-Millie-
~~~~~~
Her reaction is cataclysmic.
I am seized by the lapels of my coat and pushed backwards, pinned against the wall with enough force to bruise the notches in my spine. Her fingers find my throat, and I see it all in fine detail; the thin lines between her eyebrows, the purple shadow – concealed beneath layers of make-up – under her eyes, the flush in her cheeks. I hear myself make a pained exclamation as Emily takes my jaw in her hand, her nails digging little crescents into the skin. She twists my head to one side, holding it at an unnatural angle with a ferocity that leaves my neck exposed; a white canvas, prepared for a lashing of red paint.
"Give me one reason," she says, her voice unfamiliar, "why I shouldn't. One reason."
I swallow, and – trying very hard not to whimper in the wake of what I fear is about to be inexplicably brutal – coerce myself to look away and keep my mouth shut, unwilling to betray Jamie's position. Emily snarls something incoherent and hauls me forwards, only to force me back into the wall, the base of my skull hitting the marble with a dull, dry crack. Colour flares. My vision shatters into a fistful of crushed glass. In that moment, I grapple with sudden unconsciousness; the room flickers, lit by a stuttering bulb that does not exist, and I feel something akin to cold water run from neck to spine. I regain control in time to see her raise her fist: my eyes close, my breath hitches, and I flinch in anticipation of the pain to come–
The bottle hits the side of her head with enough force to splinter the glass in a burst of crystal fragment and red, red wine.
Jamie stands holding the remaining end of the bottle, wide-eyed and horrified. Freed from her grip, I stagger, clutching my head in both hands. Emily spits a profanity and presses her palm to her temple.
It comes away bloody.
Whatever she must be feeling at being struck around the head by her presumable lover is surpassed; irrelevant in what is now veritable insanity, rationality crushed like fine bone in fury's scarlet fist. She turns her attention to Jamie, tilting her head from side to side to crack the stiffness from her neck. My skull is ringing, ringing, and I can't see properly; Emily moves in and out of my sight in a blue-tinted nightmare, battered and bearing a gash to her head like some gruesome rendition of war paint.
However, before she reaches Jamie – who is holding his broken bottle with white-knuckled terror – the door opens.
We all turn around.
Emily visibly falters. Jamie's shadow stands in the hallway, darker, slicker, with a defining restlessness in his expression that I recognise from my few face-to-face encounters with this man; a movement behind his pupils, an unplaceable motive in his smile.
Emily looks at Jamie, then Moriarty, then at Jamie again.
I watch the tension in her shoulders slacken. She looks around at her audience, numb in confusion.
And then it clicks.
"What a reunion," says Moriarty. He steps into the room, his hands in his pockets, and addresses his brother in what must be the first time in thirty years. "All this time and no contact. It wouldn't have hurt to send a card."
Jamie couldn't move if he tried, clutching the broken remnants of his bottle as if his very existence depended on it.
"You've been giving the Moriarty name a bad reputation, so I hear," he continues, tutting in disapproval. He lifts his gaze in wicked levity. "That's my job."
Emily moves, then. Jamie backs away automatically, I take a cautionary step to one side – but we are ignored as she approaches him, her expression thunderous. She comes to a short halt.
Jim regards her with lax amusement.
"Meet my brother."
The sound of her fist against his jawbone resonates with bone-cracking clarity – my hand goes up to my mouth, Jamie near drops his bottle in shock, and we watch as the smile is, quite literally, struck off James Moriarty's face.
"Bastard."
I keep quiet, fearful in the knowledge that sudden sound might re-direct her attention in our direction, and watch as she wrenches the door open – red-faced, eyes bright – then slams it shut, leaving the wood vibrating on its hinges. We listen to the harsh tap of her heels on the marble outside.
I swallow thickly. Jamie is noticeably shaken.
Moriarty traces the welt across his cheek, dabbing the blood with his finger and inspecting the smudge of red gloss on its tip. He smiles, then; a hollow smile, devoid of any real humour, all white teeth and no substance.
"Feisty, isn't she?"
~~~~~~
-Emily-
~~~~~~
I knock softly on the rosewood door, praying that I've located the correct hotel – twenty-four hours have elapsed since I left the penthouse, and I've spent my time in a cheap motel on the outskirts of Holborn, scouring digitalised hotel records and security footage to pinpoint his new location.
It certainly fits the trend. Ivan lives a life of intensive luxury, and there is no shortage of opulence here; it is everywhere, from the quartz flooring – white, veined with pink and flecks of silver – to the vast windows, draped in amber and heavy with beadwork. I wonder if it becomes tiring, this overindulgence, this gold-dusted world, this existence of alcohol and wealth and three-women-a-night.
If it is, he doesn't show it.
I'm restless as I wait, grappling with the anger that refuses to settle in my gut; that feeling, when I saw Millie and the brother locked in their awkward embrace, has not faded – it stings more than the smile on Jim's face when he walked into the room. He saw the violent manifestation of my disbelief, he saw the hurt. It is a decay, and one that has wormed its filthy way inside my skull and taken root, lashing the curved interior with rot – an emotion I can't afford to feel.
I loathe Jim for making me vulnerable.
Frustrated by the lack of response, I seize the door handle and force it down in temper. There's a click, a snap, and the sound of metal cogs scattering on quartz. I kick it open.
His blazer is hanging from a pearlised hook – the same simple, black piece with the satin lining – and I relax marginally, knowing I've found him and not some poor family on a celebratory holiday. I hear a noise from the adjacent room, something metallic, muted scraping, and I consider calling out, but I can't quite persuade my mouth to form words on command. There's food cooking, too – a distinctive, savoury smell I can't place.
Upon investigation, I find Ivan standing with his back to me in a deluxe kitchenette comprised of polished granite, preparing food, the hiss and spit of flame on metal a soft sibilance in the background. I watch him for a moment, as he reaches for the kitchen knife in its block, his shoulder blades sharp and muscle lean beneath the black fabric of his t-shirt.
I move softly, coming to a quiet halt behind him and inspecting the contents of the pan – something sautéed and decidedly vegan – before standing on the balls of my feet and lifting my mouth to his ear.
"Smells good."
He turns quickly, startled, silver flashes: I feel the tip of his kitchen knife, his makeshift defence weapon, at the dip of my collar bone. I raise my eyebrows and lift my arms in mock surrender. It takes him a second to recognise me, and when he does, he closes his eyes, exhales slowly and presses the flat of his blade to his chest in exaggerated relief–
"Bozhe moi." He shakes his head, then smiles, relaxing his stance. "You will kill me yet."
"Not if I can help it."
Ivan spins the knife in his hand, forcing it down into the chopping board. I breathe shallowly, overwhelmed by the smell and the colour and the red haze that refuses to leave my head. I'm still shaken with adrenaline; humming with an unnatural energy, vicious in my impatience.
"I have tried to contact you–"
"Change of plan. New phone," l say, my laugh a little shrill.
"You have come to tell me this?"
"No," I say, wondering if my intention has leaked into my expression. "Not exactly."
"Why?"
I lick my teeth, undecided, then settle on the perfectly uninspiring excuse: "No reason. Thought I'd drop by."
"Хорошо." He gestures at the cooking food. "Please, stay. I have enough for two – and too much to drink. No wine, though. I am not English enough." Ivan smiles, pointing to the vodka on the counter. "How do you say it?"
"Spirits."
He laughs. "Spirits. You have the strangest words." When I do not respond, he looks at me, carefully. "You are not happy."
I make a wordless noise at the back of my throat. Ivan frowns.
"What is it?"
I consider telling Ivan the truth behind yesterday's explosive encounter, but instead find myself lying, speaking quickly to compensate for the lapse in my conviction.
"I'm making no headway."
"Headway?" He tests the word, replacing the sought-after 'w' with his native 'v'.
"Progress." I point to my bruised face. "With Trisha's killer. You told me Jim's brother had been in contact with some big names. He really didn't look like the type of man who enjoys slicing and sleeping with his women."
"No?"
"I'd bet money he'd keel over at the first drop of blood. Necrophilia seems out of the question."
"It is all rumour in my world. I can only tell you what I hear."
"I know," I sigh, unsatisfied.
"I will keep listening. Do not lose hope." Ivan lifts his hand up, hesitating by my mottled jaw. "May I?"
I nod, and try to keep still as his thumb brushes the gash at my temple.
"Fresh. This is a new wound."
"It doesn't make much difference."
He rests his palm on my cheek. "There is still swelling. You left hospital too soon, lisichka."
The word hospital brings with it recollections of Jim, and thought of Jim is accompanied by a flare of fury so acute, it is all I can do not to sob with the bitterness of it all. The anger has lost its power, reduced to the despairing kind, the hopeless tug at the flame cord; it weakens me, and I am fighting in vain, struggling against nothing but my own, wretched sentiments.
Despair makes me reckless.
Seized by a desperation to prove myself better than this crippling jealousy – it hurts to give it a name – and show Jim Moriarty just how irrelevant he is to my cause, I surrender to the indulgence that has been diluting my resolve for far, far too long.
I act without thought, without hindsight, without sense; I take Ivan's jaw in my hands, skin hot, stubble rough under my palms, and pull his head down, cutting off his sentence with the forceful collision of bruised lips and a lying mouth.
It is unexpectedly chaste: not a kiss, as such, because there is no mutual movement – after holding my position for a minute, I fall back on my heels, underwhelmed.
The time it takes for me to register this disappointment is enough for him to recover from the initial shock–
And then Ivan Yakovich is in his element.
The chopping board – knife, contents and all – is swept to one side, and I am hoisted with an ease that tells me I'm by no means the first woman to find myself on his kitchen counter. My arms are lifted up, over his shoulders, and then his mouth is on mine and his fingers are caught at the nape of my neck and his lips, his lips are sweet, his tongue sweeter – I can smell the lingering notes of casino smoke and cologne on his skin, the hints of a man defined by sex and money and foreign appeal.
It is intoxicating.
His hands stop at the convex jut of my hipbones and I'm pulled forwards, so that my chest is flushed against his and I become pliant; uncharacteristically, impossibly pliant, drunk on this slower movement, on these deliberate actions. The aggression I've come to crave no longer features in the mechanisms of my mind – I don't want it, I don't need it, not now, because this is an intensity I am not accustomed to; I lap it up, savour it.
See, I think to myself, triumphant as my fingers find the hem of his shirt and grace the coveted skin underneath, the dips of tensed muscle, the supple sinew between each rib. There is no co-dependency. I'm not tied to that man.
Ivan's hands catch my own mid-exploration.
Gently, but with a deliberate firmness, my arms are moved to my sides. The contact ceases. I make a yearning noise that is so softly pitiful, I shock myself.
His voice is patchy. "Look at me."
I open my mouth to protest.
"Look at me," he repeats. I oblige unwillingly. "You are unhappy with Mr Moriarty."
"Unimportant."
Ivan laughs, breathlessly. "I know it. I am not taking what you do not want to give."
"What?"
"James Moriarty would not want to see this."
"I don't give a damn what Jim Moriarty wants to see."
"You do not want this."
"Do I look like–"
The flame beside me cuts off my indignant interruption. Whatever was previously burning – left to char uninhibited – has spontaneously combusted. Ivan says something short and sharp in Russian and grabs the flaming skillet pan, tossing it into the nearby sink and twisting the tap. The fire hisses in fury, then dies.
Ivan looks at me. I blink, neck flushed, thoroughly rumpled. We look at the pan, still sizzling weakly.
We start to laugh.
He offers me his hand. I take it, and am helped down, brushing my skirt and straightening my blazer. There's flour on the satin, the waistband has twisted, and my shirt has come untucked – but I feel no shame. In fact, there's a thrill in this state of wanton unkempt, knowing that I could be skinned alive for my actions but choose to continue nonetheless; an act of dangerously heady rebellion.
"Come," he says, keeping hold of my hand. "I will drive you back, before I am arrested for arson."
I allow him to lead me from hotel room to lobby, his fingers warm and grip light, and return the young receptionist's glare with a saccharine smile of my own. The underground car park is similar to Jim's in its size, with both men enjoying the luxury of priceless vehicles at their immediate disposal. It must be part of the criminal package. I watch the beads of rainwater burst on the windscreen as we drive, romanticising the glowing circles of approaching car lights – balls of luminescence in yellow and red – against the black night; it is only when Ivan pulls up beside the penthouse building do I snap out of my soft haze and truly understand the enormity of the task in front of me.
It is the silent promise of a second encounter, the hint of illicit possibility between us, that keeps me going.
~~~~~~