8

Morning flowed smoothly into a hot day, and I hid in the shade on my balcony.

The bitch from the prosecutor's office, under the supervision of Gray, sent the cops away, who remained on the street. She didn’t even burr at the same time, but purely stuttered with fear, which became an iron argument for law enforcement officers who were slowly entering the topic, and they left home without even looking back at her. But Yegor and she herself were kindly invited to stay in the house, and under guard.

It warmed me, of course, that I was able to get through to Yegor, but if that was the case, put my hand on my heart anywhere and I didn’t get through to anyone. Yegor just jumped at the opportunity I gave him to save his own skin. That's all. Although he did not tell anything that I did not know or did not suspect.

Everything he accused me of, including the fact that I deceived him, that I ruined his life, that I decided to live for myself and generally became a monster, did not hurt me at all. He believed in it, or wanted to believe it, so that it would be easier for him to step over another moral boundary. After all, I, too, once suffered from this, when I convinced myself that by stepping on my throat once more, I would finally become independent.

Well, we all love to deceive ourselves and hear “yes” in “no”, and “no” in “yes”.

It was difficult to say whether Grisha approved of my decision to leave Yegor and the girl in the house. He almost immediately hid his face behind an impenetrable mask, and filled his smell with cigarettes, but in principle I didn’t care.

Something was happening between us again, but that didn't make me submissive by default. He is a man, I am a woman. He is strong, I am weak. He says I do. No. It was not the scenario that suited me.

At night, Grisha admitted that his son was practically a stranger to him, but this was not entirely true. In the cottage, I saw with what tenderness he looked at Nikita, and I knew that that terrible doll that they sent me hooked him too. Yes, Nikita was not with us, but Grisha felt him, just not the way I did.

I did not reproach him for this, because it was I who made the decision to run away from him and from the city in general, and Grisha somehow accepted this. At night, I made another decision: to go for broke. Grisha also had to accept this, although I still could not explain to him the reason that prompted me to do this. I haven't figured it out myself yet, so...

Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow everything was supposed to end, and only then we had a conversation, but for now, if Grisha decided to stay with me despite all my kicks and contradictions, it was better for him to just do what he knew how to love me and kill.

In the ashtray, a sheet of paper with Rosa's scribbles was burning out. Grisha lit a cigarette from it and with gloomy curiosity began to observe the ashes disintegrating from the hot wind.

- Are you going to the casino? he asked casually, but the question sounded like a statement.

"I'll go," I replied calmly.

Grisha averted his gaze from the ashtray and impenetrably dragged on his cigarette.

- Do you want to tell me something? - as if by the way, he managed, pressing down on me with a heavy look.

- Well no. I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray and, having finished my coffee, got up from the table.

The air conditioner in the bedroom had been working since morning, and I reached for the remote control that was lying on the dressing table to turn it off, but Grisha knocked it to the floor with a violent movement.

- Why? Why can't you understand that you are no longer the owner of the city's hole, which will be remembered x * y knows in what queue? They know you!

"Don't you dare talk to me like that!" - I still calmly answered, approximately such a reaction and expecting from Grisha.

As his friend, or rather brother, put it, Shark would have one less tooth if the wolfhound suddenly became a balanced goody.

That's what I liked most about him, in the sense of how he flared up, how he could, if desired, burn everything around with just one look. The only bad thing was that for him, as well as for Boris, my modest person became a weak point that distracted him and even restrained him in some way, because my ice was no weaker than his fire. I was generally quite a cold woman.

- Why are you doing everything to put yourself first number? - He missed my remark deaf ears, flaring up brighter. - Cops at night, your ex dolbo*b in the morning, this Mishka, bl*d, x*y in his ear... - Grisha grabbed my shoulders. - What is your next game? And, Kira Valerievna? What got you through the night? Mosquito, maybe bitten in the wrong place?

I felt uncomfortable. Grisha did not hurt, clearly controlling his superior strength, but his gesture itself reminded me of how Boris held me in exactly the same way and turned me inside out, seeking an answer about his diamonds.

- I didn’t start any game, - I answered, driving away unpleasant memories, - but you still didn’t understand anything, Grisha. He knitted his eyebrows into one line. “I am number one,” I added. - Me, not you.

- I do not want ... - the wolfhound began to growl.

"I don't care what you want or don't want," I interrupted. - I'm not your hole, as you put it, and I didn't come back to this damned city to sit at home while you thoughtlessly have fun in the casino with your scumbags. Maybe because you don't know Nikita closely, your decisions are more objective, but this option doesn't suit me.

- Damn, - Grisha did not calm down, - you reproached me for not doing anything, and now you are furious about what I am going to do! You decide, Kira!

- Firstly, - I threw off his hands, - choose expressions. Secondly, the time when you could do something is long gone, and you blew all the possibilities with brilliance. Thirdly, it's time for you to decide who you are: a hero-lover with hysterical manners or a professional mercenary, for whom this is also a personal matter. Or all your words about the family and all the promises that you whispered to me at night were lies?

- They called me whatever you like, but not a liar, - Grisha growled, twisting his thin lips, - but you ... You, woman, drive me crazy like a drug! he added eagerly.

I kept a comment to myself about how he had long since gone mad, both without drugs and without me, and picked up the air conditioner remote from the floor. From the fall, the lid opened on it, and the batteries that fell out rolled into God knows where.

Grisha quickly found them and, taking the remote control from me, inserted them and closed the lid. He was still angry, and I could give him the dumbest ultimatum, like shut up and do what I say, which in itself was funny, or say "get lost", which in principle could not happen, but I did not do anything at all talk.

I didn’t like that we were arguing again, I didn’t like that in what happened between us, we walked banal paths, but between “thinking right” and “acting right” there was a huge gap that not everyone and not always managed to get around. At least, Grisha and I have been balancing on its edge since the moment we met, and this applied not only to our relationship with him, but in general to everything that surrounded us.

Either we were like that, or the world was like that, or both, but when the still angry Grisha left, I did not turn off the air conditioner so that neither these thoughts nor the heat soared me.

After Grisha's attack and all his "flattering" expressions, I wanted to take a shower and generally change my clothes. I gathered my hair into a bun so as not to wet it and stepped under the cool water.

I hoped that by evening Grisha would calm down and not ruin my plan.

My plan... What did it sound like, huh?! Just as funny as the first number.

I grinned wryly and swirled the hot water completely, leaving only the cold.

Silence, secrets, transgressions, contradictions, life itself... She outplayed everything and shuffled everything, sending my hopes of redemption to the knockdown.

Alyosha would have said that there was a blessing in disguise, or something like what he told me in the cemetery before we left the city, so as not to return to it again.

“Everything worked out as it should,” I clearly heard his voice and smiled wryly again.

Perhaps that was the price for the redemption I naively thought I deserved.

No. Didn't deserve it. Not yet.

I don’t know how long I was in the shower, but when I returned to the room, Grisha was again in it. Judging by the sheet of paper on which he was depicted with the directly atmospheric inscription "Wanted!", He managed to search the office, trying to find answers that I did not give him.

- Why did you leave it? he asked without a trace of anger.

“If you are killed or if you get drunk and shoot yourself, at least I will have something to show my son,” I answered wearily.

- What do you mean, what should not be? - Grisha clarified in all seriousness, throwing the sheet on the floor. Is that why you left me? Does it bother you what I do for a living?

I froze with a sponge near my face, which I took to touch up my makeup. That was a killer question!

I did not think that the wolfhound could attend such thoughts, and even more so that he could voice them in an interrogative form to me - a thief and a murderer.

Yes, we cost each other ten times!

I saw his face in the mirror. He was wearing an impenetrable mask, but his eyes did not give in, and they smoldered with the fire of lonely thoughtfulness, characteristic only of Grisha, the best shooter and my would-be assassin.

Damn, it broke my ice and I slammed the sponge down on the dressing table with feeling.

Grisha came up to me and, putting his hands on my shoulders, pressed his nose to my ear.

"I feel like I'm losing you again," he breathed. - At night you were so hot, so alive, and now you are cold again, as if you don’t feel anything and don’t live at all. You're pushing me away, hiding something. I see that you have made some kind of decision, and I am afraid that again you will not let me take care of you, that I am not in your plans at all.

- Do not exaggerate, - I answered, once again surprised by his change of mood and the frankness that followed, - and make me look like some kind of machine. I'm alive and I feel everything.

“Tell me about it,” Grisha asked in a whisper, reinforcing the request with a rough kiss of dry lips.

- Not here and not now. I shuddered pleasantly and, surrendering, put my head on his shoulder. I guess this swing between us will never stop.

- Why?

“Because it’s difficult,” I answered evasively, shuddering this time not from Grisha’s touch, but from the weight of everything that I kept in myself, including those secrets that Alyoshin’s phone revealed to me at night.

- I do not believe that difficulties scare you.

I sighed heavily, looking at myself and Grisha in the mirror. We were an odd couple.

He was waiting for an answer, and I decided to give him at least something.

“I don’t know what day it is,” I said after thinking, “I don’t know what date it is. I don't remember... - I closed my eyes, reaching for the image of my son. - I don’t remember the last time I held Nikita in my arms, when I was breastfeeding him, when I was an ordinary woman taking care of washing, cleaning, buying groceries. Was it at all?

- It was, Kira! Grisha whispered with feeling. - It was and will be more!

I shook my head, immersed too deeply in memories that seemed unreal and therefore painful.

- I'm afraid that ... That I think the same way as under Boris, only now I'm betting on the wrong things and playing the wrong cards at all. I'm afraid that I will make another mistake, only this time fatal, without the right to return.

Grisha ran his chapped lips along my shoulder, taking greedy breaths, as if absorbing my feelings, my pain.

"You don't want to say what you're hiding, and you don't have to," he whispered. - Fuck it! Tell me later, but for now let it be so. Maybe you really know better. You are not only beautiful, but also smart! I will cover you and insure you, and if something goes wrong, I will definitely tell you that I warned you!

I chuckled at his last sentence. How else to say!

- So you'll be number two?

- I will be the second first number, - Grisha corrected me. “After all, you are not paying for my services,” he added slyly.

- Sue me! I snorted.

Grisha grinned, tickling me with his breath, but his gaze remained serious. Even my hands did not start to play pranks and pull off the towel from me, although I felt his arousal, and not only sexual.

The hero-lover in Grisha was as strong as the veteran killer, but the latter was now taking over, which was good for me, because I was now standing at the beginning of the finish line, the road to which was as winding and filled with mistakes as ours. relationship with him.

I ate dinner alone in my room. Grisha was preparing for the trip with his guys, whom I mercilessly called scumbags, and from time to time I heard his commanding voice coming from the street, and it was very sexy.

There was a soft knock on the door of my room.

- Kira? Can you come?

“Come in,” I answered Misha from the dressing room, where I sorted through the trempel with dresses with a detached look.

Misha came in and leaned against the blouse stand. He looked at me, not at all concealing his interest either in his eyes or in his smell.

My late mother probably would have said that a young, educated wolf, not deprived of external data, was an excellent match for a half-breed, tarnished by the names of the two masters of the city, but what could you do if girls always liked bad boys more, one of which was uncompromisingly and completely illogically turned the head of that same half-breed. Yes, and it was not for the mother to set an example. She knew as much about bad boys as I did.

- Do you have a minute? Misha asked politely.

- There are even two, - I answered, choosing a trempel with the same red dress that the wolfhound once liked.

Let him be glad that I did at least something as he wanted, although, in fact, it was not so: I was just tired of choosing, but it turned out to be at hand.

- What did you decide with the sweet couple locked in the gym?

- If you decide to follow the mayor, then you can take the girl, - I answered, hanging the dress on a hook by the door. “According to my personal observations, the suffering of loved ones, or even the likelihood of their suffering, may not be any leverage,” I added, with annoyance running my eyes over a shelf with an immense amount of shoes. It seems that I did not have red sandals.

- Just hug and cry! I muttered.

Misha looked at me in bewilderment, but he was probably too well brought up to comment on the behavior of a not quite normal woman who lived in the same house with an army of armed motorcyclists.

I chuckled softly and reached for the box, which should have been black sandals with chains instead of straps.

"You're doing well," he remarked, easily lifting the box I was trying to reach for me.

- What happens? - I did not understand.

- To rule. Your father didn't make a mistake.

I smiled wryly. The young wolf was very far from the truth, because his father knew how to keep secrets no worse than Rosa and Alyosha.

"I need to change," I said, nodding towards him.

"Don't go," Misha said without even moving. - Your mercenary will deal with everything himself. Let them at least blow up that casino and everything nearby. It's not the first time he's flooded the city with blood. Your presence there is absolutely unnecessary.

I clutched the box of sandals in annoyance. It seems that I will have to change clothes either in front of him or in the bathroom. I chose the last option.

- Mish, better go back to your father, - I said, heading towards the exit from the dressing room. - You are everything he has.

- What do you have? - Misha stubbornly blocked my way. - Who do you have besides your son? Who will take care of you? Who will protect you? Astakhov? He's empty, Kira! All he can do is smash and kill!

I almost laughed, remembering what other qualities the wolfhound was listing, but I restrained myself in time and measured the newly minted noble hero with a cool look.

It’s nice, of course, that he was not indifferent to me, but he talked about what he didn’t know about, and what didn’t concern him at all, and saying what he said about Grisha was a very bad idea, because the wolfhound had no less acute hearing than a purebred wolf, and could hear his words. Well, it was possible to make up legends about his temper, especially since he didn’t like Misha anyway.

“Mish, you really have to go,” I said as softly as possible. - If I need something, I'll call you.

The front door of the house was wide open, and a draft blew through the hall, smelling everywhere of cigarettes, gasoline, and silver. They colored the summer evening with something special and, judging by the excitement of the motorcyclists who had gathered at the house, the bouquet did not leave even them indifferent.

I, too, was overcome by a strange excitement, which even Rose, who left the kitchen to see us off, did not spoil. I could smell her excitement, as well as regret that everything had turned out this way, and her gaze frantically ran from me to the wolfhound, and back, but my fault in this was no less than hers.

Grisha, standing by his shiny iron horse with a machine gun, meticulously examined me from head to toe. The dress did not fit the hips much, but was shorter than I usually wear.

The smoke enveloped him, and the tip of the cigarette he sipped reflected mysteriously in his black eyes.

Before, I never thought about how any, even minor difficulties, affected those whom I considered close and not indifferent. Not that I believed in loud phrases like "we are with you to the end" or "in sorrow and in joy", but only after my brother was ready to dump anything on me, just to save his own skin, I I understood what it really meant to be in joy, and even to the end, and what it meant to end when grief set in, which did not imply any "we" at all.

It was good when it was good, but when it got bad and instead of an offer to have fun, there was a request for help, relatives and caring people could really surprise us with their alienation and indifference, up to “I see you for the first time” or “come when you don’t need anything” .

Sasha, my brother, whom I took care of and for whom I made many sacrifices, turned out to be a stranger to me. Christina, my partner in a jewelry store, whom I considered a friend, although with a stretch, without a twinge of conscience set the bloodhounds on me in order to hang on the boss's penis and improve my life. Egor, the person with whom I wanted to build a future, was sure that I had killed my brother and, confessing his love, at the same time offered to put me in jail, and even promising to wait for me, which, of course, would not have happened.

And here I was again up to my ears in shit. And who was with me?

Rosa, who at first couldn’t stand me, her sensitive niece Marta, who didn’t know me at all, Alyosha, who almost died because of me, but was still with me, albeit at a distance, and the assassin Grigory Astakhov with his a motley gang that risked for me for free.

Grigory Astakhov, his mother...

Throwing away his cigarette, he took something from the seat of the motorcycle and came up to me.

“I knew that you would wear this dress,” he said, and with a sly grin, he sank to his haunches.

I shuddered not so much at his touch, but at the touch of the cold holster that he strapped to my thigh without embarrassment.

- Is it loaded? I asked.

- What do you think? - Grisha answered the question with a question, slipping his hands much higher than the line of the holster.

I tried to kick him with my knee. Still, we were not alone, but Grisha only laughed, deftly dodging.

- The card has been submitted! - He got to his feet and, bowing picturesquely, pointed to one of the two black SUVs, prepared, as last time for the trip. - Today you will be an obedient queen and will not be capricious about the vehicle? he added coaxingly.

“Somehow I’m not in the mood today,” I answered, emphatically bored.

- That is great! Grisha murmured smugly, opening the door for me. He waited for me to settle down and slammed it shut.

- That's it, brothers, on the horses! Grisha shouted and, putting on a helmet with two wolf heads crossed in the semblance of a kiss, he saddled his motorcycle.