The Beauty Who Loved Him by Bethany-Kris

7.

Thwack.

Smack.

Thwack.

Smack.

Vaslav became lost in the rhythmic noise of the mallet hammers whacking in unison as the sound echoed over the lake. The final two thuds of his hammer, and his companion’s, coming down on their respective post stakes sounded different than the harder initial whacks.

Sturdier.

He moved for the pile of remaining stakes, only a half of a dozen, but the other man working side by side with him opted not to move. Passing the quiet Demyan a look as Vaslav chose his next post, he found him studying the peaceful water with fondness.

“My family has a lake property,” he said without warning.

It was the first piece of conversation either man offered the other that morning. Demyan’s fifth staying on the property.

“That so?” Vaslav asked.

Demyan nodded absentmindedly, but otherwise, he didn't pay Vaslav any mind as he went about tapping in the first six inches of the sharpened end of the stake where he’d marked the next hole six feet away from the last.

“Kept in the family,” Demyan explained. “The lake isn’t as large as this one. It’s fed by a similar landscape, the mountains.”

That was news to Vaslav. In all the research Igor had managed to do on the Avdonin family, a private lake property wasn’t one of the things to come up. Then again, if one looked on the deed of Vaslav’s home and property, there wasn’t any mention of a guesthouse, either. On purpose, of course. What people didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

“Ah,” Vaslav grunted, letting his first swing of the mallet come down hard on the flat end of the post. His companion remained silent and pensive while Vaslav worked on getting the post in. After he finished, the stake took an extra couple of whacks to get past a difficult section of hard-packed ground, Demyan still hadn’t moved to continue working. “Are we working, or talking?”

That caught the man’s attention.

“It’s not like you offer breaks,” came the retort.

It wasn’t even a hot one.

Vaslav barked a laugh. Those words coming from the same man who had already been shirtless and halfway through what remained of the posts before seven in the morning was a joke. “Let’s not pretend like you don’t like the work, comrade. You were the one up before the sun was to pound these in. I hadn’t even got down here yet, hmm?”

“A fair point.”

He thought so.

Still, the man didn’t move. Demyan had little to no interest in continuing the work of pounding in the last few stakes around the lake. In only a handful of days the two of them managed to surround the lake in the bare bones of what would become the fence. The project had started two years earlier when Vaslav began cutting trees and stripping the logs of bark to let them weather. That should have taken a year, at most.

Instead, it ended up being another.

The migraines kept him inside more often than they allowed him out. A shame, really, considering how much physical work helped Vaslav to deal with everything. From his constant, overwhelming emotions to the almost compulsive urges that rarely led him down beneficial paths, just getting outside to do something helped it all.

“What’s the problem?” he asked Demyan. Gesturing at the pile, Vaslav added, “We’re about done. I didn’t expect to get the perimeter of the lake done this fast. Either side of the road leading up to the house is next, yeah?”

Demyan squinted at him. “I’m not staying that long.”

“Good.”

That reply sent his companion's brow shooting up.

“You’re not a bad guest, though,” Vaslav added quickly.

Just so it was clear.

“I can’t say the same,” Demyan said, shrugging one bare shoulder as he reached for the gray button down he’d left hanging from the handle of a spaded shovel he’d stuck into the ground earlier. “You’re a terrible fucking host.”

“If you want a different reaction, then try a new action.”

Like not showing up without forewarning. Preferably, several months’ worth of notice. Not that he offered those details out loud. Demyan was a smart enough man to figure out all on his own why they were in the situation facing the two.

Demyan considered that for long enough that Vaslav figured work wasn’t going to continue anytime soon. He ended up using his last fence post as a resting spot for his arms while he stretched out the knots keeping his neck tight and tense.

“Why my daughter?”

“Did you love her mother?” Vaslav returned just as fast. “What was that like having a newborn in your arms as you stumbled into proper manhood while her mother’s body rotted?”

Demyan’s gaze snapped back to Vaslav’s in an instant, and he wasn’t shocked at all to find the fire staring back from Vera’s father. “That’s some nerve on you. How do you—”

“What, know that her biological mother is dead? That your wife is not her mother? Do you think she wouldn’t tell me those things?”

Not that it mattered.

Vaslav had the intel. Of course, Vera offered a personal perspective on the details of her very early life, but that didn’t factor into the question he posed to Demyan.

Through a clenching jaw, Demyan admitted, “To be honest, I don’t know anything she tells you. I barely even know what she thinks of you.”

Should that bother Vaslav?

It didn’t.

“And?” he asked.

“And?” Demyan parroted just as sharp.

“That’s what I said, wasn’t it?”

“You’re unbelievable,” the other man scoffed.

“Because I couldn’t care less if Vera chooses not to discuss personal things about me with her father?” Vaslav questioned.

“Da, her father,” Demyan spat.

Ah.

The defensiveness said it all.

“I get it,” Vaslav said, nodding more to himself than Demyan. He pointed a finger at the other man, saying, “Take that to her.”

“Take what to her?”

He wagged his still pointing finger up and down. “That. How you feel,” he explained, not hiding the disdain coating the final word. “Those sorts of things are not useful to or wanted by me.”

Demyan didn’t appear any more or less confused than he had only moments ago. “You don’t hear what I’m saying to you at all.”

It wasn’t even a question.

“Oh, no,” Vaslav muttered, pushing off the post and heading for the pile again, “I understand perfectly well that you have things to work out with your daughter, and while those same things may in some way involve me,” he said with a gesture toward his chest, “they don’t require me. Not my attention, or even a conversation. See, that’s the difference between how you feel and something I need to deal with.”

“Do you hear the way you talk?”

“Yes, like you’re a child.”

Who needed slow speech.

“It’s okay,” Vaslav told Demyan, “it took Igor a while to get the difference worked out, too. And now that I’ve pointed it out, I can get back to work.”

“You’re un-fucking-believable.”

Again with that.

Vaslav rolled his eyes so hard he thought he saw the back of his damn brain. “Get a new line, or get out of my face. I have things to do.”

He didn’t even hear Demyan come up beside him until the man’s foot landed on the next fence post Vaslav intended on picking up. He glared at the man’s expensive leather loafers. They certainly weren’t the type of footwear meant for the work they were doing, but to each their own. It wasn’t as if Vaslav gave the man the opportunity to properly pack for his trip.

“Move your foot,” Vaslav demanded.

Even he heard the dark edge to his tone.

The warning.

Demyan didn’t listen. “If you don’t give a shit that my daughter doesn’t care enough about the man she intends to marry to talk about him with her father, that’s your prerogative, but—”

“I will cut it off, Demyan.”

“I asked you a question, and the very least you could do is answer it.”

“With the mallet,” Vaslav uttered through clenched teeth.

And it would only be painful for one of them.

A beat passed between them before Demyan finally, wisely, pulled his foot back from the fence post. He saw the defeat in the man’s eyes while he did it. His chest deflated as Demyan took another step back and scrubbed a hand down his throat.

Vaslav stood straight instead of picking up the fence post. His stance on whether or not Vera opened up to her father about the two of them remained the same, indifferent if she did, pleased should she not. The question Demyan posed to him, however, wasn’t quite the same.

“I need a wife,” Vaslav said simply; the only information on the topic he would give, frankly. His health and life, never mind the state of those things, was not Demyan’s business or concern. “And she will more than do.”

Demyan blinked between furrowed brows. “And what if she wants a marriage that isn't based on someone else’s needs?”

“Why else do people marry other than needing each other?”

In one way or another ...

“Because they want to?” Demyan returned.

“Who said anything about me not wanting to marry her?”

“You’re impossible to have a conversation with. Do you realize that?”

Vaslav stared hard at the man, but admitted, “It’s something I’ve been told.”

More than once.

That wasn’t what Demyan wanted to hear. A fuck this might have been muttered but Vaslav couldn’t be sure. Frustrated, he shook his head and waved a hand in Vaslav’s direction before spinning on his heels like he might head for the guesthouse.

“Hey, we’re doing a job here!” Vas shouted at his back.

The man stopped, his back tensing. It took Demyan more than a handful of seconds before he finally turned around to face Vaslav again.

“What?” Demyan snapped.

His unwanted guest looked as if he was two seconds away from crossing the space between the two of them and going around with Vaslav. On another day, hell, Vaslav might invite Demyan to attempt a fight. He towered over the over six-foot tall man by a good few inches, but they were of a similar age and build.

Demyan had a handful of years on Vas at fifty-three, but he bet the man wouldn’t hesitate to throw the first fist, either. He respected that about Vera’s father. Like the fact he respected Demyan’s ability to work for hours doing hard labor without complaint, and that up until this moment, the two really hadn’t needed to talk while doing it.

They should go back to that.

Soon.

“Spasibo,” Vaslav thanked his companion.

“What on earth are you thanking me for?”

“The help with the fence, for one. Having an extra pair of hands around this week motivated me to get it done since you seemed so inclined to get up at the crack of dawn and work with me.”

Demyan’s tight lips caused each of his words to be clipped when he replied, “It wasn’t exactly like you gave me anything else to do.”

Vaslav pretended like he didn’t hear that. “And for your daughter, thank you for her. She’s kind when she shouldn’t be; beautiful when she’s sad; and I haven’t found a part of her yet that I would change. While I believe a lot of what makes Vera who she is came from within herself, there’s probably a lot of it that also came from you.”

Clenching a fist at his side like he was trying to rid some of the tension there, Demyan glanced over the lake. “Why did you ask me that about her mother?”

“Gia, was it? Curiosity.”

“You could not point out things you know about me,” Demyan replied curtly.

“Now you know how it feels. Multiply that by about a thousand when someone does it to me. I react accordingly.”

“A lack of self-control is a poor excuse for drugging me because I knew my daughter was involved with a man like you.”

Vaslav didn’t see the problem. “But now we both know how to behave, no?”

Hopefully, it was a lesson they both could learn from here on out. Neither of the two could afford a personal connection to the other without it interfering in their private businesses. While it might benefit Demyan to say he had a direct line to Vaslav Pashkov in the criminal world, it would only last as long as it took for Vas to pay the bounty.

“Yes, it was Gia,” Demyan said then with a single nod before his gaze swung back to Vaslav. “I’d known her since I was a boy. Barely as tall as my father’s knees. She’s my first memory, and then she was my last for a long time, too. I’ve respected you enough to put up with your madness while I was here, I know good and damn well why they call you the beast, so give me enough decency not to poke a raw nerve just because you have access to it.”

Vaslav flinched.

Demyan didn’t catch it.

“Then, I’m sorry,” Vaslav said.

“For what?”

“Asking at all.”

Demyan cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable at the turn their conversation had suddenly taken. “Is that your way of saying your question about Gia was cruel?”

“Or my way of saying I won’t do it again.”

It took a few seconds.

Eventually, Demyan nodded, muttering, “That’s appreciated.”

“Seems we have that in common, you and me. Love’s tragedy.”

It was the first time Vaslav hinted toward his first wife. He never even offered Irina’s name, didn’t plan to, and he tried not to consider if Demyan had found any information about his first marriage, and how it ended.

Not wanting to give the man time to prod on a topic that could very well cost him his life, Vaslav asked Demyan, “Anything else you want to say to me?”

“Is that an open invitation?” the man questioned. “Because yeah, I got a few things.”

Vaslav actually considered the request, and settled on, “Within reason.”

“Sounds like a death wish.”

“Pick your poison,” Vaslav offered with an open-armed shrug.

Demyan’s stance loosened as he chuckled. “You know what, all right, I’ll tell you what’s on my mind.”

“Is that going to get us back to the posts?”

The man acted like he didn’t even hear Vaslav.

“I’m not impressed that my almost twenty-seven-year-old daughter has gotten involved with a man nearly twice her age for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, has apparently taken little time to get to know said man, and has since decided to marry that man. And before you tell me to take that back to her, I’m not looking for your opinion on it, it’s just an observation that I would like you to be aware I have made. If you expect me to trust that she’s making her own choices and happily so, then that’s going to be difficult considering the way you behaved with me. All things considered, because it’s a lot, just to be fair.”

“Reasonable,” Vaslav said.

“And before I forget,” the man added.

Vaslav smirked. “What’s that?”

“If I don’t have a return date for my wife relatively soon, you’re going to have a second guest show up on your doorstep with even less warning than I.” Demyan twirled a finger between them, laughing dryly before he said, “And let me say, she’s not meant for this kind of shit.”

It was only the song of the woods that whispered between the two men or a beat or two.

“I’ll have a flight chartered within a day or two,” Vaslav said, “and I’ll make sure the wedding trip is not as ... distasteful. That feels like a good word for it, no?”

Demyan barked out a laugh, shocking Vaslav at the suddenness. “Less illegal, but who really gives a damn about that?”

Even he laughed at that.

Vaslav gestured to the remaining posts. “Are we working?”

“I still want a break.”

From him or the work?

Vaslav opted not to ask; he didn’t care. “Fine. And about Vera ...”

Demyan arched one brow higher than the other. “Yeah, I’ll take all the rest back to her, huh?”

Right.

All those feelings.

That wasn't what Vaslav meant, though.

“She’s safe with me,” Vaslav said.

And where she needs to be.

Demyan’s cheek twitched, and his jaw worked like he was chewing on the words to keep them from spilling from his mouth. It didn’t last long, but what came out wasn’t as bad as Vaslav thought it might be. Lucky for them both.

“Knowing what I do about you,” Demyan returned, “forgive me for not trusting that to be true.”

“Well,” Vaslav replied just as swift, “nobody said you had to.”

Hadn’t he made that clear?