Chapter thirty-seven
Alisa
Half-baked ideas swirled through my mind as I rushed to apply makeup and a brown wig for my mission with Dmitri. As I shivered in my freezing apartment, I threw back another dosage of my new poison, and tried to come up with lies that would appease the Pakhan the next time I saw him.
When I spotted Dmitri’s broad figure seated at the seedy bar, my heart beat into overtime. If he caught wind of what the Pakhan had ordered me to do, he’d destroy me.
I might be Dmitri’s toy on rotation, but if he sniffed any hint of betrayal…
What he’d do to me would make Jayden’s final breaths look mirthful.
“Hi, kotenok.”
“Planning on telling me how you always know it’s me despite the disguise?” I said, sliding onto a sticky pleather barstool.
A smile crossed his face. “What would be the fun in that?”
Slowly, the curves of his lips dipped into a frown as his eyes focused in on my wrist.
I followed his gaze towards the red rash spreading across my skin. Shit, another side effect of the new medicine from Dr. Poison.
“It’s not contagious,” I said with a forced smile.
Dmitri opened his mouth to say something. Then shook his head and glanced at the perimeters of the bar.
“Still not here,” he muttered, and I was secretly glad for the respite.
My legs felt like lead bars, and weakness permeated my entire body. I forced myself to feign a casual stance in the chair as if nothing was the slightest bit off.
“Have a fun week?” I said, shrugging my jacket off.
His eyes darkened as my sleeve slipped, revealing the hickey he’d bitten into my shoulder. The searing intensity left me flushing redder than the rash.
I swallowed, thinking back to seeing some woman’s clothes stacked on his guest room’s armoire, and tried to steel my body against the feeling. He’d probably had fun with multiple women this week. I was just a convenient little distraction at work.
My chest ached at the thought, but I tried to ignore it along with all the other aches in my body.
“I’ll put your coat away,” he said, his expression unreadable. He took the jacket from my hands and headed towards the coatroom.
All I could see was his tense shoulders as he spoke to the attendant. His back muscles tightened when he handed off my jacket, and suddenly, my imagination drifted to being alone in there with him.
He’d slip the coat check some bills, and then he’d slip his fingers underneath my dress. When the sensation got to be too much, he’d wrap his fingers around my throat and silence all the moans…
No.
My mind had wrapped itself in fantasies and reminders of him for the last week, and I doubted he’d even thought of me until he’d received the text about the mission. I might not hate him—shit I had no idea what I felt at this point—but I knew without a doubt that delving into this any further was dangerous.
Dmitri’s face was completely blank when he rejoined me at the bar. Any trace of heat was gone and replaced with cold distance.
“What’s the plan when he arrives?” I said quietly.
“Lure him into the back alley. I’ll handle it from there.”
For the next half hour, we waited. Dmitri knocked back a vodka on the rocks, and I sipped my ginger ale. My drink choice had gotten an eyebrow raise out of him, but I’d muttered something back about remaining sober for the mission.
Even though there was only a foot between us, ever since he’d gotten back from the coatroom there was an impenetrable distance that’d weaved between us. He didn’t tease me about the mark on my shoulder.
Shit, he barely even looked at me.
