Champagne Venom

Chapter 2 Episode 2

I read the number on the bottom of the check half a dozen times. But it doesn’t change. Sixty-one dollars…

“Is this a joke?” I gasp out loud.

He freezes halfway across the room, pivots robotically like a Nutcracker doll, and marches back over to me. “No part of this is a ‘joke,’ ma’am,” he spits. He says “ma’am” the way you’d say “mutt” to a dog that just bit your child. I shiver at the casual, dismissive cruelty.

“Sixty-one dollars for a pizza has to be a joke,” I insist. “Was there gold leaf in the crust or something?”

“Is that an actual question?”

“No,” I retort, “it’s an outrage.”

The man’s face quickly sours. “I’m afraid I have no control over the menu, ma’am. Or the pricing. You’ll need to pay for what you consumed.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to just cut out my kidneys instead?” I snap.

“I really, really need you to not call me that.”

I jump up, knocking my chair over backwards. The front door chimes just then as a couple walks in off the street, bundled up against the cold, but beautiful and beautifully matched together. They both gawk at me with jaws wide open.

I know how I must look to them: crazy. Unhinged. My hair is a mess and my eyes are still red from all the crying I’ve done over the last two days, and I’m yelling at this stupid, condescending server for something that is maybe partially but not really his fault.

This is rock bottom, I think. Turns out it smells like pizza. Who knew?

“I’m not paying sixty-one dollars for a pizza,” I insist, my voice catching and wobbling dangerously.

“You will pay,” the man snarls. He reaches for me, that pale, grasping claw of a hand looming closer and closer like something out of a nightmare.

I swat it away and stumble backwards. There’s a hall behind me that leads to the bathrooms and, at the very end of it, a black door marked EXIT. I trip my way there, feeling frantic and desperate. The walls are closing in around me.

The maître d’ follows. His face is twisted into an enraged mask. “Listen here, you stupid b***h, you are not running out on my—”

My head snaps to the side. I hadn’t even noticed there was another door in the hallway. But there is, and it’s open, and there’s a man standing on the threshold. He’s huge, tall enough to almost brush the ceiling, and broad enough to take up the whole of the entryway. The intensity of his pale gray eyes takes me by surprise. I find myself leaning away from him on pure instinct.

Something about him terrifies me.

“Mr. Orlov,” the maître d’ balks, his demeanor changing immediately to contrite and submissive. “I’m sorry about this, sir. This woman is trying to—”

The man holds up a hand. Francesco—how fitting; a stupid name for a stupid guy—clams up instantly.

Then the man looks at me. He doesn’t blink, and I can’t help but stare back. Those eyes are shockingly silver. Full moon on a cold night kind of silver. “What is your name?”

I swallow, suddenly afraid for reasons I don’t think I could ever possibly explain. “Paige,” I croak.

He’s undeniably gorgeous—roguish five o’clock shadow, dazzlingly white teeth, a devil-may-care je ne sais quoi that radiates from him like if “getting into trouble” were a cologne.

But beneath that is a darkness I can’t touch or name. That’s what scares me.

Silver Eyes nods like he expected exactly that. “Are you still hungry, Paige?”

I hesitate. I’m considering not saying anything, but then the undeniably loud rumble of my still-famished stomach betrays me.

The corner of Silver Eyes’s mouth twitches at the noise. I’m pretty sure it’s the closest he’ll ever get to a smile.

“I thought so,” he murmurs. Without looking away, he tells Francesco, “Put what Ms. Paige ate on my tab. She and I will also take a pollo e funghi and a sorrentina. You can bring both items to my table.”

“Y-yes, sir,” Francesco stammers. He bows, then scurries away.

I almost miss him when he’s gone. He’s a rat bastard, but I’d rather take my chances with him than with this handsome, terrifying man who gives orders like he’s a god and looks at me like I’m butt-naked on my knees in front of him.

No, scratch that—he looks at me like he can see straight through to my soul. To every bad thing I’ve ever done. He looks at me like he knows me.

“Come with me, Paige,” he commands quietly, in a tone of voice that says it’s not really a question. “I want to hear your story.”

I gulp as he brushes past me. Correction to my earlier statement: rock bottom does not smell like pizza.

Rock bottom smells like him.

## A FEW HOURS EARLIER

My sister’s hand lands softly on my arm. When my eyes flicker down, she removes it immediately. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “You were off in your head somewhere.”

She’s not wrong. I was remembering things that are probably better off forgotten. Shaking the memories away, I notice she has her little black clutch white-knuckled in her fist. “Leaving so soon?” I ask.

She nods and points her chin towards where our mother stands near the cathedral’s pulpit. Agnessa Orlov is wearing a black mourner’s dress, her petite frame stooped with grief. But for ninety minutes, she’s been shaking hands and accepting condolences from every crime lord in the city. Not once has her smile faltered.

“I can’t believe Otets ever found fault with her,” Nikita murmurs. “She’s flawless.”

“Otets could find fault with anything.”

Nikita turns her back on the crowd and faces me with an arched eyebrow. The thick layer of makeup under her eyes is an obvious attempt to hide that she’s spent the last few days crying. She starts to say, “I know I shouldn’t ask—”

Her lips harden with determination. “For f**k’s sake, Misha—as much as you might wish it, we aren’t robots. We’re allowed to have human emotions. Especially today. So just tell me, honestly: how are you holding up?”

“I just told you not to ask.”

She shakes her head in disappointment. “That happened fast.”

I grit my teeth. “Don’t start, Niki. It’s too soon for you to resent me for doing what I have to do.”

She squints at me for a few seconds, assessing. “But that is what you are now, isn’t it? Father is dead and Maksim is dead, so you’re in charge. You’re the big bad wolf now. All hail.”

I don’t know why I’m surprised at her bitterness. We all developed our own coping mechanisms over the last three days. Ways to deal with the grief we hold so close.

Mama got quiet. I retreated inward.

I don’t give her the satisfaction of a reaction. “Go home, Nikita. Go home and wipe all that makeup off. You aren’t fooling anyone.”

Her eyes narrow. That’s the thing about siblings: you know each other’s secrets, even when they haven’t been shared. Maksim knew all of mine. And even as we lowered my brother into the ground less than an hour ago, I couldn’t help but think, Who’s going to keep my secrets now?

“You should come home, too,” she fires back. “Mama wants to have a family meal. None of this bullshit pageantry, this ‘showing the strong face of the Orlov Bratva so the city knows we’re still here.’ It’ll be just us.”

“As you correctly pointed out, I am the don now,” I say coldly. “I have business to attend to.”

“On the day of your brother’s funeral?”

“Maksim and I discussed this possibility years ago,” I answer, marveling at how easily my tone hardens into frozen iron. “He would want me to follow the protocol he set in place. So that is what I’m doing.”

My sister’s eyes are gray, like mine. But they’re more turbulent. More erratic. Like the sky before a thunderstorm. “f**k protocol! What do you want to do?”

“I want to do what is expected of me.”

She looks away from me, disgust and disappointment rolling off of her like heat waves. “The Orlov men and their godforsaken rules,” she grumbles. “Don’t you wish you could just throw that rulebook out the window?”

Yes, I scream in my head.

“No,” I say out loud.

Nikita just grimaces at the answer she knew she should’ve expected. For a moment, we stew together in the tense, painful silence.

“I’ve decided that Cyrille and Ilya should move in with Mother,” I tell my sister abruptly.

She doesn’t even bother to look surprised. “Oh, how wonderful. Excellent idea. It’ll be good for Ilya to be closer to his grandmother, especially now that he’s lost his father and his uncle.”

“Don’t!” I snarl at her viciously, losing my composure for a moment.

Nikita beams at my uncharacteristic outburst. “Ah-ha! So you are still in there somewhere.”

“What do you want? You want me to get drunk and angry?” I demand. “You want me to blubber like a baby? Will you be satisfied if I fall apart, Nikita?”

Her triumphant grin sours. “What would have satisfied me is if my nine-year-old nephew had been allowed to cry at his own father’s funeral,” she hisses. “But he wasn’t allowed to, because of the f*****g rules—”

“Tears can be interpreted as weakness.”

“He’s nine, for God’s sake!”