Dammit, Brando!
I’d just be very quiet. I could move even quieter than him.
Just then, I heard what was undeniably a grunt, and then, in Russian,“Release me, I mean you no harm.”
I slid out from underneath the bed, slapping at my head (without sound) and cursing in my mind as the disease-ridden miscreant flew off to presumably assault another body.
Voices came from the kitchen, and when I entered, Lev and Brando turned to look at me. Lev had a shallow cut across his throat. Brando sat across the room from him, his blood-stained knife balanced on his leg.
A woman stood next to Lev, a tall, statuesque form who could have easily been described as an ice queen. Platinum hair, almost white, was twisted up in a bun so tight that it made her eyes narrow. Her skin was tan enough to make her blue-quartz eyes glisten with eager energy. “This is what the fuss is all about?” she said with a heavy Russian accent, nodding toward me.
“What are you doing here, Lev?” I asked, ignoring her, taking my place next to Brando. I still had the gun lifted. I didn’t miss the appreciative looks the ice princess kept giving my shirtless husband.
“Do not pay mind to Galina. She is tender because your husband refused her advances. We are friends,zolotse.True friends. Now that I know you speak only the truth.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “The truth?”
“I followed the blood trail from the ballet to the hospital,”he said in Russian. I translated so Brando could understand. Galina’s sharp eyes turned on me, realizing that I understood her language.
I swallowed hard, my heart hammering. A click resounded inside of my skull, the turning of a skeleton key, revealing a secret room that I had never come across in myself before. “We are no longer friends,” I said, hands never so sure on the gun in its grasp. “Whoever threatens my husband and me, myfamily, is a threat I’m willing to eliminate.”
Lev and Galina exchanged a quick glance. She seemed to stand taller. I noticed that neither she nor Lev were wet; they must have entered theburebefore the storm—and then took a step forward. She moved like a huntress, prowling toward my husband with a mischievous gleam in her eye.
I smiled and asked in Russian, “Is this your girlfriend, Lev?”
She stopped dead, head turning in my direction as though she scented my true nature for the first time.
He shrugged. “We have had relations, but no,” he said, still in Russian.
“I doubt that.” I grinned. “She is trying to make you jealous by flirting with my husband.” I felt her feelings toward Lev, but I wasn’t totally telling the truth. I expanded on what I knew she felt to catch her attention.
Her nostrils flared in my direction. Her high-heeled boots crunched against the wooden floor as she sauntered toward me.
Revenge—I turned her on me.
Brando watched her carefully. His outward appearance seemed calm, but I could feel his tension.
She came so close to me that I could feel her cool breath on my face. “I will have your husband.” She snapped at my mouth. Then she went to touch my earring.
Lowering the gun, and surprising myself, but mostly her, I punched her in the nose. The blow stunned her for a moment. She gazed at me with a blank look on her face, blood trickling out of her nostrils.
Realization flooded me then, shining its bright light. Something must have been lurking in the shadows behind that sealed door, and it possessed me. Galina fit the description of the woman Brando had sex with in Fiji. That, and the fact that I was sick and tired of people trying to come between my husband and me! Either trying to kill us, use us, or break us apart.
To my immense surprise, the Ice Princess didn’t retaliate. She backed up, standing next to Lev again. “This will never work,” she said in a matter-of-fact way. “They are too attached to one another.” Blood continued to splatter onto the floor, and she didn’t even bother to staunch it.
Lifting the gun straight again, I asked Lev what she meant. Brando had been quiet, much too quiet, and suspicion pinched me.
“I do not know about that,” Lev said to Galina, his voice distracted. “Your husband knows the reason we are here,zolotse.”
I turned to look at Brando.I hadn’t noticed the magazine clipping in his hand. He held it up. I glanced at it. A picture of the famous quarterback and me from the ad we did for American Sportswear. He was in plain football gear—clearly an athlete by his build—and I stood in front of him, my leg up in a graceful kick. The picture was meant to show the contrast between us, but that dancers were athletes too. He couldn’t lifthisleg like that while standing onhistoes.
I hesitated. “John Taylor.”
“He is interested in you,” Lev said, gauging my reaction.
Brando’s eyes turned to me, and I couldn’t hold my tongue. “He asked me on a date!” I blurted. “I told him I was married but he kept asking during the photo shoot. He didn’t want anything long term—it seemed.” A one-night stand, he had offered me. I laughed—literally in his face—and left as soon as I could. Though Violet had seemed smitten with him. She was a known flirt, and she loved football.
“He’s one of the men who wants to buy your contract from Nemours,” Brando said, his voice clipped. “He came to see your performance the night you almost—”
