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From Russia With Fangs Page 4
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Page 4
Ilya huffed, glaring at those assembled, practically daring them to comment on his daughter’s choice of wardrobe. With a limo left running in her driveway, Papa spent almost an hour at Irina’s house trying to convince her to change, but for once, she had utterly ignored his attempts to lead her. And now, the choice was made, the damage was done, and Ilya was not the sort of man to allow public criticism of his children.
Irina’s only regret was that she and Franny had decided against the little red veiled pillbox hat because it came across as too costume-y.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Andreyev Lupesco, crown prince and mover-slash-shaker of the Organizatsiya’s grudgingly accepted Rom contingent. The son of a small-time drug trafficker, Andrey had forced his way into the higher circles of the organization by working smarter, not harder. He always seemed to know exactly what people needed before they knew themselves, and found a way to get it to them first. He’d introduced Silver Bullet—a drug specifically designed to create a cocaine-like high for werewolves—to the American markets, importing it from his eastern European connections just as several local werewolves had very violent, very public reactions to cocaine, putting the supernatural community’s secret at risk.
Andrey marketed Bullet as a safer alternative to human drugs and the customers clamored for it, before the organization’s distributors even had the product. He rose to prominence while several of the older families, like Sergei’s, could barely hold onto their position with tooth and claw. These families did business with Andrey out of necessity, but secretly disdained his “filthy, Gypsy roots.”
As Irina and her father passed by, Andrey bowed his head respectfully. He caught Irina’s eye and smiled, sending a tiny shiver up her spine. The man was certainly handsome enough, with his sharp features and a sleek fall of black hair that hung over his silver, heavily lashed eyes. But there was a coldness to him. Among the wolves, Andrey was a snake: calm, calculating, and mesmerizing.
Irina bowed her head in return, but didn’t let her gaze linger. In fact, she barely glanced at the faces that stared as she passed through the hallway. Sergei’s body was lying in state in the private viewing room, a place for close friends and family to gather around the body, steeling themselves for the full visitation. She moved silently past second cousins and Sergei’s childhood friends. Sergei’s brother, Dmitry, a staid, stable married man who ran the Volkov’s drug trade, nodded toward his sister-in-law, but did not speak. He wouldn’t, not without Mama Anya’s direction.
Predictable to the end, Mama Anya picked out the Cadillac of caskets: gleaming white and faux gold, draped in huge sprays of white roses. Irina was willing to bet her sparkly new shoes that Mama Anya had hired a horse and carriage to carry this train wreck of grief to the cemetery. Irina took a deep, steadying breath before gazing down at her dead husband. The morticians had done their best. Sergei’s face was far more peaceful in death than it had ever been in life.
Irina brushed her fingers across the necklace Sergei had given her. She’d expected to feel something akin to grief, standing here, staring down at her husband’s body. But all she could feel was…numbness. Bottomless, unrelenting numbness, as if somewhere, deep within in her mind, she knew that if she allowed herself to feel the rage that Sergei had earned, she would shatter in front of this room full of people.
A damp, too-warm hand curved around her arm. She glanced up into the handsome face of her brother, Alexei. Taller than Nik, with a snub, hawkish nose and thick sandy hair, Alexei had never been a close confidant to Irina, not like Nik or Galya. Yes, he’d spared her from the crueler childhood games he enjoyed playing on his other siblings, but that didn’t mean she trusted him. There was something in his deep-set blue eyes that had always frightened her, something too bright, too eager, as if he was waiting for an opportunity, for the chance to throw her into the dirt when her back was turned. And his use of Silver Bullet only made him more paranoid, more volatile…which seemed to apply at this very moment, because he was as tightly strung as a Stradivarius.
Alexei gave her what passed for a supportive smile and squeezed her arm with hands that were too hot and too damp for her comfort. “Do not worry, Irina,” he told her. “You are never alone. We will take care of you.”
As the eldest son, Alexei had spent the most time with Papa growing up, and so his accent was always stronger than the rest of the Sudenko siblings. As always, he was flanked by his two favorite enforcers, the brutish, silent Vasily and the ferret-faced, self-styled Lothario, Timur. Vasily simply glared around the room because that was what expected of him. And Timur pretended that he wasn’t staring at Irina’s breasts.
“Thank you, Alexei,” she said, keeping her gaze locked on Sergei’s disco casket.
“So, when will you be moving back in with Papa, hmm?” Alexei asked, brushing non-existent lint from her shoulder.
“I wasn’t planning on moving back in with Papa,” she said, keeping her voice calm. Was this Alexei’s bright idea or something he had overheard Papa discussing? She couldn’t move back into her childhood home now. She knew what would be expected of her, to go back to her role as the live-in family counselor, peacekeeper, and kisser of neurotic booboos for a family of overemotional werewolves. If she felt trapped living in the relative isolation of her own house, how claustrophobic would she feel sleeping in her white canopy bed? She glanced toward the man in question, but Papa was standing outside of the viewing room, talking to some associates from the Volkov side of the family.
Vasily maneuvered his mountain-sized body between Irina and Papa’s line of sight, as if he was trying to cut off her ability to signal Papa for help if needed. She frowned at Vasily, but his scarred, rough-hewn face was impassive.
“But surely, you don’t want to live alone,” Alexei said, shaking his head, as if she were suggesting some terrible crime even he wouldn’t consider. And that was saying something. “You need someone to protect you, to watch over you.”
Something about the way he said “watch over you” made her distinctly nervous.
“I want you to come to me, Irina,” Alexei said, quietly, pulling her closer to his side. “If you need anything. Papa will not be around forever, and when he is gone, I will run things. I will make the decisions for you.”
Irina’s mouth dropped open. But before she could address Alexei’s ideas about the decisions he thought he should be making for her, Nikolai stepped in, subtly wedging his way between Irina and Alexei, like a territorial old dog, possessive of its mistress. Irina’s posture immediately relaxed.
Blond, blue-eyed and blessed with their mother’s more refined features, Nikolai was everything an older brother should be—protective, strong, loving. He would have been a perfectly adequate heir to the Sudenko empire, but he was the second-born son. Ilya couldn’t afford to acknowledge Alexei’s inferiority, that his bloodline had been tainted by weakness. And there were other factors that Ilya wouldn’t even admit out loud, factors that they couldn’t discuss without complicating Nik’s life considerably.
Nik offered her an awkward little half-smile as their brother glared at the back of Nik’s head. “Irina, you might want to step in over there. Mama Anya is being a little aggressive with the other mourners.”
At the moment, Anya was clinging to the local orthodox priest’s lapels like they were lifelines, shaking him and burying her face in his chest.
Irina blew out an exasperated breath. “Damn it.”
Alexei’s expression was aghast at this uncharacteristic display of cursing from his sister, but Nik quickly distracted him by mentioning some dignitaries from the Boranski family who could use some schmoozing. Irina took a deep breath to steel herself and then approached her wailing mother-in-law. She reminded herself that Anya had just lost a son—her favorite son—and deserved some compassion, some patience. Slapping Anya out of her hissy fit in front of her family and priest would be satisfying, but petty.
Irina held her hands out in an attempt to comfort the woman.
But the moment she got within a foot of Anya, Irina’s mother-in-law snapped upright and hissed like an angry cat.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked, drawing the attention of every mourner within earshot. “You never loved him. If you had, you would have given him children and he might have had something to fight for! Just look at the way you’re dressed, like a whore on her way to a party. No respect! No modesty! No heart! You were always a cold, unfeeling woman! You didn’t deserve my Sergei!”
Fuck it. Anya had this coming.
“You pack your things and get out of my son’s house. It is mine now, by right! Go back to your father’s house, you useless little human bitch!”
Irina recoiled as if she’d been slapped. When her adoptive mother had been alive, there was no way Anya would have spoken to Irina like this. And she certainly wouldn’t have referred to Irina’s humanity as a negative. Even as the family fortunes waned, Katrina Sudenko had ruled her social circle with the proverbial iron fist. But her mother was long-dead due to complications from Galina’s birth when Irina was still little. And Irina was stuck dealing with this bullshit.
Her teak-colored eyes narrowed and she felt her nostrils flare as she fought to keep a composed, blank expression in place. “You’re right,” she said, her voice quiet but forceful, “I didn’t deserve your son.”
Irina glanced up at Viktor, who had remained silent all morning, interacting as little as possible with her in front of Papa. But she’d felt his presence, warm at her back, like an invisible, comforting hand at the base of her spine. He followed Mama Anya with his eyes, tracking her like prey, as if he were going to launch himself across the room at the squatty Beta female.
But once again, one of Irina’s siblings rode to the rescue. Galina slid between Irina and Anya, a voluntary werewolf shield. “Okay, why don’t we all just give Irina a moment alone? Give her the opportunity to say good-bye to her husband.”
Galina snagged Mama Anya’s arm in a firm grip, practically dragging Anya toward the door. “My baby! I won’t leave that woman alone with my baby!”
Galina leaned close to whisper in Anya’s ear. “Listen to me. You can either walk out of here, or you can be carried out of here unconscious. It makes no damn difference to me.”
Mama Anya stopped her keening long enough to stare at Galina in horror. Galina chose that moment to signal Nik and Viktor, who hustled Mama Anya out of the room before she could protest further. The other bodyguards helped usher everyone out.
Irina had moved toward the casket, staring down at her husband’s body with a stony expression. Galina lightly touched her arm and kissed her cheek. “Take your time. We’ll meet you at the receiving line.”
Irina stared down at the handsome man in the casket. She stroked her necklace, closing her eyes. This would be the last time she touched the damn thing. She’d been preparing for this. She’d been practicing in the mirror, rehearsing all of the things she’d bottled up over the years. If nothing else, it helped her avoid the distracting presence of Viktor. She thought back to the disappointed hopes of a bride who found that her husband would rather spend his wedding night drinking with his boys than in a hotel suite with her. She thought back to the first slap, to the day she accepted that staying quiet was a safer choice than speaking up for herself, to that last morning, the last time he’d put his hands on her.
So many words came bubbling up to her lips, recriminations, insults, and threats. She wanted to tip the hideous coffin to the floor and scream at Sergei for all the shit he’d put her through. But instead, Irina very gently reached into the casket and brushed her fingertip against Sergei’s sleeve. “We could have been happy. If you’d been any sort of decent man, we might have at least been friends. We could have made the best of a bad situation. But you chose to hurt me in every possible way. You weren’t a good husband. You weren’t a good man. You weren’t even a decent werewolf.”
Sneering, Irina reached for the clasp on the necklace and opened it. “This is the last day you have any control over my life. Good-bye, Sergei. May God show more mercy to you than you showed to me.”
Just as the diamonds slipped through her fingers, a snide, soft voice behind her sounded. “I’ll take that.”
Irina turned to find Tatiana, wearing black Prada from head to toe and a black picture hat with an actual fucking veil attached. Behind the black gauze, Irina could see trails of tear-streaked mascara running down her cheeks. Tatiana looked every inch the grieving widow.
She held out the hand that was not clutching a cosmetic-stained Kleenex and waggled her fingers imperiously in Irina’s face. “That was mine, you know, before he gave it to you. We met at the Excelsior Hotel and made love all afternoon. We ordered pink champagne and strawberries and Sergei gave me this, gift-wrapped, and put it around my neck, swearing that one day, we could be together, truly and openly. I fell asleep with his arms around me, stroking the chain, knowing that I was his only love.”
The saccharine, breathy tone of Tatiana’s voice, like she was narrating a bad romance novel, was enough to convince Irina that the crazy she-bitch actually believed what she was saying. Irina had seen the bill for this necklace. It was charged to her account at the jewelry store for Irina’s birthday. There was no way Sergei would spend that much on one of his whores. Even he wasn’t that insane. But to know that he’d “pre-gifted” her birthday necklace on the sweaty, post-coital neck of Tatiana made Irina sick to her stomach.
“But when you woke up, he was gone, right?” Irina laughed, advancing on Tatiana. “He’d snuck out of your little love den with the necklace in his pocket. He took it off you while you were asleep because he didn’t want to admit to you that he’d bought that necklace for me for my birthday—with my own money, by the way—because he couldn’t be bothered to pay for something that was for me. Because that was the sort of man he was, Tatiana. The love of your life, the man you’re making an absolute twat out of yourself over, didn’t care about anybody but himself. He didn’t love you. He didn’t love me. Sergei loved himself, and people who were stupid enough to make him feel good about himself. And if you refuse to believe that, there’s not much I can do to help you.”
Irina dropped the necklace into Tatiana’s now drooping hand. “If this piece of garbage means that much to you, you’re welcome to it. Good luck explaining it to your husband.”
Irina stepped past Tatiana, who stood slumped, staring at the shiny mass in her hand.
“And one more thing.” Irina turned, smiling as Tatiana faced her. Irina drew her arm back and swung a cracking, back-handed slap that landed across Tatiana’s cheek. Her stupid hat went toppling to the floor. “Don’t you ever open your filthy whore mouth in my presence again.”
Irina stumbled into the hallway, tearing at the neckline of her dress, as if it were cutting off her air. Sweat broke out on her neck. She wrung her hands, the right one stinging and red from its impact with Tatiana’s face. She’d actually struck back at someone, told them exactly what she thought of them, someone who wasn’t Galina, Franny or Nik. And it felt good. She’d been so quiet for so long that she’d forgotten what it was like to roar.
Her whole body felt alive, potent, tingling with energy. She could feel the beginning of a wicked grin forming on her lips, when Viktor approached her. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
Given his tense, concerned tone, it seemed Viktor had mistaken her excitement for distress. Tatiana stumbled out into the hallway, hat back in place to hide the glowing red handprint on her cheek. Viktor snarled at her, sending Tatiana teetering down the hall on her stripper heels. Checking the hallway for witnesses, Viktor wrapped his fingers around Irina’s arm urging her toward the nearest coat closet, where he slung her inside and slammed the door behind them.
Irina’s natural instinct was to cower, to shrink away from this show of strength, the sheer power coiled in Viktor’s frame. But she planted her feet and curled her hands into fists, even as Viktor towered over her and demanded, “Are you really goi
ng to let that bitch break you down like this?”
“You don’t understand,” she shot back. “I hit—”
“No, I don’t understand. I don’t understand why you’re bothering to mourn that bastard. I don’t understand why you’re acting like you’re broken and weak, when I know you’re not. I don’t understand why the woman in front of me is so different from the woman who snuck up behind me in the kitchen, prepared to crush my fucking skull with a steam iron.”
“If you would just shut up for a second, maybe you would,” she shot back, shoving at his shoulders only to find herself pinned against the wall in a full-body press. This was bad. This was so very bad. It was the wrong place, the wrong time and with the wrong guy…so why wasn’t she stopping? Why was she sagging against his weight, enjoying the way his body covered hers? “I wasn’t upset. I was happy. I just smacked that bitch, Tatiana, in a way I really enjoyed. And you are ruining my moment. If you ever, ever, drag me across a room like that again, I will find a way to hurt you. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to get back to pretending to be a proper tragic widow.”
Irina attempted to push past him but Viktor pushed her back, cornering her against the rear wall of the closet. He glared down at her, but Irina stared right back, challenging him in a way any sensible she-wolf would have avoided.
Without warning, Viktor ducked his head and claimed her mouth in a bruising kiss. His lips were soft, but merciless, drawing her tongue into his mouth and sucking at it until she felt the pulse of it fluttering low in her belly. His hands spanned her bare shoulders, hesitating when his sensitive fingertips encountered the patterns of tiny raised bumps on her skin, scars that even Mama Yaga couldn’t help her heal away entirely.