Page 54 of British Bratva: A Russian Mafia Romance

For that, I needed to dress the part. And I hadn’t really had the funds to do that since Mum was alive, when we used to go shopping together. Some kind of stupid sentimentality had made me call Cassie and so I was standing outside Peter Jones, trying to look like I wasn’t loitering, waiting for her to arrive.

“Sorry pet, bus took ages.” She gave me a quick once over. “You weren’t joking about this being an emergency, were you?”

“Max didn’t exactly have a whole load of stuff in size eight just lying around.”

Cassie laughed, shaking her head. “Come on then. Let me supervise this shopping spree.”

Replacing everything I owned felt like too much, but Cassie talked a great deal of sense when it came to picking things out. She went for quality where it mattered and decent basics where it mattered less.

“If he cared about the amount, he’d have set you a limit. The card doesn’t even have his name on it Elizabeth, for crying out loud. Live a little. When are you ever going to get this chance again. If you don’t take advantage, I bleeding well will.”

I picked up some workout gear first, going for the expensive leggings and matching sports bra set that usually I would have avoided out of sheer frugality. Today, Lululemon it was.

Cassie rolled her eyes. “Right, wonderful. You’re all sorted for going to the gym and punching everyone’s lights out. What about the rest? Love you to pieces Elizabeth, but my shift starts in three hours and so far all you’ve picked up is lycra.”

“Fine. Okay! Let’s go and look at some other things too.”

I shouldn’t have felt bad picking things off the rack just because I liked them, but I found I kept putting things back, not wanting to go overboard. Until Cassie took me by the shoulders. “Look at me. If I was you, I wouldn’t feel the need to be budget conscious. The guy’s just destroyed your family home and everything you owned. It’s only right for him and his to comp at least some of this. It’s not like you can run off to the insurance company, is it?”

I rolled my eyes, but I had to agree and the sense of vague guilt lessened when I stopped looking at the price tags on everything. I didn’t need to think about how many hours at the hotel that would cost me, or what Maxim was going to ask in return. He wasn’t that kind of guy. I knew there was no sense of me owing him anything at all for this. If anything, he was levelling the field again. He wasn’t trying to buy me, just paying me back.

His name wasn’t even on the card and I had a strong suspicion that money was a fluid concept to the Bratva. I only hoped this wasn’t some kind of deal with the devil, where if they owned the clothes on my back they got to keep my soul. At least, only if they had Maxim’s soul too. I wanted to be with him, and I needed them to see I could be just like him rather than some kind of threat to be contained and controlled.

The only reason I trusted them, was because I trusted Maxim, and as many times as he told me that was one and the same, I didn’t really believe him.

We shopped eclectically along Kings Road. Dipping into chain stores, brands and high street, as well as the charity shop down the end, away from the Saatchi Gallery, that stocked solely designer goods, until I had a wardrobe that made me look innocuous enough. Not too trendy, not too conservative. Smart but not too smart.

I couldn’t resist a butter-soft navy leather jacket from Massimo Dutti that made everything else look just that little bit cooler. Or a pair of kickass boots. It wasn’t every day I was handed a card without a limit. I thought I was pretty bloody restrained.

In Ghost, Cassie talked me into buying a long, elegant evening dress, silky and sleek. “Come on, you’ve got to have it Elizabeth. I would if I had your figure. You’ll look like Kiera Knightly in that film where she ruins that dress in the fountain. You know the one I’m talking about, with that scene in the library of that big posh house. I bet your fella wouldn’t call it a waste of money.”

I looked at myself in the mirror, admiring the way it hung off me. She was right, it really made me feel like I was stepping out onto the red carpet, and I knew it would make Maxim come right in his pants. I smoothed my hands over the silk skirt, wobbling a little on the excessively high heels the shop assistant had let me borrow to try it on. She was standing a little out of the way and she smiled at me when I caught her eye in the mirror.

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