“Can I refuse to answer?” he asked cautiously.
“Sure, if we run across something you don’t want to discuss, we don’t have to talk about it. You can pass,” I agreed, establishing the boundaries of our conversation.
“I’m ready to start whenever you are,” he said.
I took a deep breath. This was a different approach, and I just hoped I didn’t give myself away too easily. “Alright. First, how long have you been working for Ivan?”
“I’ve only been working for Ivan for a couple of years, as long as I’ve been in the States.”
“How did you get connected to someone in the States?” I asked him.
“It’s not that different from the way it works here,” he told me. “Ivan has connections back home, and he told a guy who knew a guy who knew me that he needed some muscle, so someone reached out to me, and here I am. Networking is networking, whether it’s in America or Russia. Or, in Ivan’s case, in both places.” He smiled, pleased with himself.
“I guess it really wouldn’t be different, would it?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s different,” he added. “The networking is the same, but back home we have more power than we do here. Here we have to be careful a lot of times when we wouldn’t have to be back home.”
“Really. I guess I shouldn’t be shocked, with all the changes that have occurred over the last few decades.”
“Exactly. See, you already know.” He seemed amused at my questions, and maybe they were a little naïve, but in all of my time studying Russia, I had never really paid attention to the criminal element, especially in regards to organized crime.
I added the Russian mafia to my bucket list of things to study.
“So, that’s all I’ve got,” I told him. Hopefully, I thought, it would be enough to get him to talk a little more to me.
“Well, I’ve got something for you,” he said. “Something you need to know.”
“Okay.” I wondered what he possibly could have told me that I just needed to know.
“I know why you seem a little more confident today,” he started.
I sat back and crossed my arms. “Why’s that?”
“You went home with Gage last night, didn’t you?”
“I’m sorry?” I knew my face must have given me away.
“Maybe you didn’t sleep together, but it seems like you guys are circling each other right now, maybe flirting a little, trying to figure out how to court each other,” Dimitri taunted me.
“How do you know all of this?” I ask him, incredulous.
“I’ve seen it all before,” he said distractedly.
“What are you talking about? You’ve seen what before?”
“Nothing in particular.” He tilted his head back and looked into the darkness above the light hanging over us. “He’s using us both, you know. Well, you should know, but maybe you’re a little blind right now because your hormones are firing off here and there, and you think you might be falling for this big alpha male street thug.”
“Come on, now. Stop dancing around it, Dimitri. Tell me what you’re really trying to say.”
He looked at me again. “It’s easy. He’s got you thinking you’re helping him out with me, and he’s got you thinking he might like you, making it easier to get you to come down here and ask me questions, trying to find out where Ivan is or what he’s up to. I think you even believed at one point that he was going to let both of us go home when all of this is over.”
I had believed that at first, before conversations with both Dimitri and Gage made me realize he probably wasn’t leaving the interrogation room in the basement of the Kings of Hell HQ. I didn’t want to admit to Dimitri that I had changed my mind.
“The truth is, doll, he’s not letting either one of us go. Once he’s done with me, he’s going to finish you off. And honestly, things will probably get a little stranger and more intense for you before that happens.”
I thought about how Gage had passed up the perfect opportunity to take advantage of me the night before; he’d had a couple of opportunities, and he passed them all up. But if Dimitri was right, then all of it was just his way of disarming me so that I would continue to work for him without any fuss.
“Neither one of us is going to get out of her alive, Dr. Danvers, unless you help me. I can free us both.”
Then again, it was entirely possible that Dimitri was doing the same thing he accused Gage of doing—filling my head full of distractions to get me to help him when all he planned on doing was double crossing me in the end.