Her Russian Beast: 50 Loving States, New Mexico (6 page)

“Okay,” Willa said. Just like that. “What can I do to help?”

And Thel broke down sobbing.

“I ain’t used to being nurtured no more,” she tearfully explained as her much taller little sister held her. “Or having somebody say they’ll help me without a devil’s deal being involved.”

“I’m not ‘somebody.’ I’m your sister, Thel,” Willa admonished, holding her even tighter. “And whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. I promise.”

Thel believed her. And moreover, she was grateful. For the first time in a very long time, she was grateful to be Thelxiope Okeanos. The strangely-named girl with the crazy family who loved her. After Bair Rustanov, after this terrible pre-diagnosis, which made it immediately clear she had to get out of this fucked up version of a life she shared with The Beast, she knew she wouldn’t ever take her remaining family for granted again.

But even as she cried with gratitude in her sister’s arms, she knew this wasn’t the end. Knew she wouldn’t get away from The Russian Beast that easily. She’d escaped for now. But even back then, safe inside her sister’s arms, she knew she’d never truly be free.

D
ear W
,

I’m sorry. I know you want to hear from me for real, but you don’t understand about Bair. He has me followed everywhere. He calls it protecting me. But whatever. There’s always a goon there. Waiting for me to get done, tracking my every move, reporting back to him if I so much as talk to another guy.

So I’m sorry I can only write you in my diary. Which I know he won’t read, because he doesn’t care what I’m thinking about, only that I’m under his full control. Which I am.

Did I tell you I’m set to join the Moscow National Opera as a lead soprano in the fall? I know, right? I’m so young! How did I get so lucky?

The answer is I didn’t. He arranged everything. The album that put my name on their radar. The donation that made the spot magically open up. All of it.

I should be grateful. But I can’t be. I don’t feel anything but trapped.

He’s no longer the Beast I met in Greece.

Sometimes it seems like he became a monster the minute he started wearing a suit. I still ain’t scared of nothing, but the anesthetic is definitely wearing off, and I’m not sure how much longer I can do this with him.

All he wants is to control me. He tells me how to dress, how to talk, what to do. He takes me to parties and I have to act like this docile thing so I don’t embarrass him. Wear all these designer clothes and act like somebody I’m not with this fucked up song chewing on my chest. The rain in Berlin falls mainly in the Plain.

I miss my accent.

I miss you.

I wish I could come home.

I’ve learned how to cry so I don’t have to reapply make-up.

He’s in Russia with his brother now, but he’ll be coming back in a couple weeks to take me to live at his family home in Moscow.

His family is awful, W. He’s awful. I wish I’d never met him.

I’ve got an appointment next week. He asked me to get my tubes tied. Ha! I said asked. He informed me about this just like he informs me about everything else. And of course it’s me who has to get the procedure, not him, because what good is a pet if she doesn’t know she’s under your complete control?

But that’s all right. I’ll happily get spayed and neutered, because if there’s one thing him and me can agree on, it’s that we are both too fucked up to bring kids into the world.

I miss you, W
. I wish I was wherever you are instead of here with him.

The only place him and me work right is in bed.

Love,

T

S
he came
out of the blue and went right back into it. Six years after his wife’s disappearance, Bair sat in a red and gold baroque armchair in front of his office’s marble fireplace. Though it was the middle of summer, a fire burned inside its massive confines, crackling almost as loud as his rage.

He’d do it this year, he told himself. He’d finally throw the damn thing into the fire.

The damn thing being her diary, which he held in one hand. He had an empty bottle of Beluga Noble Vodka in the other. Re-reading her diary was the last thing he did on their anniversary every year.

Tonight marked their sixth. They’d never made it to their first. And as he’d done every anniversary, he read about her time with him from front to back.

The first entry had been written just a year into their relationship. A tale to “W” about how he’d arranged for a bodyguard to follow her everywhere after a middle-aged millionaire had offered Bair a considerable amount of money for one night with her at a big donor gala they’d attended together. The donor hadn’t known Bair’s last name before making the request.

And Sirena hadn’t been the least bit grateful for the extra protection he’d given her from unwanted suitors. Or appreciated that he’d actually used a bit of discretion while handling the matter. Instead of beating the man at the party, which very well might have led to the big donor’s death, he’d had her new guard do it the next day as part of his “interview.”

However, according to Sirena,
“He’s getting worse. Farther and farther from the boy I met in Greece. I hate the man he’s becoming.”
And the list had only grown longer from there.

They’d lived in Germany, but his wife had written a surprisingly Russian tale of pique and disillusionment. Laments about the life she led, about him, about all the things he’d given her after finding her in that Greek basement. Complaint after complaint, broken up only by her fervent wishes to somehow break the hold he had on her, the possession he’d taken of her body.

“I can’t stop with him. I wish I could, but I still ain’t figured out how,”
she’d written more than once in her blunt, but somehow lyrical, style.

His hand fisted around a new bottle of Beluga Noble, the old Darkness threatening to consume him as he opened it.

She was a cunt
, he reminded himself in a familiar litany.
A selfish bitch
who’d used him and his money, and then ran off. Most likely to another lover. Maybe this W. Or Trevor, a name he’d heard her murmur in her sleep.

Sirena, he knew from the start, had a way with male animals. She’d told him that the very morning she’d agreed to be his pet. He’d believed her then. And he bitterly believed her now.

She wasn’t worth the money and effort he spent over the years trying to find her. On their fifth anniversary, he’d sworn he’d apply for a divorce, take a new pet, and never think of her again by the sixth.

But now the sixth anniversary had come. And here he was, consuming another bottle of vodka. Still not divorced. Still unable to move on to a new pet. Still unable to so much as get it up for another woman. Only for his hand. When his eyes were closed and he could think about her. Underneath him. Coming for him. Even when he told her not to.

His siren had never been very good at following orders in bed. Had always gotten too worked up, her body taking her over the edge without thought for the punishment that would come later.

But she wasn’t his siren anymore.

He took another swig of vodka and stared into the roaring fire. Willing himself to throw in the diary and be done with it, done with her, once and for all.

“Boris Rustanovich?”

He turned in the chair to look over his shoulder. His secretary, a sturdy matron in a skirt suit, was standing at the door.

“I asked not to be disturbed, Marta.”

“I know, and I am sorry to disturb you, Boris Rustanovich.” Despite his lack of formal language with her, she continued to address him as her superior.

Her eyes cast downward to the floor. “His people are asking for him.”

Bair twisted and saw the former global UFC heavyweight champion, still prone and crumpled on the ground. His anniversary gift to himself and not worth the money it had cost to arrange this private fight. The man had gone down in under ten minutes. Yelling for mercy.

“Have two of my men come and toss him outside near the trash cans. His people can take him from there.”

“I will do that. Also, you have a visitor.”

“A visitor,” he repeated. “At 2 in the morning?”

“Sorry, this is my fault, Borya. I did not calculate the time of my arrival correctly, and arrived in Moscow now as opposed to first thing in the morning. So I came here instead of the office.”

His brother, Alexei, pushed in past Marta, his arms spread with good cheer despite the late hour. Upon seeing the only person in the world who dared to call him by the diminutive form of his Russian name, Bair grunted, remembering the last time they were in this room together.

They’d just come home from the Moscow offices Bair would formally be taking over, once Alexei departed to head up their new offices in New York.

“I think Father would like this. We two working together as brothers to further his empire,” Alexei said, as he poured them both a glass of vodka.

The only acknowledgement their father had ever given of his existence was allowing his mother to put his name on Bair’s birth certificate. For that reason and many others, Bair doubted the father, who’d allowed him to languish in a Siberian village while his mother continued on in her Moscow apartment, would have approved of Alexei’s efforts to bring all of the Rustanov bastards into the family fold.

But as fate would have it, the cell phone in his breast pocket had rung before Bair could respond to his half brother’s supposition. He’d frowned when he saw the name of his siren’s guard flashing on the caller ID. When he’d answered the call, he thought the man would have news about the second bodyguard Bair had decided to hire for Sirena after what had happened with the Moscow National Opera director.

However, her original daytime guard hadn’t been calling about a possible new hire, but to tell him his siren had gone into her doctor’s appointment and never come out. And despite his best efforts, he hadn’t been able to find her.

No, not his siren any longer
, Bair reminded himself six years later, as he poured his brother a glass of vodka while the guards came in to remove the UFC fighter. He needed to remember this. Commit that fact to not just his mind, but also his heart.

Which was why it was rather ironic that the first thing Alexei said after sitting down was, “I need your help to find your wife.”

“
I
do not understand
. Why should you want to find Sirena?” Bair asked his brother. “From our phone calls, I am thinking you are happy with Eva and have no wish for pet.”

“You mistake me, brother. I still want only my Eva, but I have job for your singer and she is the perfect fit. You could say the
only
fit.”

Alexei shifted forward in his seat, a new excitement coming over his normally stoic face. “I am financing an opera, you see. It was written by two children of a friend, and it is very good.”

Bair answered his brother’s fervent declaration with a sardonic lift of his eyebrows. He highly doubted any opera written by two children would be any good.

“Yes, yes, I know how it sounds,” his brother said when he noticed Bair’s expression. “But listen…”

Alexei brought out his phone.

“We workshopped this opera with the other lead last summer. Listen to the last song in the show…”

He touched a button and unleashed a dramatic aria into the office’s formally quiet space. Bair’s English was still only so-so, and used purely for business now that his si—
Sirena
had left, but even he could feel the beauty of the words. Fully understand the longing as the girl on Alexei’s phone sang of her dream to one day be reunited with the brother she’d left behind to go north.

“It is the tale of a slave who escapes to the North and finds a job working in the house of Abraham Lincoln before he becomes the president. The first act of the opera is sung by the young girl you hear here, with simple arias. But the rest of the show is sung by the strong woman she becomes after her escape. It is much harder, and the children want Sirena to play the part.”

Bair shook his head. “How would these children know about Sirena?”

“They are, how can you say it, obsessive when it comes to this opera. They listened to many performances by many opera singers from all around the world, and did not find anyone they liked. But then they found Sirena’s one album in my study, while visiting our house in Texas with their father. Now they say it must be her, that they will not let the opera be performed if she is not in the lead.”

“This is a crazy thing to say,” Bair answered. “And they are just children. Spoiled children from the sound of it.”

“But brother, I agree with them,” Alexei said solemnly. “One hundred percent. Sirena’s voice is bold and, judging from her accent when I first met her, from the American South.”

Yes, Bair remembered that accent, too. She’d never quite been able to completely shake it when she wasn’t singing, even though it made it hard for her German voice teachers to take her seriously.

I miss my accent.

Sick of the way his chest ached whenever he thought of Sirena, he shifted his attention back to his brother. “I am sorry, there is nothing I can do for you,” he told his brother. “I do not know where she is anymore.”

Alexei studied him. “Yes, I believe you. Now. That has not always been the case. When she first disappeared without a trace, I had some thought that maybe you had something to do with that disappearance. When I first started searching for your Sirena myself, I thought there might no longer be an opera singer to find. That perhaps my brother had handled his wife’s unhappiness in a bad way, despite his family’s rules.”

No, he hadn’t had anything to do with his wife’s sudden disappearance. Even if Sirena had come to him and asked for a divorce, he would never have hurt her in that way. He simply would have put her in a tighter cage and limited her freedoms until she learned her lesson.

But in that moment, Bair merely stared blankly at the half brother who’d helped him become a billionaire. Keeping his face carefully neutral, even as he wondered where Alexei was going with this.

“I thought that until I received a call from one of my contacts at the SoCal Opera,” Alexei continued on. “Apparently Sirena submitted herself for their Young Artists Program, and easily got in on the basis of her album. However, my source told me they were forced to rescind the offer when the opera director found Sirena’s name on a list of singers who had been blacklisted from performing with their company. Imagine my surprise when I found out she’d been blacklisted all over the world at nearly every major opera outfit.”

Alexei’s voice held a rather judgmental note, but all Bair heard was “Sirena submitted herself for their Young Artists Program.”

“She is trying to sing again?” he asked, sitting forward. No longer caring as much about playing his cards so close to the chest.

“Yes, she applied to quite a few programs and they’ve all either turned her down or rescinded her invitation. But a few weeks ago, the applications stopped and despite being told to keep an eye out for her name, none of my contacts have heard from her since.”

Sirena was singing again! After all these years, he’d thought she might have left opera for good. Toward the end, the hours of rehearsal had been the only thing that seemed to make her happy, but after she left, he’d put out feelers to every major opera operation all over the world. Not a word. Not an application. Not one single note sung. For six years. Not until now.

He took this new information in, his mind racing, already making plans to hire an investigator—

“I already asked the children’s father, my man in Chicago, to hunt her down. But to no avail. The address she used is a post office box. And the email address she gave them was established in Washington D.C....”

Dark, sinister hope flared within his chest. So maybe Sirena was in Washington D.C.—

“Again we checked,” his brother said, easily reading his thoughts. “And we found nothing, especially without a real name to go on. Our only hope of finding her is for you to lift the ban you put on her. Call each opera director personally and tell them—”

“I will not do that,” Bair informed him, voice hard as stone.

He planned to keep the vow he’d made six years ago when he’d returned from his Russian business trip to find their German apartment empty. She would never sing again, unless it was under his conditions.

“But I will let you know when I find her,” Bair finished.

Alexei lowered his eyes and Bair waited. He didn’t expect his brother to take the rejection of his request lightly. Alexei was a legitimate businessman now, with a family to boot, his Russian crime family days far behind him. But he was still a Rustanov. And Rustanovs did not like to—and some said
could not
—be told no.

However when his brother raised his green eyes to meet Bair’s black ones, there wasn’t anger in them but pity.

“Borya, I understand how you feel. When Eva left me, I could not understand it, could not reconcile it in my brain, and she was only my girlfriend back then. I cannot imagine how this would have felt to me if she were my wife—”

“This is nothing like you and Eva,” Bair said, cutting him off.

Having never visited the States, Bair had yet to meet his sister-in-law, but he’d heard the stories just like the rest of the family. Knew the circumstances that had compelled her to leave Alexei.

However, Sirena was not Eva. Eva had at least left a note. Sirena had simply disappeared without warning or explanation. So thoroughly, he spent a few dark nights wondering if she was dead. Only the lack of a body and some primal instinct on his part had convinced him otherwise. And now she was back, attempting to revive her career as if her time with him had never happened.

Bair snarled, “I know the true reason for her leaving. She is spoiled pet who stopped appreciating what I did for her. It is a very old story, brother. But I will find her. This I assure you.”

“And when you do?”

Bair merely dead-eyed him from behind the desk that used to belong to their father, but now belonged to his bastard son.

Alexei might be the official CEO of Rustanov Enterprises, but he lived full time in the States. Bair had become used to the complete autonomy he’d been given to run the Russian half of their vast empire.

Over the years, Bair had carved out his own path within their company, using his Siberian background to make deals at a few tables even Alexei couldn’t access. Now he was an oligarch in his own right. Maybe only still half a Rustanov but a full billionaire a few times over. Which meant he was and would never again be so easily commanded by Alexei or anyone else.

Apparently Alexei understood this, because after a few long minutes of Bair’s answering silence, he gave in with a nod.

“Fine, but I hope you will do the right thing where your opera singer is concerned, Borya. I do not like disappointing children.”

“And you know how I feel about children,
Lyosha
,” he returned, using the diminutive form of his older brother’s name to make his point.

Bair thought of the appointment he’d made for Sirena at the Berlin University, scheduled for a couple of weeks before he’d been due back from his Russian business trip, so he wouldn’t have to be without her. How frustrated he’d become when that doctor refused to tell him and his men what had transpired during the appointment, citing doctor-patient confidentiality. There had been a much more expensive interview with one of the front office staff after that. The woman told them Sirena had signed the papers, but then had asked to have a private conversation with the doctor before the procedure. She hadn’t even been aware Sirena had left until the doctor had come out to the main office to cancel the surgery. The nurse had been just as surprised as the guard waiting to escort her home after the outpatient procedure.

The guard had run through the same back entrance she’d left from, searching the streets of Berlin for her. But by then it was already too late. Sirena was gone. Never to be seen or heard from again.

Until now.

He and Alexei exchanged terse good-byes, with his older brother retiring to a hotel. He never stayed in their family home during their visits to Russia. Too many bad memories, because he’d actually been quite happy here growing up, and now both his parents were gone. Leaving him with one noncompliant half brother who’d just refused him the one request he’d come all the way to Moscow to make in person.

Long after Alexei left, and Marta had finally been dismissed to go home, Bair continued to sit in his office. Wondering where she’d been hiding all these years. He’d often imagined she’d gone to someone else. Imagined and found both his fists curling at just the thought of her giving to another what she’d given to him.

Sultry smiles and warm caresses at the end of long days. A “come here, Beast,” as she settled his head in her lap and sang him one of her gospel songs while stroking his hair.

Did she stay wet for her new lover the way she’d always been for him?

“Mmm, you want some of this, Beast?” she used to say when he came up behind her while she was getting dressed in their bathroom. Voice teasing, body ripe to his touch.

Remembering her, Bair unzipped his pants and took himself in his hand. Thinking about the smell of the product she used to smooth back her wild curls. The sight of her sensual smile in the mirror as he took her up on her teasing invitation.

Yes, he wanted some of that. He always wanted her.

The whisper of her dress—he only allowed her to wear dresses—against his trousers as he pushed it up and pushed himself into her wet core.

He stroked himself faster and faster, remembering her plaintive cries. The way she’d often reach up and cup the back of his neck as he fucked her from behind. Kissing him boldly until she came apart under his merciless thrusts.

She never held anything back from him when they were together like this, he remembered. And he could hear the sound of her laughing as she came down. As if the aftershocks of the orgasm he’d given her tickled.

“Oh, God, Beast, you know how to make a girl happy in the morning,”
he remembered her saying the first (but definitely not the last) time he’d taken her like that.

And she had been happy. So happy with the life he’d provided her. At least for a little while. But then things had…changed. That first August…and then gotten worse after that.

The only place him and me work right is in bed.

Bair spilled into his hand, lust and rage swirling in an eddy of confused emotion as he threw back his head and gave into the release.

Only to come down to an overwhelming shame.

She wanted nothing to do with him, he remembered then. Had left him without so much as a goodbye. And now she was trying to take her name back.

She’d apparently either left or been let go of by her last lover. And now she was in the wind.

But not for long, he vowed to himself.

Darkness swelled inside his chest as he tucked himself back into his pants. No, this wouldn’t be like his brother and Eva. There would be no happily ever after for him and the girl who so thoroughly destroyed him six years ago.

Only revenge.