Kiko

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

Mischa Abromavitch wrinkled her nose at the sight before her.

These American women and their shops. It was obscene the way they darted about, rushing into them as though they were addicted to handing their hard-earned money over for items they didn’t particularly need. She’d never seen anything like it. The way some of them were handling the clothes, it was like they were starved!

Of course, in the larger cities in Ukraine, with some of the wealthier people as patrons, there were shopping centers such as these. But where she lived, there had been nothing like this. And the truth was, she wasn’t too sad about that fact. These malls were exactly what Marx had foreseen. Not shopping centers per se, but monuments to capitalism. Places that persuaded people to part with money they didn’t have for things they didn’t need. The vicious cycle was something she’d only read about, but now—seeing it in the flesh—she was truly astonished.

Having grown up poor, Mischa should have been enamored by the sight of such affluence, but she wasn’t. She saw it for what it was—a credit card company’s Utopia.

Sasha, her friend and fellow newbie to a shopaholic’s paradise, clapped her hands together in wonder. “I can’t believe this is a place to shop. It’s so big—and luxurious! Isn’t it beautiful, Mischa?”

Wanting to gawk at her and ask when the other woman had become a slut to consumerism, Mischa settled for grumbling, “That isn’t what I’d call it.” Granted, it was fancy. But it had to be, didn’t it? No one would shop here if it was a dump.

“Don’t be a spoilsport,” the other woman teased, nudging her with her elbow.

“I’m not. It’s just... this isn’t my idea of fun.”

“No, I suppose not, considering you came from Azovske.” She wiggled her hips like an excited puppy and winked at her. “But still, just because you’re not used to it doesn’t mean you can’t get used to it, eh? I certainly won’t mind having places like these on my doorstep.”

They’d just been saved from indentured servitude—which would have probably had them all on their backs earning their ‘living’ with their legs spread—and Sasha wasn’t so opposed to that she could think about buying some clothes?

Biting her tongue to stop herself from snarling at the stupid woman beside her, someone she did consider a friend, Mischa followed with a deep, calming breath. Instead of sniping at her, she questioned softly, “Get used to it on what doorstep, Sasha? We’re illegal immigrants, for God’s sake. It isn’t like we can get decent jobs and dream of making a better life for ourselves. And you know what it’s like over here. Even the people who are legal, who had good professions in the Ukraine, they’re mopping floors and cleaning up other people’s homes. So, what are you going to buy here? What use is it to us to have these places on our doorstep?”

“You’re so negative!” In her umbrage, she shook her head, but Sasha’s hair swished about her shoulders, sending a little breeze Mischa’s way because Sasha’s locks were thick, heavy, and long—down to her butt long. It made Mischa wonder if that was all Sasha had between her ears.

Air.

Because she was being a realist, not a dreamer, and if that made her negative, well, then that was her label of choice.

The truth hurt. And this truth, though it stung and stunk, was their lot now.

“I have my feet on the ground,” she countered, glowering at her coat sleeve which had a few wayward strands of Sasha’s dark hair draped it over it. Granted, it was her friend’s crowning glory, but she shed it worse than a dog. “That isn’t a bad place to have them. Unless Prince Charming is around the corner, we have about as much chance of being able to shop here on a regular basis as...” She spluttered, unable to come up with a comparison, because there was no comparison.

This would never be a place where they could comfortably part ways with their wages. To believe anything else was just setting them up for a fall.

She knew the Motorcycle Club, The Nomads, who were acting as their escorts had good hearts, and this trip was supposed to be a kindness, but to Mischa, it showed her everything she’d never have.

It didn’t matter that she didn’t want to be a shopaholic. She would never be able to be one, nor a thousand other things. For herself, that wasn’t an issue. She’d weathered tougher times than the inability to buy crap she didn’t need, but it gave idiots like Sasha ideas.

Ideas were always dangerous in the wrong hands.

With a glum sigh that had Sasha rolling her eyes and wandering off to talk to one of the others in their group—one who was more interesting, less gloomy, and very excited about the whole shopping trip—Mischa was left alone.

Truth was, she preferred it that way. Only, in a group of fourteen, alone wasn’t that easy a task to accomplish. Annette, another new friend of hers and the girlfriend of the leader of the MC who had saved her from a cartel’s clutches, swooped down on her and laughed when she happened to catch sight of her. As far as Mischa had been able to sense, Annette was a sensible woman, a learned one with a good job at an important newspaper, and yet, she too was befuddled by the need to shop.

Hadn’t she declared, “Let’s shop ‘til we drop, ladies!” when the car that had taken them from the clubhouse had arrived at this mall?

Mischa would have liked to ask her what the thrill was exactly, but Annette didn’t know she spoke English, and Dickie, the man who could speak Ukrainian, was busy helping one of the other women. So, talking was out if she wanted to keep her knowledge of English a secret.

Instead of discussing the madness that had seized hold of all the women within these grand walls, Mischa looked about and took stock of her surroundings once more. Each step revealed different stores, different restaurants, different stands. There were fountains and trees inside; it beggared belief.

The amount of money that passed hands here was incredible. She doubted her small Ukrainian village earned in a year what was spent here in a day! She had come from one of the poorest regions in Eastern Ukraine, an area close to the Russian border but far away enough not to have fallen foul of the recent issues in Crimea, but still, even in some of the richer towns, such spending would have been considered utterly frivolous. Wasteful, even.

The mentality in America was alien to her, but now, Ukraine was too.

When her grandfather, her sole living relative, had passed on, she’d been left alone. Without her family, the home she’d lived in since she was a child had become nothing more than bricks and mortar. Though she had shelter, she had no home anymore, so Mischa had used the small inheritance her grandfather, her Gidoo, had left her to purchase a ‘pass’ to the United States.

She’d been promised dreams, a golden future, but instead, she and dozens of other women like her had been herded like cattle, shipped across the Atlantic in crates, and handled as though they were beasts not humans.

It was hard to deal with those memories in the face of what she was seeing at this moment.

Here she was, in a proper American mall with legal citizens, all of them wasting their hours in the folly of a hunt for clothes they didn’t need and undoubtedly wouldn’t wear more than once before shopping for something different. Yet three months ago, she’d been in a shipping crate, crapping in a bucket that sloshed over the slides in rough weather, and wishing to God she’d never had the stupid idea of travelling to America.

Then and now were so disparate, it hurt her head to think of the differences.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t grateful to be here in this luxurious mall, it was that it was difficult to accept.

Why hadn’t she realized the men who had helped her hadn’t done it out of the kindness of their own hearts? She’d paid a fortune to them, but she should have known it wasn’t enough.

Only when they packed her into the shipping crate that made a tin of sardines look roomy had she seen the error of her ways. Only then had she seen what a fool she’d been.

Now, safely in the US with a group of bikers protecting her, she could state that things had worked out for the best possible way—as insane as that seemed!

But it had.

Undoubtedly, the Ukrainian mob would have had her selling her body from sun up to sun down. Yet here she was, shopping, even if she didn’t want to shop. She had the luxury of free time, when her future would have been... She shook her head, unable to think about how her life could have turned out if not for the fact she’d been rescued by The Nomads.

Wrinkling her nose at the bizarre smells coming from something Annette called a ‘Food Court,’ where the stench was mostly of grease and hot, sickly sugar, she dragged her heels. There were three bikers along with the group—not to herd them or to make sure no one ran off, but to protect them.

Normally, she liked the idea of that. Protection came at a premium in her country. But when no one noticed she’d gone, she rifled in her purse for the money the biker called Kiko had given her that morning. She didn’t know why he had done it. He hadn’t given the other girls any money, but in slow English, he’d urged her to, “Buy something pretty, Mischa.” She didn’t want something pretty. What she wanted was to be back at the clubhouse, and that was how she was going to use the money he’d given her.

He didn’t know she could speak English. No one in the group did. She’d pretended not to. They weren’t to know her grandfather had been a scholar of languages. They’d been poor, but intelligence and knowledge didn’t cost anything. She’d been fluent in English since adolescence. American English did present some problems. There was so much slang, and the bikers all seemed to have their own language. Because they believed she couldn’t understand them, they had loose lips, so she was privy to words like Clans and Shifting and talk of Blood Sacrifices.

Truth was, the words she’d come across had filled her with foreboding. Blood sacrifices? She’d just left the continent of Dracula! She hadn’t realized coming to the so-called Free World had its own freaky rituals too. And some of these phrases didn’t translate well when, on the rare occasions she had access to the internet, she searched for them in an online dictionary.

If they knew she could speak English, Mischa felt certain it would draw attention to her, and that was the last thing she wanted.

The Ukrainian mafia, who had been the ones to transport Mischa and the other girls in her crate, had sold them to a cartel in the States. The bikers had rescued them from that cartel. But like many of the women she had traveled with, Mischa had intended to run off—to find freedom on her own. So, keeping a low profile had been imperative. However, each time she’d tried to go, that man with the strange name, Kiko, had made her stay.

Oh, not with words.

He hadn’t encouraged her to stay. He rarely said anything to her. He just looked at her… the way a man looks at a woman he wants.

It wasn’t the first time a man had looked at her that way, nor would it be the last. But what was a first, was the way she’d felt.

Ever since her fourteenth year, when Mischa had been r***d by one of the local gangs, she’d repressed all her desires and did nothing to encourage the opposite s*x. She wore baggy clothes, her hair was a mess, and she never wore makeup. She did everything she could to appear unattractive. Back home, she’d even taken to not wearing deodorant as a precaution. It seemed extreme, but so was being r***d by six men. The thought had her insides tensing. Memories tried to push at her, break into her concentration. She forced them away, slammed the mental door she’d spent a decade constructing, and breathed a sigh of relief when it held.