Colleen bent, her curvaceous form folding in the gold silk gown, and she said, “We’ll be right back. Ladies room.”
Sergey frowned at his woman walking away, even as she flirted with him over her shoulder and waved at him with a flourish of her red-manicured nails.
As they reached the doorway, the girls linked their slender arms, bending their heads toward each other with their shoulders shaking with girlish laughter.
It was frickin’ adorable, and images assailed Tristan again of flying with Colleen to Monaco and Berlin and watching her giggle like that as he showed her the world.
God, he loved having a little.
Nevertheless, he turned back to Sergey. “That particular algorithm is certainly useful. I understand why you’d like to work with the author of such an interesting piece of software, but I’m sorry to tell you that it isn’t me. It’s relatively simple to commission software like that if you know who to talk to.”
“It appears person to talk to is you.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ve got to say, I certainly appreciate doing this deal with you—”
“With clean money. I cannot emphasize enough that we give you clean money.”
And it was getting to the point where his repeated assurances were suspicious in themselves. “But I don’t think any future deals with me would be beneficial for you. I have my one little trick, but I am a one-trick pony. I’m not interesting in the slightest.”
Sergey chuckled. “I think you are very interesting indeed. I think you could ‘commission’ other new software for us, given proper incentive. I think we will have long and fruitful relationship.”
Sergey hadn’t mentioned Tristan’s Superman software that was trolling the finance markets and arbitraging pennies as they spoke. He must not know about it. If he did know about it, he would be angling for that, too.
Tristan said, “I don’t want to take your money on false pretenses. I mean, especially your clean money. I think we should keep this on a case-by-case basis for any future endeavors, just because I don’t think I have anything else that you would want.”
They continued their seemingly lighthearted but deadly serious discussion about the future of Tristan in Sergey’s organization for what seemed like twenty minutes or longer, to the point where Tristan began to watch the door of the private room for Colleen and the blonde to return.
Their absence was beginning to become worrying.
Sergey was absolutely the type to kidnap someone important to an adversary and hold them hostage to leverage a business deal like this one.
Keeping every nuance of his concern off his face was difficult, as was trying not to laugh too much and swing the other direction.
The next course came—a few blini pancakes with caviar and sour cream—but the girls hadn’t returned yet.
The crepes were like chewing plastic wrap in his mouth as every bit of his attention rooted on that door behind him, and he willed it to open and for Colleen to walk through.
He was just about to stand up and excuse himself to go find her when Sergey glanced at the door, and his eyebrows contracted so hard toward the middle of his nose that his scowl must’ve given him a headache. “Where did girls go?”
Whatever was going on was not Sergey’s doing.
Indeed, Sergey lifted a finger, said something in Russian to a man farther down the table, and pointed toward the door.
Tristan tensed to leap up and block the guy from going after Colleen.
17
Svetlana
Colleen
Scarlet and white ceramic tile striped the Russian restaurant’s bathroom like they were inside a womb. Colleen surmised that it must be easier to hose blood splatters from mafia hits off that atrocious tile.
The girl, Svetlana, was bracing herself with both arms on the bright red sink with her head hanging below her shoulders. “You can’t help me. He’ll come after you. He’ll kill you.”
While they’d been talking at the table, Svetlana had thrown the undercover hand signal for domestic violence at least ten times, which was the person’s hand held up flat like a stop sign, then the thumb crossed over the palm, and then the fingers closed over the thumb like the wrong way to make a fist.
So Colleen had asked her if she wanted to try a new drink at the bar, an Angel Shot, which is what women on dates ordered from bartenders if they needed help to escape a creeper. An Angel Shot, neat meant the woman needed an escort to her car. An Angel Shot with lime meant the bar staff should call the police.
