Page 104 of Ruthless Rustanovs

“Iguess I better let you keep me.”

Five years after uttering those words, she wondered if she’d ever forgive herself for saying them. She understood why she’d done it. Why she’d agreed to not only sleep with, but be kept by, The Russian Beast.

But understanding why you did a thing and not hating yourself for doing it were two separate things entirely.

And she hated herself as she waited in the narrow hallway for her sister. Hugging the package she’d found outside Willa’s apartment door to her chest, like it could protect her if he found her. Like anything could protect her if he found her.

She remembered with a shiver the story he and his brother had “discussed” in front of her a few years ago at a Berlin nightclub Alexei had recently acquired.

She hadn’t liked Alexei from the start. Mainly because he’d shown up to his first visit at the ridiculous large apartment he’d bought for them in Berlin with two hookers as a housewarming gift.

“So you are not a very good pet,” he’d observed with a sneer when she’d refused to let the scantily clad women into the apartment with him.

He’d told the girls to wait for him in the car, but after they left, he told Bair, “I would think you would want better pet, Boris,” as if she weren’t standing right there. “She is not very grateful. All you do for her, and she won’t do such nice thing for you?”

Alexei hadn’t been any more respectful that night.

He had Bair halfway into a third bottle of vodka of which she hadn’t been allowed even a sip, and they’d been talking in Russian the entire evening, while she sat beside Bair, sober and bored.

Thinking about an Italian aria she needed to have completely ready for class the next day, only to be jerked out of her zone by a male waiter asking in English if she wanted anything to drink.

His eyes had lingered on her, even after she answered “No” with the siren switch completely set to off. And she could tell by the squeeze of Bair’s large hand on her thigh that he wasn’t happy about the exchange.

There’d been a moment of tense silence, and then Alexei had said in his aggressively perfect English, “You remind me a bit of our cousin Nikolai’s mother, Sirena. She was like you. So pretty.”

Technically it was a compliment, but it certainly didn’t feel like one accompanied as it was by a dark sneer. The Rustanov sneer, she’d started calling it, after finding out it was a trait he and Bair had in common.

“Remember that story, Boris?”

Another squeeze of her thigh, then Bair had answered, also in English, “Yes, I do.”

They went on to “discuss” in her native language what had happened to their cousin’s Nikolai’s mother, after she’d gotten pregnant with another man’s baby. She’d tried to get rid of it but ended up dying in the attempt.

Bair had finished the recount with a shrug. “If she had not died that way, she would have died when Uncle found out. And he would have found out.”

“Remember what happened to the first man he caught her cheating with?”

“Not officially,” Bair had answered, “but I hear the fish could tell me the whole story.”

Alexei had burst out laughing at Bair’s answer.

And Bair was always insisting he didn’t know how to joke, she’d thought to herself.

But she got the message loud and clear: Rustanovs weren’t the kind of men you left.

The only way a pet could get out of a relationship with one of them was if she they got tired of her and let her go.

And Bair had made it apparent on more than one occasion that he was nowhere near ready to let her go.

Yet here she was, hundreds of miles from Berlin, alone for the first time since Bair had decided to start keeping her under 24/7 guard. For her own protection, he claimed.

But it wasn’t her protection she was worried about, but getting caught by her Russian protector.

Her eyes traveled to the hallway window once more, searching the street below.

No dark cars. No hulking men in suits with obvious pieces tucked inside, standing on the sidewalk, waiting for her to come out.

Sembach was six hours by train but only one by plane.

And if they knew where she was, they would have followed her here by now.

If she hadn’t truly given her guard the slip, he’d already be outside her sister’s apartment building—no inside. Making some not so veiled threat. Letting her know just how few choices she had left when it came to him.

No, it was hard to believe, but she’d really done it.

A last-second decision to run out the back door of the university doctor’s office.

To hail a cab and pay with cash for it to take her to a small town outside of Berlin.

Then pay another cab to take her to a bus station in an even smaller town.

Then to take that bus to the closest town with a Bahnhoff.

And from there, catch a train to Sembach. It had actually worked.

The brilliance had been in the lack of planning. There’d been no chance to let fear override her, or flake out. Just the driving need to run away. Not tomorrow, not in a few years when he finally tired of her. But that very day.

Thank goodness she’d heeded the advice Natascha—one of Alexei’s pets—had given her five years ago, the first and only time the woman had come on one of Alexei’s visits to Germany.

“Sirena, that is a good name for an opera singer,” she’d said at the expensive restaurant Alexei had invited them to.

A fairly new hot spot that, like all the places Bair’s brother had ever invited them to, he owned.

Supposedly Alexei had taken over the backroom of the restaurant to celebrate Bair finishing his first Wintersemester at Berlin University.

But judging by the number of business contacts who’d also been invited to this “little celebration,” it also served as a good excuse for Alexei to show off to his German associates.

Because she and Natascha were two of the only people in the room who didn’t speak German, they had naturally gravitated toward each other over the course of the evening.

“I hope it turns out to be a good name for an opera singer, but it’s not my real one,” she had confessed to Nastascha.

She’d been so young and na?ve back then.

Following The Russian Beast to Germany had still felt like it was the best decision she’d ever made.

Even if her brain was still reeling from being thrown into an opera program back in January, halfway through the first of the two semesters that make up the typical German school year.

Despite their late starts, both she and Bair were thriving in their individual programs and opera felt like nothing less than the music of her true soul.

The kind of music she’d always been meant to sing, not the dramatic R&B and gospel standards she’d messed around with back in high school.

Back when she’d met Natascha, everything with Bair had still felt like a honeymoon. And she only barely acknowledged the small town girl she used to be, before Bair found her and swept her up and away into a new life and name.

“Even better that this is not your real name,” Natascha said with a twist of her perfectly painted lips. Not quite smiling as she asked, “Does Boris know your real name?”

Boris. That was what everyone called him. His family, his classmates, everyone. She’d yet to meet one other person aside from herself who called him Bair.

“No, I guess he doesn’t,” she answered. “But it’s not a secret. I just don’t like it.”

She would never forget the sudden bitterness that overtook Natascha’s expression at that point.

Or the shadow in her voice as she said, “Take my advice, Sirena. Do not ever tell him anything you don’t have to.

These Rustanovs are, how you say, ‘generous but not kind.’ Anything you give them, they will use against you. Especially your heart.”

Natascha was in love with Alexei. Anyone could tell by the way her eyes softened as they followed the large Russian businessman around the restaurant’s back room. Which made her words all the more confusing for a young and stupid girl from Virginia.

But the next time she’d seen Alexei at a similar intimate (but not really) get together at an even hotter restaurant to celebrate the end of Bair’s Sommersemester, he’d had a new pet on his arm. This one much more uptight, without any of Natascha’s inner warmth to offset her frosty Russian looks.

“This is Alexei’s way. When he is done with a pet, she is gone,” Bair had answered with an indifferent shrug, when she brought up his half brother’s lack of fidelity as the town car ferried them back to their apartment later that night.

“But she was in love with him.”

Another shrug. “Her feelings do not matter.”

Wow. That was cold. But still she couldn’t resist asking, “So if I fell in love with you, what would you say?”

The car was too dark to see his face, but his body went rigid beside hers. “I would say do not give me something I cannot give you. Love. It is not the Rustanov way. Not my way. I will give you flowers and jewelry if you wish it, but there can be no love between us. Do you understand?”

She’d nodded, not knowing how else to respond.

And later, she’d put in extra effort with her performance in bed, reminding herself that she was here to do a job with Bair.

Not make love, but provide the fuck part of the equation that had allowed him to thrive so well in his German Economics program.

Back then, the conversation had felt like a blip in an otherwise good first year of being Bair Rustanov’s pet. But it wasn’t a blip. Rather a harbinger of things to come. Things that would eventually bring her to the door of her sister’s apartment in Sembach.

But if her sister could get her to someone with government connections, she could finally get a new passport. One issued under her own name. If this crazy non-plan worked out, she could finally go home.