fudgel
(n.) pretending to work while actually doing nothing
RONAN
Albert held the banker by his collar and punched him in the face. Blood and spittle flew through the air. Leaning back in my desk chair, my eyes caught and narrowed on a blonde hair on my shirt sleeve. My first instinct was to pluck the strand off as if it carried a flesh-eating strain of bacteria. The hair was yellow. And these days, the color made my chest feel ridiculously tight.
The sensation was karma.
I knew it would catch up with me. And here it was, making me feel awkward as fuck with a single strand of Mila’s hair. She clung to me when she wasn’t even present. Her summery smell, the feel of her legs wrapped around me, the sound of her laugh . . . All of it had burrowed beneath my skin deeper than claws.
Albert’s fist flew. The banker’s jawbone cracked, and a tooth skidded across my desk.
Karma could have given me something easier to deal with—like an impending atom bomb or a nuclear disaster. But no, the comeuppance karma had dealt me was feelings. What a cunt.
Albert kicked the prone man in his ribs. He tried to block the blows with his arms. Bad decision. A boot connected with his head, though I vaguely paid attention, my mind still stuck in fluffy, Mila-induced clouds.
I’d been inside her enough times to memorize every inch of her body. My curiosity on that front should be satisfied. Though satisfaction was the feeling of a job well done; not the driving need to do it again and again until I died.
Sergey’s pained groans filled the room as I stared at the strand of hair on my sleeve, relishing the fact it was there and hating it all the same.
I’d like to think my interest in Mila was just about her body, but I’d never talked to a woman as much as I did her without experiencing the pull of suicidal boredom. And yet I was the one striking up conversation even while balls-deep inside of her just to hear what that mouth of hers had to say. The truth was . . . Mila could have braces and leprosy, and I’d still want to fuck her six ways to Sunday.
I ran a thumb across my lip, coming to terms with the uncomfortable realization while Albert grabbed Sergey by the hair and threw him into the wall. The side table splintered, breaking beneath the banker’s hefty weight.
Less than forty-eight hours. That was how long I had left before making the trade with Alexei. He was the one with a death sentence, but somehow, it felt like I was getting fucked over. The passing minutes mocked me, settling beneath my skin with an edgy feeling I couldn’t shake.
Alexei’s head no longer seemed an adequate trade for Mila. She was worth millions more . . . and the stolen Eiffel Tower. As a tension tightened my body, searing my chest, I pondered asking for exactly that.
It would give me more time. More time to get Mila out of my blood. Though if things continued the way they were, she’d only work her way in deeper. Not to mention, this meeting told me the one thing I didn’t have on my side right now was time.
Albert wiped the wall clean with Sergey’s face. Picture frames fell, and glass shattered on the floor. Any other day, I would have something to say about Albert destroying my office, but all I could focus on was this token of Mila’s she’d left behind and how, soon, it would be all I’d find of her.
It felt like a hot iron was wedged in my ribs at the thought of pushing her into Alexei’s men’s arms. The idea of Ivan being one of them made me grind my teeth. Apparently, jealousy was imagining smashing the other man’s head into a wall. Five times. A sinister feeling spread through me, telling me she was mine—every yellow, sickly-sweet, hearts-in-her-eyes inch of her.
Albert slammed Sergey’s face into the desktop, and blood splattered on my inked hands. The same ones that would separate Mila’s papa’s head from his neck.
She gave me her forgiveness.
I had nothing to give her but vengeance.
I brushed the hair off my sleeve and let it fall to the dirty carpet.
“I met with him!” Sergey finally gasped in Russian, hunched against the wall from the latest punch to the stomach. There was so much padding there, I was surprised he felt the blow.
Staying Albert’s fist with a hand, I waited for Sergey to continue.
“I . . . I met with Alexei,” he repeated, flicking his swelling eyes from Albert to me.
“We got that much,” I drawled and leaned back in my chair. “This meeting of yours better be because you and Alexei are hiding a love affair.”
“What?” He gaped. “N—”
“Because if you weren’t fucking”—my eyes hardened—“it leaves me to assume you were discussing business. My business. So which is it? Are you fucking Alexei, or are you a fucking rat?”
By his expression, I’d put him in an impossible position. He wiped blood from his nose with the back of a hand, his eyes coasting to the exit he would never reach.
“I—we didn’t discuss anything, I swear,” Sergey said. “H-he only asked me some questions—”
“Like who would do the fucking.” I nodded as if I understood.
He grew flustered, sputtering, “No! I didn’t have a choice! He had a gun to my head!”
I raised a brow. “So you were definitely on bottom.”
His bruised face turned crimson. “We didn’t fuck! I’m not gay! Alexei asked me about stocks and liquid assets and to redirect some of your money into an offshore account. Said I’d receive ten percent if I did it.” He was breathless, and when he realized how much he’d given away, his double chin wobbled. “Oh, God.”
I smiled with venom.
Sergey’s shaky hands pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped sweat from his brow. “I can fix this! Just let me fix this. Please . . .” he whined. “I have a family.”
Alexei was going down swinging. Anyone else would assume his master plan was to redirect all my funds so I couldn’t pay my dealers and therefore my men, which would demolish their loyalty and leave me to live a sad, lonely life as a manual laborer. And apparently chimney sweeping was out. But knowing Alexei, this was just one annoying distraction of multiple others that were sure to come.
“Alexei didn’t offer you ten percent,” I stated.
Sergey swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Alexei may be a cornered animal right now, but a leopard couldn’t change its spots. The man held onto pennies like each one was another day he’d live. His greed was one of the reasons it had been so easy to work my way up from the bottom of his ranks to sitting in his own cushy leather chair now.
“They make great prosthetics these days,” I announced.
Sergey’s shifty gaze came to me. “I . . . I don’t understand.” He was dripping sweat.
My eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “I imagine typing speed may not be up to par, but at least you’ll still be able to wipe your ass.”
The banker’s wide eyes dropped to his hands in understanding. “W-wait—”
Albert cut in. “I’ve read new prosthetic hands can even play rock, paper, scissors.”
“Rock, paper, pliers,” I corrected, pulling my gaze to Albert. “They can’t scissor yet.”
“There must not be a woman on that team then,” Albert returned with amusement.
I chuckled.
“He offered me a girl!”
I turned my attention to Sergey. “Sorry, what was that?”
“H-he offered me a girl.”
Tapping a pen on my desk to hide my distaste, I drawled, “So he’s still dealing in flesh.”
Sergey shifted uncomfortably.
“What does this girl look like? I’m sure he showed you a picture.”
He fumbled for his wallet and pulled out a small photo, unable to hide a flicker of pride in his eyes when he put it on my desk. I slid it closer with a finger. It looked like a mug shot besides the fact it was a full-frontal of a naked girl, not a day over eighteen, standing in front of a white wall stained yellow from cigarette smoke. As beautiful as she was, her appearance was tainted by the bruises and glazed look of heroin in her eyes.
“She’s definitely a step up from your wife.”
Sergey didn’t know if he should be offended—if it was wrong to call the purchased slave prettier than the wife—but in the end, he took it as a compliment.
“She’s from France . . . Paris.”
“Ah, the city of love. How romantic. Although, beaten as she is, she might not have very amorous words for you.”
His gaze hardened a flicker. “She’ll learn.”
I smiled. “Maybe, but it won’t be you doing the teaching.”
Albert pulled out his pistol, and a pop split through the air. Sergey’s body fell with a solid thunk to the floor, dreams of an underage sex slave still in his eyes.
I shuffled bloodstained paperwork, stapled them together, and slid them in Albert’s direction. “Take these to the bank and tell Leonid I need a new banker.” I tossed the girl’s photo on top of the papers. “And burn that.”
“What do you want to do with him?” Albert nudged Sergey’s leg with his boot.
“Use him as target practice. Feed him to the fish. I don’t give a fuck.”
“That seems to be your current position these days. Well . . . besides one thing.”
I lifted hard eyes to Albert’s. “Why are you still here? The bank closes in an hour.”
He grabbed the papers off the desk. “The truck’s here, but apparently, I have very important papers to deliver.”
Albert was calling me out on being distracted today, but I refused to go along with it. “I’ll take care of the truck,” I snapped and stood, stepping over Sergey’s body on my way out the door.
I walked into the back room and straight into a brothel. Andrei’s pants were around his ankles while he fucked a woman up against a shelf, her legs wrapped around his hips.
Annoyance brewing, my gaze slid to Kostya sitting at the card table shoving a handful of peanuts in his mouth. His little brother Vadim stared at the pair fucking with wide, unblinking eyes. I was having sex at his age, but I wasn’t exactly the best role model.
The scene would have never bothered me before, though now it reminded me of fucking Mila. It seemed I couldn’t go one minute without thinking about her today, and the knowledge worked aggravation through me.
I grabbed the collar of Vadim’s coat and dragged him out of his chair toward the back door. Then I realized I knew those feminine moans and stilled, a dark chuckle escaping me.
“You reek of desperation, Nadia.”
“You probably reek of your American!” she called out breathlessly between the steady slap of flesh.
Kostya dropped a few peanuts, his eyes going dark. I gave him a warning look and nodded to the back door, telling him to get out there now. He got up and stalked out.
“She’s the reason you’ve been ignoring me, isn’t she?” Nadia asked from over Andrei’s shoulder, seeming to only tolerate his thrusts now. Apparently, he was fine with it. His pace picked up.
“Your jealousy is becoming a nuisance,” I returned harshly.
I was surprised Nadia thought I would have a problem with her fucking someone else when I never gave a shit before. Hell, I’d even watched her with others. She either thought my feelings had changed, or this was merely a desperate attempt for attention.
“You haven’t come to see me in weeks!” she whined. “What was I supposed to do?”
Dry amusement filled me at the fact she believed this was her best option. I tightened my grip on Vadim’s coat collar when he tried to escape to get a better view.
“You need therapy.”
“Me?” She sounded confused.
Andrei groaned, and I pulled Vadim to the back door, finished with the conversation.
“Wait!” Nadia pleaded. “Come over tonight.”
“No thanks,” I chuckled. “I’m not a fan of queues.” My skin crawled at the thought of fucking Nadia ever again. I’d rather stick my cock in a seedy gloryhole.
Not to mention, I hadn’t been using a condom with Mila and refused to wear one now. I may not want to think about her, but I knew I wouldn’t have the willpower to stop fucking her, so that meant my dick had her name on it for the time being. Fuck . . . That sounded like monogamy. Odd the thought didn’t seem to bother me as long as Mila was in my bed.
“Andrei, you have a minute to finish her off, then get your ass out here to unload.”
“Got it, boss.”
“Ronan, wait—”
The back door slammed shut behind me.
Kostya was already helping the driver unload the truck filled with frozen meat and cocaine. I released Vadim, who stumbled in a dreamy state of preteen lust before catching his footing.
“Damn,” he mumbled and shook his head as if to clear it. “I think I’m in love.”
I laughed. “You’ll change your mind when you realize you have standards. Or just one.”
“I don’t know what those are, but when I saw her, it was like I couldn’t breathe. Then I felt . . . tingly all over.”
Kostya propped the back door open with a crate. “Sounds like crabs.”
Vadim frowned. “Shut up. I ain’t got crabs.”
“Only because you’ve never got your dick wet.”
The kid reddened. “Maybe ’cause I have standards.”
“You didn’t even know what those were a second ago.”
I took the clipboard from the driver, scrawled my signature, and handed it back.
“I do now,” Vadim returned stubbornly. “And I realize I have them.”
“So you would definitely protest if Nadia Smirnova wanted you to fuck her when Andrei’s finished.”
Vadim’s expression was torn, which made everyone laugh.
“Don’t think about it too hard,” Kostya said. “It’ll never happen. You don’t have a single thing a woman would want.”
“What do women want?”
Listening to their conversation, I bummed a cigarette from the driver and leaned against the truck.
“Money,” his brother told him.
This was apparently bad news for Vadim, who glanced at his scuffed boots before asking, “What else?”
“A big dick.”
The kid raised a brow. “So you don’t have what women want either.”
I blew out of a breath of smoke with a chuckle.
“You little shit.” Kostya dropped his crate and took off for Vadim, who hightailed it down the alley, hurling insults about his brother’s small dick the whole way.
I inhaled on my cigarette and thought about what women wanted and how my view had changed when Mila entered the equation.
“Get lost, kid,” the driver snapped, closing up the back of the truck and latching it with a click. The exchange was only background noise; my thoughts were centered on the girl I held captive in my home.
“I’m starving, sir.”
Mila wanted candles, world peace, and most likely a lot of household pets.
“Talk to your momma about that.”
“I don’t got one!”
“Not my problem.”
Mila would probably even like me more if I had a small dick. I bet it would remind her of a baby bird she needed to nurture.
“Hey, let me go, fatso!”
An uncomfortable edge slid through me when I realized Mila wouldn’t care if I was penniless.
“Your momma’s probably a whore!” the boy yelled. “And she’s so fat and ugly, she gets paid to keep her clothes on!”
That finally brought my attention to the scuffle happening in my alley. I pushed off the truck to see the driver dragging a young boy away while the kid punched him in the stomach, struggling to get free. So this was the starving boy deprived of a momma. And with a creatively dirty mouth. He bit the driver, who dropped him to the pavement with a harsh curse. The driver moved to hit him, but my “Nyet” froze his fist mid-air.
“Snot-nosed little brat,” he muttered to the kid before heading back to the truck.
“Hey, mister!” the boy hollered at me and got to his feet. “Can you spare a few coins?”
He appeared to only be nine or ten and small for his age, but it was the way he edged closer with his hands cupped like a cinema-inspired orphan that made me narrow my eyes. I knew what was coming before it happened, though it was too late to react.
He pulled a pistol on me, fired, and ran like a bat out of hell. Pain cut through my arm, making me drop my cigarette. I stared at the wasted nicotine with annoyance, then at the boy running down the alley.
“You’re a poor shot, kid,” I growled after him.
He turned and gave me two middle fingers.
The little fucker.
Andrei flew out the back door, pants unbuttoned and gun already drawn. Seeing the retreating kid, he started to go after him, but he stilled when I said, “Let him go.”
It wasn’t the boy who shot me. That was on Alexei. Contempt flared in my chest knowing I’d be busy with more of his shit all day.
