Unmeasured (Unmatched Book 1) Page 22

  Ivan came out of his room, a towel in his hands and wet hair. “What’s wrong?”

  “Help me find Samantha.”

  They descended the stairs together.

  “What happened?”

  “Karina showed up, and she got spooked.”

  Ivan flashed him a look of compassion, stating the obvious. “You are starting to feel something for her.”

  Oleg remembered starting to feel something for her in the coffee shop. That something was fragile and thin like the ice on his pond in the spring, and it was worth falling through it and drowning beneath it because there was no other choice.

  “I need to find her.”

  “I’ll check the basement,” Ivan said.

  Karina yelled after Oleg as he passed her in the hall. “Did you hear me? Someone needs to pay the cab outside! My father turned off my fucking credit cards.” She folded her arms. “He says I’m all your responsibility now.”

  Those words chilled him to the bone. Turning the last bend of the corridor, he couldn’t miss the wide-open front door or the empty spot where an idling cab should be.

  *

  Sam tucked her legs beneath her in the back of the cab. Feet bare and wearing nothing but a fine custom-tailored wool blazer, it was the worst walk of shame of her life.

  “Listen…uh…miss, are you cold? I can turn the heat up.” The cab driver smiled at her in the rear-view mirror.

  She shook her head. “No. Thank you.” She deserved to be cold and uncomfortable for being such an imbecile. How had she even gotten so far into such a mess? She was off the rails. That was what her dad called it when she went too far. She’d gone off the rails somewhere along the way and ended up naked in a cab, whipped and fucked and heartbroken.

  If ever there was a time to wake up and get back to reality, it was now.

  Her phone rang. Tears streamed down her face before she could even answer. “Mom.”

  “Honey where have you been, I’ve been calling and leaving messages. Are you all right?”

  “No, Mom. I’m not all right.”

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  Olivia Hunter was right to ask, because eventually, something always happened around Sam. Eventually, she ended up off in the wilderness where people who didn’t suffer with a missing part of their humanity were too afraid to go. Eventually, she woke up and found herself in an awful predicament of her own doing. “I forgot to look for the boundaries.” She calmed herself some. “I see them now. I’m fine.” But she wasn’t fine. She never would be.

  “Maybe you should come home. I’ll have you on a flight for tomorrow, and Doctor Rosen can write you a note for your classes.”

  More tears spilled, but she managed to hold on to a clear voice. “No. I don’t want a note.” The fucking irony. She didn’t want to go back to New York either, where her parents could shake their heads at her in pity all day long. “I have to make up my mid-terms anyway.”

  “Make them up? Were you sick honey?”

  “No. I just needed some more time to… I’m ready now.”

  Olivia sighed. “I know there are lessons you have to learn on your own. You’re a grown woman, Samantha. I want to trust that you can handle yourself.”

  Samantha nodded, but who was she reassuring? Herself probably. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Mom. I promise.”

  Samantha pulled her keys out and slotted them into the lock. She hoped and prayed that Marielle was still in Nice on holiday. A suitcase had been left next to the door. Her prayers were being ignored at every turn it seemed.

  “Ah, I was starting to think I’d have to watch Dancing with the Stars by myself. How was your staycation at the flat?” Marielle said, her eyes on the TV. Then she glanced Sam’s way. “Mon Dieu!” Marielle jumped from her chair and pawed at her, as if she couldn’t decide between inspecting her and hugging her.

  Samantha would take the hug.

  “What is this? Where are your clothes? Are you hurt?”

  “No.” That wasn’t entirely true.

  “Where have you come from?” Marielle was breathless with worry.

  “I was with Oleg and his friends.”

  “I’m going to ask you again.” Her eyes were mirrors of empathy. “Are you hurt?”

  “Not like that.”

  Marielle wrapped her arms around her. “I know exactly how it hurts.”

  Samantha cried into Marielle’s long silken hair. “You were so right.”

  “I know,” she said and gave her a squeeze. “Come. I’ll run you a bath. You can talk about it if you want.”

  Samantha nodded her head. The bath sounded nice, and there was so much bubbling up in her chest that needed to be spilled.

  As she lay in the bath and the water swished and swayed, Sam poured out all the events of the last few days. Marielle sat on the closed toilet seat and listened. She didn’t interrupt, and Sam was grateful for that, because letting it all flow in one long dribble let her see where the lines had been and how badly she’d crossed them. She needed reminding.

  “Before you say anything, though,” Sam said. “You should know that something about me is broken.”

  “You are not broken. Don’t say that. Their games are not fair. You can’t win them.”

  Samantha shook her head. “No, listen to me. I was born with a defect, in my brain…my amygdala doesn’t function correctly. I don’t experience fear.” She saw the confusion on Marielle’s face. It was why she rarely shared this fact with anyone. Either they outright disbelieved her, or they goaded her into some kind of idiot parlor trick. Samantha sighed. “I know it sounds impossible, but it isn’t.”

  “Oh, Sam. I can’t think of anything more dangerous than someone who can’t experience fear in a D/s scene. You can never be safe.” She knelt next to her, grabbing both of her shoulders. “Promise that you are finished with them.”

  Samantha took stock of her feelings. As shredded as she felt inside, she wasn’t able to make that promise. Not with words that would make it stick. She nodded instead, willing it to be enough to convince them both.

  “Were you ever…with all of them?” Samantha asked.

  “All of them?” Her eyebrows pinched together. “No. Alexander said he liked to keep my tears all for himself.”

  Sam breathed a sigh of relief before examining what Marielle had said. “You make that sound awful.”

  “You don’t think it’s awful?”

  Samantha stood up and let the sheets of water fall from her body. Marielle handed her a towel.

  “I never know things are awful until it’s too late.” She wrapped herself in cool terrycloth and thought how blurry the lines between awful and amazing had become.

  Chapter 27

  Voicemail, again. “Fuck.”

  Karina stretched in the seat next to him and then put her feet up on his dashboard. It irked the hell out of him, but he didn’t correct her. It hardly seemed worth the trouble.

  “Girlfriend not taking your calls?” Karina asked.

  Oleg flicked his gaze her way for only a second. “Why don’t you tell me where to find your miserable excuse for a man so I can drop you off?”

  “I think my brothers told him to fuck off, goddamn Neanderthals.” She huffed. “And so that means I need a place to live.”

  “You can’t stay with me, if that was what you were thinking.”

  “Why? Is that because of that blond bitch?” She rolled her eyes, and her lips curled into a sneer. “My brothers can tell her to fuck off too.”

  “Speak that way about her again, and I’ll pull over and leave your ass right here on the side of the fucking road.” It was a feat of control to keep his hands to himself. He didn’t hit women out of anger. Men, on the other hand, were another story all together. “Where are your brothers?”

  “Hell if I know,” she muttered. “Take me to that club of yours. I really want to see it.”

  “Look. This isn’t happening.” He motioned between them. “You don’t want it.
I don’t want it. I’m taking you to my uncle’s for the night, and tomorrow, we’ll put this charade to rest.”

  “Hah! You think it will be that easy? You don’t know my father.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.” He took a hard turn off the highway. “I know myself, and I know what I want.” He dialed Samantha again. Nothing. “Fuck.”

  *

  Viktor looked happy to see them together. Oleg knew the condition would be short lived.

  “Uncle, I would like to speak with you privately.”

  “Certainly, come sit with me in my study.” From the foyer, Viktor turned to Dimitri, who sat alone in the salon draped with the blue wash of a movie but was more interested in them. “Dimitri, would you get our guest a drink and keep her company while we speak?”

  Dimitri took his time getting up, but he did as asked. Oleg watched as Dimitri greeted Karina with a kiss on one cheek and then the other. He lingered at her ear, and she smiled with the tiniest of giggles.

  It was obvious they had some history, though Oleg hadn’t stopped to care until then. They entered the study, and Oleg was glad for the door. What he had to discuss was for no one else’s ears. Viktor took a seat on the sofa. Oleg didn’t sit at all.

  “I cannot marry her.” He figured he’d get right to the point.

  Viktor signed hard and shook his head. “Oleg, you are my good boy, but right now you are trying my patience.”

  “I went to see Luka Durchenko.”

  “You did what?” Viktor was on his feet with one stiff press of the armrest.

  “I needed to know!”

  “If your mother was a whore?”

  Oleg’s blood raged with that word. His fists balled but remained at his sides. “I had to get answers about that night.”

  Viktor’s eyes narrowed, and then he arched one taunting eyebrow. “And what did you discover?”

  Oleg’s breath caught in his throat. “You know.” He read his uncle’s expression, his granite resolve. “You know that he’s my father.”

  “Vlad loved you. I raised you. That cockroach has no claim to you at all.” Viktor bared his teeth, pointing at nothing in particular. “He took your mother and turned her into a whore, and Vlad loved that woman so much he kept her, tried to protect her from herself.” The pointing found the middle of Oleg’s chest. “Do you know what? He kept you too.”

  Oleg winced as he went from enraged to humbled.

  “Vlad stole her from Luka. Luka tried to steal her back. When that bastard killed my brother, I swore he would never have any part of her again.”

  Something pounded against Oleg’s chest. It was his heart.

  Viktor came closer. He held Oleg by both shoulders, like he’d done so many times in years past, securing Oleg to the words he spoke. “I have given you everything, nephew. Because you are a good boy, yes? I never asked you to do anything except to study hard and make me proud. It was my brother’s only wish to keep you clear of this life and away from Durchenko. I honored his wishes.” Viktor came closer. “But now, you will do this one thing for me. You will marry Karina.”

  Oleg shook his head, stepping back from him, perhaps for the first time. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Why can’t you? Hmm? It is not that hard to give her your name. You don’t have to give her your heart.”

  “My name, Uncle… It is up for argument, don’t you agree?”

  “I don’t. You are a Balashov if I say so.”

  Oleg wasn’t at all sure what to make of that. “That’s not all. When you first asked me, I didn’t believe I would ever give my heart to anyone. That’s changed now. It’s a bad trade, Uncle, my heart for my cynicism. I choose my heart.”

  “It’s that American girl, isn’t it? You choose that girl over your family obligations.”

  “If I could do this and live with myself, I would. But I can’t. I won’t.”

  His uncle mashed the intercom button. “Dimitri, come in here.”

  “Coming.”

  Viktor shot him a disapproving flash of his eyes. “You are putting me in a very bad position.”

  “I am aware, Uncle. I will make it up to you some other way.”

  A long cigarette appeared in Viktor’s fingers, plucked from the snake-skin box on his desk. “Oh, yes. You will.”

  “Yes, Papa,” Dimitri said upon entering. He eyed Oleg with stabbing glances in his direction.

  “Sit down, both of you.”

  Oleg obliged, taking the chair adjacent to the one Dimitri selected. Viktor brought his cigarette along, and Dimitri picked up the brass lighter as if on reflex.

  “How well do you know Karina?” Viktor asked Dimitri on a long plume of smoke. “And don’t lie to me.”

  Dimitri smirked. “I met her at a nightclub a few years ago.”

  “A few years ago, she was practically a child,” Oleg said. The distaste for his cousin never ceased. “She’s only twenty-one right now.”

  Dimitri sneered and shrugged. “She was woman enough.”

  Viktor sighed and shook his head. “Is this common knowledge to her family? Your knowing her…so well?”

  “You would have to ask her that question,” Dimitri said. “But I doubt it. We didn’t do the kind of things you run home to tell daddy.” He looked Oleg up and down. “Are you jealous that she’s wishing I was the one marrying her?”

  “Why aren’t you?” Oleg countered.

  “You will have to ask my father that question. I have no idea.”

  Viktor looked at Dimitri and then at Oleg and then back at Dimitri. “Michal Harakian might be a murderous son of a bitch, but he wanted his only daughter to marry Oleg specifically because he is not.”

  Dimitri cast his eyes away from Viktor. Oleg couldn’t miss the downturn of his lips. “I am a soldier for our family, Papa. I do what I have to do.” He rubbed his hands together, as if stains had suddenly appeared.

  “I will need to convince him that you are the right man for his daughter.”

  Dimitri looked surprised, and then suspicious. “So Oleg has no responsibilities to our situation once again.”

  Oleg leaned in. “I will do anything else, Uncle. Just tell me what else I can do.”

  “Does he even understand the entire reason we need Luka’s territory?” Dimitri sat back in his chair and picked a piece of lint from his pants.

  “Revenge, adjudication…” Oleg said.

  Dimitri rolled his eyes. “Everything is not about you and your cunt of a mother.”

  “What the fuck did you say?” Oleg stood up and had his cousin in his grip in an instant. The sound of a tearing seam was the deadliest of warnings.

  “Tell him, Papa. We need their money laundering set up. The National Police are too close to asking the wrong people the right questions. Our money is piling up, and it stinks like rotten fish.”

  Oleg released him. “How much?”

  Viktor blew another plume of smoke into the air. “Twenty million.”

  It was the easiest decision he’d had to make in weeks. “Give it to me. I’ll clean it.”

  “So the choir boy is ready to get his hands dirty?” Dimitri asked. He smoothed his abused lapel.

  Oleg ignored Dimitri and sat next to his uncle on the sofa. “Give it to me. This I can help you with.”

  Viktor nodded. “You have made your choice? You will not fulfill your promise to marry Karina?”

  “I’ll clean your money. It will take time to clean that much, but I can do it.”

  Viktor tapped his cigarette on the ashtray in front of him. “At least four million a month. Until it’s done.”

  “Five months, and you will have your money back.”

  “No, no. Twenty million to start,” Viktor said. “You will continue until we have secured other means.”

  Oleg scraped his lip with his teeth and nodded. Undetermined limits to any arrangement was ill advised. But Oleg wasn’t thinking about arrangements. He was thinking about Samantha. He was thinking with his heart. “Cons
ider it done.”

  “I will,” Viktor said and pinned him with his gaze. “I will not be disappointed twice.”

  “No, Uncle.”

  Viktor smiled then and held his arms out to him. Oleg accepted his embrace, just as he had accepted everything else Viktor had generously given him over the years…with gratitude and respect. The debt he owed had shifted, though. Reparations were due to Viktor on this forever war between Balashov and Durchenko. Who better to mend this wound than the one who’d caused the injury in the first place by just by being born?

  “I will call Michal and arrange another meeting.” He scanned the room for his phone and found it on the desk. “I think it’s best if you don’t attend, Oleg. There is no reason to add insult to injury.” He pointed to Dimitri with his cigarette. “If he still wants an alliance, we will discuss Dimitri’s marriage to Karina.”

  Dimitri smirked. “She just needs a little cleaning up. A man could do worse.”

  Oleg shook his head. “Why do you need an alliance anymore? I will make good on my promise.”

  “I am greedy. I want my money and my revenge.” Viktor grinned, and smoke seeped through his teeth like the dragon Oleg knew he could be. “And I assure you, I will have both.”

  “I’ll do my part,” Oleg said. “Tonight, I need to ask that you keep Karina here with you.”

  Viktor searched his eyes and nodded. “Fine. Go. Follow your heart tonight. I will speak to Michal tomorrow.”

  *

  Every traffic light conspired against him. Oleg had a terrible unsettled feeling in his stomach. He needed to speak to Samantha. Every minute that left her wondering where she stood with him was a minute too long. Henri had texted her address from the contract she’d signed. She’d promised to hold none of them liable, and yet Oleg had never signed. Speeding to her apartment, he wanted very much to be liable, to be held responsible for anything he’d done or would do in the future. For the first time, he wasn’t afraid to be attached by more than a piece of paper.

  He double-parked and jumped out of the car, marching past the doorman as if he didn’t exist.

  “Pardon, you must announce yourself,” the man said, stepping in front of him.