THE FIXER

“Why is she asking?” a gruff male voice rumbles in the background. The hairs on my arms stand up.

“Is that Viktor?”

“Yes. Where are you, Sasha? At Ravil’s penthouse?” Later I would wonder how she knew about Ravil’s penthouse, but my mind is already trotting forward to my most burning question.

“Yes. I’m in the bathroom with the tub running. That’s the noise you hear.”

“Where is Maxim?”

“I don’t know-out on business. But he has roommates. They all live together on the top floor of a building. Mama… ”

“What is it, Sasha?”

“Um… ” Asking your mother if she killed a man is harder than you’d think. “Who poisoned Vladimir?”

“Oh, probably Leonid,” she says dismissively.

“But he hasn’t claimed responsibility for the death. Ravil thinks that’s strange. He made it sound like people think you did it,” I blurt.

“Th-that’s because he probably gave the order,” my mother says, sounding flustered. I know her well enough to hear the thread of tension in her voice.

Warning bells go off, but I ignore them.

I don’t want to believe my mom would do such a thing.

“Ravil has backed Leonid. He’s responsible for him taking the helm in Vladimir’s absence.”

That chill that I felt in the pool returns.

“Don’t you see why, Sasha? If Vladimir’s dead, he’s one step closer to taking control of the oil wells. That’s why I’m in hiding. As long as they can’t find me, you’re safe. You see? Because if you die, your money passes to me. But if we’re both dead, Maxim and Ravil have it all.

They take control of the money and the bratva. It’s exactly what your father feared would happen to us.”

I shake my head. “I-I think you’re being paranoid, Mama,” I tell her, but I can’t stop the trembling in my hands.

“Have they asked about me? Did they ask you to find out where I am?”

I suck in a ragged breath. “They asked, but I said I didn’t know. Which is true. So… I guess don’t tell me. So I don’t have anything to hide.”

“I won’t tell you. But how are you doing, darling? Are you a prisoner there?”

I think of what I just had to go through to buy the phone to call her. I expel a measured exhale. “It’s a gilded cage, but yes. I’m a prisoner.”

“Has he hurt you?”

“Maxim?” Guilt seeps in through the cold. Am I wrong to listen to my mother? Maxim takes very good care of me-sexually and otherwise. How could I even think he planned to murder me? Besides, why would they need to murder me when they alraedy control my money? I’m the one who should do the murdering around here. My father treated me like the spoiled princess he created, not trusting me to manage my own funds. Giving them to Maxim to divvy out to me as he sees fit.

It’s ridiculous, really.

“No,” I tell my mother. “He’s good to me. I think you’re wrong about them.”

I hear Viktor say something in the background, but I can’t make it out. “I have to go now,” my mother says. “Call me again next week. I’m working on a plan to see you.”

“You are?” I can’t decide if that makes me happy or not. “Maxim said you could come here, and he’d protect you.”

“I’d be crazy to trust him,” my mother answers. “No, don’t tell him you spoke with me.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

“Promise me. It could mean my life.”

Another wash of fear runs down the front of me. “I promise.”

“I love you, daughter mine.”

“I love you, too, Mama.” I hang up, fighting the urge to burst into tears.

My mother is wrong.

She’s wrong about all of it.

She has to be.

Maxim

THERE ARE three things I adore about my new wife.

I love the sex. Da, that had to be first because nothing moves me like watching her surrender. Watching the walls and barriers between us crash down in a torrent of hot, brutal passion.

I also love the show. I love when she gets dolled up and turns her natural female magnetism way up. She’s not afraid to talk to anyone. She loves to be the life of the party. She’s the type people might call “too much,” but I love every bit of it. In the week she’s been here, she’s already won over my roommates-even Lucy, and the two of them have very little in common, other than being female. She’s won over the soldiers in the building-the doormen and guards. She’s made friends with the baristas at the coffee shop on the corner. She knows how to work a room.

Most of all, though, I love when she shows me what’s really beneath it all. When she fell apart over acting. When we get real about her father. She’s proud as hell, so I figure if she’s showing me her weaknesses, it means something.

That she’s mine in more than body and last name.

It still isn’t all the time. She’s mercurial. At times, I find her reserved and cagey-especially after I leave her alone for too long, but hopefully with time, she’ll learn to trust that my attention won’t be withdrawn the way her father’s was.

Tonight she’s all about the show. After our talk last week about theatre, she found a play to attend tonight. She’s dolled up in a gorgeous open-backed blue designer dress, looking far more Hollywood star than her usual nightclub diva look. All the guys whistle when we emerge from the bedroom suite, and she tosses her red hair like a model on a runway.

“Where are you two headed?” Lucy asks from her stool at the breakfast counter. She’s eating beef and potato perogies-her constant pregnancy craving.

“The Chicago Temple of Music and Art,” Sasha answers. “Chicago Stage is doing Cabaret.”

“Ooh, that will be good,” Lucy says.Upstodatee from Novel(D)ra/m/a.O(r)g

“That’s a strip club, right?” Nikolai asks with mock innocence.