“So?”
He stared at me. “You’ll come with me. It’s safer than leaving you here alone.”
I had to pretend I had no clue about the deal. “Safer?”
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. Then he got up off the bed, pulled up his pants and poured vodka into a glass, handing me one, too. I took it, propping myself up on one elbow. I was ready for him to spin me some story about how he was a legitimate businessman, but sometimes he had to do business with shady types. I was ready for him to say that everything he did was legal, but had to be done on the quiet to avoid paying taxes.#p#分页标题#e#
I was ready for the lies because it was obvious from his calls with Elena and Natalia and Svetlana that none of them had had any clue what he really did.
I was ready for anything except what he said next.
“Arianna,” he said. “I sell guns.”
It should have been hard. I had to pretend to be stunned, when I’d known what he did all along.
But the weird thing was, it was a shock. Firstly, because he’d told me. The one thing I’d never considered was that this man who lived his life behind a veil of lies and secrecy would open up to me.
Secondly, I didn’t want to believe it. I had his file memorized. I’d seen his tattoos. I knew what he was on an intellectual level...but on a deeper level, on the level that lived in my chest, I hadn’t believed it. I’d had some stupid, childish dream that maybe it was all a mistake. Maybe he’d been set up. It didn’t make any sense, but I’d stuck to it anyway. It was a jolt, now, to realize I’d been thinking that...and to have it so suddenly ripped away.
So when I stared at him and said “What?!” it sounded absolutely real. I sat up fully, my vodka sloshing in the glass and nearly spilling on the bed. My soaked panties pulled tight against my lips, still swollen with arousal, a reminder of what we’d just done. Moments ago, I’d had sex with Luka: my boyfriend, my lover. My biggest problem had been my guilt over doing it when I knew it was just a short-term fling for him. Now he was back to being Malakov, the arms dealer and I felt like a fool for ever forgetting it.
He slowly unbuttoned his shirt and showed me his tattoos. “Do you know what these mean?” he asked. To my surprise, his voice was thick with emotion. “Do you know what this means?” He pointed to the rose.
I swallowed. I had to pretend to be innocent...but not stupid. “It means...you belong to something?”
“It means I belong to a brotherhood. The strongest brotherhood there is. My father, too.” He sat down gently on the edge of the bed. “We make order where, otherwise, there’d be chaos.”
I nodded slowly.
“What I do...part of what I do...is guns.”
I didn’t know how to react. This was not something I’d ever discussed, when I’d talked with Adam. I wasn’t ever meant to know that he was an arms dealer. Should I lie and say I understood? Would he buy that?
In the end, I went with what I really thought. “You sell...death,” I said, my voice cold. “To who? To armies? To street gangs?”
“To anyone with money,” he said.
I shook my head in disgust.
“I arm people. I don’t make them fight.”
“You make it so they can fight. If they were punching each other, they’d do a lot less damage. Bystanders wouldn’t get shot.”
He sighed. “If I didn’t do it—”
“Oh, someone else would?!” I shook my head.
He went quiet. I could sense the anger building inside him, now, could see it in the set of his shoulders, the white of his knuckles as he clenched his fists. Sooner, not later, he was going to lose it. And the thought of a man as big as him, as violent as him, getting out of control was terrifying.
I tried to calm things down by going quiet myself, but that only seemed to add to his frustration. “Say something,” he said, his voice almost a growl.
“Why are you telling me?” I said. “What do you expect me to say?”
“You had to know. You’ll be at the meeting tomorrow.”
“But why—”
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“I already told you: it’s safer than leaving you here alone.”
I shook my head. “But why bring me on the trip at all? Why not just leave me in Moscow, oblivious?”
He lowered his head, brooding. He reminded me of an animal, when he did that—a huge bear, solemn and deadly. When he raised his head again, he stared straight into my eyes. “Because I can’t be without you.”
I believed it. Not just because I could see the need in his eyes, but because I was feeling that tug, too. But I knew it wasn’t the whole story. “You could have waited one night. Why did you really bring me?”