“Anyway, now he’s decided on you and me getting married, and the real problem is, he’s been planning this foryears.”
I would have to give my uncle Michel the third degree as to when Volkov first began to approach him. “Is that right?”
Yes, I was absolutely letting Alina Volkov tell me what I wanted to know. I was straight-up holding an interrogation while waltzing at a white-tie cotillion.
But it was working. All I had to do was let her tell me.
“I don’t know why he thinks thatmymarryingyouwould somehow helphisbusiness.” Alina practically spat the last word, so she might indeed understand the sordid business her father conducted. “He craves validation. It’s not enough to be accepted by the other people who run businesses like his. He wants to be welcomed into high society.”
I just had to last until this song ended, and the orchestra was playing the final verse. “We’re not a very welcoming bunch.”
“Yeah, I noticed. But seriously, I need to make it look like I’m making headway with you.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something to tell him,” I said, keeping my tone pleasant. God, I wanted out of this dance and this night.
“Nicolai, he told me to make progress with you, or things could get ugly.”
“Things are already ugly. Your father’s goons confronted some of my security personnel last night. We were lucky no one on either side died.”
The last strains of the waltz died, and people applauded as I began to step back from Alina Volkov with relief.
I began to raise my hand to her back to shepherd her toward her father.
“No.I have to—If my dad doesn’t see someprogresswith us, he’s going to—fuck it!”
Alina Volkov grabbed me by the back of my neck.
She’d had the element of surprise. Otherwise, I would’ve just kept standing straight and let her dangle from my neck by one arm, twisting in the cold breeze from the air conditioning.
But we’d been dancing. Though I’d been leading, I’d been responding to her cues to change direction or to moderate my step-length.
With her arm around my neck, her weight dragged me down, and I bent. She pressed her mouth upon mine.
I jerked upward, breaking her grip.“No.”
“Look, I’m sorry, but I just needed to?—”
I dropped my arms away from her and wiped my mouth off on my jacket cuff, but she stepped forward with scared-wide eyes. “I’m sorry. I just needed to do that to show my father I was making progress in landing you. Now my dad will let us off for the remainder of the night, and I won’t have to hear about it.Please.Just dance with me for another minute or so. The next song is already starting.Please!”
People were really staring now, but surely they were also seeing my posture leaning backward and the tightness of my jaw. “Don’t try that again. And after this waltz, don’t speak to me ever again.”
“Damn, now I’ve ruined everything. He’s going to beso madat me.” Her blue eyes’ quick dart to their corners suggested she was checking for ears that should not hear what she was saying. “He wants recognition from the people who have always looked down on us. I don’t know whether he has a fatal case of imposter syndrome and needs some antidepressants, but I do know what he is craving can’t be bought. Yet, he is trying to buy himself a son-in-law who will allow him into places he currently can’t.”
Queasiness rolled in my stomach, and I regretted indulging in every bite of the large piece of fatty prime rib set in front of me for supper. “And he decided I was for sale.”
“He knows you are, or youwere,until you suddenly showed up with awife.”
Calling mefor salesounded like I was one of her father’s pawns. I wasnot.I’d been scrupulously careful my whole life not to become anyone’s pawn. “I was notfor salebefore, and I have married my wife in the Russian Orthodox faith. There is no retreating from this.”
“Look, I’ve already told you that this is not my idea. I really wish that I’d run away and married some bodyguard or nouveau riche chav from school when I was seventeen because that would’ve solved all my problems, but I didn’t. And he is not going to let this go. Did youseethat video he sent you?”
The horrific torture-murder video from that morning was indeed from Volkov, then. “I have my own security staff.”
“I’m telling you, right now, they arenot enough.They arenowhere near enough.”
“That video wasn’t from your father’s operation, though. It is known that the video was filmed by Russian state security services, not a minor bratva hiding in the underworld.”
“My dad recruits middle management from Russian state security services. He may not have had the influence to do that two years ago, but he does now. He hiredthose guys.Like,thoseguys. He has video footage of your wife. I think her name is Alexandra, yes?”
