Page 26 of Dirty Quinn
“You tell me.” I throw back at him. “Otherwise, why the fuck are we meeting?”
“We wait for the boss,” one of the other men says.
“I am boss,” Andrei bellows, pounding his fist on the table.
I scoff into my glass; the sound ricocheting out like it was amplified.
Andrei draws a gun from his shoulder harness and points the barrel at my face. “You have something to say?”
I meet his hard, cold gaze with one of my own. I’d point my gun back at him, but I have a feeling he’d shoot the moment I went for it. I hold my hands up in a surrender pose. “Nah, man. I’m good,” I say, then drain my glass and opt for bottled water next instead of more vodka. If I keep drinking like this and subsequently running my mouth, someone is going to be shot.
And it’s more than likely going to be me.
13
Daria
I’m feeling better. Enough so that I don’t feel the need for pain medications or copious amounts of sleep. Though the doctor doesn’t see fit to let me go home yet. I’ve been here for two days, which is about forty-six hours too long. Mack has yet to leave my side, except to use the restroom or get himself something to eat.
Oddly, I’m not yet tired of his presence. Instead, I feel comforted that he’s here. Partly because I feel vulnerable, emotionally, and physically. I’m not used to being helpless, or at the very least unable to care for myself.
As it is now, I still can’t sit up without help. I haven’t showered in days, and as I discovered this morning, I have a hard time wiping my ass with my left hand. Something I would never have considered to be an issue until I broke my right wrist and punctured a lung. I’m a flexible girl, but somehow that twist with a reach around just isn’t happening for me. I don’t even want to think about the potential of having to ask Mack for help when I’m discharged. I’d rather hire a full-time home nurse.
Which, as I think about it, might not be a bad idea. I shelf that thought in the back of my mind for later and resume thinking about what will happen when I get out of here and how I plan to respond to Ronan’s request. The girls stopped by right after he left, so I tossed some ideas around with them before I got too tired. That was over a day ago, and now I’m more clear-headed and ready to get the hell out of here and get shit done.
Ronan wants me, well, I guess really my girls given my condition, to infiltrate his organization and take out Andrei, who he’s pretty sure is planning to try to overthrow him. At first, I didn’t understand his logic with having us do it, instead of himself or his guys. But after thinking about it for a bit, it’s starting to make more sense.
He doesn’t know who he can trust at this point. Andrei is—shit, was—his right-hand man, and if he’s turning against him, there’s no telling who else is joining him. If Ronan were to go in, even to his most trusted men, and ask them to take Andrei out, it could backfire. So, having a third party come in is the smarter move. I don’t see why he’s gone through all the trouble to kidnap Quinn to ensure my cooperation, though. I would have done it just for information on Katya’s killer. And if I can get that information before my father does too much damage here in Santa Caranina, that would be best.
If my father hasn’t found out already. Not that I would know. He’s not the type to keep me informed of what he’s doing. He’s also not the type to visit me in the hospital if I’m admitted. Weakness does not exist in the Limonov family. And injury is just that. Even something unavoidable, like what I encountered.
If you were to ask my father, he would tell you I should have parked my car elsewhere. Or put the explosives in the front seat. Or not used something combustible at all. Actually, it wouldn’t matter how I’d handled it, he would find a way to criticize every scenario. My father is the king of hindsight. He has enough top-level advisors that he rarely makes the kind of mistake I did.
It also helps that he’s rarely in the field himself. So, it would be difficult for him to ever be injured on the job. And if his men are injured, well, that’s on them, not him. Just like my short sightings are on me. Limonov’s do not reward weakness. A visit to the hospital is just that.
The only exception is terminal instances, be it illness or age. Beyond that, the blame is on you. Injury is like a germ that can be caught and passed. No one wants it. The best way not to get it is to avoid it. Hence, my father will not be coming to the hospital to see me.
And I’m okay with that. I don’t need to hear all his reasons for how I could have done things differently. How what happened is my fault. How weakness is abhorred. And once he tired of that, he would move on to Mack. He’s not Russian. He’s law enforcement. FBI on top of it. Able to bring the entire family down. How dare I put the lineage in danger with such reckless actions.
I can hear his voice in my head now. “Daria, why must you perform the sex for love? It is for release. And babies. No more. No less.” Not that he believed that when my mother was alive, I’m sure of it. But her death brought with it a cynicism so devout in my father, it would take her resurrection and immortality to reverse it.
Mack snores lightly from the chair next to my bed. He fell asleep a few hours ago, finally, and I don’t have the heart to wake him back up. I’m pretty sure he’d been awake almost forty-eight hours at that point, and he definitely needs the rest. But I’m itching to go over my plan for Andrei with someone.
Because I have one.
And it’s a good one.
I could call the girls in to discuss, but that would definitely wake Mack, and I really want him to sleep. The same goes for video or phone conferencing. Plus, I don’t like to discuss particulars of activities deemed illegal over any kind of device with the ability to record. Or that travels over sound waves. I don’t trust that everything isn’t recorded.
That’s how we handle it in Russia. Americans think they have a reason to fear “Big Brother,” but they have seen nothing when it comes to the dominance and control Russia has over its citizens. They monitor everything. And by everything, I mean just that. Phone conversations, emails, written correspondence, work schedules, school schedules, trips to the store, what you buy. Every single movement a person makes is recorded and tallied.
If they can’t use it against you when advantageous, then it’s cataloged to predict human reactions and behavior. Because the better that the Kremlin understands its citizens, the better it can anticipate them. And if the Kremlin can anticipate, it can manipulate.
As far as Putin is concerned, that’s all any of us are good for. To manipulate for his greater good. Men as soldiers. Women as housebound slaves. Or whores. Because if you aren’t good at cooking, cleaning, or making babies, then you’d better be pretty and on your back.
The exception being women like myself and the others in my family. The Limonov women get special dispensation dating back to my great grandmother. But only for as long as we prove ourselves and our worth outside of what the Kremlin deems valuable. Once that ends, it all ends.
Women are the lesser sex. It’s just the way it is.
