Naomi & Bradley, Reality Shows... (Vodka & Vice, the Series Book 3) (8 page)

BRADLEY

Friday, April 24th

After our sexathon last night, I should be asleep, but I just can’t.  I hear everything:  the elevator cables as they shuttle people up and down the floors, honking horns on the street below, but mostly I hear my phone, now fully-charged and springing to life.  It pings and vibrates until I can’t take it anymore.  I leave Naomi fast asleep in our bed and retrieve the phone from the kitchen.  Pour myself a glass of water, scroll through the messages and alerts.  There must be twenty messages from Tim Smith. 

--This isn’t over, fuckhead.

--You think you can just walk away?  No one walks away from FSTScom Media.

--7:00.  Out front.  Town car.  Be in it.

And the last one, which put the smile back on my face:

--
ANSWER ME!!!!!!!!!!!

No mention of lawsuits, contract breaches, or million dollar penalties.  No, Tim Smith was a desperate man.  I crawl back into bed and snuggle up to Naomi.  She doesn’t move, so I brush her hair off her face and prop myself up on one hand.  It’s a little past sunrise.  Gold sun pours in through the skylight, illuminating half of her face, like the moon.  I think that’s a lot like the way I know her now.  I’ve seen the light and I’ve seen the dark.  Now I want to spend my life getting to know all the in-between moods.  We were getting to that point when that asshole Chase entered our lives and almost ruined our chances forever.  Anger stirs up briefly inside me, but just then her eyes flutter open.

“Hey you,” she whispers, caressing my face. 

“Hey back,” I say, kissing her gently on the lips.  She arches up under my kiss and explores my mouth with her tongue.  Her hand slips down my stomach, between my thighs, caressing my balls.  I let out a little groan.

“Sorry,” she says, biting her lip and batting her eyelashes.

“I don’t believe you.  You aren’t one bit sorry.” I glance at the bedside clock.  It’s almost seven.

She pulls me on top of her and bucks her hips up to meet mine.  I can feel her hot breath in my ear.  We move together in our familiar rhythm until we both cry out at the same time.  Afterward, we lay in silence, her wrapped in my arms.  I check the clock again.

“You have someplace to be?”  She laughs.

“Well, kind of.”

She pushes back a little, props herself up on one elbow.  “Really?”

I grab my phone from the bedside table and hand it to her.

“Are you kidding me?  Those asshats!  Just don’t go.”

“Naomi, I have to go.  They’re going to get me one way or another.  Either for breach of contract or arson.  The only way to get out of it is to do what they want and finish the show.”

“I don’t care about the money, Bradley.  I bet I have twice as much coming to me.  We’ll pay them off, go live somewhere in the south where it’s cheap.  I hate it here, anyway.”

“I committed a
crime
and they might have it on tape.  I’m sorry.  I know it was stupid, but they wanted me to plant child pornography in one of the guy’s rooms.  He has a wife and almost five kids.  I couldn’t do that to him.”

“My god, they really are monsters.  It’s okay, I probably would have done something equally as crazy.”

A horn sounds outside.  The buzzer rings.  At the door is that weasel, Gus.

“Good morning Mr. Bradley.  Huh!  I thought you was gone, but the guy downstairs in the limo said you was here.  I told him he was crazy but I’d check anyway.  He was very insistent if ya know what I mean.”  He winks at me, raises one eyebrow. 

Naomi calls over my shoulder.  “Gus, we know, it’s fine.  Tell him he’ll be right down.”

“Alright, Miss Naomi.  And congratulations, Mr. Bradley.”

“On what?”

“Being the next Bachelor, of course.  Sheesh.  I guess fame’s gone all to your head.”

“Goodbye, Gus.”  Naomi is standing right behind me now, nudging the door closed on Gus’s face.

After the door is closed and locked, she turns to me, puts her hands on my shoulders.  “Now you listen to me, slick, you are gonna go finish the show and do whatever they want you to.  I’m gonna watch here at the apartment and know that not one bit of it is real.  When you’re finished, we are moving far away from here.  I don’t care where it is.  We can move to Middle Earth and live with the Hobbits if you want to.”

“God, I love you,” I say, staring into those ethereal gray eyes, trying to burn them into my retinas so I can see them anytime I need to in the next month.  I kiss her and go off to get dressed. 

“Let’s have a signal you can do to let me know you’re thinking of me.”

“A signal?”  I zip up my pants and pull on a vintage Stones t-shirt.

“Yeah, like Carol Burnett used to have for her grandmother.  She used to pull her ear and that was an ‘I love you’.”

I grab my crotch like a baseball player.  “How about this?”

She laughs.  “I love it, but I doubt you can get away with that too much on national TV.

“I could also pull my ear.”  I try it out.

“That looks ridiculous.”

The horn sounds outside.

“Fine, you think of something.”  I hand her my phone for safekeeping.

Gus is outside the door again, ringing the buzzer relentlessly.

“Hmmm…how about you stroke your beard twice?  That looks natural and I’ll know it’s for me.”

I test it out.  “Works for me.”  I do it again, then take her in my arms and kiss her deeply.  Her scent, freesia and cedar, engulfs me.  I might not shower for a few days, just to keep it around.

“See you in five weeks.”

“I love you.”

“Me too.”

I leave before it’s too hard to go, brushing past Gus on my way to the elevator.  A giant man is stalking back and forth in the lobby, speaking loudly into a headset.  He glowers at me and points toward the waiting black town car.  I go out the door he holds open and head down the steps.  At the bottom, I notice a familiar figure walking quickly toward the building.

“Dobrov!” 

“Viktor?  What are you doing here?”

“What are YOU doing here?”

“Long story.  Are you still picking up your stuff?”

“Ha ha, no, of course not.  Didn’t KuKu tell you, I still live here?  I don’t know why is secret.  Ha ha, maybe she has feelings for Viktor, still.”

I’m about to punch him in the face when out of nowhere, the linebacker of a chauffeur opens the door to the limo and shoves me inside, slamming the door behind me.  Viktor is still on the sidewalk, looking confused, as though I literally disappeared.  I try the window, but it’s locked and all at once we are pulling away from the curb and into traffic.  Viktor recedes in the rear window and I reach for my phone to call Naomi.  Then reality hits me like a piano out of a fortieth floor window:  I don’t have a phone and it’s going to be five weeks before I can get to the bottom of all this.  Reality sucks.

NAOMI

Friday, April 24th--28th

I slept through the weekend after Bradley left, just hours of laying in the messy bed, smelling his scent on the sheets, counting the days until he’d be free of that ridiculous contract.  June first.  I could do thirty –one more days. 

By Monday, my insecurities once more buried, I decide to get busy revamping myself once again.  I return to the gym downstairs for a long strenuous workout. 
Front plank jumps, squat jumps, crunches, deadlifts, curls, and shoulder presses, I keep going until my FitBit reads: Calories burned: 466-635.  Good enough.

I avoid the machines; they remind me of Chase, his whispered lies, and his phony friendship.  I notice he’s called my phone several times in the last few days, but I decide to ignore him.  He broke up my relationship with Bradley for cash.  He’s a disgusting creature, even if he is also my half-brother.

On Tuesday, I re-dye my hair, keeping it long, and black like a sable cat.  I’ll make myself fit and sexy, a woman a hot stud like Bradley deserves.  I laze away the day imagining us walking red carpets, posing for magazine pictures together, his strong arm holding me tightly against his trim waist.  I can almost lose myself in my imaginary perfect Bradley filled world. 

Except for that noise.

All that ridiculous noise! 

Damn Viktor. 

My perfect fictional world is shattered by the constant sounds of a party in the loft living room.

“Viktor!”  I shout, “Can you turn that gypsy music down?”

My heart leaps as my bedroom door bangs back hard against the wall and Viktor staggers in.  I never expected him to burst through the bedroom door.  We have established new boundaries.  Viktor knows he’s no longer welcome in my bedroom.  He’s dripping vodka from the bottle, all over my white rug.  His eyes are glazed over and he smells as if he’s been drug through an ashtray of tobacco and pot.  He lurches closer.

“You called?”

Before I can speak, Viktor whistles through his teeth as if he’s calling a horse.  In bursts his two brothers, Aleksey and Luka both are shooting videos with their iPhones.  Viktor dives on my bed and starts dripping cold vodka all over my stomach, and then he slides one strong hand into both of mine and holds them over my head.  To my horror, he uses his free hand to pull up my T-shirt and he starts licking my stomach.

“Viktor, stop this right now!”

He grins, a sly nasty grin, presses his lips together, and shakes his head in the negative.  He continues to kiss my skin with wet lips.  I glance up at the two younger Slotzky brothers.  What the hell are they doing?  Was this their idea of a joke, making some porn home movie or something?  They look sinister, black cigarettes squeezed between their lips, their eyes fogged over like a car window on a cold night.  I’ve never seen them this high and my adrenaline kicks in with a touch of real fear.

Viktor is burying his nose in my navel now and smelling me as if I’m a freshly served taco bar.

I raise my head and struggle to get free, but Viktor outweighs me by a hundred pounds and he’s not letting go.  “Shh KuKu, just having some fun.”

“
I’m
not having fun, and what’s with the video?”

“I just want to remember you KuKu, you know, when Bradley comes back, if he does…and I leave.  Just give me that, a little something to keep.  How hot you are.”

Viktor wiggles between my legs and holds my kicking feet down with his.  I stare at the two roaming Slotzky men as they film us and a terrible feeling comes over me.  This smells like another setup.  Viktor had come back last Saturday in the morning hours, just as Bradley was leaving.  Had they crossed paths in an elevator, in the lobby?  I never talked about Bradley’s surprise visit, but since then Viktor has been quiet, staring at me, smoking more dope than normal.  The tables in the loft now littered with full ashtrays and empty bottles, tipped over glasses, and decorated with water stains.

“Get up, shift off of me, I mean it Viktor!  If you don’t stop this, one of us is moving out today!”

“One last kiss then Kukolka, for old time’s sake, please…”  Viktor whines as he starts kissing my neck, moving towards my chin.  “You owe me that.”

“No, let go of my hands or I’m going to knee you in the balls good, final warning.”

Viktor grins, “You American girls, all rugged like the old west huh?”

He swoops down and covers my lips with his.  I haven’t kissed him since that wild night after the Russian nightclub fire, and I have to admit, the man knows how to move his tongue.  I relax, trying to get him to drop his guard.  He goes wild then, licking my bottom lip, he releases my hair and holds my head steady with his big paws.

Here it comes, I think, before shifting and getting him good right where it hurts.

“Ouchhhhhhhhhh!  Shit!”

Viktor slides off the bed and doubles over, rolling on the floor in a tight ball.  He shouts out a string of Russian words I can only guess the meaning of, and I hear Luka and Aleksey howling like monkeys.

I pull down my shirt and point at the Slotzkys, “Enough with the stupid video, get out, and take that crying bear with you.  And Viktor, I want you out tomorrow.  Every rolled cigarette, your pile of dirty laundry a mile high, and your entire family.  All of them, I want you all out!”

A deep voice comes from the doorway and I freeze.  I smell his scent.  Cocoa, flowers, and cardamom.

“No, my boys stay.  And you stay too Naomi,” Mr. Slotzky says with an iron voice.  “We edit the video, we send it to Model House, we all watch and see what your Bradley does after that, huh?  Maybe he’ll be the next Bachelor on your American TV show after all.”

“Why?  Why would you do that to him, to us?” I cry, the panic thick in my voice.  “I went into the real estate deal with you. I stay out of the decisions.  I don’t know what else you want from me.”

“Ratings Naomi, millions of dollars of commercial contracts, didn’t Bradley tell you?  Ha, I see he did not.  Me, Fedor Slotzky, I own FSTScom Media, the owner of Model House.  Your Bradsky is my golden ticket and I need him on my show, not just moping around on the sofa, no I need him to breathe fire into the live feed.  Now that he’s pulled that prank and set fire to my set, I can bring him up on arson charges.  Don’t think I won’t prosecute him; send him to jail.  The women, they want to know they have a chance with him.  If he sees you cheating with Viktor here, he’ll drop you.  He’ll be available for all their wet dreams.  Yes, this is a good plan.  I’ve got him by the balls now.”

He stoops and grabs Viktor under the arms and lifts him as if he’s weightless.  “Speaking of balls, sorry about yours son.  Good work boy, the distillery business is yours.”

I sit up in my rumpled bed and wrap my arms around my waist.  I’m frozen with fear and dread.  I know how they can manipulate tape, make that bed scene with Viktor on top of me look authentic. 

Will Bradley believe it?  He knows I had sex with Viktor before, when we were broken up, but now it’s very different.  We’re engaged.  After our Saturday night together, would Bradley fall for their doctored video?  Would he believe their deceit?  No!  I will
not
lose faith in him ever again.  I won’t fall in that rabbit hole and wallow in despair.  I believe in my man.  Bradley will laugh it off.  He knows Viktor has a vicious streak.  Bradley also knows that Fedor Slotzky owns Model House.  Didn’t he just tell me that the show would stoop to anything to gain better ratings?  Bradley would see right through this farce.

I’m tempted to sob, but my eyes remain dry. 

Be strong Naomi Swanson.

I refuse to cry.  Those Russian mongrels will not frighten me out of my relationship again.  They fooled me once.  Bradley and I both suffered through months of misery because of their tricks.  We are both stronger now.  Everything’s going to be fine.

I will watch it on live TV this Friday and see Bradley laugh in their faces.  He’ll declare our love and spit in their eyes.  Me, and millions of viewers will know our love is real.

Those asshat Slotzkys would not win this time.