⚠️Contains mature content⚠️
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Alina Lenkov
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He's going to kill me.
I tuck the phone Vladimir gave me—that now feels like a heavy weight in my hand—back into my purse. My stomach fills with dread after reading the demanding text message telling me I better get to his hotel room immediately, or else.
"Shit!" The curse catches in my throat on its way up to escape my lips. The night hasn't even begun and I've already made him angry. Fear swells in my chest making it hard to breathe in this cramped backseat. I never take his threats lightly. If nothing else, he's a man of his word.
Vladimir's driver snags my eye in the rearview mirror, his bushy eyebrows and thin lips flattening as he glares at me. His irritation is evident in his hardened visage as he questions my outburst. He, like Vladimir and all the other men in Vladimir's circle, finds women to be nuisances. Best to be seen but not heard.
I flash him a wary smile in return, my lips lifting weakly as my eyes remain somber. I'm frightened but I don't let him see it. The last thing I need is him reporting back to Vladimir that I was an annoyance on our drive to the hotel, making my night even worse.
It seems to suffice him as his eyes flick back to the road ahead of us.
I turn my attention out the window, letting my heart rate and breathing settle. There is nothing I can do now but wait. I'll accept whatever punishment Vladimir has for me once I get there. Just as I always do. For now, I might as well enjoy the calm before the дерьмовая буря (shitstorm).
Dazzling lights from the city of Moscow shine on the glass of the window. We pass smiling couples holding hands, and happy children eating treats. The possibility of being free like them seems so tangible, so close, yet is invariably out of reach.
I've seen enough.
With a sigh, I turn away from the window and stare straight ahead, watching the street lights pass over us, not allowing my gaze to settle on the vibrant nightlife that lines the strip.
The drive feels painfully slow. Every red light allows time for Vladimir to get angrier about my absence. I fret about his text the entire twenty-minute drive to the Lotte Hotel, smoothing my custom-tailored dress and my professionally styled hair over and over. The closer we get, the more my nerves worsen.
Vladimir's a dangerous man. He won't hesitate to use my supposed tardiness as an excuse to indulge in his sadistic hungering. Everything sets him off and he lives to make me pay for my supposed mistakes.
Saying the wrong thing, wearing an outfit that doesn't fit his taste. Making him wait.
All of them are perfectly acceptable reasons in his mind to punish me.
Torture, starvation, humiliation.
Name it, he has done it.
I check the time again, it's half past five.
The event doesn't even begin until six thirty in the hotel's private ballroom. Yesterday he told me to meet him in his room at six pm sharp. I won't forget it. So why the urgency? What's he planning?
Finally, we pull up to the brightly lit marbled portico.
As I step out of the town car and into the lobby of the luxury hotel I prepare myself for the bristling way Vladimir seems to greet me anytime I enter a room—hands on his hips and a scowl marring his hideous face. I prepare myself for the way his teeth scrape against one another as he seethes and the punishment I know for a fact he is conjuring up in his head, worsening with every second I make him wait.
Panic rolls in my gut as I rush from the car to the elevator and again as I run down the hallway, once I make it to his floor. My heels hardly carry my racing feet.
My eyes close briefly when I make it to his hotel room door. I suck in a breath, stealing myself for his awaiting fury.
I swipe the hair off of my shoulder that has stuck itself to the speckling of sweat along my neck and then smooth down the errant hairs around my face.
I open my eyes and look over my shoulder, down the long corridor, as if there's a chance someone is waiting in the wings. A knight in shining armor eager to save me. But there is no one.
The desolate hallway mocks me with its ornate light fixtures and echoing silence. All I can hear is my labored breathing and frantic heartbeat.
I swallow another calming breath and smooth down my inky black hair one last time before swiping my key card he delivered with the dress.
~~~~~~~~
When I finally work up the courage to push open the door and step through the threshold, I discover the entire hotel suite to be drenched in darkness and an uncomfortable silence.
I pause, unsure of what to make of the scene before me.
It's not like Vladimir to swath himself in silence like this. He's not one to be left alone to his thoughts, instead he drowns them out with fútbol on the television or classical music at a volume louder than necessary.
This eerie quiet is unsettling.
The door creaks as it slowly closes behind me, shutting me in. A stagnant smell of copper fills the space causing my nostrils to flare. I let my gaze trail across the stillness as I creep my way into the living room. The uneasiness growing like a tumor within me, I have to force myself to put one foot in front of the other.
"Vladamir?"
He doesn't answer. I step through the entryway and into the living area.
"Vladimir?" Shakily, I call out again.
A sound from across the room scrapes against my senses. I recognize it immediately. It's the distinct clicking of a gun as a bullet is loaded into its chamber. A frightening echo that seems to reverberate off the walls and sends a chill down my spine.
I freeze, just as my eyes meet a dark-shadowed man sitting in a chair in the middle of the room. He's wearing a tuxedo and a sinister glare.
And then I see the blood.
My gaze catches on the pool of red as it seeps out from a lifeless form at the killer's feet. A shiny silver gun sits in the intruder's lap as he looms over the dead body.
Vladimir.
Vladimir is lying haphazardly face down and his head is turned at an odd angle.
I scream a blood-curdling sound.
Oh god! I'm going to be sick.
"Make another noise and you'll join him in death." The intruder's accented voice is as deep and menacing as his words. He points his weapon at me and my body involuntarily stiffens.
I believe his threat, Vladamir's lifeless body is enough to scare me into submission. My legs tremble and a whimper escapes me as the man's thick Italian accent meets my ears once again.
"Vladimir didn't want to do as I say and it got him in trouble. You don't want to get in trouble too, do you?"
Trouble? No. I shake my head vehemently. Please God, no.
"Good." The bulking man says as he stands up.
Oh fuck! My eyes bulge as I watch him stand to his full, towering height. Is he going to hurt me, too? I need to get out of here.
Frantic to get away from him I stumble backward in fear, eyes focused on the long slender nose of the gun winking at me in the moonlight cast in from the window.
I trip over the long silk of my gown in my backward escape, inadvertently dropping my purse. The contents—including my phone—spill out at my feet. Fuck! I manage to catch my hands on a chair behind me but I don't have time to scoop up the spilled mess.
The man continues to stalk me like an animal does its prey.
With each stumbling step I take backward to the door, he advances. Two steps for every one of my own. His long legs seem to devour the space between us with little effort. I can feel his piercing stare bore into me the way a sighting laser would the next kill. I don't dare look him in the eyes.
Just get to the door.
Suddenly my back slams against a wall halting my escape. дерьмо! дерьмо! дерьмо!
Please don't hurt me, I internally beg. Please!
The man is like a machine, mouth rigid and eyes focused on his target. Me. Void of any signs of empathy. He takes another purposeful step until he is right in front of me. I'm now trapped between the smooth, cool wall at my back and the heated body of the murderer to my front.
My body trembles from his proximity.
He's so close now, I can smell him. It's an overpowering scent that adds to my turmoil. A smell I will never be able to forget, one that will always connect me to this night.
I try not to breathe him in as my eyes—blurry from tears—focus on his Italian leather dress shoes. They are perfectly polished, as if brand new.
My brows pinch and my shoulders stiffen as he drags the barrel of his gun along the exposed skin of my neck.
Panic hits me with force, a punch to the gut, stealing all the air from my lungs.
"It's a shame you won't be able to whore yourself out this evening for Vladimir like he had hired you to do." He says.
My eyes snap up to his in surprise.
The man tips his head over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of Vladimir. I don't follow his gaze. "Seeing as you now need a new date to the party, you can take me." The killer smirks and my blood runs cold.
The devious gleam in his eyes threatens to eat me alive.
I shake my head no, side to side, distraught.
"I-I don't have any money. I don't have anything of value to give you." My breaths are quick and ragged and my chest is aching from the adrenaline coasting through my veins. My skin feels as if it's radiating heat with him pressed up against me like this and my bare arms and neck are sprinkled with sweat.
I just want it to stop.
The dark shadow answers me by shoving the nose of his gun into the meaty skin under my jaw. A whimper squeaks from my lips as I try to tip my head away but he simply presses harder. Forcing my skull into the wall behind me. The cold metal pinches against the underside of my tongue and I cry out at the sharp pain.
The murderer's thick eyebrows cast a shadow down his astute nose as he drops his forehead down to mine briefly and my mind races with all the things he plans to do to me alone in this room while Vladimir's lifeless body taunts me. My stomach turns with dread.
"You do not speak unless I tell you to, do you understand?" He threatens in his heavy Italian accent before lifting his head and flicking his eyes to mine.
I nod furiously as I swallow down a fearful cry.
"Good girl," he says pulling back, but the gun remains tucked in place.
"I will be going in Vladamir's place. We will eat a nice meal and you will keep your mouth shut or-" he gazes over his shoulder at Vladimir's lifeless form once again. I know what he's going to say before he says it. "You'll be next. Capisci?" He ends his statement in Italian before transitioning to English. "Do you understand?"
I don't move my head in fear of the gun pinching my skin again, but my eyes find him in their corners.
He cocks a brow.
His eyes are so fiercely dark in this moment they look ebony in the moonlight.
"Yes, I understand," I answer quickly.
"Brava ragazza." He steps back, suddenly releasing me. My knees collapse and I fall to the floor.
I curl up into a ball, shrinking as far away from him as possible. My limbs quaking beneath me.
He looks down at me with heated disdain as I snap out of it and scramble back to my feet again. Somehow managing to stand on unsteady legs.
"Let's go." He takes ahold of my arm roughly and jerks me forward toward the door.
I fight the urge to look at Vladimir from over my shoulder as the dangerous man pushes me out of the hotel room with a gun pressed to my back.