a frown came to his face.
Did he see my game?
It didn’t matter. His short answers told me he wouldn’t spill any more info on his boss to me. That left plan F. I hated plan F. It tasted like bargain barrel vinegar to just think the words, let alone say them out loud.
“Do you, by chance, know who my father is?” I said without hissing or scowling.
“Michael Marciano,” Oleg replied. His expression didn’t change, except for his eyes. They narrowed even further under his thick brow. His lips pressed together. Yeah, he knew my game but I had to try.
“My father’s a very wealthy man.” The foul taste grew stronger in my mouth. “He’d offer a generous reward for the person who returned me to him.”
Oleg laughed, a sudden bark that he soon stifled but his shoulders rose and fell all the same. When he recovered, he shook his head.
“If I betrayed the Bratva, they’d kill me but only after they killed my mother, my sisters and brothers,” he said, head continuing to shake. “I don’t know how they do things in America, but from what I know of Michael Marciano, the only reward he’d give me would be a bullet in the head. I’d die quicker, but I prefer to remain living.”
He wasn’t wrong. You couldn’t put any trust in a man who’d betray his family, or Bratva in Oleg’s case, for financial gain. If a rat would rat for you, turn on their brothers for a pile of cash, they would rat against you when someone offered them a better deal.
At least he’d let one nugget slip. Alexei was Bratva, the Russian mob. I’d expected that, given the people around him and his Russian last name, but his British accent served as a powerful red herring.
The Bratvas were not as powerful in the States. Places like Brighton Beach with their large Russian expat communities had their mobsters, but my father preferred to work with other Mafia families, not outsiders. They had global reach though and had infiltrated business and governments, especially in Europe.
Still, the confirmation he was a mobster offered a little insight into the potential reasons Alexei might hate my father. It could have been a deal gone bad, though it would have to have been a huge deal to explain Alexei’s anger. My father was a ruthless man when he needed to be. I wasn’t living in a fantasy world where I could pretend he didn’t have blood all over his hands. Could that include the blood of someone Alexei loved? More than likely, but I still didn’t know for certain.
“You can’t blame a girl for trying.” I shrugged and flashed an apologetic smile. “At least you can say my father’s name without hissing. Alexei almost spits every time he mentions him.”
When I thought of Oleg as little more than a thug, I went the direct route. He’d proven a bit too bright to fall for that but I could be subtle too. People who wouldn’t answer your question might give information away when you approached it obliquely.
“You’d have to ask Mr. Lebedev about that,” he answered, proving my subtlety wasted. “It’s getting late. You should get some rest. We will be at sea tomorrow but in port the day after.”
With that, he turned around and slid sideways through the door, leaving it open for me. He continued down the hall, disappearing into the door across from where I’d found my luggage.
He’d left me a few things to consider. Minutes after he left me alone, I trudged back to my cabin. Whatever happened tomorrow, it was best to be ready for it with a full night’s sleep – or at least as close to one as I could get.
…
Sleep faded from me slowly the next morning. Between the low, almost imperceptible hum of the engines and the equally subtle swaying of the yacht, I snuggled under the blankets when I first woke, enjoying the caress of the cotton sheets. They had to have had a thread count in the high four digits.
All too soon, the waking world opened the flood gate of memories, of why I luxuriated to the sound of an engine and the rocking of a boat. I tossed the sheets from my body as if they were covered in bed bugs.
Bright daylight shone through the long narrow window of my cabin. No, my cell. Alexei might not have locked me in last night, but I was still his prisoner. Even on a swanky yacht in a cabin with sinfully soft sheets, I had to remember I was a prisoner here, not a guest. That was what he wanted me to see myself as.
Thinking about him gave my mind an excuse to picture the man and what we’d done last night, what I’d almost let him do. I leaped off the bed and my eyes darted around the small cabin for any sort of distraction, a way to put that tall, blond and handsome genie in the bottle.
Seeing none, I grabbed my toiletries bag and rushed to the small bathroom connected to my cabin. No, my cell. My morning routine usually centered me and helped me focus on the coming day. If there was ever a day I needed focus, it’d be today dealing with Alexei. No, my kidnapper.
As the scalding water steamed the air in the tiny shower compartment, I visualized my worries and anxieties evaporating into the cloud, steaming away. A ridiculous idea, it was some meditation exercise that Katie had stumbled upon once. I’d laughed the entire duration the first time I’d tried it, but damned if I felt better after, not that I’d ever shared that with her or anyone else.
A few deep breaths of the thick humid air offered more clarity. No fear or worry, and most importantly after last night, no lust clouded my thoughts. Logic beat passion, nine times out of ten.
