Page 62 of The Game

Each day, Anna comes home and we take Pepper for another stroll through the neighborhood. The paparazzi haven’t caught on yet, so it’s a peaceful walk through quiet streets and a detour along the Hudson, and I talk to Anna about the ambitions I once had for my business and how I always wanted to buy a brownstone, and she tells me about fighting her way up through the Russian tennis system. When I listen to her stories about the pressure to take performance-enhancing drugs and the abuse from coaches, I understand why she doesn’t worry too much about a few press people with cameras on street corners, irritating though they are.

Most evenings, Janus, Anna and I do a Google Meet with Jo, who, it turns out, has never met Anna because Anna’s on the road so much. Jo claps her hands when we tell her we’re keeping Janus company, and Janus rolls his eyes at the lot of us. She fills us in on Samsung and all the big business politics she and her number two, Des, are dealing with, and I’m hit with a renewed enthusiasm for my little startup. Susie calls with figures for the last month and they’re better. We’re not setting the world on fire, but the dog kits are slowly ramping up, so I do a revised budget and it pushes the time I’m going to have to close the company out by a month. I tell Susie that, if she can keep the sales creeping up, any extra we make she can spend on advertising the dog kits.

On Wednesday night, a grocery delivery arrives with turkey and all the trimmings, and I wake up on Thanksgiving morning to find I’m alone in bed with two cats and Pepper sleeping in a row all along Anna’s side, like they’re all BFFs, and I snort into the bedsheets. I never want to leave the peace of this place, and when I tell Janus this while we’re cooking, he says I should move in, that “he loves having friends living here” and has plenty of space. When Anna comes back from practice, we’ve got a veritable feast on the table and we stuff ourselves and then lie around groaning.

If I thought my lack of control with Anna was due to a long dry spell, I’m starting to think I’m mistaken. Every night in the wide bed in Janus’s beautiful spare room, we sweat and fight and pin each other down, heat swirling around our bodies. I become more and more insatiable, and Anna gets braver and more adventurous. And I know this because she tells me she feels she can do anything she likes to me, that she’s never been like this in bed with a guy. And good Lord, letting her do things to me sets my skin on fire. She says she has nowhere and no part of her life where she can let loose, but now she’s found it, and I close my eyes and suck in a deep breath and ache. I can’t contemplate stopping living together and sharing a bed with Pepper. The idea of me going back to my place or her going back to hers turns my gut sour.

And lying there, on what will turn out to be the last day I stay in Janus’s apartment, I fondle Pepper’s ears and hope in my heart of hearts that she feels the same way.

22

ADAM

After three days, the fact I have a team to run forces me back into the office. And after some resistance from me about the cost, Anna has persuaded me to let her pay for some extra security for our little space out in Brooklyn. The building manager spluttered at me on the phone when I tried to explain to her why we needed it, but eventually agreed to having more people on site, muttering something about famous people and their agendas. If it had been Janus’s building downtown, I’m sure they wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. Even to me, it’s all ridiculously over the top, but after the paparazzi tried to break into my apartment, I have to admit that I need to protect my staff. So, on Friday, I pull them into a meeting and give them a briefing, and stress that the best defense if anyone accosts them is to pretend they don’t understand what they’re talking about.

Now Susie is looking at me across my desk, her phone held to her ear and her eyebrows raised, as the building manager squawks on the other end of the line.

“Arty Maroz is in reception and says he wants to speak to you,” Susie whispers, her hand over the microphone. “He grabbed someone from another business in the lobby and slammed him against the wall before security pulledhim off. They called me instead of calling the cops.”

I bury my head in my palms. Maroz has turned up here? Why? God, I hope Anna’s all right. “I’ll go and talk to him.”

Her eyes go wide. “You can’t do that, boss.”

I wave my hand. “We’ve got security now; I’ll have backup.”

She gives me a dubious smile. “I can watch your back. I learned to fight dirty on the streets.”

She and Fabian both. “I’ll be okay. I’m a ninja.” I make a chopping movement with my hands like an idiot, and she grimaces.Not convincing then.Whatever, I’ve taken him down before.

One of the security guys stops me when I step out of the elevator, concern creased across his face. “It’s that guy who’s been in the papers. He’s not armed. He said it’s important, and he just needs to talk to you.” He glances back over his shoulder. “But I’m not sure you should be down here at all,” he adds.

“Let me find out what he wants. Maybe I can persuade him to leave quietly. Just cover my back.”

He makes a face, but he’s right behind me as I head down the corridor to the lobby where I discover Arty Maroz pacing red-faced across the floor.

“Finally!” he says, like I’m some minion who’s kept him waiting.

“Do I know you?” I say.

He scoffs as I widen my stance and fold my arms over my chest. If he comes at me, I want to be ready. “Why are you here?”

“You need to stay away from Anna.”

“That’s it?”

“You can’t just say, ‘that’s it,’ like it’s easy. Things are never simple. You don’t understand.”

He’s like some kid who can never put aside high-school rivalries. What is his agenda? He’s mightily persistent. If I can work out what he’s doing and why, we’d have more leverage with him.

“What don’t I understand?”

“Russia. The whole thing. Have you asked Anna about her tennis coaches? The deal she did.”

“The deal?”

“You don’t get out of Russia without making a deal.”

“What sort of deal?”

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