The Beauty Who Loved Him by Bethany-Kris

18.

I hate the snow. Ihate the snow. I hate the snow.

Vaslav had always been better suited for warmer weather. His mother took him on a vacation to a private island in the Maldives when he was barely six, and a part of him never left those warm beaches. His mood drastically improved based on the temperature outside. There was absolutely no way to ignore the cold creeping into his bones when the snow started to fall from the wide-open skies.

The one thing he hated more than snow and cold weather was his migraines, but as he’d stopped self-medicating his constant pain, Vaslav was left with his ever-constant companion throughout many of his days. At least, while he rested lounging on the wide steps at the front of the house, the falling snow gave him something else to scowl about.

For the moment.

He could always get back to the migraines later, after all. It wasn’t like they would soon leave.

“Look at it,” he bitched under his breath. “All white and wet.”

Igor grunted where he worked at the rear of the parked SUV. “And cold.”

“And that and that, too!”

“Hmm.”

The inquisitive note from Igor had Vaslav sitting up on the steps. The thickness of his tweed coat was not nearly enough to keep him protected from the quickly plummeting temperatures, but he barely shivered when a good gust of chilly wind sent snowflakes dancing over the steps.

And him.

Fuck the cold.

He had other things to focus on now.

“What was that for?” he asked Igor. “That hmm.”

“Were you playing with the cash?”

Ah.

Vaslav fell back to the snowy steps, even more unpleasant by how much had managed to gather on the stone in the fifteen minutes that he’d been outside. “I may have broken a few bands here and there, tossed around some bills ...”

“A few?” Igor asked, leaning back far enough that Vaslav could see the way he arched an eyebrow in question. “More like damn near every one. In all six bags, Vas. I wondered why the duffels were lumpier.”

He didn’t see the problem. Checking the stacks upon stacks of bills served a purpose. More than one, even, and he didn’t intend on sharing them with Igor.

“Lucky for your accountant that I didn’t find anything wrong, no?” Vaslav returned.

Igor sighed, leaning back into the rear hatch of the SUV with a grumbled bullshit or something of a similar sort. Louder, he told his boss, “The neuroticism is getting out of hand. If you’re willing to talk to the doctor about other things, perhaps that’s something else you could bring up, yeah? I’m just saying. You could have picked rolls at random and checked, you didn’t have to check every fucking one. There’s a hundred million dollars here in various bills. Is this all you did for the week?”

Vaslav waved Igor’s nonsense off. He didn’t need to be reminded that he could have spent his week, and his current Friday night, doing a hundred other things than what he had and currently was. “I was bored, and had nothing else better to do.”

For a few too many nights.

He blamed Vera for that.

And her little friend, Hannah, too.

Just because Vaslav accepted the fact that Vera had a life outside of the one he created between him and her didn't mean he liked it. He was not particularly good at sharing things. Especially if said thing happened to be a woman he thought about for nearly every waking second of his days. She probably featured in a great deal of his dreams, too, when he was lucky enough to have them, but if Igor wanted to talk about things getting out of hand with Vaslav, this was a far better topic.

“It’s not normal,” he uttered.

The zip of bags followed Igor stepping back from the SUV and yanking the rear hatch shut. “What isn’t?”

“How often I find myself thinking about Vera.”

Or maybe it wasn’t healthy. That was a better word. Normal was a state of mind Vaslav hadn’t been able to relate to in decades, so perhaps that wasn’t the best point of reference.

“It’s all the time,” he added when Igor kept quiet, allowing his boss to speak. “About stupid things, too. How she’s put her hair today, or what she’s wearing. I even wonder if she’s eating!”

Which might not be a bad thing if it wasn’t constant. The obsessive thoughts only eased when Vera was near enough for him to see and touch, but that was because then he could focus all that energy and silent fixation into reality.

Igor’s lifting brow said what he didn’t. The sight alone was enough to irritate Vaslav to the ends of the earth and back. He knew how he sounded, he didn’t need Igor’s fucking expression to spell it out, too.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he muttered.

Igor cleared his throat. “I’m not looking at you—”

“You are like that. Big eyes and high eyebrows. Just because you don’t speak doesn’t mean I can’t hear.”

“Hear what?”

The sight of a black mass bounding around the corner of the house stopped Vaslav from answering the question. Marrow, with snowflakes clinging to his shaggy black hair, made his way along the side of the house until he came to the steps where he took them one at a time to the very top. Never once did the pup look at Igor, and he certainly didn’t bother with Vaslav.

At the front door, Marrow plunked his heavy backside down, tipped his snout high, and started to howl. One long whine after another. Each louder than the last.

Igor cringed at the sound. “Another reason to hate the winter ... that thing likes the house.”

“He’s not a thing.”

“He’s not a normal dog, either,” Igor returned just as fast. “He’d be shot anywhere else, Vas. No one would put up with him the way you do.”

Well ...

Maybe the dog was just misunderstood.

On his fifth howl, Marrow turned until his dark eyes found Vaslav. It was almost like the dog’s soul was screaming through his black eyes for his master to listen—get me the fuck out of here. Vaslav wasn’t the only beating heart on the property that hated the snow more than the sight of their own reflection.

“I know, it’s hard when the bunnies turn white, and you can’t see them in the snow, huh?” he asked the dog.

Marrow howled at that, too.

Vaslav cackled right back.

Finally, the front door opened a crack. Barely an inch, but it stopped Marrow’s howl instantly. Suddenly, the usually feral and wild dog was an overgrown puppy, and he laid himself flat to the stone step with a fast-wagging tail. He whined at the woman eyeing him from beyond the front door.

Mira tried to keep a serious face. “Is it cold?”

Marrow didn’t move. Except for his tail.

He didn’t make a sound, either.

“Shake first,” Mira said.

Standing the moment the words left her lips, Marrow turned into a ball of shuddering black fur and tumbling snowflakes. A second later, the door opened wider, and the dog stepped into the darkness inside. All the while, his fluffy tail wagged.

Igor shook his head when Vaslav turned back around with a chuckle.

“He barely even nips at her when he wants something like being let inside,” Igor pointed out. “See, he can be nice when he chooses to be. He never does that for me.”

“Jealousy is unbecoming.”

That had his man scoffing.

Hard.

“Right,” Igor choked out in a laugh. “A fucking joke, that.”

The noise between the men settled down while Igor hit the auto start on the SUV, and the engine purred to life. The smoke sputtered from the tailpipe, the only source of heat in the bitter chill of the air.

Igor checked his watch. “I better head out, then. You think?”

Vaslav didn’t even care about the time, or the length of it that it would take Igor to arrive at the meeting place. “What’s it matter if you’re late? The prick isn’t about to complain when he thinks you’re delivering him a hundred million dollars. Whether it’s five minutes or thirty, Feliks Abramov won’t give a shit as long as you show up.”

The bastard was who he was. Greedy to an extreme. Never willing to turn the chance to get one up on someone else down. If getting what he wanted meant doing exactly what he thought he had to, no excuses even if the demands by Vaslav included a last-minute meeting in practically the middle of nowhere to collect his money owed, then that’s precisely what Feliks would do. In the end, the man’s behaviors and motives stemmed from the same thing regardless of how it presented itself.

Manipulation.

Like leopards, Abramovs also couldn’t change their spots. Vaslav expected nothing less.

“A matter of semantics,” Igor responded dully.

“Or is it one of respect,” Vaslav returned, “that Feliks, mind you, has never deserved.”

Igor pondered that statement.

Vaslav let him.

Besides, he needed the moment to massage away some of the tension and pressure forming behind his eyeballs. He regularly considered carrying around a spork just in case the urge to spoon his eyes out of their sockets ever became too much. At this point, he might follow through.

“No matter why I decide to show up on time,” Igor said, bringing Vaslav back to the conversation at hand, “at the end of the day, I would just like to get this over and done with.”

“Right. One more thing crossed off your growing list.”

Igor grunted at that, spinning on his heels to head around the rear of the vehicle. “You said it, boss, not me.”

Igor squinted one eye up at the darkening sky. With the sun setting fast, soon the overcast grey would be a black canvas with no stars. Just silent snowfall for God only knew how many days.

“Any change on the weather report?” he asked.

“Expected to be mild next month.”

“Yeah, but that’s next month,” Vaslav mumbled.

“What’s that you said?” Igor asked, popping his head over the top of the SUV before he opened the driver’s door. “Did you say you wanted to come?”

No. That wasn’t what he said at all. Not even close.

But it wasn’t a bad idea.

“I suppose I better come,” Vaslav said, pushing off the steps to stand and taking the time to brush the wayward snowflakes from his jacket and dark wash denim jeans. It was the only time of year he cared to wear such a heavy, irritating fabric because it did okay in the cold. “Wouldn’t want you hitting a bump or something, and ruining everything before Feliks realizes what I’ve done.”

Igor’s blank stare over the roof of the SUV didn’t waver from Vaslav as he approached the vehicle. It was only once Vaslav came to stand at the passenger door that his head of security glanced to the rear with concern writing lines on his brow and bald head.

“You wanted to load the duffels up,” Igor said.

Bored with the obvious, Vaslav didn’t respond and instead, wrenched open the passenger side door.

“All the bands are cut, and the bags are diff—”

“Are we driving, or no?” Vaslav asked.

Igor openly glowered. “At least tell me what shit we’re about to step in before we do it.”

Vaslav grinned. “Trust me, this is better to watch.”