A Bitch In Time (Marina: Part One: Naughty Nookie Series) (9 page)

I shake my head.  My hair
makes a whispery sound as it rubs against the cotton.  “No.  That’s
why I’m telling you about what I’ve done.  It’s the only reason.  I
wanted to make sure my presence at Blue Ridge wouldn’t cause the commune to be
in any danger.  That’s why I waited for you here and didn’t go there
directly.”  A laugh bursts free from me and it’s anything but
amused.  “I’ll have to go somewhere else then.  I’ll have to go into
hiding.”

The mess I’ve managed to make
of my life is astonishing. 

Go into hiding?  I shake
my head at the thought.  Like a fucking fugitive.

Where did it all go wrong?

I just wanted to help some
women.  I wanted to get them off the streets.  I say as much,
mumbling my past intentions to the room at large, not particularly to
Nathan.  Just to the ceiling. 

Maybe the plaster understands,
where he can’t?

I’m not one for
self-pity.  Never have been.  Losing Jimmy at a young age, I could
have sunk into the doldrums.  Faded away alongside him.  But I didn’t. 
I took charge of my life and did what I wanted instead of the fate my parents
had allotted me.

It seems thinking for myself
is a dangerous thing to do.

Footsteps tap against the
floor and they come close to me.  I wonder if he’s edging toward the door,
if he’s going to leave me, but then I sense his presence at my side and turn my
head to look at him.  His stare is somber.  Sad almost.

“What did they want from
you?  Really?”

I shake my head again and
frown.  “They want the brothel.  I wasn’t running some dive.  It
was a high-class place.  The clientele were politicians and the
like.  People with money.”

“You say it like it’s closed
now?”

My lower lip trembles. 
“It is.  They’ve been approaching me for a few months now.  Making
their intentions known. 

“They wanted to buy but I
didn’t want to sell.  Especially not to them. 

“Every girl on my team is a
friend of mine.  If I just sold Papillon to the mafia, then they’d be a
product to be distributed.  To me, they’re women.  Not a
commodity.  So I kept on saying no and then, they turned nasty.” 

I’ve never had an epiphany
before.  But with Nate’s hatred of my deceit blasting me, the truth comes
to me.

They burnt Mona’s building
down, because
I
was there.  Nate’s right.  If I go to Blue
Ridge, they’ll only follow and they’ll do the commune harm, because I’m there.

I’ve buried my head in the
sand, thinking they’re targeting the people I love.  They’re not. 
They’re just after me. 

“In what way?”

“They tried to kill me.”

His hiss has me turning my
head to look at him. 

Ordinarily, if we gather at
Mona’s place, dump that it is, we crash there.  Too many drinks have Eddie
and I snoozing on the couch and waking up to omelets and homemade muffins
provided by Mona Homemaker.  It was only a twist of fate that had someone
contacting Mona for some out-of-hours cleaning.  I was the target and the
rest was all collateral damage.

A part of me wonders which
person on my client list is worth all of this.  Because like Anna said, my
caliber of clientele has to be why the Russians have declared war on me.

His jaw is like iron. 
White with tension and his lips are flattened by his fury.  “Why can’t you
be normal, Marina?  Why have you always got to be so damned complicated?”

Stung, I sit up and flinch as
my head protests the swift movement.  That whiskey might not have been the
smartest decision I’ve made this morning.

“I resent that!”

“How can you after what you’ve
just told me?”  He shakes his head and moves away from the bed to stride
back and forth along the breadth of the room.  The carpet probably has a
groove in it from all the pacing.  It’s a path I’ve trodden many a time
during my stay.

I sink down to an elbow and
with lowered lashes, watch him.  “Do you hate me, Nate?”  I hate how
important the answer is and wish I hadn’t asked the question, but it popped
out.

Thank you,
whiskey.

His head whips around to look
at me and the swift frown and even faster sigh leave me in the dark. What he’s
thinking eludes me and it’s annoying how much his opinion means to me.

To the room at large, I
mutter, “You know, the last time I gave a damn about what a man thought of me;
Jimmy was still in the hospital.”

“Jimmy?”  Nate stops his
pacing and stares at me.

My head feels way too heavy
for my neck and the deadweight has it falling back so I’m looking at the
ceiling again.  “Yeah.  My husband.”

“You’re married?”

His astonishment has me
grinning.  A light chuckle escapes me and I shake my head.  “A few
months ago, I’d have said, I wish.”

“But not now?”

Even though my skull feels
like it has taken on the weight of a ten-pound dumbbell, I lift it and look at
him.  “No.  I don’t miss him anymore.”

“Why not?”  He takes a
step closer to me. 

“Because I have you.  Or,
I
had
you.”  My lower lip pops out.  “You don’t like me
anymore.”

“It isn’t about like, Marina.”

I shrug and the movement in my
position has my upper body jostling.  “Course it is.  You can’t
accept my past, so you don’t like my present.”

“Where’s Jimmy now?”  He
walks over to the side of the bed and stares down at me.

“Blue Ridge.”

“There’s no Jimmy there. 
I’d know him.”

“He’s on History Hill.”

Silence greets my words. 
“He’s dead?”

I smile at him, but even in my
semi-drunk state, there’s no humor in it.  “Yeah.  He died a few
weeks after we married.”

“How the hell did I not know
about this?”

I shrug again.  “The
folks at the genius farm aren’t ones for gossiping.”

He grimaces at the truth of my
statement and grits out, “Did you love him?”

“Very much.  He was the
first person to love me.  To give a damn.  And he left.  They
always leave me.  Always.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,
Marina.”  It doesn’t escape my attention that he’s taken a seat beside me.

I don’t want his pity. 
I’ve never wanted anyone’s.  And that’s why I moved away from Blue
Ridge.  That, and the memories.

“It is.”  My nod is
all-knowing.  “My parents were never there, until my sculptures started to
win awards.  Jimmy left.  He knew he’d leave me alone, but that didn’t
stop him.”

“If he was in hospital, then
he was ill?”

“Leukemia. Meant I couldn’t
even have his baby.  He was sterile.  He’d had it as a kid and it
kept on coming back.”

He ponders that for a few
seconds and then, in soft voice, asks, “What sculptures?” 

“They’re my specialty. 
If I wanted, I could live at the commune on my own right.  I don’t need
the Denison surname to be there.” I smile up at him.  “You really don’t
know me at all.”  The smile disappears.  “Nobody does.  They all
think they do.  But they don’t.  Not even Jimmy knew me.  He
loved me, though.  I forgave him for not realizing what I really am.”

“And what’s that?”

“Alone.”  I jerk my
shoulder, pretending I don’t really care.  When I really do.  “I
always will be.”

“That’s not true.  You’ve
got Mona and Eddie.  And you’ve got me.”

I snort.  “I have you on
your terms.  They’ll probably cast me out like you will, when they find
out what I’ve been doing.”  I shake my head.  “So quick to judge,
even though you don’t understand.”

“Explain it to me then.”

“I don’t want your pity,” I
snap, coming out of my happy-drunk to glare at him.  “Or guilt,” I
amend.  “I’ve already explained and you can’t accept me or my choices.”

He shakes his head.  “You
can’t deny it was a shock, Marina.”

“Don’t see why it matters. 
I don’t begrudge you your past.”

“I didn’t help women sell
their bodies.”

A huff escapes me. 
“Still judging, I see.”

His jaw tenses. 
“Maybe.  Four years, nearly five, we’ve been together, Marina and today,
you tell me that you’re an artist, that you’re a widow, that you were a madam
and that you’re basically on the run from the mob.  How did you expect me
to react?”

Despite the seriousness of the
situation, I grin at him.  “Kiss it better.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Be grateful I am. 
That’s the only reason you’ve learnt half the stuff you have.”  I eye him
carefully and ask, “Is this the end?”

He sighs and runs a hand
through his hair.  “I don’t want it to be, but how can we come back from
this?  You’ve been lying to me for years.  You’ve shared nothing with
me.”

Shaking my head at him, I
mutter, “And you’ve shared so much with me?  Apart from bodily fluids,
that is.”

Nate grimaces at my crudeness.
Raising his left hand, he drags it through his tousled hair as he mutters, “You
said a few months ago, you wished you were still married.”

The question shoots from the
left field and I frown at him, but seeing no harm in answering, I nod. 

“What’s changed?”

I grin at him, but it’s tinged
with sadness.  “You.  Ironic, if you’re going to leave me too.” 
Tired, I sink back on to the sheets, letting myself relax into the
mattress.  “But it won’t matter if the Russians get me, I guess.  A
fitting end to a crappy life.”  I tilt my head to pierce him with my
glare.  “Go on.  Say it.  Poor little rich girl.” 

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“No?  What were you going
to say?”

He doesn’t reply, but he
shocks me by climbing on to the bed and lying beside me.  “If you don’t
want me to leave you, I won’t.”

With a snort, I roll on my
side away from him.  “Don’t do me any favors, Nate.  Stay if you want
to; go if I’m suddenly repulsive to you.  I was stupid to start to care
for you.  It’s always the beginning of the end.”

He doesn’t reply, but in a
way, his body speaks for him.  He turns on to his side, curls an arm over
my waist and just lies there.

What that means I don’t really
know.

In a way, I feel like Nate’s
shown his true colors today.  I can’t trust him with the real me.  I
wonder if that part of me will have to hide away forever.  The idea that
no one will ever know the true Marina shouldn’t hurt, but it does.

Mona and Eddie see one side of
me, the girls saw another and then, Nate another.  I feel almost
schizophrenic with how many different facets there are to my nature.  Yet
none of them touch the real person.  The person inside.

Like Nate said, tonight, he
has learnt I’m a widow, a fugitive, an artist and a madam.  Four titles,
yet not one of them fits.

What does?

I guess if I knew that, I’d be
able to share the real me.

As it is, she’ll have to hide
away for a bit longer.

Until someone who can accept
her comes along.

If my heart bleeds a little at
the prospect, then that’s neither here nor there. 

It’s pathetic, but I’m used to
it.
                                                                    

“
Vy dumali, chto prosto
otpustit' tebya?
”

The thick Russian accent
breaks into my dreams the instant before my brain translates.

You thought
we would just let you go?

My blood freezes, turns to ice
and my heart aches in my chest at the sudden pressure there.  I want to
reach out, grab Nathan’s hand but the inner cold of my terror has frozen my
limbs.  I suck in a breath and it jumpstarts me into action.  I start
to sit up, but the sudden cold of metal presses flush to my throat and I feel
the sharp blade slip into my flesh as though the soft skin were nothing more
than butter on a warm summer’s day.

Blood, hot, gushing and free
from ice, flows down the curve of my throat.  It’s only a small nick,
otherwise I’d have felt more than the sting I experienced, but it has me urging
myself against my pillow.

“Don’t hurt us,” I whisper,
repeating it in Russian.

“But you have seen fit to hurt
us.  To hurt our business.  We do not accept this lightly.”

The snap of the light switch
is louder than a gunshot and I flinch as though a revolver had just been
fired.  Lights blare into the room and stun me with their
brightness.  I blink and flutter my lashes, trying to get my eyes to focus
and within seconds, even though it feels like a lifetime, I can see who’s in
the room.  And I’m shocked.

It’s the big man himself.

Petr Ivanov.

I’ve only ever dealt with his
right-hand man in the past; Aleksandr Petrukhin.  The only man I’ve seen
in my life who could be a gorilla-human hybrid.

I only recognize this bastard,
because Aleksandr made sure to point him out, when he took me out for a
business meeting.  I use the verb took out, when really I mean
forced
. 
The only reason I didn’t shout the place down, was because he’d taken me to the
Kensington Park hotel for a business lunch.  I can just imagine Eddie’s
face if she’d heard about that!  Her boss owns that and God knows how many
other boutique hotels in the city.

Christ knows why my thoughts
have spun to Eddie and her boss, when I’ve a knife against my throat and a
Planet of the Gorillas character is the one wielding it, but hey, it’s either
that or pee myself.

Yeah, I’m
so
not going
to do that.

“What do you want?” I
ask.  Arching my throat to shift out of the blade’s way, I try to look
about the room, because the coldness of the sheets tell me Nate’s not there and
I don’t know where he is.

The panic surging through my
veins has a weird kind of paralysis overtaking my limbs.  I
can’t
lose
him.  I can’t lose another man.  When Jimmy died, it was like having
my heart cut out.

If I lost Nate too?

I can’t even think about it.

When my eyes eventually catch
sight of him, eventually see where he is, I’m forced to think about it. 
There’s a bloody gash on his forehead and his head is lolling to the
side.  The only reason he’s on his feet, is because some goons are holding
him upright and he’s quite evidently unconscious.

“Don’t hurt him!”

“It’s too late.  He’s
already hurt,” Petr retorts, malicious pleasure in his voice.

I try and study Nate, but the
angle of the knife at my throat makes it hard to see everything.  I only
notice the gun at his forehead, when Petr loosens the press of the blade
against my skin.

“Please.  Don’t do this.”

“You could have sold to
us.  You could have left the city without another glance and a nice few
million in your bank account,” Petr spits at me, his upper lip curled into a
sneer.  “Instead, you sought to flee.  No one escapes our attention,
if we have our focus set on you.  You have learnt a lesson and the class
isn’t over yet.”

“What do you mean to
do?”  The question quivers out of my lips and I hate the weakness of my
voice, but I’m feeling very, very weak.  I want Nate; I want him to
protect me.  It’s a fucking terrible time to go all wimpy woman dependent
on her strong Alpha male, but Christ, I do.

Tears bead in the corners of
my eyes as Petr’s gaze flickers to Nate’s limp form.  I can only imagine
the damage the bastards have done to him. 

I damn the whiskey I imbibed
for dulling my senses.  I damn my pathetic alcohol tolerance.  How
could I have not heard him being beaten?

A sob wells in my throat, and
I long to free it, but I can’t show any more weakness in front of these
fuckers. 

The man holding Nate upright
doesn’t appear to be feeling the strain of supporting nearly two hundred pounds
of muscled ranch foreman, so what damage have those fists done to Nate?

I literally feel the blood
drain from my face and I have to suck in air as Petr deigns to speak.  “It
depends on your bargaining chip.”

“What do you mean?”

A warble of Russian escapes
the bastard and I watch, in horror, as the goon lowers his weapon to Nate’s
belly.

My voice rises to a pitch so
high I think even dogs would find it difficult to hear it.  “No! 
I’ll do anything,
anything
, just don’t hurt him.”

And I mean it.  I
would.  I’d do, be,
give
anything to ensure Nate’s safety.  I
don’t care about this morning’s argument.  I don’t care that he can’t
accept the real me.  I want him.  I
need
him.  Maybe more
than I’ve ever needed anyone else.

“I want your little black
book.”

My belly clenches at Petr’s
soft words.  Of course, he does.  That I’m about to trade some of the
country’s most important political players for a relative nobody makes me feel
sick.  But there’s no doubt in my mind that I’ll do it.

Is it an act of treason?

I don’t know.

I try and reason it out by
saying they shouldn’t have used Papillon if they didn’t want to have a dirty
secret, but even so, I know what I’m about to do could cause many people a
worse headache than the one Nate will experience upon awakening.

But I don’t give a shit. 
Because that’s all that matters to me.  That Nate
will
wake up with
a migraine to end all migraines.

“I don’t have a little black
book,” I start and when Petr’s face clouds and the goon’s fingers clench about
his gun, I hold up a hand in warning.  “Wait!  I don’t.  I have
a USB drive.”

“Where is it?”  A
silkiness has entered the Russian’s voice.  He knows he’s going to get
what he wants without having to pay a single cent for it.

“It’s in my bag.  I-I can
get it for you,” I whisper, hating the tremor in my voice but hell, I’m fucking
terrified.

My hands are shaking; my body
is trembling with fear.  For Nate.  I
can’t
lose him.

I
won’t!

I wouldn’t survive it.

“Don’t try anything funny or
lover boy will get it in the gut.”  His warning comes with the removal of
the knife from my throat.  I cup a hand to my neck and my fingers return
drenched with the copper fluid.  Swallowing back nausea, I grab the sheet
and curl it about me.  I hate that I’m naked, hate that these men are
seeing me like this but I try to retain my dignity. 

The sheet is ample covering
and once I stand and go to the wardrobe, I wish like fuck I had a gun in my
bag.  Or something I could use to even the odds of this sorry scene. 
But I don’t.  I’m completely without any means of defense.

I should have used the last
few days in Chicago more wisely.  I could have bought myself a gun, used
that on these bastards.  Instead, Nate’s in danger and it’s all down to
me.

Before I reach the door, I
turn to Petr and ask, “How do I know you won’t come after me again?”

“Once I have your client list,
you hold no more interest to me or my associates.”

“How can I trust your word?”

He sneers at me.  “You
can’t.  But I have no need of anything from you aside from the list. 
You’re expendable once I have it.”

Now, why doesn’t his choice of
words fill me with glee?

Knowing I’m screwed and that
giving this bastard the USB pen drive won’t assure my or Nate’s safety, I open
the doors and reach for my carry-on case.  I grab it and lay it on the
floor, opening it to Petr’s interested gaze.  Rifling through the crap I
always travel with and never use, I dig down to the pocket lining in the case
and pull it open.  The drive is as small as my thumbnail.  It’s
innocuous and looks unimportant, but the fate of at least two Senators, a
Congressman
and
woman, as well as countless lawyers, doctors, businessmen
lie within the documents saved on to the tiny bit of metal and plastic.

With no guilt, I hand it to
Ivanov.  He eyes it, turns it between his fingers and then, whispers, “
Sdelayte
eto!
”

Do it.

My brain feels dulled,
sluggish.  I translate the bastard’s words a second after the sound of a
shot explodes through the room.

I don’t even have time to
scream.

It’s too
late.

Read on for
more information about
the next part of Marina’s tale!