Page 85 of Taken By My Grumpy Pakhan

Breakfast arrived shortly and I opted to eat on the balcony to get a nice view of the city at dawn.

Kazimir was yet to text and it was about an hour to the first appointment. I sent him a second email, one to him and one to Nikolai, and proceeded to lay out my outfit for the day.

Rose, Anna and I had pulled all our arsenals to find the perfect Euro-style outfits for the trip and I was beyond excited to try it out.

An hour turned to two, and two became three, and still, nothing from the two, and in the most gut-wrenching manner, I’d realized this was a replay of Texas.

They’d gone to take care of stuff and never returned till the meeting was done. Fury engulfed every inch of me.

If he thought I was that incompetent, why bother employing me and bringing me to these things to humiliate me when he could’ve left me at home to waste my time on whatever I wanted.

I grabbed my phone, my fingers moving faster than my brain as I typed the most obscene message known to man, cursing him out and telling him how he was a pompous bastard who deserved to be grilled and served to cannibals.

When I was done, my chest felt light, but the thrum in my veins was nowhere near gone.

I checked my phone again, just to confirm the absence of a notification, then tossed it onto the duvet with more force than necessary.

“Fine,” I said to the empty room. “Fine.”

It wasn’t fine by any metric. I’d flown hours across an ocean to sit in a hotel room and water the single orchid on the windowsill, which, I was almost certain, was fake, because nothing this perfect grew without someone forcing it to be that way.

By the time the fifth hour rolled by, boredom had curdled into something sharper. And in my fury, Svetlana’s voice in the changing room whispered into my mind's ears, soft and venomous, telling me to save my coins for when he got bored. I thought about the parade of women plastered all over the magazine with him. I thought about how I was apparently good enough to fly to Moscow but not good enough to sit in on a single meeting. She was right. I was nothing more than a decorative doll standing beside Kazimir.

So when I found his black card sitting innocently on the entryway table, the one he’d given me for “incidentals,” I decided incidentals could mean whatever I wanted them to mean. Maybe I should do what arm candy was meant to do.

I grabbed my coat, told the security detail at the door I was going shopping, and watched their faces do the careful blank thing men did when they weren’t sure if they were allowed to stop me.

The boutiques on Tverskaya Street did not care that I was furious. They welcomed me with champagne and soft lighting and racks of clothing so beautiful it almost made me feel guilty for hating the man who’d unknowingly funded the spree. Almost. I tried on a coat that cost more than three months of my old rent and bought it without checking the price tag twice. I bought shoes I would probably never wear. I bought a set of crystal earrings for Anna, a pair of shoes for Rose and a coat for Caroline to compensate for the time they spent helping me pack up for this mistake of a trip and also because they deserved nice things and I was, apparently, in the business of spending Kazimir's money out of spite.

It felt childish and petty and good, the way eating an entire pint of ice cream felt good even as you knew you’d regret it later.

I spotted one of the men at the hotel door behind me; he was doing a terrible job of shadowing me, but his presence only encouraged me.

Knowing I was not alone and safe in a foreign land, I became emboldened to widen my horizons and explore options.

By the time I dragged myself and four overstuffed bags back into the suite, the sun had gone down, my feet ached and the satisfaction had mostly worn off, replaced by the low hum of exhaustion. I kicked off my shoes by the door, left the bags in a haphazard pile, and went to find something to eat from the absurdly stocked minibar.

The suite was dark and silent. I assumed he was still out, locked in whatever ruthless negotiation he was in, or even worse, in the arms of some Russian model.

I swallowed the bitterness on my tongue with a shot of whiskey. I wouldn’t let him make me feel sorry for myself. I would turn this suite into a disco ball if that was what I needed to stay sane.

And if he was going to let me spend the night alone while he rotted in the arms of God-knows-who, then I'd create my own fun.

I was wrong. The sound of running water hit me as I entered the room, coming from the bathroom on the right.

My first instinct was to ignore it. Whatever he was doing in there was his business, and I’d spent the entire day reminding myself that his business was none of mine. But curiosity had never been my strong suit when it came to him, and my feet were already moving before my better judgement caught up.

The bathroom door was half open. I pushed it the rest of the way and the sight that greeted me stopped me cold.

Kazimir stood hunched over the sink, his jacket gone, his white shirt sleeves shoved up past his elbows. His knuckles were split open and the water running over them turned pink as it swirled down the drain. A gun sat on the marble counter beside the sink, dark and entirely too at home there, like it belonged among the toiletries as much as his razor did.

He didn’t flinch when I stepped inside. He didn’t have to. We’d been down this road before; the only difference was, the last time, the blood wasn’t his.

The gun, however, pushed forward memories I’d tried to bury for the longest time.

“You should be asleep,” he said. His voice was low, rough at the edges.

“And you should not turn up to shared spaces bloodied and with a gun.”