is her awareness of the environment. If you watch her for a long period of time, the way I do, you notice it. I’ve only seen that awareness in a few other people; namely Andrius, Konstantin, and the British Special Forces guys.
It got me wondering if Zoey had served, which got me digging. What I found raised my suspicions. There’s something too perfect about her story and her background. Call me paranoid, and I am, but I’ve got Damen looking into her. It’s a sixth sense I have about people sometimes, and with Zoey, that sixth sense is ringing all my alarm bells.
I have wondered whether to tell K, but tell him what? That I’ve been skulking around his legit businesses despite clear orders not to? That I’ve been obsessing over Zoey despite him telling me numerous times to leave her alone? That I have a hunch? A stupid hunch probably, and one that nothing I’ve found in my investigations so far backs up? No, I need evidence if I’m going to go to him with this.
She gets up from the bench where she’s been sitting in the weak late-afternoon sun and walks toward me. I put my cigarette out and step out from the shadows right in front of her. As I thought, she doesn’t flinch or jump. No, she knew I was there all along. Zoey watches her environment.
“Hi,” I say.
She smiles at me.
“Listen, I don’t do this often, but do you want to get a drink later this week, before I head back to Moscow?”
I’m expecting her to say no, so it surprises me when she nods with a fleeting smile. “Sure. That would be nice.”
Oh, I don’t want to be nice. I’d like to do very bad things to Zoey and have ever since I first saw her in this damn courtyard. This is, however, also about getting to know some more about her. Damen is looking, but so far he hasn't found anything. I might just simply be paranoid, but last week Zoey went to Corfu for a few days to meet with Konstantin and an old friend of his called Maxim, a talented artist.
K thinks Zoey and Maxim can make a breakthrough on a project that is struggling to take off, and they spent a few days in the sun being all creative and shit. I want to know if she’s someone we should be wary of.
If Damen finds anything, K will be the first to know. I also don’t know how well K would take me sniffing around his legit business, and his legit employees, but I don’t want to have to stop sniffing around Zoey.
I like the way she smells.
**
Zoey - London
Why did I say yes to Vasily? I’m already playing a supremely dangerous game and then I go and say yes to an invite for drinks, which most definitely means sex to someone like Vasily.
It’s not as if I’ve been asked to keep tabs on Vasily. He’s nothing to me, or it seems to the people I work for. Work for being a loose description of the whole fucked-up situation.
Konstantin was someone to those mysterious men who control my damn life. They told me to sleep with him and to get close. When that didn’t work and he offered me a job instead, they seemed to accept that. When I was, invited to Corfu they were pleased, but it makes no sense to me. Konstantin is out of the game now. He’s found love with Cassie, and she seems like a lovely girl. They’re in Corfu far away from the cut and thrust. What they are building there seems totally legitimate, and I don’t understand why the Order is still interested in him. Why not Vasily who seems to have taken on Konstantin’s mantle of underworld boss readily and successfully?
If they asked me to screw Vasily, at least I’d get some pleasure from all this subterfuge. He’s the hottest thing I’ve seen in years. Not pretty like Bohdan, and not as big as Konstantin, Vasily is packed with lean, strong muscle, covered in ink, and all hard edges and striking blue/green eyes. He’s a bad boy alright, down to his very marrow, and I love a bad boy. Don’t get me wrong, Konstantin is utterly terrifying, and bad, bad, bad, but he never did it for me. Sleeping with him would have been nothing more than a means to an end. Sleeping with Vasily would be mixing business and pleasure.
Trouble is,