You Don't Own Me: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (The Russian Don Book 1) (18 page)
Read You Don't Own Me: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (The Russian Don Book 1) Online
Authors: Georgia Le Carre
Dahlia Fury
I
look up and Olga is standing there. She walks up to me and helps me up to my feet.
‘Are you all right?’ she asks.
For a moment I forget to be hurt and wounded and furious. ‘You don’t speak English.’ I say stupidly.
‘Of course, I do,’ she says briskly.
‘What? Then why?’
‘Oh, child. Every time a new woman comes in here, it’s the same damn thing. They fall in love with him and expect me to listen to their pathetic stories. I got sick of it, and unless it was a Russian girl, I just pretended I could speak nothing but Russian.’
This house is full of liars. ‘I don’t believe this,’ I say shaking my head.
‘Well,’ she says dryly. ‘Try listening to the same idiotic story again and again.’
‘I’m leaving,’ I tell her.
She glances at the bag that is lying on the first step of the stairs. ‘No, you’re not.’
I sniff pitifully. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘Well, come and have a cup of coffee first.’
‘No, I don’t want to stay under his roof for another minute.’
She points to a little red light blinking in a corner of the hallway that I have not noticed before. ‘See that.’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s a camera. Yuri is watching you right now from that small room there. The moment you try to open the door he will come out and quickly escort you back to your room. That is his job. No one gets in or out without Aleksandr’s say-so.’
‘I’m a prisoner?’ I ask incredulously.
‘Not exactly, but you cannot run out in the middle of the night. If I was Aleksandr I would not allow it either. It is not safe for a young woman to be wandering about alone at this time of the night. Why don’t you come into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and a little chat?’
I sniff. ‘Coffee and a chat?’ Everything seems so surreal.
She goes over to my bags and picks them up. ‘Can you walk or do you need help?’ she asks.
I cough. ‘I can walk,’ I say, and begin to limp towards the kitchen. She holds the door open.
The kitchen is fragrant with the smell of baking.
‘Are you cooking at this time of the night?’ I ask, my mind latching onto meaningless inconsistencies around me in my moment of shock and betrayal.
‘Yes. I don’t like waking up early in the morning. I prefer to work at night and have an extra hour in bed in the morning.’
I hobble over to a stool and sit on it. She puts my bags on the floor next to me, and slides a box of tissues towards me. ‘Now, let’s get you some coffee.’
I pull out a couple of tissues, wipe my eyes and blow my nose.
She puts a mug of coffee in front of me. ‘I’ve already put the right amount of sugar in it.’
‘You know how many sugars I have in my coffee?’ I ask, weirdly and helplessly exploring more meaningless inconsistencies.
‘Of course.’
I wrap my hands around the hot mug. ‘Did you know that he kidnapped my sister too?’
She nods. ‘I might have heard something to that effect.’
‘And Noah? Does he knows too?’
‘Of course. It doesn’t take a genius to work it out.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You come to this house in a tight dress—’
‘It was a uniform,’ I correct automatically.
‘OK, a tight uniform and run out like a bear was on your tail and three months later your sister gets kidnapped. In Aleksandr’s world, glaring coincidences like that don’t happen unless they are made to happen.’
I stare at her unperturbed face. ‘But you don’t think he has done a terrible thing?’
She shakes her head. ‘No. I don’t think it was so bad. It is an English saying no, “all is fair in love and war”?’
I throw my hands up. ‘This is unbelievable. Do you know how upset my mom was? We didn’t know what to think. She could have been dead.’
She shrugs. ‘We are Russian. We are not so emotional. We are more, how do you call it, stoic. No one was hurt. Sometimes it is only when something bad happens to the people you love that you come to see just how much you love them. It teaches you to appreciate them more.’
I hold my head. ‘You can’t seriously think what he did was not wrong?’
‘Wrong? What is wrong? One hundred years ago it was not wrong to buy a man and use him as a slave. In Aleksandr’s world it was not wrong to take your sister to have you. In his world she was bait he put on a hook to catch a fish he wanted.’
My God. How he must have laughed at me. Calling me
rybka
and letting me think it was a Russian endearment. ‘That’s so fucked up,’ I say, my voice quivering with anger. Little fish, my ass!
‘Aleksandr makes his own rules.’
‘And that makes it OK?’ I demand angrily.
She looks directly into my eyes. ‘Aleksandr makes his bed and he lies on it. You think it was an accident that you found out what he did today?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Aleksandr has many secrets buried inside him that he will carry to his grave. You will never know them even if you spend a lifetime with him. If you have found out something it was only because he wanted you to know.’
Then I remember his eyes, the way he watched me while he told me to take up yoga and meditation like my sister. There had been something there. He knew how I would react.
He wanted me gone.
I gasp and cover my mouth with my hand. ‘Oh my God! He doesn’t want me anymore and that is his way of getting rid of me.’ My heart aches with this new knowledge. It was better when I thought I was the one leaving him.
She shakes her head and sighs deeply. ‘You are too young to understand a man like him. He does not want you gone.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask instantly.
‘Have you ever thought it may be the opposite of what you think? Perhaps he wants you too much, and he is afraid of being hurt by you.’
‘Hurt by me? I’ll never hurt him,’ I deny hotly.
‘Look at you. At the first sign of trouble you’ve packed your bags and are running away with your tail between your legs. What good are you for a man like him? He needs a strong woman. A woman he can trust.’
‘Why, because he’s an asshole and a criminal?’ I retort, stung by her criticism.
She smiles a secret smile. ‘Have you seen him play the piano?’
I still with the memory. ‘Yes,’ I whisper.
‘Then you have seen the real man. The criminal is just the mask he puts on to survive. That man playing the piano.’ She drops her voice to a whisper. ‘That’s the real him. That’s the man who needs a good woman he can trust because he has wounds that only she can heal.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
She opens a drawer near her and takes out a thick, hardcover book and shows me the title.
The Big Book of American Recipes
. ‘They won’t give me the money back and it will be a useless buy if you don’t stay.’
I try to smile but I can’t.
She opens the book and looks at the random page she has opened it to. ‘I can make you fried pickle. You like that? Remind you of your home. Hmmm?’
I smile through my tears. ‘That’s Southern food. I’m not from the South.’
She raises her hands into the air dramatically and says impatiently, ‘So. I will make you Northern food.’ She taps the book and nods. ‘Recipes from all of America are in here.’
I rest my chin on my fists. God, what a mess I’ve gotten myself into.
She looks at me seriously. ‘Both Noah and I want you to stay.’
‘Noah? He doesn’t even like me.’
She laughs. ‘Ah, child! Sometimes you are like an American tourist. You need a map for everything.’
‘Those are Japanese tourists you’re talking about,’ I tell her.
‘Japanese, American, what’s the difference?’ she dismisses roundly. ‘Noah has always been on your side. He told me he arranged you on your bed in such a way that when Aleksandr came into your room later, he would see not a drunk slut, but a sleeping angel.’
I stare at her dumbfounded. ‘Noah did that?’
She nods.
‘Then why is he so cold and distant with me?’
‘Noah works for Aleksandr. There is a phrase, what is it, way of conduct—‘
‘Code of conduct,’ I correct.
‘Yes, that is right. Code of conduct. He cannot be too friendly with you.’
‘Why do you want me to stay and not any of the other girls?’
‘Because you are not like all the others. You alone can find a way to his heart.’
I look at the table sadly. ‘I don’t know if I want to. I’m not Russian. I was brought up in a different way. I can’t forgive him just like that for what he has done to my family.’
‘The path of love is a thorny one. Fight for your love.’
I smile wistfully. ‘He doesn’t love me.’
She fixes me with her dark eyes. ‘You do.’
I bite my lip. ‘What good is that? He won’t even let me close to him. When he caught me watching him playing the piano you wouldn’t believe how furious he was. He ordered me never to enter that room when he’s in it again.’
Olga walks away from me and switches off the oven. She dons oven mitts, pulls open the door, and takes out a tray of little buns.
‘Learn from the national symbol of your country. The eagle does not fight the snake on the ground. It picks it up into the sky and changes the battlefield. The snake has no balance, power or strength in the air. Take the fight into the air where you are strong and he is vulnerable.’
‘But I don’t know how to fly,’ I say.
She takes the mitts off her hands and looks at me, and quite seriously says, ‘Then you must learn how to.’
Oh God! How the fuck do I learn to fly?
To be continued …
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You Don’t Own Me #2
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Published by Georgia Le Carre
Copyright © 2015 by Georgia Le Carre
The right of Georgia Le Carre to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the copyright, designs and patent act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN
:
978-1-910575-20-8
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