Die for Me (Killing Eve #3) - Luke Jennings Page 0,15

my big toe. “You want to be a gangster, pupsik?”

“I want to be by your side. I didn’t come all this way just to go shopping.”

“I did. I’m going to make you look so amazing.”

“I’m serious, Oxana. I’m not just your babe.”

“Yes, you are. You know your feet taste of Emmental cheese? The sort with the big holes in?”

“You are seriously fucking weird, you know that?”

“I’m weird? You’re the one in the bath with the psychopath.”

I try to get my head comfortable against the taps. “What sort of criminal stuff is Dasha into?”

“The usual. Smuggling, credit cards, protection, drugs… Probably mostly drugs. Her father Gennadi led a brigade for the Kupchino Bratva, which controls the St. Petersburg heroin trade, and when he retired he passed the leadership of the brigade to Dasha. It’s almost unknown for a woman to hold rank in the gangs, but she was already a fully initiated vor, and people respected her.”

“I bet. She’s a fucking sadist.”

“Eve, pupsik, you have to move on from this morning. See it from her point of view. That Prekrasnaya Nevesta warehouse pays her to protect them, and we did make quite a mess in there. Dasha had to be seen to be taking control of the situation.”

“She didn’t have to torture me.”

“She only tortured you a bit.”

“She’d have tortured me a lot if you hadn’t turned up.”

“She was just doing her job. Why is it that when a woman is assertive in the workplace she’s always seen as a bitch?”

“Huge question.”

“I’ll tell you. It’s because we expect men to torture and kill people, but when women do it it’s seen as violating gender stereotypes. It’s ridiculous.”

“I know, sweetie, life’s unfair.”

“It really is. And just for your information”—she kicks bathwater in my face—“I’d appreciate a thank-you for rescuing you this morning.”

“Thank you to my protective, feminist girlfriend.”

“You’re so full of shit.”

Dasha, I have to admit, takes very good care of us. The apartment is impersonal, and the room she assigns to us has an unaired, unused feel to it. The windows, which are locked shut, have the thick, greenish look of bulletproof glass. But the bed is comfortable enough, and after breakfast, which is brought to us by a young woman who introduces herself as Kristina, we both fall fast asleep again.

When we wake it’s almost midday, and we’re ravenous again. The apartment appears to be empty except for Kristina, who has clearly been waiting for us to surface. Handing us each a warm down-filled jacket, she leads us out of the flat, and we descend to the street in the shuddering lift. My ankle is less swollen than it was, and although it’s still sore, I can walk.

It’s good to be in direct sunlight. The sky is dark azure blue, and the morning’s snowfall has frozen, dusting the grimy, yellow-brown buildings with sparkling white. Lunch is a Big Mac and fries, and then Kristina walks us a short distance down Stachek Prospekt to a second-hand store in a converted cinema, the Kometa. The seats have been removed from the auditorium, which now holds rank after rank of clothing stalls. These offer everything from goth and punk fashions to old theater costumes, military and police regalia, fetish-wear and homemade jewelry. The place smells musty and cloying, as such places always do, and it’s oddly poignant to wander down the aisles beneath the art deco chandeliers, picking through the tattered residue of other people’s lives.

“In these clothes, you’ll look as if you’ve lived in St. Petersburg forever, like subculture people,” Kristina says. Tall and long-legged, with hair the color of wheat and a gentle, hesitant manner, she’s an unlikely member of a gangster household. She doesn’t speak often, and when she does it’s so quietly that we strain to hear her.

Oxana gives my waist a squeeze. “Reinvent yourself, pupsik. Go crazy.”

In this spirit, I make a point of choosing things I’d never have considered in my former life. A midnight-blue velvet coat, its silk lining in tatters, its label identifying it as the property of the Mikhailovsky Theatre. A studded jacket painted with anarchist slogans. A mohair sweater striped in black and yellow like a bee. It occurs to me that I’m enjoying myself, something I’ve never felt while buying clothes before. Oxana seems to be having a pretty good time too. She’s as ruthless out shopping as she is in every other area of her life, not hesitating to rip a garment out of my hands if she wants it for