The Beauty Who Loved Him by Bethany-Kris

4.

I’m where I want to be.

Vaslav was left to ponder those words while he should have been enjoying the Olivier salad and sourdough rye bread Mira had made to go with the dark roasted coffee to wash the dense food down. Instead, he’d made it halfway through his lunch as Vera’s conversation trailed on with her father and Vaslav made no effort to engage.

He didn’t care to talk.

He’d rather think.

Obviously, the food he promised to get ready on the rear porch didn’t even get unpacked. He’d been too busy eavesdropping on the terse, and sometimes loud, conversation between Demyan and his daughter. Not that Vera mentioned that when she finally came through the front doors to find he’d left it sitting on the dining room table inside the house.

They did get the food to the back, though.

At least, while he watched the lake nobody seemed to care if he wasn’t involved and engaged with their discussion.

“December first, I think,” Vera said, drawing Vaslav from his pensive thoughts.

Only because Demyan said, “Your birthday?”

“My birthday,” she agreed.

“For what?”

Vaslav’s sudden emergence into the conversation between a father and daughter, not caring who he interrupted, earned him an annoyed glance from Demyan. Vera, on the other hand, only peered up at him with sweetness. It curved her lips into an indulgent smile and brightened her eyes.

“You were spacey for a minute. I didn’t even think you were listening.”

“Hmm.” Vaslav nodded at the lake, and lifted a hand from the table to point at the speck of black emerging from the thick bush on the other side of the shallow end of the lake closest to the porch. “I was keeping an eye on Marrow.”

The dog made a loud splash when he jumped in. The only other noise but for the birds in the trees that would soon be leaving for the winter and the hum of the generator at the far end of the house keeping all the decorative lights that hung overhead stay lit. In the shade of the tall oaks, it allowed the porch a bit of light in the daytime.

At the other side of the table, Demyan made an anxious noise. “If that fucking dog comes near this porch, I’m going in the house.”

Vaslav didn’t hide his chuckle. “Ah, he was only a little bothered about you last night. Give it a rest.”

“And what about this morning?” Demyan demanded.

Well ...

Vaslav considered the aggressive behavior the dog displayed while observing the two men pounding in stakes that morning for the fence line. Marrow barked for a solid half hour before finally slinking away to jump in the lake, clearly disturbed by his master’s new companion. Nonetheless, during that half hour of non-stop barking, if Demyan even looked the dog in the eye, Marrow started creeping forward in preparation for attack, teeth bared.

“He doesn’t like guests,” Vaslav said with a shrug. Then, he tossed a tight-lipped smile Demyan’s way, adding, “Or men.”

“Can’t imagine where he picks up that attitude.”

Vera laughed into her hand but quickly hid her amusement in a bite of sourdough bread. He enjoyed the way her blush crept up her throat the longer his piercing stare lingered on her. Does she feel the way she tests every ounce of self-control I have just by being near?

He could kiss her giggles quiet. Or he could even enjoy the way she’d fluster and push back against him if he felt like correcting her behavior when men of certain status sat down at a table together. Both would end in a way he liked ... eventually. Whether it was angry or not. Vas got off either way.

Vaslav couldn’t say that for the other two people at the table.

Damn it all to hell.

Vaslav raised his brow and observed Marrow paddle closer in their direction. Every few paddles followed a loud bark that echoed over the lake, and snapped back across the property straight into Vaslav’s brain. “A breed thing, I think.” Whistling high, he called to the pup, “Get a stick to toss, you shit. Don’t come over here with that bark of yours again. You’re making my head pound on a good day, Marrow.”

“Right, a breed thing,” Demyan muttered. “That’s what’s some shit, right there.”

Another rough laugh escaped Vaslav, although at least he did try to hold it in. “I can hear the Brooklyn in you there a bit. It’s been a while since I’ve been around to that side of the world, let me say.”

“Adrik sends his regards from Jersey.”

“What did he have to say about your trip here when you told him your plans?” Vaslav asked.

An honest curiosity. Adrik Vasin, whose son Koldan had taken over his organization a while back, was one of the few vory in America that Vaslav would sit down to do business with should the need arise. Mostly because men like Adrik had started their life in the brotherhood in their motherland, and still paid respects to where they came from.

He appreciated loyalty.

Even if it did come in the form of a three-percent cut off the top of a multi-billion dollar smuggling and trafficking organization. Cocaine and weapons, for the most part. Not that it mattered. The monetary value made the difference.

“Well?” Vaslav asked after a noticeable pause from the man across the table.

Demyan, distracted by the way Vera smiled at the paddling dog who actually was searching for a floating stick in the lake, glanced his way. “He didn’t tell me anything. My father, on the other hand ... all they have to do at their age is talk. He told Anton I had a death wish. The message got passed along.”

“But apparently,” he mused, “not heard.”

Demyan wisely chose to be quiet.

Peering down at Vera again where she sat at the outdoor dining table next to him, Vaslav asked, “And what about December first, yeah? I didn’t forget.”

She finally took her gaze away from the dog in the water who had, in fact, found a stick. He really needed to join the pup down here more. It was Marrow’s favorite spot.

For obvious reasons.

“I thought it would be a good date,” Vera told him.

“Yes, but for what?”

She gestured at her father. “He asked if I’d picked one for the wedding.”

Ah.

There was the missing piece; the one bit of missing information from the initial conversation he hadn’t been properly engaging at the table.

His surprised hum had Vera’s brow lifting higher before she popped a piece of sliced pickle into her mouth, and then sucked the juice from the tip of her thumb. The staple at any Russian’s meal, the pickle gave her something to chew around her barely suppressed grin.

She put him on the spot.

Knew she’d done it.

And liked it.

Cheeky witch.

Vaslav’s gaze narrowed slightly at her challenge.

He considered asking her right then and there where she planned on sleeping that night. He had an opinion on the matter, of course, but did she want to discuss it right now?

“Vera,” he warned.

The tone should have done it.

A dainty shrug fell from her bare shoulder where the neckline of her dress draped down to expose everything from her collarbone to her shoulder blade. “Yeah. It’ll be my birthday and our anniversary on the same day.”

Vera’s gaze drifted her father’s way when Demyan said, “I hear a common complaint between wives and their husbands is the man being forgetful of certain times of the year. Like important dates. Could be useful.”

Vaslav stiffened, turning to ice in an instant. The switch that flipped on in his brain went from zero to sixty instantly. It would have been nothing, meant nothing, for him to reach across the table in that moment to get a better grip on Demyan’s head to smash it through the pristine glass beneath their plates.

He didn’t know where the self-control came from that held Vaslav back from giving into the sudden, intrusive violent urges toward his unwanted and resentful guest, but it may have been the fact that being near Vera made him ... happy.

Or something like it.

Content, at least.

It just wasn’t enough to stop him from wanting to kill her father.

He didn’t know if the other two people at the table noticed the sudden change in his demeanor. Frankly, he didn’t give either of them the time to before he’d stood up from the table with enough abruptness to make Vera jump beside him. Her shocked, widening stare followed him as he scrubbed a hand down his thicker, but not by much, growth of facial hair on his throat, and walked away from the lunch without a single glance back.

Utensils clattered at his departure.

“Vas?” Vera called. “Where are you going?”

It was only a few strides from the table before he slid through the sliding glass doors leading into the rear rooms of the guesthouse’s ground level.

“What happened?” Demyan asked, his voice fainter with every step Vaslav took further away.

“I don’t know,” he heard Vera say. “Just ... give me a second, Papa.”

Chair legs scraped against the deck wood.

Vaslav kept walking even when she called his name again. He needed a second, too.

Or perhaps more than a few.

By the time Vera had caught up to him, he’d paced a line in the dirt at the front of the house and finally settled on jumping into the driver’s seat of the side-by-side. Vera came to stand just beyond the opening from door with her arms folded over her chest. He considered not even giving her an explanation, to let the dust from the ROV’s tires say his goodbye.

The knot of confused sadness between her eyes when she tipped her head to the side stopped him from turning the engine over. The loosely tied laces of the hiking boots on her feet spoke to how hastily she’d pulled them on trying to get out of the house.

“What are you doing?” Vera asked. “I thought we were having lunch?”

Jaw tight, he shook his head once and forced out a clipped, “No.”

“What happened? Something just happened, right?”

“Are you staying?” he asked.

Vera blinked. “What?”

“Your father will not be leaving this property unless it is to leave the country. So, if you have any plans to stay with him for an extended visit, let me know now. I’ll have your things brought from the city.”

“Vaslav.”

Her quiet exclamation of his name only irritated him further.

It wasn’t even her damn fault.

“How am I going to get back to the house?” she asked then.

“Walk.”

It wasn’t that far. Especially in her current footwear with decent ankle support.

“But tie up those goddamn laces if you get any bright plans,” he said for her benefit.

Vera’s brow jumped high when he turned the key forward, and the engine of the side-by-side roared to life. Over the growl, she yelled, “You can bring my things!”

He glanced her way.

Vera, even scowling at him, was terribly beautiful in front of a backdrop of gray bricks and green vinery. “I would like to spend time with my father as long as you don’t intend to make it a hassle the entire damn time.”

Fair enough.

He nodded once.

Vera’s defensive stance loosened as her arms fell to her sides. “I just don’t understand ... you brought me down to have lunch, we were only talking, Vas. This is my father, who by the way, I know you’re aware how long it’s been since I’ve spent meaningful time with him, so can’t you just—”

“That’s the only reason he’s even alive.”

Her lips flattened into a grim line. “He didn’t do anything!”

“He’s here.”

“You brought him here!” she shouted.

A second time.

Despite his calm tone.

“No, he came here,” Vaslav corrected, “knowing you were involved in some way with me and expecting at the same time that I wouldn’t intend to have words with him in the meantime. Foolishness. A stupid thought for a man like him. Or maybe he loves you too much to think about the nuances of a man in my position.”

“Maybe that’s what it is,” she said.

His confusion tightened his shoulders. “I don’t—”

“Your position. The real, and proverbial. I don’t have a clue about any of it.” She waved two dainty hands his way and added, “What I see is what I get with you. You keep expecting me to put the rest of the puzzle together but apparently, I also have to make the pieces.”

“You’ll run,” he said.

Vera’s head shook gently. “What does that even mean?”

“Everything you think you want to know ... once you do, you’re gone. And then I’ll have to chase you, kisska. You won’t give me a choice, and as you like to point out, I’ve already taken quite a few of those away from you. What’s really left? How rose-tinted would you like your life to be from here on out, or should I just drop the pretense altogether?”

“Go to hell,” she muttered weakly.

Vaslav laughed, cold and uncaring when he focused his attention back on the wheel of the side-by-side. “You think I’m not a monster beneath the smile you’re so fond of; you think I won’t hurt you because you crave my touch. You have no idea how wrong you are. Vera, I won’t even say sorry.”

“You don’t know that,” she called over the metal clang of him roughly shifting the side-by-side into gear. “You don’t know what I’ll do; you don’t even know if I love you, and I bet that’s what scares you, too. I thought you didn’t like to be called a coward? So why are you being one?”

His foot slammed hard into the brake before the bike could roll more than a few inches forward, and his head snapped to the side. “Kisska—”

The front door slammed shut.

He didn’t even see her go inside.

You silly woman, he thought.

She didn’t fully comprehend what she had just asked for; her unintended challenge met its mark like an arrow straight through the heart. A love like his would absolutely ruin her.

Vaslav shot one last glance at the front door before he hit the gas. Well, then—game on, Vera.

*

The following chilly, damp night found Vaslav reclining in one of the wicker chairs as the sun started to set beyond the trees. Not with the rest of the set in front of the outdoor fire pit, but rather, further down on the hill where the taller grass swayed at his knees when he stood.

Halfway between the house and the tree line.

Almost nowhere.

It felt like it when he was drunk, anyway.

The tip of his finger toyed with the rim of the mostly empty bottle of vodka where it rested between the legs of the chair. It wouldn’t be long before he couldn’t stand to sit outside in nothing more than a thick sweater and denim. He might as well take advantage of the good weather. Or rather, what remained of it.

With eighty proof swimming thick in his veins, he could almost be lulled into a comfortable nap with his neck resting on the curved back of the chair, and each of his legs stretched out in cool, tall grass. If it weren’t for the familiar growl of an engine ...

Sighing when he heard tires rolled to a stop on nearby gravel, Vaslav instantly regretted not downing what remained of the almost two liters of vodka when he still had the chance. That time ran out the second his newly appointed nurse, Igor did not think that joke was funny, knew Vaslav had access to the liquor.

“Where did you get the vodka? Did you hide that from me?” Igor demanded, his every word punctuated by a stomped foot through the grass.

Vaslav didn’t dignify Igor’s question with a response, but he did straighten up a little more in the chair. Just in enough time to watch the man yank the bottle up from the ground. Then, he promptly tipped it over and dumped the two or three mouthfuls that remained onto the ground at his feet.

“Waste of good vodka,” Vaslav cursed at his friend. “I should kill you—”

Igor let out a hard exhale, and his stare nailed into a suddenly still Vaslav in the chair. “Do you want the fucking seizures to stop, or not?”

“Right now, it’d just be good if the sky would stop swirling.” Vaslav glanced down, muttering, “And the ground, too.”

Igor spat a Russian curse and whipped the bottle to the ground. The thick glass didn’t even crack, and even bounced a little before coming to a stop at Vaslav’s feet.

“No alcohol, no Vicodin, you know this!”

“But I didn’t agree,” Vaslav replied through a grinding jaw.

He half agreed, to be frank. Hence the molar pain from his sore jaw because he’d been twenty-four hours since his last dose of an opioid narcotic, and of any pill, actually. He couldn’t say as much for the liquor, but that wasn’t because he’d been craving vodka.

Vaslav simply wanted to sleep.

It wasn’t asking much, but if he couldn’t take his regular cocktail of medication to get through a day and night, then living was a second-by-second battle for survival at times. Like now.

Who would have known that mixing nearly a liter of vodka a day with a handful of pills meant to either help his head, his gut, or his sleep wasn’t exactly great for his health? Once Igor learned Vaslav had been in contact with the doctor responsible for the newest file on his desk, the one full of reports on brain scans and imagery, he didn’t waste time getting on the phone.

To the doctor in question, that was.

Vaslav wasn’t interested in being the guinea pig for anyone’s game of Ring Around the Medications, but a conversation with the doctor over the phone, while Igor listened in, at least convinced him of one thing.

The seizures were likely his own doing.

Accidentally, of course, as Doctor Bogdan Nikitin had opted to carefully explain to Vaslav. He couldn’t just mix pills to his liking even if he did have ready access and it seemed to make things better for a short time. Add liquor into his cocktail, and blood toxicity was a real possibility. The man offered to do bloodwork to confirm, which Igor said Vaslav should do, but he refused.

He’d go clean first.

No pills.

No mixing.

Less stress could help too, the doctor had said just before Vaslav ended the conversation without a proper goodbye.

He’d barely wanted to make the phone call, let alone get an entire list of orders he was required to follow that would do nothing to make his days bearable.

Bullshit.

Every bit of it.

Unless it worked, he mused.

Vaslav chuckled at his inner thoughts, and the action wasn’t missed by Igor who shot him a curious, but not amused, glance.

“Did you really have to guzzle it while I was down the hill?” he asked Vaslav.

He shrugged. “You would have tried to take it from me.”

“You sound like a child.”

Vaslav chuffed. “You’re entitled to your wrong opinion.”

“Vas.”

Ugh.

“I need to sleep tonight,” he said. “Give it twenty minutes, and the vodka will finish me right off.”

“Try a hot shower. I’ll even help you back to the house.”

“While a knife stabs through your eyeball?” Vaslav shot back. “That’s going to be a hard task for you.”

“Knock it off.”

“Ah.” He waved Igor off. “I let you clean out the house of any pills.”

“I thought liquor, too.”

Vaslav squinted at that. “I need something.”

And it couldn’t be a half of a pack of sleeping tablets, according to that prick in the city. Not on top of everything else.

“At least tonight—Christ, it’s only been a day,” Vaslav added.

Not even a good day, for that matter. If he were an honest man, Vaslav might admit that having Vera as close as he did, but not within the four walls of his own home, did not help the matter of his mood or the constant churning in his gut.

“You’re going to kill yourself,” Igor said.

Vaslav let out a heavy breath. “Maybe, yeah.”

“You don’t have to speed it up, no?”

The morbid joke landed perfectly for a tipsy Vaslav who knew better than to down nearly two liters of vodka within the time span it would take his man to drive the ROV down to the guesthouse and power off the generator system for the evening. That didn’t mean he intended on telling Igor he was right, though.

“Are they fighting, do you think?” he asked without warning.

Igor seemed to know who he meant without the explanation. “Wouldn’t you know better than me? I found you pounding in fence posts with the man this morning again.”

Vaslav rolled his eyes, refusing to admit that the entire time he was down the hill earlier in the day, Vera had all but refused to speak to him. Clearly, she still had feelings about their discussion the day before. “That’s the only thing I like about him; he’s willing to do a job with me.”

“I offered to do that job with you,” Igor pointed out.

“You talk while we do it. And you didn’t answer me. Are they getting along?”

Igor sucked on his two front teeth, muttering, “I’m not sure. He’s not that interested in having a conversation with me whenever I’m around. I don’t take offense. Her father isn’t exactly here to chat with me, is he?”

Vas tipped his head to the side in silent agreement, but then he replied, “He also doesn’t have a choice but to be where he is.”

Neither did she, in a way.

Igor passed Vaslav a wary glance. “Kiril still doesn’t believe you won’t cut off his dick for going into Vera’s place last night to pack a weekend bag.”

“He does understand that it would have been already done, yes?” Vaslav asked back. “I told him to do it. I got on the phone myself.”

The other man only shrugged.

“Explains why he’s been missing all day,” Vaslav said to himself.

“Yeah, well ... You know you’re going to puke all that vodka up, yeah?” Igor asked, his concerned tone warring with his disgust.

Yes.

Yes, he did. Vaslav could already feel it sloshing because he’d taken that forty-percent way too fast for his stomach and liver. Yes, he’d puke until he couldn’t anymore.

And then he would feel like absolute death.

“But I’ll sleep,” Vaslav mumbled.

Like a fucking rock.

That’s what mattered.