Acquainted, page 10
She only needed a second to feel his promise for later.
Reluctantly pulling away—because she was still working despite her hormones—she remembered how she had learned Alfie was looking for her.
"Who's he?" Vera asked, finding Frances in the crowd along with the man who'd interrupted their conversation.
And even with her hair, Frances hadn't been as easy to spot as she usually was. His doing, if she had to guess. The thought seemed impossible, but even as he seemed to stand out among the sea of others in sharp suits down on the floor, Siris also seemed to blend in just as well.
As if to be seen only when he wanted to be and invisible the rest of the time.
He also didn't seem to care that Blaine was currently standing across the room with his douchebag friends, glaring at them, but he wasn't bold enough to go over and confront either of them—that wasn't who he was. No ... that wasn't who he had been raised to be.
Alfie came up behind her, his arm sliding around her waist and holding her there as his gaze went in the direction she gestured. "Siris? We do business on occasion."
She wanted to ask him if Siris was a good guy but then thought better of it. Frances was more than capable of taking care of herself, and beyond that, she had a boyfriend that, despite how much Vera despised him, she seemed to think he was still a good guy.
No matter how he showed her otherwise.
Before she could ask him anything more, he turned her around to face him, and she rested her hands on his chest.
"You look beautiful tonight," he said with a lingering sweep over her body from head to toe and back again. "I haven't told you that enough."
He told her that plenty—enough that she never doubted he loved the very sight of her. "You did buy the dress."
His grin was slow and intoxicating. "That I did."
She traced a finger over one of the buttons on his vest, briefly losing herself in the muscle it covered. "But you didn't buy what I'm wearing underneath it."
Her first thought was to leave him with that information and head back downstairs—let the thought torment him for a while—but she underestimated the effect her words would have on him.
"Let's see, then," he said with an unabashed grin, stepping away from her as if he fully expected her to just reach back, undo the zipper of her dress, and let it fall.
"You're not serious," she said even as his expression told her he was, but if he thought she was coming out of this dress here where anyone could see her ... it just wasn't happening.
Not one to take no for an answer, Alfie crouched in front of her, drawing her forward by the back of her legs until she was away from the edge and, hopefully, out of sight.
"Big Al will make sure no one comes up," he said even as he ran his fingers up her legs, sparking sensations along the paths he created until he was beneath the skirt of her dress and still going.
As he brushed the top of her stockings where the lace met the snaps of the garters she wore, he made a low, approving sound in the back of his throat.
He took his time unsnapping each one, letting the warmth of his touch bleed into her skin. His fingers finally reached and curled into the edges of her panties and slowly pulled them down until she had no choice but to step out of them.
As quickly as he had stripped her of them, he had them tucked away into the pocket of his trousers. He smoothed her skirt back into place before whispering, “Something to look forward to later.”
He made it entirely too easy to forget herself.
“Alfie Shelby.”
Vera didn’t think there was ever a time she didn’t like hearing Alfie’s name … until right then. Especially from such a familiar voice and the last one she expected to hear coming from behind her at this party.
It was only made worse when she felt Alfie’s hand tense where it rested against the small of her back.
She knew, even before she turned her gaze to him, that the man’s voice was as familiar to him as it was to her, and with that knowledge came betrayal.
Vera forced a smile as she turned, hoping her face didn’t reflect the anger she felt. “Papa,” she greeted respectfully, already knowing that Irina would be standing at his side. She was the only person who kept him on his best behavior, after all. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“I would never miss a chance to see my doch’ work,” he said with a grand wave of his hand, his smile a little too knowing for this to be a coincidence. “And imagine my surprise when I learned that you were working for Alfie Shelby.”
“You two know each other?” she asked, though she turned her gaze from him to Alfie because he was the one she wanted the answer from.
He was the one she hadn’t expected to have lied to her for months.
“He and Kazimir do business together, no?” Vasily asked before Alfie could get a word in, posing the remark as a question, though she knew that if Kaz was conducting any business in the name of the Bratva, he knew all about it.
Then he’d known who she was the whole time.
There were no other Markovics in this city, and while she might have steered clear of the family business, if he was familiar with her brother, then there was no question that he knew her, yet he hadn’t mentioned a word.
“Mrs. Markovic, lovely to meet you,” Alfie said, and though his voice was friendly, his smile was tight, and his eyes were flaring with fire. “I see where Vera gets her beauty.”
Irina, ever the diplomat, smiled and shook his proffered hand, but judging from the way she looked between him and Vera, it was clear she knew something was wrong.
“Albert, mate, how’s about you take Mrs. Markovic and her mister to the bar for a drink, yeah? Get them nice and settled. On the house, of course.”
Big Al, who had her father in both height and weight, smiled at her mother, offering her his arm, but while she willingly went along with him, Vasily remained where he stood.
“Vera,” he said. “A word.”
She opened her mouth, ready to tell him she had absolutely nothing to say to him, or even Alfie for that matter, but Alfie took a single step forward. Even if her father wasn’t the Pakhan of the Markovic Bratva, it was hard not to show fear when Alfie got into your personal space.
“Fuck off, Markovic, yeah? Before I forget that I’m not in the mood for a fucking war with you.”
Vasily blinked before a smile slowly crept across his face. “He has more mouth on him than the last one.”
She didn’t need him to remind her of Camden and the colossal mistake he had been. She also didn’t like that anything about him could remotely be compared to Alfie.
Vera was officially over it.
She didn’t spare her father or Alfie another second of her time before she turned and walked away, moving as quickly as possible through the throng of bodies, careful not to let her mask slip.
Alfie was trailing her. She could hear him calling her name, but she refused to acknowledge him for fear of what would come out of her mouth.
Ever the professional, she waited until they were away from prying eyes before she whirled around and shoved him away, wishing that she was strong enough to send him back farther. Instead, he voluntarily took a step back as if he knew she wanted to put more distance between them.
“I know you’re upset—”
“Upset?” she asked before cursing him in Russian.
“It’s not polite to call your lover an asshole, luv.”
He was deliberately trying to piss her off. “We’re done.”
That managed to wipe all traces of good humor from his expression. “No, we’re not.”
The audacity. “You lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie.”
“Semantics.”
“Vera, I—”
“Lied by omission. It’s the same thing. You should have told me.”
“And what would you have said?” he asked, stepping closer to her as a couple swept past them into the restaurant. “If I told you who I was the first time I met, would you still have smiled and agreed to go out with me? Eh? Or would you have made your assumptions that I was like your dickhead of a father?”
Vera was momentarily rendered speechless, and as much as she wanted to retort, to say anything, she couldn’t find the right words.
“I guess we’ll never know, will we?”
She didn’t give him a chance to stop her this time.
Instead, she hailed a cab and refused to look back.
Chapter 10
"Something happened, didn't it?"
That was the trouble with having intuitive friends. Vera found it much easier to deal with her conflicting emotions when she was home alone where no one could read her mood reflected on her face.
It wasn't that she wanted to avoid Frances for the past week, but the last thing she wanted to do was discuss Alfie and the relationship that hadn't even really started yet.
Plus, Frances had a knack for seeing what others didn't.
She thought of not responding or offering an excuse so she didn't have to discuss it, but if there was one person she was sure would give her honest advice, it was her.
"My father happened," Vera said with a shrug, hoping that if she continued to stare at her computer screen—though her brain wasn't making sense of anything she was seeing—it would make this easier to discuss.
If there was one thing to be said about their relationship, it was that their family life never came up. Frances knew the power her last name held, even knew some of the rumors about the Markovic family in Brighton Beach were true and probably more violent and deadly than the papers made them out to be.
But she didn't judge, and she never asked questions.
It was the unspoken rule of their relationship.
Which was why she had never let her guard up with Alfie back when they first met. She hadn't expected anyone to actually know her name when she was down there—especially not someone like him.
Who had power in his own right.
"Wanna talk about it?" Frances asked as she stepped farther into the office. Closing the door behind her, she completely forgot whatever she had come in to ask about work.
They were the only two in the office this late. Vera had been in no mood to go back to her empty loft, and Frances was working late on a project they needed to finish.
At least now she could stop making excuses and actually discuss it with someone who wouldn't judge.
"Alfie is a fixer ... broker ... one-man mafia? I'm not even sure what he's called."
She just knew that the casual businessman with a sexy accent was the least of what he was.
In the days following the opening night, Vera had spent the first few hours pissed beyond reason. Then, as the anger morphed and twisted into something else, she decided she would get her own information that Alfie hadn't bothered to provide.
She didn't go to Kaz or Ruslan about it, not wanting to hear or even see their reaction to the fact she had even been dating a man like Alfie. Instead, she went to the next best option.
One of Kaz's men.
Since he was more loyal to Kaz than Vasily, there was no chance of him going back to report the information to her father, and unless Kaz asked him for it, she doubted he would just offer up the information, especially when they had other things to worry about.
She had only wanted answers, and he'd had a plethora of them.
"Apparently, if you need something in this city, you call Alfie to get it."
It now made sense why he said he was in exports.
For someone who knew all too well how vague job titles could mean something else entirely, she had completely missed it with him.
"Oh, so he's the guy."
In every sense of the word.
According to Iosef, Alfie could get his hands on just about anything. Shipping routes, building schematics ... even finding the right person to bribe when the time called for it.
He could even get an unregistered plane out of New York to Chicago if someone needed to get away very quickly and discreetly.
Vera told her everything she knew. What he did, and what she thought he was involved with, and even the little information about Kaz that had surprised her when Iosef had explained just how well Alfie knew her family.
"Which isn't so bad," Vera finished, not sure whether she was trying to convince her or herself, "but he's been lying about it."
"Maybe he was just trying to keep you out of it?" Frances suggested. "And just from the outside looking in, it kinda looks like he was trying to keep the two separate."
She shrugged, not knowing what to say. She didn’t know if there was anything to say.
“I don’t know what to think.” She sighed. And no matter how she tried to work through it in her head, she was still no closer to an answer now than she had been days ago.
“If he’s on your side of the law, wouldn’t that make him a viable choice?”
If only it was that simple.
Sure, she saw better examples of men in the life—her brothers weren’t awful people at all—but she couldn’t erase the image of her father from her mind.
Cruel, even sadistic at times. And he had delighted in using his power to manipulate her life in ways she hadn’t even realized until after.
She remembered the way he smiled as he lied so easily.
His joy at inflicting pain.
She didn’t want a man like that.
“He lied to me. Whatever this was, whatever it could have been, was built on a lie.”
And maybe that was what bothered her the most.
That she had trusted him, opened herself in a way she never had before, and he hadn’t been honest with her. That she had never, for a moment, doubted anything he told her.
Though it wasn’t very much to begin with now that she thought about it. But it could have been.
For as long as Vera could remember, her mother had never blinked an eye at Vasily’s misdeeds, no matter what he did.
She couldn’t think of a time when they argued about police arrests, rumors that no one would ever dare confirm, or the very clear reality that the Markovic name was synonymous with Bratva.
That was the life she was born into. The only life she had ever known.
And from the day she had turned eighteen and blew out the candles on her birthday cake, Vera had been running from it.
Now, it was time for her to confront it.
Vera was in no rush as she drove over the bridge into Brighton Beach, passing familiar restaurants she had frequented as a girl. She could almost see herself back then in one of her favorite summer dresses, the sun on her skin and the wind in her hair as she ventured down the pier, her brothers close behind.
How simple life had been in those days. Easy.
None of them had truly known just what their father or uncles did for a living. They only knew it involved many late hours and things no one was ever willing to discuss.
She rode by their old apartment, and even passed the street where their old two-story home had sat. She drove until she reached the beachside mansion Vasily had moved them into once he became the acting Pakhan of the Markovic Bratva after her uncle was killed.
As many good memories as this place held, it had just as many bad ones.
Just as she always did when she came around to this side of town—which wasn’t as often as she or her mother would have liked—she checked for her father’s car before climbing out of her own and making her way to the front door.
Despite not having lived at home for years, she still had a key and let herself inside, breathing in the smell of the ocean that permeated every inch of this place.
“Vera?” Irina, she assumed, called from the kitchen. “Is that you?”
Tension she didn’t even know was knotting her shoulders drifted away as she stepped out of her heels and walked barefoot through the foyer and into the sunny white kitchen.
Irina stood at the island, pruning flowers, placing them one by one into a crystal vase.
“Mama,” she greeted warmly, coming around the island to kiss her cheek. “Where are the twins?”
“With friends,” she said in that way Vera remembered all too well. “They won’t be back until later.”
She didn’t have to ask where Vasily was. His job was never done and usually kept him out of the house for hours or even days at a time.
“You wanted to talk about the other night at the restaurant, yes?”
Of course, she would know. Mothers always did. “His name is Alfie.”
Irina’s smile was patient. “He’s handsome.”
More than any other man Vera knew. “He is.”
“And he is the one you met on your trip?”
Irina might not have spoken an ill word about her husband or the life he and her sons lived, but that didn’t mean she was blind and didn’t pay attention. She saw far more than she ever let on.
“I thought he was just a regular businessman when I met him.”
“Did you ask him what he did?”
“Not … outright.”
She thought she had, at least once in all the time she had known him, but if she did, he hadn’t answered her.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“He knew who I was from the moment we met, and he didn’t say anything.”
Irina frowned, setting the flowers she held down. “Maybe it didn’t matter. You are not just your name, Vera.”
“I …”
Again, she didn’t have a response because her mother was right.
All her life, she had been trying to avoid the ties that came with the Markovic name, yet with Alfie, she was upset with him because of that unacknowledged tie.
“But he didn’t tell me who he was.”
“I don’t know very much about your Alfie, but what I do know is that he made you smile that night. You seemed happy.”
And she had been.
The bubble they were in had been beautiful, and a part of her wished they were still inside it. That they could pretend for a little while longer that he was just a man and she was just a woman.
