“She’s okay,” said Luka stiffly. “She’s fine.”
His dad shook his head. “You couldn’t keep your dick dry for one night?”
“It’s not like that! She’s not just—” Luka took a breath to calm himself. “I like her.”
His dad sighed and laid his face in his palm. “Luka, Luka...an American?! She is not suitable for you.” He glanced at me. “She’s pretty enough, I grant you. I’d want to jump between her legs if I was a little younger.”
“Father!” snapped Luka.
I willed myself not to blush. I didn’t want them to know I understood Russian.
Vasiliy sighed again. “You shouldn’t have brought her here. What have you told her?”
“Only that it’s guns. She can keep quiet.”
They’d been talking in Russian for a long time. I tried to look uncomfortable, as if I was wondering what was going on. Luka caught my look. “My father is asking all about you,” he told me in English, forcing a smile onto his face. “He says you’re exactly what I need.”
I smiled at the lie and then smiled at his father.
“Why did you tell her that?” asked Vasiliy in Russian. “Sometimes, I worry there’s too much of your mother in you. Soft like butter.” He shook his head. “You’ll have to dump her, when you get back to Moscow. I can’t have an American sniffing around.”
I felt myself tense and tried to hide it.#p#分页标题#e#
“She’s not sniffing—” Luka began.
But his father interrupted him. He put a big, fake grin on his face and grabbed hold of me, kissing each cheek in turn. “Welcome!” he said in English. “So rude of us to talk in Russian. I apologize. Luka has been telling me all about you. You must call me Vasiliy.” Then, still grinning at me, he said in Russian to Luka, “I’m serious, Luka. Get rid of her as soon as you get home.”
I had to keep the stupid, dumb smile on my face even as I felt the hurt inside me swell. He hated me. Somehow, the fact he disliked me as a father, that I wasn’t good enough for his son, bothered me even more than the sniffing around comment. Stupid! As if this is any sort of normal relationship! As if you’re really his girlfriend!
But Vasiliy’s distrust was a problem, too. I was going to have to be super-careful around him. Luka would give me the benefit of the doubt but Vasiliy wanted to think badly of me. The slightest hint that something was off about me and I’d be screwed.
One the guards held his finger to his ear, listening to his earpiece, then nodded to Vasiliy.
“They’re here,” said Vasiliy. “Let’s go.”
The building we were in was an old factory of some kind—big, hulking machines and stacks of old cardboard cartons. We’d been waiting in what used to be the front offices. Now we moved through a door and onto the cavernous factory floor.
A group of men approached. Wait...not a group, exactly. They kept their distance from one another, as if there was no trust between them. And they didn’t seem to have anything in common. Some of them were dressed like bikers, some of them like blue-collar workers and some of them in suits. And something was off. There was something familiar about their clothes, their attitude.
“Okay,” said one of the bikers. “Let’s get this started.”
Only he didn’t say it in Russian. He said it in English, with a broad Jersey accent.
Vasiliy stepped forward and introduced himself, clasping hands and kissing cheeks. I listened to the men, memorizing their names. Every one of them was American and I heard accents from New York to California. I felt sick. The weapons I’d seen in the yacht’s hold were heading straight for my home country.
“I want to thank you for making the trip,” said Vasiliy in English. “Some things are better discussed in person.”
I remembered what Adam had said: that Vasiliy was the figurehead now and Luka ran the business. Vasiliy would have brokered this deal and persuaded all these men to fly out here and then drive God knows how many miles to wherever the hell we were, somewhere isolated and totally private. Vasiliy was the showman and the face they’d come to trust. But, now that the pleasantries were over, it was time for Luka.
I’d grabbed Luka’s hand again as we stood there listening to his dad. Now he dropped it, looking at me almost apologetically. Then he walked forward and, suddenly, he was all business, the mask coming down. I felt my heart slowly icing over again as he reminded me, word by word, what he really was.
The way things were done now, with big shipments of guns coming to America in cargo containers, was dangerous and costly, he explained. “One shipment is lost, and it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars. And when the weapons do get into the country...what then? You still have to get them across several states to reach your customers. Every state border means another chance of getting caught.” He glanced at some of the bikers. “Paying off rival motorcycle clubs, bribing the police. It’s a mess.” He shook his head. “No more.”#p#分页标题#e#