Close Up: Exposure Book Three (11 page)

W
e boarded
the plane and it took off into the sky. I was exceedingly nervous, even though Asher was right there, holding my hand.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked me.

“Just very nervous. I mean, I’m meeting somebody who is a high-level criminal. And I was kidnapped and almost forced into sex slavery, while your father is a person who deals in that kind of thing. Not to mention that you think that I’m probably not going be approved by your dad, which will leave me exactly where? In danger, that’s where.”

He put his hand on my leg, and whispered “don’t forget about the contingency plan.” He kissed me full on the lips, and I squeezed my legs together reflexively. Then I put one leg on the leather seat, and sighed as Asher unbuckled my jeans and brought them down. As much as I was apprehensive about trying to get pregnant so that Asher’s father would bless our marriage, there was a part of me that actually really wanted that.

He put his head between my legs, and gently stroked my clit. I screamed out immediately, as I felt that this area was on fire. There were so many tingles and sensations in his gentle stroking of the area, and I could feel the first orgasm coming on. I wrapped my legs around the back of his neck, and just lost myself in the feeling that he was giving me. Asher had a way of making me lose touch with all that was troubling me, and making my problems seem so very far away.

He put his hands around my back and brought me up to him. He wrapped his arms around me, and looked me right in the eyes. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t really have to, for his emotions were right there behind those gorgeous blue eyes of his. Then he put my head on his shoulder and his hands in my hair. I sighed, my head on his shoulder, my hands wrapped behind his neck. I could hear his heart pounding loudly in my ears.

He then lightly put his hands underneath my shirt and unhooked my bra. I pulled my shirt off, and both my shirt and bra fell to the floor. I was naked, but he was still fully clothed, so I unbuttoned his shirt, button by button. I removed his shirt, and rubbed my hands over his rock-hard chest. It was still amazing to me how perfect he was, how flawless.

I bit his nipple and he sighed and reared back his head. He pulled my hair and groaned. “I want you, Asher,” I said. “I want you in the worst way.”

“Oh, God, you don’t know how much I want you too. You make me so hard, harder than I’ve ever been in my entire life.”

I kissed him, and he laid down on the seat. I tugged down his pants, and underwear, and put my lips on his rock-hard shaft. I did see that I made him incredibly hard, and it made me feel powerful. I continued to suck and lick his hardness, with one of my hands gripping his shaft tightly. My tongue explored his jewels, and I put one of them in my mouth and sucked hard. His breathing started to speed up, and he pulled on my hair. “Come here,” he said. “I need to be inside of you.”

I crawled up and put my legs on either side of his torso, and I lowered myself down on him. He filled me up, inch by inch, and I laid down on top of him. He rolled me over, and he started to pound me rhythmically. I felt orgasm after orgasm wash over me with his every thrust. He put his hands on my breasts, and then kissed each of them lightly while biting my nipples. His lips soon made their way to my own, and we devoured each other for a long time. I was feeling as if I didn’t want to leave this place, ever. If I never disembarked from this plane, Asher and I could stay in this bubble for the rest of our lives. The world could be an ugly place, and I was so terrified of meeting his father. I didn’t want to think about any of this, so all that I wanted to concentrate on was how Asher was making me feel.

And he was making me feel absolutely awesome. I had never in my life felt more of a woman than I did when I was with him. I had never in my life felt more desired, more powerful, more potent.

He climaxed inside of me, and the two of us laid down on the leather seats together, clinging onto one another tightly. He stroked my hair while I listened to his heart beat. He felt incredibly warm, and his skin was so very soft. I put my fingers on his chest and played around with his nipples and skin. We were silent for the longest time, neither of us particularly wanting to break the mood.

He finally spoke. “This is going to be a long flight. Would you like to watch a movie or something?”

I smiled. “Sure, go ahead and put something on. I have to admit that this is still so amazing to me, flying like this. When I flew home from DC, I flew commercial and it really was not the best thing. I was next to a girl who talked about herself incessantly the entire time.”

He smiled. “Hey, this is one of the perks of working really hard and getting lucky enough to patent some pretty amazing products. And you, my dear, are going to share in all of that.”

I nodded. “How much of a role did your father play in your success?” It was an innocent question, but I did feel him tense up underneath my fingers. His jaw got tight as well.

He finally just sighed. “He paid my way through Yale and Stanford. I got my undergrad at Yale and my PhD at Stanford. And he gave me the $20,000 seed money that I needed to get my products to market. The rest was all me, but, I have to admit, without him, I would be nowhere. It was very difficult to get things going in Russia without money, power or influence. So, I really have mixed feelings about him, and, by extension, I have mixed feelings about my own success. It does feel a little bit tainted.”

“I can imagine your dilemma. Do you really think that you wouldn’t have made anything of yourself without him?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t have opportunity. I was surviving, and just barely. You just don’t know how difficult it is to advance in this world without a hand up, especially if you’re in an emerging country that has little safety net. My sister….”

At that, he stopped and shook his head.

“Your sister what?”

“Well, you know that I told you about what she does for my father. So, be prepared for that when you meet her. I hate her, yet I also feel sorry for her. I know that she wants the same things I have, but our father hasn’t yet released her.”

“Released her? What does that mean?”

He took a deep breath. “You can’t just get out of the mafia. You can’t just leave. You have to be released, and, unless you’re under the protection of some extremely powerful people, like my father, you pretty much don’t last very long out in the world. I was lucky enough that my father released me and gave me the protection that I needed to make my own way in the world. Natalia hasn’t been given that chance, so she has little choice in how she makes a living.”

“Why hasn’t she been given the same chance that you have?”

“I don’t know, except to say that my father is chauvinistic. I’m quite sure that’s not a surprise to you, considering how he treats women. I’ve talked to him many times about getting Natalia out of the business and into America, but he won’t hear of it. But she’s my twin, so it’s hard for me to know that she’s there and is helpless to do anything about it.”

“That’s sad,” I said. “I feel badly for her. I guess it’s a good example of a good person being forced to do bad things.” I paused for a long time. “Like you were at one time.”

I wanted him to take this opportunity to come completely clean on all that he has done for his father’s organization. I knew that there were skeletons in his closet, and that he had white-washed his role in the group. If he was a “soldier” like he had said, then it stood to reason that violence had to be involved. I had a working knowledge on the kinds of things low-level mob people did, and it wasn’t always pretty.

But he didn’t say anything. He just kept lying there and stroking my hair. I could tell, though, that he wanted to tell me what he had done. It had to be hard for him to admit to it, though, like a soldier in a war who was always reluctant to talk about the men that he had to kill.

“Yes, I was at one time,” he finally said. “But that’s all in the past.”

I looked at him, wanting so badly to know everything there was to know about him. But it seemed as if I wasn’t going to be privy to that information.

I sighed. “Asher, is there anything that you want to tell me? Anything at all? I’m about to meet your father, and I’m about to make a lifelong commitment. And, who knows? I might already be pregnant with your child. It might already be too late for me to back out of this whole thing, but I do need to know. I deserve to know. What are some of the more unsavory things that you did when you were in the mafia? You can’t tell me that you only hacked into banks and large corporations and stole money from them. I think that you’re white-washing, and you need to come clean. Please.”

He looked at me, and then shook his head. “I can’t right now. I’m so sorry.”

Ire rose in my throat. He
still
wasn’t coming clean with me. I knew this. I felt it. And I was trapped on the plane. I couldn’t very well ask him to tell the pilot to turn the plane around and take me back to New York. But I wanted to do just that. I wanted to get off the plane and away from him, by any means possible. At that point, if I had a parachute, and it was safe to jump, I would have.

“Asher, I’m going to find out, sooner or later. You need to stop hiding things from me.” I was shaking with anger. “Goddamn it. How much more do I have to take? I feel like I can’t even breathe anymore. This is no way to begin our lives together, with me in the dark as to who you really are. Now, you need to tell me, and tell me right now, or, I swear to God, when we land in London, I’m going to board the next domestic flight right back to New York. I don’t even care how much it costs. Now, I’m going to ask you one more time. What did you do when you worked for your father? I need details. Don’t just tell me that you ran surveillance and you were a soldier. That type of stuff tells me nothing. Zero. I need to know details. Give me details, or I’m going to be gone.”

Asher looked at me for a long, long time, not saying anything. But, I knew from the look on his face, that he was going to tell me. He was struggling with it, though.

That was okay, though. It was coming.

Finally, he sighed. “Okay. You need to know, so I’ll tell you everything.”

B
efore he began his story
, he first got up and got us both a drink. “You’re going to need this,” he said. “And so will I.”

I nodded my head. I felt a sense of relief that I was finally going to find out the dirt on what he did. But, at the same time, I also felt a sense of foreboding. A feeling that everything that was happening – him trying to get me pregnant, him being so desperate for me to meet his father, his pushing us to get married now – was connected to this moment. It was as if he had made the decision that he was going to wait until I really had no choice, and I couldn’t back out, before he told me everything. Yet, I was pushing him, so he now knew that I
did
have the option to back out once I found out everything.

If that was the case – if he really was trying to trap me before springing all the bullshit on me – then what he had to say was really, really bad.

I was, at long last, going to have a close-up, a minute close-up, on what he did in his former life. And he was clearly scared to death to tell me. He was terrified of this close-up. His expression, his body language…everything was telling me, screaming to me, that he was not ready for his close-up.

He wasn’t ready, but, at the same time, he was resigned. That was also clear.

He came back, and gave me a stiff scotch. That was a signal to me that what he was about to tell me was going to be something completely horrendous, so I braced myself for it.

Then he sat down next to me on the leather seats, and just stared at his drink without saying a word. I, too, was silent, waiting for him to begin his story.

Finally, after what seemed to be a million light years, he began. “Okay. Well, you know the gist of what happened. My brother was murdered, and my father came for me. It was quite a shock, meeting him, because I thought that he was gone for good. I used to ask my mother about him, but she would never talk about him. I was always frustrated, because I sort of knew that he was still alive, yet he wasn’t helping us out financially, and I really wanted my mother to come after him for it. I hated that she struggled to provide for us so much, while my father was out there, somewhere, and he could probably have given us money to live.” He chuckled lightly. “Little did I know just how much money he could have given us, but that’s really besides the point here, isn’t it?”

In spite of myself, I smiled. He was trying to lighten the mood with a joke, so I indulged him in this.

He sighed and continued. “So, I met him. He came to my house and introduced himself. This was after my mother killed herself. He arrived in a limousine, which was as out of place in my neighborhood as a spaceship. I lived in an area where most people don’t have indoor plumbing, and here comes this limousine.” He smiled again at the memory. “I couldn’t believe it, really. I really couldn’t believe that the limousine was there for me. Why would I ever think that?”

I was quiet for a little while, and then asked him the obvious question. “What were you doing then? Your mother was dead, and it was you and your sister. How did the two of you plan to get by?”

He shook his head. “Obviously I was going to have to quit school and find work anywhere I could. That was my only hope, really, to keep things going. Natalia wanted to work too, but there was always more jobs for men than women. Grueling, backbreaking work, really, and dangerous jobs that paid very little. I was only 14, but I was prepared to completely quit school and find a labor job. It was either that or take to the streets, and I didn’t want to do that. Little did I know that what I was about to do would be something more despicable than being a low-level criminal stealing things and picking pockets.”

I nodded my head, willing him to proceed.

He sighed. “So, he showed up at my door, and introduced himself as Sergei Pushkin.” He smiled. “At first, I didn’t put it together. My last name was Pushkin, as was Natalia’s and Anton’s. My mother’s last name was Brezhnev, so the fact that he introduced himself as Sergei Pushkin should have been my first clue as to who he was. But I was dumb, I guess, so I didn’t quite know what he was doing there at my house. I soon found out, though.”

I was quiet, but I was feeling for him. Having just met my own father for the first time, I knew that the experience was disconcerting, to say the very least. It was a weird experience, really, and I could just imagine what he was thinking as this man rolled up in a limousine and informed him that he was his father.

Asher smiled. “Needless to say, it was surreal. Here he was, at my doorstep, apparently wealthy, and telling me that he was my father. And he just told me that point-blank when I asked him why he was there. ‘I’m your father,’ he said, just as plainly as you please. At first, I thought that my prayers were answered. I had no idea about him. I only knew that he was being driven around in a limousine, and, therefore, he probably had some money.” He laughed lightly and shook his head. “Boy, I thought that I was about to have it made. My father finally showed up in my life, and he was going to support Natalia and me. I wasn’t going to have to quit school and find a job in a factory or a slaughterhouse after all.”

I smiled, too, but the irony of what he was saying certainly wasn’t lost on me. Asher thought that his father was there to save him, but, instead, it seemed to be the beginning of his nightmare.

“So, he showed up at the door, and he was pretty straightforward about what he wanted for me. He told me that he needed me to work for his business, as Anton did before me, and that I really didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

I nodded my head, and willed him to continue, but he took a deep breath, and then shook his head. “Okay, I need to come clean about another lie that I told you. I doubt that you remember me telling you this story before, because I told you about it before your accident, but….” Then he paused for a long time. “I told you before that I was threatened by my father. That he forced me to work for him, and that if I didn’t, my mother and sister would be killed in front of me. In fact, I told you that he sent one of his men to threaten me. Those were lies.”

I nodded in encouragement. I didn’t want him to think that I was judging him, or that I was going to bolt. I needed him to keep going, so I tried to keep my face as sympathetic as possible.

“My mother was dead at this time, so, obviously, there were no threats against her life. And my father was the one to come to me. And, well….” He looked ashamed and shook his head. “I wasn’t actually threatened. I was desperate at that time. I had been pounding the pavement, every single day, looking for work for the past month. By the time he showed up, I was desperate for money.” He got red. “So, even though he admitted that he was mafia, I was eager to sign up.”

I didn’t know what he had told me before, as I couldn’t remember it, but I was disheartened that he was apparently telling me lies even then. But I let him go on. He obviously was eager to come clean, so I was going to let him.

His breathing was coming faster, and I could tell that he was about to tell me some things that were difficult for him to say. His hand was shaking, just a little, as he held his glass of scotch. He finally took a deep breath. “So, he showed up, he told me who he was, and what he did, and I jumped at the chance to work for him. I didn’t really know, however, what was in store for me, but I soon found out.”

“I would imagine you did. Go on, Asher, with your story. I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere.” Obviously I wasn’t going anywhere right at that point, of course, considering we were on an airplane. But I wanted him to know that I wasn’t going to run, no matter what.

He nodded his head and took another sip of his drink, and then poured another. “Okay. Well, he immediately had jobs for me to do, and I suddenly had more money than I had ever seen. I probably made more in that first week working for him than my mother did in her entire life. I thought that my problems were solved, because, at first, the work seemed to be pretty easy.”

“Easy? That’s one word that I wouldn’t ever associate with working with the mafia.”

“Yes, easy. He basically had me standing watch while some of the action was going down – when there were men negotiating in a restaurant, for instance, it was my job to always be on the lookout for the police or other men who might show up. Usually nobody ever did, so the upshot was that I was fed and paid a lot of money for sitting at the table and doing nothing. I was also assigned various errands, which would include passing messages to men who were a part of the syndicate or other syndicates who were allied with us.”

I nodded my head. “So, you were good with weapons then?”

“Yes. I had learned, from a young age, how to handle a gun. I had to know that particular skill, growing up in that neighborhood. If you didn’t know how to protect yourself, you were dead. I didn’t have to learn, then, how to be on the lookout and protect my father’s interest, because I learned to be on high alert early on.”

I imagined Asher growing up, and it was so different than the way that he was right at that moment. He was the epitome of “rags to riches,” although the way that he earned those riches wasn’t exactly the most ethical.

I drew a breath. “And people were killed sometimes?”

Asher’s face got completely red. “Not during that time. I was a low man in the organization, you have to remember. The soldiers were the ones who took care of all of that. I just ran surveillance, and the information that I obtained pretty much sealed the fate of many men. But I wasn’t actually the person who killed them.”

Not during that time.
This implied, of course, that at some point, he did kill people. I braced myself for that revelation.

“How many men were you responsible for during that time?”

“You mean how many men did I turn in?”

I nodded.

“About fifty, probably. But they were rats. They were rats within our own organization, and they were rats from other groups. If they remained alive, they would have brought our group down. We couldn’t have that, of course.”

“What kind of rats? What do you mean by that?”

“Sometimes they were men who were working for other groups, yet working for us as well. Your classic ‘double agents.’ Others were men who were stealing from us. They would make deals that always went sour, and always blamed it on the other side. Come to find out that the deals went perfectly, but they took the money and tried to make it like it was a kiboshed deal. Still others were having affairs with the wives of some of our more senior men. Others were making side projects that were running counter to our business. If a man was caught doing anything that was counter to the goals of the organization, that man was taken care of.”

I was surprised that he was able to tell me all of this in such a voluble manner. It was almost matter-of-fact, but I could tell, by his expression, that he was feeling very shamed by it all. If it weren’t for that expression on his face, I probably would have bolted right then and there.

He shook his head. “You have to understand, these men understood the penalty for what they were doing, yet they still chose to do it. They assumed the risk that they would be killed if they were caught, and they were always caught. For better or worse, I was very good at finding out what these men were doing.”

I felt a little sick to my stomach. “But you didn’t actually take care of these men yourself, right?”

He took a deep breath and rattled around the ice in his glass. “No, not during that time.”

I nodded my head. I knew what that meant. “Okay, so, I assume at some point you moved up the corporate ladder, so to speak?”

“You assume correctly,” he said with a note of resignation. “I was only a low-level six for a year, and, when I was fifteen, I was moved into the position of soldier. And, as a soldier, I was in fact the one who would take care of the rats.” He took a deep breath, as if he were trying to think about how much he should tell me about this period of his life. He finally said. “I killed 36 men in a span of two years.”

I felt my heart racing out of my chest. I couldn’t believe it. I had suspected it, of course, but hearing it in my ears made me want to throw up.

I tried to calm down. Asher was literally a soldier, just like a soldier in a war. He took care of enemies, plain and simple. I had to look at it that way. But I did wish that he was pressed into service, however, not that he did all these things willingly.

He looked pained. “Looking back, I would have never, ever taken my father up on his offer. I did, though, out of desperation, and once I was in, I was in. I couldn’t refuse the jobs that he gave to me. If I did, I would have been the next one on the list. There was no doubt in my mind. Yes, my father is the head of this group, but that means little to him. He would have had me killed if I would have tried to get out before he was ready to release me. So, what I did to these men…I had no choice. It was them or me.”

That made it sound a little better, but to know that he had that much blood on his hands…

I had to admit that I was anxious for him to tell me about the other job that he had, which was the job of hacking. After hearing that he had killed so many men, anything else that he told me about what he did for his father’s organization would pale by comparison.

“Okay, so that was the worst of what I did.” He looked at me almost shyly. “Do you want to leave me? If you do, I understand. There aren’t many women who can understand something like that. Not many women would be able to forgive what I did.”

I sighed, but said nothing. I wasn’t going to reassure him, because, right at that moment, I wasn’t exactly sure of what I was going to do. There was a part of me that wanted to run, far and fast, and get on the first commercial flight out of London the second our plane landed. There was another part of me that loved him too much and wanted to hear the rest of the story.

“Go on, Asher,” I finally said. His face fell, as he was obviously hoping that I would hold his hand and tell him that this was all in his past, and not to worry. But I wasn’t feeling that right at that moment, so those words were not the words that I told him.