Page 79 of Santa Daddy
He didn’t deny it.
I hadn’t gotten him anything. Of course I hadn’t. Three days ago I was throwing lamps at his head and trying to break his windows.
Guilt twisted in my stomach in a way that had nothing to do with rich food or champagne.
Breakfast was awkwardly almost normal. Coffee. Toast. The kind of silence that wasn’t empty so much as crowded with too many unsaid things.
By afternoon, the walls started closing in again.
I walked from window to window, staring down at people hauling Christmas presents bags, kids showing off new bikes, a couple kissing under a tree wrapped in white lights. Car horns, distant carols, all of it sealed away behind bulletproof glass.
I’d spent days watching the world like some tragic princess in a tower. Today it was worse. Today, the world had glitter.
“I need air,” I burst out, storming into Konstantin’s office where he sat behind his desk, phone propped between his ear and shoulder. “Real air. Outside air. Not this recycled penthouse bullshit.”
He slid a look up at me over his screen. Those winter eyes took in the oversized shirt, bare legs, the way my hair was still a little wild from last night.
He finished whatever he was saying in Russian, hung up, and regarded me with unnerving calm.
“No,” he said.
Of course.
“I wasn’t asking for permission,” I said, crossing my arms. “I was informing you. There’s a difference.”
Something almost like amusement flashed over his mouth. “Is there?”
“Yes. One implies I give a shit about your opinion.”
He leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled, looking every inch the corporate overlord from a prestige drama. Except instead of board votes and shareholder meetings, his calendar involved hits and bribes and my increasingly compromised sanity.
Behind him, snow drifted lazily past the glass, city softened into a postcard.
He studied me like he was adding numbers. My pacing. The tightness in my shoulders. The way my gaze kept darting to the door.
“Fine,” he said at last.
I blinked. “Fine?”
“You want air.” He stood with that smooth, predatory grace that made the room feel smaller. “You get air. But you take Yakov and Lenny with you.”
Babysitters. Of course.
“Who the hell are Yakov and Lenny?” I asked.
Right on cue, a wall of muscle appeared in the doorway. Yakov: tall, wide, perpetually unimpressed. Behind him, Lenny: leaner, sharp-eyed, looking like he’d stab a guy over the last doughnut.
“Your shadows,” Konstantin said. “They go where you go. They see what you see. They hear what you hear.”
Fantastic. I got to be a Disney princess with two murdery dwarfs.
“Fine,” I said, because I was desperate. “But I choose where we go.”
His smile was sharp enough to cut.
“Of course, kotyonok,” he said. “It’s your world. They’re just living in it.”
Sarcastic bastard. At least he was consistent.
