Bargains and Betrayals

  “Da. Good. We’ll start with that. Widen your stance—feet shoulder-width apart.”

  “Like target shooting,” she realized.

  “Good, good. Now bend your knees slightly and lower your center of gravity.…”

  Jessie

  “I need you to read this, O, editor,” Pietr whispered, coming up behind me in the sitting room on silent feet.

  I turned to face him, my hands still damp from washing up after training with Alexi. I was stiff. Tired.

  Probably bruised. But I knew a few more things than I had known before, so I chalked the experience up as a win.

  I took the paper he offered without looking at him. That close to Pietr there was never anything I wanted to see but him. “What am I looking for?” I asked, shifting into editor mode. “Spelling, facts? Voice? Flow?”

  “Accuracy.”

  “Accuracy, I can do,” I promised, thinking of one hit I’d surprised Alexi with.

  He leaned forward and plucked something out of my hair. “What—?” He held the dead leaf before me.

  “Must have gotten that rolling around with Alexi in the backyard.” I blinked and looked at him. “That sounded so wrong.”

  He nodded, eyebrow quirked. Waiting.

  “I’m trying to learn a few things from your more experienced brother so I’m ready for our big event.”

  His expression didn’t change.

  “Yee-ahhh. Not any better, huh?” I laughed. Our big event could mean two vastly different things to Pietr. “Lemme just run through the other ways I could get this wrong: Alexi’s teaching me some moves. He’s trying to put the hurt on me. He was putting me into some positions I’ve never tried before.…” I snorted. I couldn’t help myself.

  A muscle near Pietr’s left eye twitched.

  “He’s teaching me to fight!” I laughed, grabbing his wrists.

  He rolled his eyes and groaned. “You,” he whispered. “A school newspaper editor.”

  “Hey, buddy.” I grinned. “Editing means we get time to improve the words. We’re allowed to be pretty rough originally.”

  He smiled, kissed my forehead, and slipped away, leaving me with the paper.

  “‘A Eulogy for Jess Gillmansen,’” I read the title aloud. Oh. Our psychology project. I flopped down in the love seat, pulling my knees up under me.

  Jess Gillmansen led a life spent enriching others’ lives. Friend to strays and monsters, she accepted everyone with gracious abandon and loved them well beyond what they ever deserved or dreamed. A true friend and fierce forgiver, she pulled the man in me out to face down the monster I feared and helped make me the best bits of what I am. I would follow her to Hell and back if only to protect her and let her know how much she’s loved. Now and forever.

  My hand shook as I set the paper on my knees. “Pietr?”

  And he was there, eyes dark with worry. “I—”

  “Don’t you dare try and apologize. It’s perfect—better than I could’ve expected. You give me a lot of credit.”

  He stared at the floor marking the distance between us and I reached out to take his hand. “You deserve it.”

  “Although you made me go into research mode on your childhood and it appears you wussed out and went all sentimental on mine.”

  “I wanted to get it finished before…”

  He didn’t have to say it. I knew. Before the big fight. Tie up any loose ends, say whatever needed to be said, because who knew what the outcome would be?

  “It’s going to turn out fine.” I tugged him over to the love seat and, pulling him down beside me, curled up against him and drifted off.

  Until I heard the chair in the corner shift, I didn’t realize that I’d been moved. I woke up, a soft pillow beneath my head and the scent of Pietr—everywhere. I sat up and, blinking to clear my vision, found him sitting in the chair in the corner, watching me.

  He cleared his throat. “I thought…” His eyes narrowed. “… since Annabelle Lee’s in your bed…”

  “I should be in yours?”

  He shrugged one shoulder, noncommittal, but his expression was decidedly guilty. “Tomorrow everything will change, no matter what happens tonight.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. “Is the mirror new?” I asked, looking at the long oval mirror framed with dark cherry wood. I didn’t remember seeing it before, but I seldom remembered much after I’d been alone in a room with Pietr.

  “Something Cat gave me. She insists I look at myself as part of accepting who I am. It’s lame.”

  I laughed, and, catching my reflection in the mirror with just a bit of his, an idea came to me. I slipped off the edge of the bed. My bare feet touched down on the wooden floor and I padded over to him, my brooding, silent Pietr. Pietr with so much pain and heat and hope in his eyes. So confused, so torn, so beautiful.

  “You’re thinking too much.”

  “Everything depends on my plan working. I can’t stop thinking about it—running scenarios through my head.”

  “Come here,” I commanded, my words as strong as the pounding in my chest.

  One step was all it took and he was standing before me, casting me in his shadow. “Distract me, Jess,” he begged. His hand trailed down the side of my face, fingers sweeping aside my hair and dropping to my shoulder.

  I held his hand there a moment, moved it down, and over slightly so it rested on my heart.

  “Look at us,” I whispered, turning my face as I reached to turn his to the long antique mirror that stood beside us. “Focus on us. Now.”

  He did, his eyes sparking as he was mesmerized by the image of his hand on my chest. His fingers twitched, reaching for the buttons on my shirt, his eyes on my eyes, watching us in the mirror. He fumbled a moment with a button and then carefully opened it, separating the two sections of fabric as far as he could and tracing a tantalizing line along the neckline of my shirt until his finger brushed against the next button.

  In the mirror I watched his hand on me, watched him catch my mirror image’s gaze and ask a silent question.

  I nodded and he undid the next button. It was agonizingly slow, this tentative torture, and I finally shook his hands off and undid the next three buttons quickly with trembling fingers.

  He pushed my shirt down, baring my shoulder, and looked away from the mirror, focused with a devastating intensity on me. Something inside of me loosened, heated under that look, and I lifted his shirt, pulling it up and over him, off of his head, but stopping before I slid it free and loosed his hands. Instead, I brought his hands down, the T-shirt still binding them and held in my closed fist. I stood on tiptoes to kiss along his jaw and he growled, hands flexing against my hip, eager to touch me again.

  “Nyet.” I nipped at his neck.

  When he said my name it came out strangled, his voice breaking the word into two syllables.

  And then I heard the sound of cloth tearing and his hands were free—his shredded T-shirt falling to the ground. “I liked that one,” I mused.

  He snarled and the remaining buttons on my shirt popped off like shots fired one after the other as he tugged my shirt all the way off, letting it crumple on the floor like a puddle of fabric around my feet. “I liked that one, too.”

  “Shut up, Jess,” he whispered, and he bent his powerful legs and lifted me up, his hands sliding across my back and clutching me to him while he kissed me quiet. One of his hands reached behind my left leg and dragged it around so it wrapped his waist. He adjusted his grip with a grunt and did the same thing with my other leg.

  His face buried in the curve of my neck, I heard him draw in a deep and ragged breath. “You’re beautiful,” he confessed, his breathing shallow. Pressed so tightly to him I felt his heart racing into my stomach—a mind-numbing sensation.

  He set me down on the bed and, propping himself above me, he searched my face for an answer to the question we both kept arriving at.

  “Yes—da,” I whispered, and he groaned. “Pocelujte menyah,” I commanded.
/>
  And he filled my ears with his trembling confession: “Yah tebyah lyewblyew, Jess.”

  “Yah tebyah lyewblyew, Pietr Andreiovich Rusakova,” I replied, peppering his face with kisses.

  His pants fell in a heap by the bedside and his nightstand drawer opened and closed with a squeak. I heard the rustle of a foil packet and my eyes popped open a moment, realizing this was it. Then Pietr’s mouth was on mine and we rolled under the covers.

  For a while the world fell away and there was only me and Pietr. And a fire that burned in us both as bright as a wolf’s eyes at midnight.

  Jessie

  It was still dark outside when I untangled myself from the sheets and sat up in the bed, carefully moving toward its foot so I didn’t wake Pietr. Focusing on the mirror, I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to straighten it. I turned my face from side to side, examining my image. Did I look any different?

  I felt different. A little sore, and a lot nervous. A bit guilty. Yeah. Definitely guilty. I’d never imagined myself here, sleeping with a guy I’d only met a few months earlier. I wasn’t even eighteen. My eyes settled on Pietr’s sleeping form. What had we done? How would it change things between us? I swallowed hard. What if …

  What if Pietr had been right and we didn’t really know enough about each other?

  The mattress squeaked and Pietr reached out in his sleep. “Jess,” he rumbled, his fingers prowling my empty side of the bed. “Jess?” He sat up suddenly, blinking. “Oh.” His brow wrinkled as he focused on me. “What are you doing there?”

  “Thinking.”

  A smile slid across his lips. “Liar. You’re worrying,” he corrected. “Quit that. Come here.”

  I nodded and flopped down beside him.

  “Better,” he said, his hand walking along my arm.

  “This”—I looked at him meaningfully—“changes everything.”

  “Da. It does,” he agreed, and he pulled me into his arms and fell asleep again, his forehead hot against mine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Jessie

  The next morning we drove together to Junction High, Pietr wrapping himself around me like the finest of coats, Annabelle Lee riding shotgun so she could be dropped off at the middle-school entrance.

  Our behavior didn’t go unnoticed and after Annabelle Lee had been dropped off, Max and Cat exchanged a look, glanced at us, and laughed.

  Max had planned to take the group of us out to the movies after school to keep up appearances and fill my head—and eyes—with things that would keep Derek watching us and not exploring the house while Dmitri and Alexi finalized plans.

  Amy told Max the night before that she’d take the bus to school. It was always earlier and she needed a few minutes before homeroom to deal with some library books she’d rediscovered in her closet.

  So it surprised me when she wasn’t waiting for us. “Wait—where’s Amy?”

  Pietr looked up and down the sidewalk. His nostrils flared momentarily. “She hasn’t gotten here yet.”

  “No. There’s her bus.” I pointed.

  I jogged over to it. She was nowhere in sight. I dug my cell phone out of my back pack and hit her number.

  “Hey,” she answered.

  “God, you sound awful.”

  “Yeah. My throat’s really killing me,” she said hoarsely.

  Max trotted over, his eyebrows tucking his normally bright eyes into shadow.

  “So you’re not coming in?”

  “No.” She coughed.

  “Should we bring you something?”

  “No. I mean … I just feel like crap. Can I—can I talk to you later?”

  “Yeah. Oh.”

  “Did you tell Max?” I asked, catching his eye.

  “No,” Amy said. “Could you—” She was coughing again, so loud I had to move the phone away from my ear. “Sorry,” she gasped. “I gotta go.”

  “Where’s Amy?” Max asked, tossing the car keys back and forth with Cat.

  “Home. Sick.” I slipped the phone back into my pack’s pocket. “It must be some bad bug,” I muttered. “She hasn’t been sick enough to skip school in…” The words dropped away when I saw him. Smiling, laughing, flirting with some girl—a girl who looked remarkably like Amy.

  Max, Pietr, and Catherine followed my gaze.

  Straight to Marvin.

  Max snagged the keys out of midair and spun back toward the car, his stride so long I jogged to keep up. “Take notes for me!” I told Pietr.

  Max glanced down at me, his jaw set.

  “I’m coming, too,” I panted. “Shotgun!”

  “I may want one of those.”

  I felt the color drain from my face, wondering what he thought we’d find. And I worried he’d be right.

  Jessie

  “I’m sick,” Amy protested from the other side of the door. “I don’t want you to get this, too.” She coughed. Suddenly it sounded fake.

  “I’ll take the chance. Let me in now,” I insisted.

  “I am absolutely unwilling to spread this contagion. Go back to school.”

  “Open the damn door, Amy,” Max demanded.

  The dead bolt slid into place.

  “Nice move.” I tugged at my hair. “If she’s locking both of us out it must be bad. What the hell could he have done…?”

  Max closed his eyes and he stepped forward, one hand on the door.

  “Oh…” Bile rose in my throat.

  He licked his lips. “I can get through this.” He tapped the door with a finger.

  “Amy, open the door,” I urged.

  Silence.

  “Step back, Amy,” Max commanded. “Check me,” he whispered.

  “Coast’s clear.”

  His eyes glowed and he grabbed the edge of the door and peeled it off the hinges, throwing it behind us like he was discarding old cardboard.

  There, behind a coffee table leveled with shims, Amy stood, eyes wide, arms wrapped protectively around herself. The hem of the bathrobe she snugged against her flapped in the sudden breeze.

  Hair snarled, her wrists were black with bruises. At a glance I knew her sore throat was legitimate, a handprint visible on the slender curve of her neck.

  Max was inside a heartbeat ahead of me.

  Something passed between them and the air electrified. Max’s nostrils flared. And then his hands brushed the hair back from her eyes and rested on either side of her face. Tenderly he tilted her face up to him and he kissed her forehead so lightly his lips might have been a feather brushing her battered skin. “I have to go,” he apologized. “Here.” He handed me his cell phone and some cards. “Use the Visa to get a door that works.”

  “When will you be b—”

  But he was already gone, the car slinging gravel as its tires spun.

  “Visa.” I flipped through the plastic options. My hands shaking, the cards tumbled to the dingy carpet. “Oh. Crap.”

  Amy’s eyes widened at the sight, too. She picked them up tenderly and tears came to her eyes. “What is he planning?”

  My stomach curled in on itself and I shook my head. Whatever Max was planning, it was obvious he didn’t want any identification on him if he was caught.

  Amy clutched his school ID and license and I rooted through old newspapers and magazines for a place to sit.

  Jessie

  I awkwardly nudged the door up the trailer’s rickety stairs and leaned it in place to provide us with some sense of security. Coaxing Amy’s old computer to crawl to a site with a phone number, I called and ordered a new door.

  We sat there silently for a few painful minutes, Amy staring at her hands, and me staring at the handprint on her neck.

  “Marvin.” I said the name and she flinched. “I didn’t think…”

  “I didn’t, either,” she admitted, the words scratching their way out of her throat. “I mean. We fought. A lot,” she confessed. “More than I ever wanted to think about. I mean … I thought he was like some prince at first. Taking an
interest in me. Him with all the money and privilege … I thought I was being rescued. My brother Frank got out of this dive. Mom left soon after that. Dad escaped when he started drinking. Heavily. Why not me? Don’t I deserve to escape?”

  I reached out and rested my hand on hers.

  “But he pushed me around. At first he said he was sorry.”

  “And you believed him,” I said.

  “I was stupid.”

  “No. He was a liar. How could you know?”

  “The flowers he gave me at Homecoming? They were part of an especially big apology.”

  “Oh.” I had thought they were beautiful.

  “He wasn’t what I expected. He pushed me around. He smacked me. He kicked me. He pinched me and shoved me…”

  The words unsteady, I urged her, “You can just say it, you know.” I couldn’t stand to hear each way he’d hurt her.… The use of each cruel verb. The summary was bad enough. “Just say he beat you.”

  “No,” she said, the word stark and cold. Her eyes locked on to mine and I saw a bit of fire—a bit of that beautiful and bold Amy sparking in their depths.

  “Why not?”

  “Because of the word, Jessie. It makes a difference. Beat has different meanings, you know? One’s right for the way he treated me.” She swallowed and tugged her hands out of mine to rub her tender throat. “But one relates to winning—like if you beat someone in a race. If I say he beat me, it feels like he won. And he hasn’t.” She swallowed hard, a tightness around her eyes at the pain. “No,” she croaked. “He didn’t beat me. He’ll never beat me,” she promised. Her eyes flashed open and she caught me watching her. “But he did rape me.”

  And then she was silent. The words all used up.

  I stood, rubbing my forehead and urging my brain to kick in. “I need to make a call.”

  She nodded. “I need a shower.”

  “No,” I said, aching at the look she gave me and so sorry to make her wait. “Not quite yet.” I closed myself in the small bathroom and called Alexi.

  Next I’d call Dad.

  Alexi

  “God.” Words escaped me. “Where will he go with him?” I heard Jessie’s question, but my ears were so full of the noise of blood rushing through them as my pulse pounded in anger, it took me a moment to respond. I pushed the phone more firmly to my ear. “This is Max we are talking about. He will take the fight to Marvin. Nyet. An audience won’t be enough to stop him from grabbing him. Da. I know. Pietr’s at school.”