Billie and the Russian Beast - Theodora Taylor Page 0,21
he’s having a hard time being patient with me. But he answers. “Beauty. It means beauty.”
A day ago, even a few minutes ago, I would have found that meaning complimentary. But now… “No! Don’t call me that! I’m not a beauty queen or an animal or a pet or whatever you wanted me to be for these five days. I’m an accountant—a boring accountant who got in way over her head with you.”
I try to sidestep him again. But he steps in front of me again.
And I just lose it.
“Get out of my way!” I scream at him. “If you keep me here, that’s kidnapping on top of blackmail!”
He grits his chiseled jaw, but after a heated beat, he steps aside.
I rush past him and grab my phone off the table with the chessboard which I set back up after his temper tantrum about me leaving on Saturday. He’s still playing himself, I see. A few more pieces have moved on both sides of the board.
Whatever, I’m done here. So done. I continue toward the exit but stop again when I find Vlad in front of the elevator doors.
“No leaving,” he reminds me. “You still have one more day until your time is up.”
Before I can answer, a voice behind me says something in Russian. Harsh and short.
I look over my shoulder to find Cheslav. His hands are loose at his side, and his expression is shadowed over with fury.
I brace, prepared to fight my way out of this penthouse if that’s what it takes.
But then Vlad says, “I will take you to your home now, Princess South Carolina. Sorry for mistake.”
So in the end, I don’t have to fight my way out of the Russian’s penthouse. Vlad takes me by the elbow and escorts me into the elevator.
I’m relieved. Or at least I should be.
But for some reason, it feels like my chest is cracking as I step into the elevator. And my eyes immediately find Cheslav again when I turn to face forward.
I look at him, wondering what parts of our time together were real and what parts were just his game.
He looks back at me, his eyes green ice.
Then the elevator closes.
Chapter Eleven
When I get home, I find my brother gone. There’s a hastily written post-it stuck to my door: Sorry, sis. Talked to Nat, and she said I can move back in.
I don’t know if he’s sorry about the position he put me in or for moving out. Either way…
I crumple up the post-it and toss it in the very smelly trash he didn’t bother to take out before leaving. Why do I have the feeling this is the last I’ll see of Clemson too—at least until he needs something else.
No matter what…
I know I promised my mother on her deathbed, and I love my brother. But sometimes it feels like I’m a doormat. Something that only gets used when he needs to wipe his feet.
After taking a shower and changing into my own clothes, I find about a thousand messages from my boss when I sit down at my laptop to check my work email. My firm has called a company-wide meeting about whether to switch to a remote work model into the foreseeable future. So even though I’m taking a sick day, I’ll have to go into the office.
Okay…
First, I do some funds shuffling between my personal savings account and the one I made to hold the money I set aside for my brother. Then I write a check for forty-three-thousand dollars to Cheslav Rustanov and I drop it in one of my pre-stamped envelopes. After that, I pick up everything I’ll need to work from home.
“You don’t look sick to me, beauty queen,” my boss says when I show up at the office.
That’s one of the things I wish I had known before another cheerleader convinced me to enter the Beauty Queen of America state pageant with her—or as most folks call it, Queen America. Back then, I’d just thought it would be an interesting way to earn some scholarship money. I had no idea I’d actually win.
But the thing about winning something like that is it comes to define you. So many people at work still call me Princess South Carolina, it’s not even funny. And just because I paraded across the stage in a bikini a couple of times, people think they can say anything they want to me. Because in their eyes, all I am is a title without feelings