Unmeasured (Unmatched Book 1) Read online

  “Sir? Oleg Balashov is here.”

  “Sit down,” Michal said to Oleg while simultaneously waving off the blonde.

  Oleg obliged. “How does this evening find you, Michal?”

  “Very well. Your uncle did not misspeak when he said that you were a punctual person. That is to be respected in a man.”

  “I find it to be a sign of respect to the host and hope you know this alliance is also regarded as such by my family.”

  “Your uncle is a good man. I never thought I would admit that out loud.” Michal laughed. It was a good-natured rumble that caught Oleg off guard.

  He returned the chuckle. “Ah, yes. I would agree.”

  Michal took the cigar out of his mouth and tapped it on the side of the marble ashtray next to his crossed legs. “But you, Oleg, I know not shit about you.”

  Oleg scraped his lip with his teeth and tried to control the scowl that itched to form on his face. An Oxford postgraduate millionaire who had legally turned seven figures into eight many times over and he sat under the scrutiny of a known criminal. “I could offer you my curriculum vitae, but I don’t think it would answer your questions.” Oleg leaned forward, looking the man others referred to as Le Diable straight in the eye. “I am a man of my word.”

  “Has your word ever been tested? I don’t imagine there are too many tough choices to make at university.”

  Oleg considered his answer. Michal would not likely be interested in the internal battle waging inside Oleg over his choice to return to Paris and defend the Balashov empire.

  “This was not a tough choice,” Oleg said. “You daughter is a true beauty. I only hope she is as excited to meet me as I am to meet her.”

  “Karina is just in the other room. You’ll have the rest of the evening to get to know one another. But first, let us share a drink and a promise.” Michal stood and crossed the room to the old filing cabinet that surely served him better as a place to stash his favorite vodka. He poured a few swallows into two of the four glasses that sat atop and handed one to Oleg. “Balashov and Harakian. Together we will scrub the Paris streets of the foul stench left by our common enemy.”

  Oleg raised his glass. “The enemy of my enemy…”

  “Is family. You will be good to my princess, yes?”

  “Of course.”

  Michal chuckled. “Ah, but will she be good to you? Tough choices, my son. I will be watching to make sure you have the balls to see this through.”

  *

  Oleg moved deeper into the underground lair that was the Harakian’s home office. Many long stone halls wound off the main one in what Oleg assumed was a repurposed part of the ancient mining network that lay beneath most of Paris. He took the second hallway on the left as the blonde directed and knocked on the arched wooden door.

  “Go away.”

  Not exactly the introduction he was looking for. He knocked again. “Karina? It’s Oleg.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Oleg frowned at the man’s voice attempting to dismiss him now. “Why don’t you open the door Karina, so that we can get this over with?”

  The door flung open, and Oleg was face-to-face with the woman he’d only seen in a smattering of photographs. Karina seemed a broken-down version of the beauty he’d expected.

  “Are you retarded? Go away!”

  He appraised the gaunt-faced woman with hair piled haphazardly atop her head. A cigarette dangled on her lip, and her hand shook violently as she moved to remove it. Past a billow of smoke, he peered over her shoulder to see a similarly malnourished-looking man slouched shirtless in a chair with his pants undone and his belt slackly encircling his arm.

  Oleg grimaced. “You look like you could use a moment. I’ll come back tomorrow to discuss the details of our arrangement.” No need to even pretend it was more than that. Not now.

  “Whatever.” She slammed the door in his face.

  “Right,” Oleg said to no one in particular. His wife to be was a smackhead. As long as she used, heroin would be her only love. At least she’d stay out of his way. She wasn’t his responsibility. Oleg sighed and pulled out his phone. A few moments later, he’d saved the numbers to three private rehab facilities. No, he wasn’t responsible for the condition she was in, but she was going to be his wife, and that meant that protecting Karina’s well-being was his obligation.

  Chapter 2

  All day, Samantha Hunter had been brimming with excitement, awaiting the exact instant she’d find herself high in the air about to try something that was sort of batshit crazy. God, how she craved these stolen moments of pure exhilaration. Do it, do it, do it. Her stomach fluttered, and it wasn’t because she’d traded her favorite bowl of soup for an energy bar in order to make her trapeze fitness class in time. She was giddy for the soul-igniting rush that promised to follow the moment she flung herself into the air. She was breathless with it, starving for it, compelled to reach for the edge of audacity. It was visible. She could taste it. She smiled wryly. Nothing felt like this.

  “Don’t even think about it, Samantha!”

  Samantha wrapped her toes around the edge of her trapeze platform. She’d already made up her mind. She was going to go for it, no matter the firm warning from her fitness instructor. If Samantha could have run away and joined the circus when she was a kid, she was sure she would have. When she came across the circus-themed fitness complex, she didn’t care how faddish it was. CrossFit was for people with no imagination.

  “I’m as ready as I’m ever going to be!” she yelled back, and without further discussion on the matter, she jumped free of the platform. After five months, the trapeze bar felt like an old friend in her grasp. Gravity propelled her forward. She worked her hips and legs to extend her range, and then gravity brought her back again high above the platform. But she planned on showing gravity a thing or two. Samantha swung her legs high in front of her, rigid with intent, and arched her back, releasing the rod and then tucking her head to her chest, her knees just below, to turn four rotations in the air.

  A fucking quad, baby!

  Her instructor reached out with his arms straining to meet her in his upside-down catcher’s position on the opposite swing. He caught one of her wrists and missed the other. His tenuous grasp wasn’t enough to keep her with him and she fell, careening toward the net below. Only the lopsided almost-catch had thrown her way off-center, and she spun right, tangling in her guard straps before reaching the net, one strap wrapping around her neck.

  “My God!” her instructor screamed. “Hang on, don’t panic, Samantha!”

  Panic? Samantha didn’t panic. Ever. She laughed, or she thought she laughed, but the sound was caught inside her restricted windpipe. She’d almost done it. A quad somersault. The thrill still ran wild in her blood. A grin percolated on her lips until it all went black.

  Next, she was on her back on the mat with the rope net looming above her like a trap waiting for some kind of giant fish. Two faces peered down at her, and her chest felt like a boulder had landed there.

  “Are you crazy? You could have hung yourself!” her instructor yelled. His breath heaved in ragged spurts of air. His eyes were wild and full of acrimony. “You are lucky Marie here pulled the safety release just in time!”

  “Richard had to bring you to,” Marie said, her eyes shifting to the instructor. The blood had drained from her face, and it made her look twenty years older.

  Samantha was sorry for scaring them. Really, she was. She knew about remorse even if the part of her brain that properly recognized danger was missing, or so that’s what her diagnosis read. “I’m okay.” She tried to sit up. Richard pressed her back down.

  “Rest for a moment. I’m calling you a taxi.” He frowned. “And I’m banning you from ever flying here again. No trapeze, no aerial dance, nothing. If you can’t safely follow the rules, you aren’t welcome. Do me a favor, and don’t come back.”

  Now that hurt. “I’m sorry. Please, please don’t ban me. I promise…” she sta
rted but stopped the lie from falling from her lips. She couldn’t promise she’d never do it again. What was the point in going back if she couldn’t push her limits? “Fine, I understand. I get it,” she said finally, standing up on wobbly legs. “Keep the rest of my class fees for your trouble.”

  Samantha was pissed. Not because they’d kicked her out, but because she’d failed. She didn’t blame them for kicking her out. She was a walking liability, and she knew it. Everyone knew it. Purposely set your childhood playhouse on fire on your seventh birthday and that label never fades entirely. There was a pocket tucked deep inside of her where she carried the shame and the blame for those kinds of stunts. No one had been hurt in the fire, thankfully, just as she hadn’t been hurt falling from the trapeze. But even if she was sorry for the cost and the stress she’d brought on her parents, she couldn’t say that the memory of lighting that fire didn’t still excite her in some sick, twisted way.

  She’d done that awful thing, and her parents had sent her to a shrink. She’d done that awful thing, and her parents were told she had a rare congenital condition affecting the amygdala section of her brain. She’d done that awful thing and known it wasn’t the last time. She was better at it now, coloring inside the lines, respecting the limits any normal person would see. She was better at not being a freak.

  Mostly.

  But every so often, even if just for a little while, she needed to cross way the fuck over the line and see what would happen.

  Samantha huffed at the cab waiting for her outside and walked right past it. The Gymnase de Cirque was supposed to do the trick, at least trick her into thinking it was more dangerous than it actually was. She couldn’t even remember the amount of waivers she’d had to sign before her first trapeze lesson. And still, she’d been wholly disappointed with the safety harness tethering her from each side for added insurance. She’d managed to pretend the straps weren’t there, imagined only the rope-net hovered between her and the concrete floor. What the hell would make her heart sing like flying did? Samantha walked slowly, a slight sway to her gait as her head began to throb. She’d known a quad was dangerous, and she’d also known she’d be wet with the mind-blowing thrill of trying it no matter what happened. Richard didn’t understand, and neither could she really. Was she crazy? Maybe. But crazy was a hell of a lot better than boring.

  The sky turned cloudy, encasing the Parisian street in a drab cloak of gray, bullying the colors of the city. The beckoning evening chill began to take hold and her knapsack of textbooks weighed heavy. She trudged onward, determined to find some way to live life in full color. But the evening had other ideas, and unremarkably, Netflix and microwave popcorn carried her off to sleep.

  Saturday morning had watched her from the window as she lazed in bed and daydreamed of changing her name and disappearing into a fantastical life. Where would that life take her without the weight of the name Hunter like an anchor around her neck? She’d been born with that anchor, and it had kept her head low for her entire life.

  Morning came and went. The hour had a better relationship with lunchtime when she finally decided she’d reached her limit of nonsensical wishes that would never come true. She popped from the covers, kicking away her sheets and blanket like they’d had a sudden falling out. Samantha knew the time limit on wallowing. Time was up.

  After padding into the kitchen on fuzzy slippers in the shape of pink pigs, she scrounged around for something to eat. With a yawn, she pawed at the fruit bowl. Something caught her attention in the trash pail. It sat on top of a pile of freshly pressed coffee grounds. Samantha peeled her apple as the sepia-toned metallic gelatin print glinted again with the noonday sun. Soon this discarded thing, fantastical enough to have her picking through the garbage, rested between her pinched fingers, slightly soggy and pocked with brown granules. The image played tricks on her eyes, and she blinked to make sense of the luminescent soft curves of flesh. Two female figures, nude and facing one another, that’s what the image depicted. Only their silhouettes blurred and folded in and out focus with the neutral backdrop.

  In the foreground, crooked elbows were propped on the other’s shoulder to hold mirrored hands aloft with fingertips touching. Their heads rested in bowed positions, cheek to cheek so as to make only one of them visible in profile. Their other hands were high above their head and pressed flat, palm to palm. She couldn’t decide if she was looking at an out-of-focus photo or a softly caressed painting. After staring a few more moments, the image took on another form, the serpentine outlines becoming delicate parts of a familiar whole. The narrow space between them, dark with the shadows residing in the backdrop was a resting feminine channel. Their rounded backs and shoulders became freshly waxed labia majora. Their graceful arms alluded to the soft petals of inner lips. Bronze stained hair slicked back on an obscured head was suddenly the tip of a swollen clit and their raised arms joined at the pinnacle with pressed palms that more than suggested the outline of a clitoral hood.

  Signed “Signorino”, the image demanded thought-provoking homage to feminine beauty in the most intimate of ways. She stared and had almost forgotten it was only the folded cover.

  The door to the apartment opened and closed. Samantha instinctively pressed the card into the pocket of her robe.

  Samantha’s roommate tossed her keys on the butcher block counter next to the bowl of cheery green apples. She was out of breath but barely breaking a sweat from her run in the park. “I see you’ve finally decided to join the living.”

  Marielle Clavier could probably run a marathon and not find a hair out of place on her blunt-cut black bangs. She pulled her hair from the high, swinging ponytail and unzipped her warmup jacket.

  Samantha smiled and rolled her eyes. “I do my best thinking in my pajamas.”

  “Then you should be a genius by now,” she quipped, grinning back. “I’m heading to the shower, and then I’ve got to study.” She tipped her head at Sam. “Are you going to join me?”

  Samantha gave her smoky eyes and a sultry smile. “In the shower? I’m so flattered.”

  Marielle tossed her a smirk. “I’m not that far gone off men yet.”

  Samantha laughed. “You know me. I’ll try anything once.”

  “I know you, and you should take me up on my offer…to study.” She combed her fingers through her long black locks. “Mid-term exams are here, Sam. Pass them or drop the course. There’s no escaping.”

  Don’t I know it. “You’re right. Go take your shower. I’ll go next.”

  When Samantha Hunter had agreed to share a two-bedroom flat with Marielle Clavier, she had only one rule to follow: no studying on Saturday nights. As far as Sam was concerned, no studying period would work just as well. But it was only Saturday afternoon, and there was really no excuse for not taking her studies seriously. As Marielle dipped into the bathroom, the enchanting card burned a hole in Samantha’s pocket. She pulled it out and hurriedly opened it.

  The elegant script read simply “Come. You know you want to.” Below, in block engraver’s print, was the current date and an art deco logo that read “Club Duval” in blood-red raised-gloss ink. There was something else faint and unassuming on the stark-white stock. It was a whip, coiled like a snake. Samantha tucked the card away again and eyed the closed bathroom door. Why had Marielle thrown it out? The beautiful artwork alone was worth keeping, and Samantha was pretty sure the invitation would be the least interesting part of that party.

  All afternoon, Samantha sat on the invite. It literally took up residence in her back jeans pocket. She fingered the sketch she’d been doodling on the top of her notes and then finally closed her laptop. A soft chuckle escaped her for the irony of the title of the course: Historical Applications of Force in International Law. Sam was more interested in the applications of force suggested by that mysterious invite.

  “Samantha, mon amie, it usually works better when your laptop is open.” From the other side of the sofa, Marielle nudged the closed computer with her p
erfectly manicured toe. Sam sighed and opened it again. Marielle was right. She’d stayed in Paris to pursue a degree in international law, not to daydream about corsets and whips.

  She rolled her eyes anyway. “Don’t you have some recycling to do or something?” Sam stuck her tongue out at her roommate for good measure.

  Marielle plucked her black square-rimmed glasses from the table, put them on and returned to her reading. Samantha thought she wouldn’t even get the satisfaction of a response. But then Marielle muttered the words, “Putain enfant,” and she was mildly satisfied. Marielle had the most envious ability to form her plump, glossed lips around the foulest of French obscenities with the effortless grace of a baroness. Samantha had the cursing part down, but she’d yet to master the poised flare of her friend.

  Everything about Marielle was intriguing, yet somehow off-putting, like the regal beauty of a panther. At nearly six feet tall, she rivaled any high-fashion model for turning heads. But pin-straight, near-black hair with blunt-cut bangs and the intense blue of her kohl-lined eyes were a clear warning to almost anyone that she wouldn’t be fucked with. There was a distance in those eyes that she wore like a veil.

  Samantha smiled at her.

  Since that look wasn’t exactly effective for gathering donations in support of environmental conservation, Samantha knew they could help each other when Marielle had presented the pathetically empty collection jar to Samantha after their legal methods class last term. Remembering the relief on Marielle’s face when Samantha had returned the jar brimming with euros made Samantha brim with pride. If she’d learned one thing from her mother, it was how to lay on the charm to get people’s wallets behind a political agenda.

  Samantha had practically beamed sunshine from her ears when they’d met up the next day. “Okay, so now you’ll help me pass this class?”

  “What do you Americans say…with flying colors?” Marielle had bent down to kiss her on both cheeks and given her a hug. Right then, Samantha had known they’d be friends; the cool and dangerous-looking altruist and the bubbly blonde rebel without a cause. Samantha had happily moved in when Marielle asked, because she wasn’t immune to loneliness either. Together, they made the classic odd-couple roommates in their spacious two-bedroom flat in a posh District 8 high-rise.