Page 87 of Immaculate Deception (Romanoff Bratva)

The Butcher or Arya?

Arya or The Butcher?

The names go around and around in my head like a fucked-up carousel. I can’t have both.

So choose, you son of a bitch, hisses that voice in my head.Pick your poison.

I sigh and close my eyes. To Gennady, I say, “Give me the name of the bar.”

And in the fading dusk, The Butcher vanishes from sight.

29

Arya

At Dinner With Taras

When Rose said faking good humor was harder than it sounded, she really undersold it.

Plastering a smile on my face while I’m sitting across from perhaps the most appalling man in the history of the known world isn’t just hard.

It’s damn near impossible.

Like pretending that being burned alive on a stake merely tickles.

Everything in my body is telling me to run, to hide, to claw this man’s eyes out and hurl myself out the nearest window. Instead, I’m sitting quietly, cutting daintily through baked chicken I can’t stomach eating right now, and smiling as Taras talks to me about… whatever the hell it is that he’s talking about.

“…Patience is a virtue, and tonight, we’ll both be rewarded,” Taras crows, lifting his wine glass in the air. He smelled strongly of liquor when I arrived and he has only gotten drunker as the dinner has dragged on. His teeth are stained with red wine. “The moment I saw you on that stage, I knew I had to have you. I like beautiful things and you were the most beautiful woman in the room.”

He means to flatter me—I think. But he’s discussing the worst moment of my life as if it was our romantic meet-cute. As if I should be honored he deigned to look at me.

I’d rather he choked and died right this fucking second.

I force my lips into a smile and lift my glass.Go along to get along,Rose advised me. I’m trying. I’m trying so damn hard. But my hand is shaking so violently with rage and fear that wine sloshes over the edge of the cup. I quickly set it back on the table.

“It’s normal to be nervous,” Taras says, raising his voice to be heard from all the way across the room. We are seated at the opposite end of a long, formal table. King and queen of this fucking nightmare. “Everyone is nervous on their first night. That’s why I brought out the good wine. It will loosen us both up. Make the experience more enjoyable.”

Only a lobotomy could make the experience more enjoyable.

I smile again, showing teeth this time. My lips feel dry and stiff and my chin is wobbling. Despite my best efforts to tamp down my emotion, tears are brimming just below the surface.

But I won’t let him see me cry. I’ll be like Rose—strong in the face of horror.

“Horror” doesn’t really do the man justice, though. Taras is twice my age, at least. He wears a harsh combover of what’s left of the hair on his head. No beard—just bald, quivering jowls like pats of half-melted butter.

His eyes are sharp and beady. They’re not stupid though. For all his faults, stupidity is not one of them. This son of a bitch is cunning.

“Do you have any questions before we begin?” His words are slurred already. The look in his eye is flashing menace, but it’s blurry with the liquor. I’m not even sure he’ll be able to find his own dick in ten minutes.

Dima’s face flashes in my mind, furrowed in rage. I was stupid to ever leave him. I should have stayed. He never would have let this happen to me.

Does he know what happened to me and Lukas? Probably not. Why would he? He dropped me off and I basically told him I didn’t want to see him again. I told Dima I wanted to keep Lukas safe.

But I willingly walked us both straight into a trap.

So much for keeping him safe. I don’t even know where he is. What Brigitte and Jorik might be doing with him or to him.

Hopelessness threatens to pull me under. It claws at my throat and burns behind my eyes. I fucked everything up so bad and I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know how to make it better.

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