Page 9 of Sexting the Bratva Beast
I can hardly hear my voice above the blood gushing in my ears, but I must say something intelligible because everyone claps,and the mayor steps forward, his voice filling the room while I shrink back out of the limelight.
A glass of champagne finds its way into my hand when the speech is over, and I down it in one, the bubbles fizzing against the back of my teeth.
Other people congratulate me. They mention the wonderful renovations and the good work that we’ll be doing to help women less fortunate than them with their pearl earrings, their Gucci purses, and their general American accents. I’m polite but brief.
And every time I look around, Andrej Ivanov is there watching me.
From a distance.
As though he’s scared that I’ll bolt if he gets too close.
He mingles. But not with the VIP group clustered around the mayor, the police commissioner, and a representative from the Chicago Women’s Health Center. Which is where I would’ve expected to see Leonid. But with smaller groups, mostly female.
No surprises there.
He was chatting to the mayor when I first spotted him, so they’re obviously acquainted, but now I notice the older man’s eyes following Andrej around the room as if frightened of losing him.
Not that I’m watching him too.
Andrej moves away from a small group of women, and one follows him, brushing his arm lightly in a gesture that’s too familiar for someone she just met. Or is it? Is she just being flirty? Or am I reading too much into it because he stirs up theair like a man who has women begging him to spread their legs wide and come on in?
I look away, cheeks flaming.
When my gaze finds its way back to the last place I saw him, Andrej is gone. And so is the attractive woman in the obviously expensive shift dress with the sparkling pendant around her neck that may or may not have been a real diamond.
Not that it matters.
Not that I care what Andrej Ivanov gets up to in his leisure time.
So, why do I feel as if the ceiling is pressing down on the top of my head and someone has sucked all the air from the room?
He was messing around with me in the hospital room. He saw me gaping and thought he’d have some fun at my expense, so I only have myself to blame. He had no intention of giving me a guided tour of Chicago. Or if he did, he saw it purely as a direct route into my panties.
“Is that what you want?”the voice inside my head demands like a stern schoolteacher. “I expected more of you.” Because my internal voice has always been way harsher than it needed to be.
I stumble back towards the kitchen, my head down to avoid making conversation, and freeze when the name Ivanov penetrates my miserable foggy brain.
I glance around. Two women are strategically placed near the door that leads to the downstairs hallway; from this vantage point, they can see everyone coming and going. Sliding my phone from my pocket, I pretend to check my messages and shuffle closer, praying that no one will pull me away before I find out what they’re talking about.
“…rumor about a severed hand being delivered in a box.”
What the actual fuck!
“You can’t believe everything…” The speaker must turn away, and when I chance a glance, she’s waggling her fingers at another woman across the room, false smile firmly fixed in place. “A friend of mine was?—”
The woman pauses before she can explain what her friend was getting up to with Andrej Ivanov and greets a man in a gray business suit with air kisses and a coy smile.
“Peter. How lovely to see you.”
I wish that Peter would fuck off so that she can finish telling her story. Perhaps I’m giving off the right vibes because he doesn’t stick around.
“Your friend?” the other woman prompts the instant the suit vanishes in the crowd of guests, and I silently thank her.
“My friend was almost assaulted one night.”
She drops her voice so low I have to move even closer, studying my phone messages like I just found out a meteor is hurtling towards Earth. If Andrej Ivanov is a sexual predator, then it’s better that I discover the truth now rather than later.
“Andrej Ivanov,” barely more than a whisper beneath the buzz of other conversations, “just happened to be passing by, and he pulled the guy off her and knocked him out.”
