Page 71 of Sexting the Pakhan

He says, “Less criminal?”

I say, “You know. Decorative intelligence.”

He looks at me over the rim of his glass. I should know by then what that look means.

He crosses the room, takes the book out of my hand, and kisses me until I forget the joke entirely. It becomes hands, breath, the hard edge of a shelf against my back, my dress shoved up around my hips, his mouth at my ear telling me to be quiet because there are men in the hall.

I am not quiet. He looks very pleased about that afterward.

I pretend to be offended, but I’m not.

By the third day, I stop pretending I don’t wait for him.

Not all day. I’m not that pathetic. But I know the rhythm of the house now. Morning calls. Men at the dining table. Stepanarriving around noon with the same grim expression and a folder under one arm. Ruslan disappearing into the office for hours, then coming out with his jaw tight and his patience gone thin.

Those are the times he comes looking for me.

Sometimes he finds me in the kitchen, eating toast because I refuse to sit through another formal lunch with men who look like they’ve buried bodies recreationally. Sometimes he finds me on the balcony, wrapped in a blanket, trying to pretend I’m reading.

Sometimes I find him. Once, in the laundry room of all places, because I follow the sound of his voice and find him ending a call in Russian with murder in his eyes.

I should leave. Instead, I say, “Bad news?”

He looks at me for a long second.

Then he says, “Yes.”

There’s blood on the cuff of his shirt.

Not fresh. Not much. Still, I see it.

He sees me see it.

For a moment, the whole thing is there between us again. Who he is. What he does. The fact that I’m standing barefoot in his house wearing borrowed clothes while he comes back from God knows what with blood on him.

I should be horrified.

I am. But I’m also angry. And scared.

And sick of being the only one shaken by the truth.

So I step closer, grab his wrist, and say, “Wash your hands.”

He looks down at me.

No one else in that house would speak to him like that. I know it the second I say it.

Ruslan turns on the tap, and I wash the blood from his hand myself. Neither of us says a word. When it’s gone, he turns his wrist and catches my fingers.

The kiss that follows is not tender. It tastes like fear and anger and the kind of want that has stopped asking permission to exist. He lifts me onto the counter beside the sink, and for a few minutes the laundry room becomes another place I will never be able to think about normally again.

Later, he carries me back upstairs because my legs are unsteady and he’s smug enough not to pretend he doesn’t notice.

“I can walk,” I say.

“I know.”

“Then put me down.”