As Red as Blood (The Snow White Trilogy) (19 page)

You could still get a lot with money, though. You could get your life straightened out. And that was why he was here.

While the first-floor rooms were beautiful, enchanting fairytale worlds, the rooms on the second were full of savage nightmares from the same stories. Trees whose limbs grabbed at passersby like hands. Swamp sirens that used their songs to lure men into bottomless pools. Sleep that even a prince’s kiss couldn’t break.

One room was black and contained a threatening illusion of flying crows cawing. Lumikki flinched and almost ducked to avoid the imaginary claws grabbing at her hair.

Inside the room were two servers dressed in black, carrying silver platters. On the platters were small shot glasses full of black liquid. The servers were talking in hushed tones. Lumikki wanted to hear what they were saying, so she stepped closer, trying to look like she intended to take one of the drinks.

“Where’s Polar Bear?” one of the servers asked.

“Haven’t you heard that he never comes until midnight?”

“He? I thought—”

The server shot the other a warning and extended his silver platter ever so slightly toward Lumikki. Lumikki took a shot glass, smiled, and turned her back.

“Polar Bear has a strict rule that everyone always has to say ‘he,’ ” the server whispered.

Lumikki tipped the glass so the liquid just touched her lips and considered what she’d heard. She glanced at the large, ornate clock on the wall. Nine fifteen. Almost three hours left.

The other aspect of the exchange was a mystery. Why wouldn’t they refer to Polar Bear as “he”? Strange. Presumably, that would be cleared up at midnight too.

If the party was any indication, Polar Bear seemed increasingly odd. He—or was he a he after all?—used vast sums of money to create unbelievable sets for a single night, but you could bet most of the guests were incapable of appreciating the lavish rooms. All that mattered to them was that the alcohol didn’t run out and the girls were beautiful and open to flirtation. And maybe more.

Swine in black tie.

As if a thousand-euro suit and a twenty-thousand-euro watch gave you class. Or the right to act however you pleased. If you had money, there were no rules. If there were no rules, you were a king.

Suddenly, Lumikki felt sick to her stomach. She wanted to go home. She wanted to kick off these high heels and pull on the gray slippers her grandmother had knitted her. She even kind of wanted to fix herself a cup of tea, even though she usually thought it was pointless, warm water. Right now, it would have felt calming and homey, and reminded her of wallpaper with roses and her grandmother’s gentle hands braiding her hair.

Lumikki carefully licked her lips. Licorice vodka, just as she’d suspected. The sharp, salty taste eased her nausea.

Remember, you aren’t really here. This character is not you. Someone else is walking through these rooms in white high heels and a red evening gown. None of this can touch you.

Lumikki straightened her back. She wasn’t here to have a good time. She had a job to do.

Natalia was not cold. She had been dead for 128 hours. One hundred and twenty-eight hours was a laughably short time when a person was alive. Dead, it was even shorter. Natalia had lived for twenty years, three months, and two days. She would be dead for an eternity. Next to eternity, 128 hours was no time at all.

If Natalia had still been alive, would she have wanted to go back to the moment when Boris Sokolov first contacted her? Natalia had met him a couple of times with her boyfriend at the time, a dealer named Dmitri, and she knew that Sokolov was a big fish in the business. Not a high-level boss, but a boss nonetheless. He had influence. Sokolov invited Natalia to join his team. They needed a presentable-looking young woman with a brain unclouded by booze or drugs.

Would she have wanted to choose differently? If she hadn’t said yes to Sokolov, she never would have come to Finland, she never would have met Terho Väisänen, she never would have tried to run away with the money, and she never would have taken that bullet in her gut. She wouldn’t be lying dead now at zero degrees, blank eyes staring into the darkness, blue lips slightly parted as if ready to whisper in your ear.

If Natalia had known what would happen, of course she would have declined. But back then, all she had known was that she didn’t want to raise her daughter in an apartment that stank of mold and whose cardboard-thin walls let through the neighbors’ earsplitting fights and equally boisterous makeup sessions. So she had agreed. That very same week, Sokolov arranged better living arrangements for Natalia, her mother, and little Olga.

A year passed. Natalia peddled drugs to the young, rich, and affluent of Moscow, feeling that she was one of them. Young, rich, and beautiful.

Life could have been good. Worth living. But in her nineteen years, Natalia had already learned that whenever everything was going right, something would always mess it up. That time, it had been an order to leave for Finland with Sokolov to run the business there. She had imagined she’d end up in Helsinki, where flying home would be relatively easy. Instead, they sent her to Tampere, which had seemed pitifully small the instant she arrived. Before, Sokolov had spent half of his time in Moscow and half in Tampere, but now he was moving to Finland full-time.

Orders from Polar Bear, Sokolov had said. That was the first mention Natalia had heard of Polar Bear. Later on, she was invited to Polar Bear’s parties and realized how ridiculously small her role really was in the grand scheme of things. She was a trivial cog, replaceable at a moment’s notice.

Natalia felt like a Martian in Tampere. She walked wrong and dressed wrong. Her rabbit-fur muff and high-heeled boots were over the top. People stared at her on the street. Men tried to offer her money, but not for drugs, for sex. At times, Natalia thought bitterly that the only way not to stand out from the locals was to wear a snowsuit in the winter and a tracksuit in the fall and spring, and to spend all summer sitting in Tammela Square eating black sausage with a baseball cap on your head and knock-off Crocs on your feet.

She didn’t know anyone in the city other than Sokolov and his Estonian sidekicks. In the beginning, she called home every night, listening to little Olga’s voice and then crying herself to sleep.

Sometimes she watched the Finnish high schoolers, who looked like absolute babies in her eyes, even though she was barely a year older herself. She wondered what it would feel like to live like them. To go to a coffee shop after school to debate whether something a cute boy had said meant he liked you, or what a teacher might ask on your history exam. To deliberate over college options and consider taking a year off before going. To dream about moving out on your own, buying your own dishes, and making your bed with those fancy, Finlayson-brand sheets your grandparents gave you as
a graduation present. To have an existential crisis over not knowing what you want to do when you grow up.

Then Natalia had met Terho, who was completely different from Sokolov and the Estonians, even though Sokolov said he was “one of us.” A narcotics detective who had gotten tangled up in the business, a mole.

Terho and Terho’s rough hands. The affection Natalia felt for him from their very first meeting. He was so shy, so sweet and insecure about how to speak to her and how he could touch her. Completely different from her previous boyfriends and all the other men who immediately forced her into whatever shape they wished, twisting and posing her like a mannequin.

Had it been love? It had at least felt like love. Natalia had felt safe with him. Terho talked about his home, his family, normal life. Natalia had known that she wanted a life like that too. Not this secrecy, this fear, the sensitive nasal membranes and needle marks in her groin. He had promised to fix things for Natalia, to help her out. For a long time, Natalia had believed him, but nothing ever happened. He’d been making empty promises, just like every other man in Natalia’s life.

Promises that turned to lies the instant they left the mouth.

Natalia should have learned by now. Not to trust anyone but herself. To make her own decisions and accept the consequences.

That was why she decided to take the thirty thousand meant for Terho from Sokolov’s house and disappear. She made a plan. She stole Sokolov’s spare key without him
noticing. She arranged a hideout in the countryside. Everything should have been easy. On Sunday, Sokolov and the Estonians were supposed to be gone all day, but they came home early. That was why Natalia Smirnova was lying dead now, in the dark, naked.

She was accepting the consequences of her decisions, consequences that were heavier than she could ever have imagined.

Natalia’s life had been a series of seemingly unavoidable wrong decisions. Wrong decisions had been offered to her as right, presented on a golden platter smelling of roses. But she had never looked under the tray or past the person holding it to see the backdrop of white snow splattered with a shower of red droplets.

That was why Natalia Smirnova was lying alone now in the cold without feeling the chill.

Just as she had lain for the past 128 hours.

But even in death, she could not be at peace. Boris Sokolov still had one more job for her.

Lumikki hurried down to the basement. She glanced back to see if the man had followed her. No, thank goodness. She’d managed to shake him.

She had just been sampling the dozens of different delicacies at the buffet when the man who had accosted her earlier surprised her from behind and demanded an explanation for her disappearance.

“The ways of woman are inscrutable sometimes,” she answered coquettishly.

The man suggested that they move upstairs to investigate her feminine wiles a little more closely. Lumikki begged him to let her eat first. In response, the man placed his hands on her hips and said that it would be a shame to ruin such a lovely, slender waist with excessive gluttony. Lumikki replied
that she hadn’t eaten all day and that he would probably prefer for her not to faint. The man laughed.

“You’re probably quite the little wildcat once you get going.”

Yeah, I’ll scratch your eyes out,
Lumikki thought, but settled for answering with a kittenish meow. Then she faked him out by handing him her plate to hold and saying she was going to powder her nose. He stood there looking satisfied, obviously imagining that he now had collateral in his possession that Lumikki couldn’t get along without.
Jackass.

In the basement, Lumikki looked around. Directly ahead was a large kitchen where, judging from the sounds, cooks were working at full tilt to prepare more amazing dishes. She heard the sizzling of frying pans, knives chopping against cutting boards, and orders being shouted over the din. A steady stream of servers marched through swinging doors carrying trays, bowls, and large serving platters. Lumikki discreetly watched the flow of food from a dim corner of the room, tucked safely out of sight.

She had caught a few glimpses of Elisa’s father, but he kept disappearing when she tried to follow him.

Now, as if on cue, she suddenly heard Terho Väisänen’s voice from a nearby hallway. He was speaking English with someone. The other person’s voice sounded familiar too, but Lumikki couldn’t place it.

The voices came toward her. Then Lumikki realized. She had heard the other man’s voice when she was being chased in the woods. The Russian.

Lumikki thought for a second. Should she just stay put and pretend she was lost or curious and that was why she was in the basement? Neither of the men would recognize her. It would attract attention though. She was in the wrong place, and way too visible, which wasn’t a good thing given what she was up to. She really didn’t want any of these people recognizing her later on the street.

Lumikki tested the nearest door. It opened. She carefully peeked inside, but no one was in the room. All she could see were several large chest freezers and stacked plastic crates of alcohol. Some sort of extra storage room, probably. Slipping inside, she waited for Väisänen and the Russian to pass the door.

They didn’t. Instead, they stopped.