Page 25 of For a Price

“It doesn’t matter. You will never have to worry about that. I decide where you go.”

I breathe through the instant frustration, my nostrils flaring. “Those men in the cars. On the subway. Do they work for you?”

“None of your concern, devochka. Ask too many questions, you might find trouble you will regret,” he says. “You should know that your place here isn’t to know things. You are here because I saw what I liked and have decided to keep you for myself.”

“You don’t just get to…” I sputter. “You don’t get to decide to keep people!”

The corner of his mouth lifts slightly. “Isn’t that what you and your men did, devochka? Have you forgotten how we met?”

“That’s… that’s… beside the point?—”

“You had no idea who you were trifling with,” he says in his deep, throaty Russian accent. “You were after the sovietnik. You saw him as an easy mark. Is that correct?”

When I turn my head to avoid meeting his gaze, he slides two fingers under my chin and forcefully turns my head back toward him.

“Is that correct? I ask a question. You answer.Orbe punished.”

“You don’t answer my questions?—”

“I make the rules,” he cuts in. His fingers curl around my chin to grip it much more roughly, demonstrating how his touch can go from gentle to brutish in a second. “It is probably in your best interest if you learn to cooperate. No one likes a poorly behaved kitty cat.”

“We thought it would be an easy job,” I confess. “Me and JC. We didn’t have many details.”

“JC… the one whose teeth I knocked out.”

“The one and only.”

“And why were you after him?”

“I told you. We didn’t have very many details. Finch?—”

“The coward who came to the apartment,” he cuts in, letting go of my chin. “The one who left you alone because he was about to piss himself.”

I almost snort in laughter at his description. “Yeah, that’s Finch. He’s the one who usually brokers all the deals for our jobs. JC and I are just the manual labor. We carry it out.”

Roman sits back slightly on the edge of the tub and surveys me more severely than he has been during this bath-timesession. Though I have no idea what’s on his mind, I’m unnerved anyway. He seems to be making a judgment.

Did I say too much? Have I said the wrong thing?

You did just sort of rat out JC and the others…

…did I have any choice? Besides, it’s not like they didn’t ditch me with him.

I’m arguing with myself in the seconds it takes the Russian Bear to say something else. I expect him to issue a threat or express some kind of anger that we’d targeted the sovietnik.

Which I’m guessing is his boss.

Instead, he throws me a curveball of a question.

“Why are you running with men like those?”

Confused by his question, I frown. “What do you mean why?”

“You are a pretty woman,” he says plainly. “Young. Interesting. Men will take care of you.”

“I take care of myself. I have since I was little. My whole life pretty much.”

“On the streets?”

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