“The cops—”
“Fuck the cops. Do you think the cops will do anything? I pay them to do what I want,” he snarled.
If he hadn't been so brutal to her, she would have found him enormously attractive. He was tall and athletic looking. His dark hair was cropped and his Slavic features were fine. The most attractive thing about him were his eyes. When she looked at him, she was lost in a sea of green.
“Let me go, please. What can I possibly do to you? I'm just a young woman trying to get an art degree.”
“Where is your mother?” he asked.
“Dead,” she replied.
“How?” he asked, expressing no sympathy.
“Car crash. She was Spanish. She went to see her mother in Madrid and never came back to us.” Lucy's mind flashed back to the day the policeman had called at their house and told them what had happened. The tormented look on her father's face had stayed with her ever since.
“Too bad. I'm sorry to hear that. How long ago?”
“Three years.”
“I don't know what it's like to have parents. I was a Moscow street kid until I was fifteen, and then I came to the US.”
Lucy got up and walked a few steps. She needed to stretch, and as she bent to touch her toes, Grigori looked at her. She was wearing tight jeans, and they stretched over her body when she bent over, showing the most perfect ass he'd ever seen. He liked to think of himself as a professional criminal, the kind of man who could kidnap a beautiful woman and ignore the treasures she had to offer. But in Lucy, he found out he was, after all, fallible.
Lucy sat down on the sofa next to him and considered how quickly she could thrust her long nails into his eyes. Was it worth trying? Maybe, she thought, but she decided to see whether she was able to talk her way out of her predicament first.
“Why did you come to the US?” she asked.
“Opportunity. I wanted to get rich.”
“And you are, but aren't you ashamed of yourself?”
He looked shocked by her question. “No. Why would I be?”
“Because you haven't become rich by hard work or ingenuity. You've bludgeoned your way to wealth by threatening people, scaring them, and who knows, probably even killing a few of them. That's a dishonorable way, a way that gains no respect.”
His face darkened, and Lucy thought he was going to slap her. “What would you have done if you'd lived on the streets in Moscow, freezing to death? Nobody gave me a start in life like you have had. I had to fend for myself. Whacking people was all I knew, and it got me to where I am today.”
*****
“Where is the bitch?” Lucy heard a woman scream. The light went on, and Lucy sheltered her eyes. There was the sound of women's shoes on the stairs and then the sound of somebody following her.
“Ah, so here she is,” the woman said. She was around thirty and thin. She was rather goth-like in her appearance. Her hair was jet black, and her eye shadow matched it. Her lipstick was very dark, and she wore a ring on each finger. Lucy took an instant dislike to her. “Why the fuck isn't she tied up?” she said in her Russian-American dialect.
“Because she can't go anywhere and her wrists are hurt,” Grigori replied.
“Who are you?” Lucy asked.
The woman slapped Lucy's face, causing her to stagger backward. “Don't you dare ask me any questions. If I want you to know anything, I'll tell you. Understand?” Lucy nodded, her hand over her stinging face. “Pretty, isn't she?” she said.
“Very attractive,” Grigori said.
“Don't you go fucking her or I'll kill you.”
Lucy flew into a rage. Who the hell did she think she was? She wrapped her arms around the woman and rolled her onto the floor in a perfect wrestler’s throw. The woman was stunned when she hit the ground hard. “Don't you talk like that. You may have the advantage over me now, but when this is over, I'll find you,” Lucy hissed, her knee across the woman's throat.
“Get the bitch off me,” the woman shouted.
Grigori pulled Lucy away and put her on the sofa. The woman got up gingerly and stretched her back. Without saying anything, she walked back up the stairs and slammed the door.
“That was very brave,” Grigori said.
“Who the fuck is she?”
“That's my girlfriend, Natasha.”
“You have a girlfriend like that? Jesus, Grigori, what the hell were you thinking when you hooked up with her? She's a bitch, and she's ugly.”
Grigori remained silent, and Lucy got the impression she'd hit the nail on the head. He didn't appear to be very fond of her either. “She's dangerous,” he said.
“What do you care? You're the most dangerous man in New York.”
“No. There is one man more dangerous than me. That's her father, Iakov Sheludko.”
“You Russians are so fucked up,” she said angrily. “Listen, Grigori, stop playing games. Let me go. It'll do you no good keeping me here.”