My gut churns as I consider the way we might flip her. We could threaten her mother. Throw them out of the building. Find anything dear to her and hold it hostage. There are a multitude of ways to use fear rather than violence. Ravil’s practiced at the art of theatre when it comes to making things happen. We don’t actually have to break that many laws-or that many fingers although that does still happen often enough.
But I couldn’t stomach any of those things with Natasha. No, there’s only one way I would allow her to be flipped, but it would require something of me that I’ve sworn I won’t give.
I turn back to my screen and lie. “Pressure points.”
She shivers. “Like what?”
“Enough questions, amerikanka.” I turn back to my screen, popping the last bite of the sandwich in my mouth.
“Why do you call me that?”
“Why do you think?” I say with my mouth full, playing the part of the asshole again. It’s the only role that feels safe with her. I close out the search on her mother and start down the path I’ve been most looking forward to: antagonizing Alex.
“Are you judging me?”
I stop clicking keys and look her way. “What? No. Because you’ve become Americanized? Of course not. You grew up here. I admire how well you fit in, that’s all. Nobody would even know you’re Russian, except for your last name.”
She sits back, finally digging into her sandwich. “I worked damn hard at it,” she says. “It didn’t just happen because I grew up here.”
“Oh?” I give her a sidelong glance. I don’t want to get sucked into her story-don’t need any more fuel for my obsession with her, but I can’t resist. “Why? Were you embarrassed to be Russian?”
“Pamela Harrison,” she says like I should know who that is.
I swivel to face her. Now I need to know the whole story.
She licks a crumb of sandwich from her lips, and my dick twitches at the sight of her pink tongue. The memory of how she used it on me this morning is still fresh.
“She lived in my apartment building. We used to play together. It was the summer before fifth grade, and we spent nine hours a day together. And then school started. Someone made fun of my accent on the first day, and at lunch, Pamela pretended she didn’t know me. Turns out, I was just her fall-back friend-good enough to play with at home, but at school, I was Russian garbage.” As if the memory of it brought out Natasha’s fifth-grade self, I hear the trace of her former accent for the first time. “You know what the worst of it was? I was so lonely that I still played with her at home. I let her use me. I was her fall-back friend for two more years until I finally had enough backbone to cut her loose.”
“Pamela Harrison was a cunt.” I turn back to my screen and pull her profile up on Facebook. “This one? She’s an ugly cow-that’s why she was jealous. Not because you had a beautiful accent.”
Natasha lets out a small chuff of laughter.
It’s the first time she’s smiled or laughed since I dragged her here, and it does something squirmy to my insides. Dredges up guilt for taking away her smile, along with the desire to make her do it again.
“I will give her five parking tickets as punishment for her fifth-grade crime on our sweet Natasha,” I pronounce as I open the Cook County police department records and use my back door access to get in.
“What?” The ring of laughter in her voice makes it all worth it. “You can do that? Oh my God!”
“Is that enough? Or should we punish her more severely?”
“You can’t do that, Dima.”
I steal a sidelong glance and catch her smile, which lights the whole office.
I start filing the false tickets. “I can, and I will. She deserves it. You know who else deserves a pile of unpaid parking tickets?”
Her smile falters. “Who?”
“Alex Volkov.” I will make that asshole pay for nearly killing my brother.
“Oh.” Natasha doesn’t protest, she just sits and watches me work, chewing her sandwich slowly. “You’re good at that.”
“Damn straight.” I manufacture a dozen unpaid parking tickets-enough to trigger a warrant to issue.
“You know what else is going to bite Alex in the ass?” I ask.
“What?”
“Not paying his taxes for the past three years.”
Natasha gasps. “Dima, you can’t-” She stops when I raise my brows and shoot her an oh, really? look. “I mean, what if you get caught? Won’t they be able to trace this back to you? You’re pretty much daring them to come after you now.”
Is she worrying about me? About my safety? That’s damn sweet of her.
I keep working. “I am taunting them, yes. But don’t worry, I’m slippery as hell. They won’t be able to track anything back to me.”
I sense her gaze on my face rather than the screen, but I resist peeking to gauge her reaction to my handiwork.
“Where do you learn how to do this?” she asks softly.
“Vlad Popov, a bratva brother. I studied with him back in Russia. I heard he married into the Italian mafia and lives in Las Vegas now. Part of the Tacone crime family. But I have far surpassed his skills. At least in hacking. He was more interested in-” I stop myself. What the fuck is wrong with me? I can’t go spilling bratva secrets to this girl. Especially not when she might be working with the Feds.
Except I’m almost certain she’s not.
Still, I don’t trust my gut when it comes to her.
“Sorry. I probably shouldn’t ask about anything work-related.”
“Work-related,” I snort at the term. As if the bratva was a job, not an identity. A life. And for many, a prison. “Right.” I finish changing Alex’s tax returns and close out. “There. That will haunt him for a few years at least. Straightening out messes with the IRS is tricky business.”
“I still don’t understand,” Natasha says. “Why did he shoot Nikolai?”