Chapter Text
Alexi Rex Aslanov had had better nights. To be sure, he had had worse as well. The vodka had been of a very fine quality, as had the caviar, and the girl playing the piano had been quite good, not to mention beautiful.
But now the caviar was on the floor, with the rest of the table upturned, and some idiot with a Kalashnikov had let fly a spray of bullets into the bar so the liquor lay in ruined shards of glass. And the girl was cowering against one leg of her instrument, curled into a little ball. Alexi could see just a hint of the bare skin at the nape of her neck as she trembled.
The once crowded lounge bar was empty. Well, mostly. There were the corpses of the two patrons, a waiter, and the hired thugs Philippe Gustavo had brought with him. Alexi still sat in his chair. He had been disappointed in Gustavo from the minute the man had turned over the table. It was too dramatic for his tastes, like something out of a fucking movie. The same with the monologue the man had felt it necessary to impart before he'd taken a bullet to the head.
Alexi stood and spit on the body. The asshole had made it disappointingly easy.
He almost resented it. After a month in Paris arranging this meeting with the (now former) arms dealer that had been trying to push Lev out of France, it seemed an anti-climax. The muscle he had hired was green, without discipline. They never should have stood so close together, nor should they have allowed him reach for something unknown.
But people new to these kind of dealings always imagined the best. They had probably thought he was going to offer them something from the bag, some reward in exchange for his own life. Optimism. What a European sentiment. An emotion for paintings, museums, a promenade in the fucking jardin.
He slung the duffel bag of cash he'd brought-- a million dollar prop—over his shoulder. Lev hadn't needed him to buy anything. Only to reduce the competition. He bent and slipped the knife from the strap on his leg. He cut off a few of Gustavo's fingers, leaving the lavish, gaudy rings on, and slipped them into a small jar of formalin he had brought for that purpose. Lev would want the rings on. Made it more personal.
He stood and went to the bar, found a bottle of high proof vodka, and poured it over his fingers to rinse them clean of blood. He checked the mark. Not a bad bottle, so he took a swig of it before smashing it on the floor with the rest.
Only then did he turn his attention to the only other living occupant.
With the men dead, only the sound of her breathing was left in the room.
He was impressed with how quiet she had been—not so much as a squeak when the guns had gone off, nor when he'd smashed the bottle. When the shooting had started most of people had fled for the exits. But the piano player had had no such option. Some idiot conceit of whoever had designed the room had led them to construct the piano in what appeared to be a life-sized orb of glass, almost like a snow globe, lit with soft, warm light and a mirrored bottom and top that projected the girl and the piano into infinity in both directions. It was purposefully nostalgic, meant to bring to mind the old-fashioned, softly-lit mirror vanities of a Hollywood movie star era that had never existed.
It hadn't been enough to stop the bullets, there were several shattered circles in the glass, but it had made it impossible for her to run. Or hide. He could see her a thousand times over in the two mirrors, leaning back against the leg of the exquisite cherry-wood piano, face pressed to her knees. She had her right arm across her chest, hand clasped over her left arm. There was blood seeping from between the fingers, down the side of the cotton print dress she wore. Her legs were tucked up against her chest but even despite that he could see she was breathing hard, if quietly.
He walked around the glass orb to get a better look at her.
Even curled around herself as she was, he could see she had the soft, gamine features that he liked best—all slim arms and legs but with a distinct womanly curve of the hips and breasts. Her breasts would be small, barely enough to fill his palm, judging from where he stood, but her ass looked more generous.
Yes, she was the exact kind of pliable little piece of flesh that Alexi Aslanov most liked to feel bent under him as he opened her with his cock. He put one Oxford-clad foot against the edge of the sphere and tapped the sub-machine gun's tip against the glass. He had seen her eyes from across the room, and knew they were startlingly blue. He wanted to see them again.
At the sound, the girl lifted her head and her eyes opened. Her eyes did not flick to the weapon he held pointing at the ground.
She was like a little kid. If she couldn't see him, he wasn't there. If she didn't look at it, it wasn't real.
But, God, she really was lovely.
She had hair so blond it was almost white, that looked as though it would be silky to the touch. She wore it in a single braid with long bangs cut straight across that made her look somehow very young and very old-fashioned at the same time. Like looking at a picture of an actress from the silver screen in their youth. Brigitte Bardot but cast in a role meant for Ingrid Bergman. Sexy, but too wholesome to know what men thought of when they looked at her.
Her eyes were wide, framed with thick lashes. She wore very little makeup and her lips were a very pleasing pink. They looked soft. It made him wonder if her cunt was the same color. Or what they would look like with his cock between them.
He saw what he had expected: fear mostly and pain of course, the raw emotions of any wounded animal. But there was something there that surprised him. It wasn't courage exactly, somehow that was the wrong word for it. Discipline. Some kind of tenacious inner strength that was unusual in someone so young. This was a girl who exerted an enormous amount of control over herself. All of it working overtime not to panic.
And yet, at the same time, she looked so impossibly fragile. Her wide blue eyes were so open, the fear so close to the surface it seemed like he could touch it if he were a bit closer. There were no walls up at all, no hint that she knew she should try not to look so much like prey. And the grip she had on herself, cost her dearly. Something inside of her seemed to be burning far too hot. Flames licking the feet of some virgin martyr.
His cock stiffened in his trousers.
“You heard my name.”
It was not a question but she nodded once. Gustavo had practically been shouting it, the fucking moron.
“Say it.”
“Alexi Aslanov.”
Obedient too. His cock twitched, straining against his zipper.
He should kill her.
It was the neatest thing to do-- just one more dead body amount the crowd for the gendarme to find. But he liked the way she said his name. If it felt like a caress, how would it sound when she was begging?
“How do you get out of this?” He tapped the glass with the tip of his assault rifle.
“I climb out of the top.”
She wouldn't be able to make it with her wounded arm.
“Get under the piano.”
She pushed to the side with her good arm and did as she was bid, huddling under the roof of the grand. He slung the PP-2000 over his back and picked up a chair. It took him two swings to bring the glass case down. Again, the girl surprised him when she didn't scream as the glass shattered down around her.
He stepped up into the raised platform, onto the mirror now covered by shards of glass and stepped forward to where she crouched. He bent and took her by the wrist, jerking her to her feet. She let out a little exhalation of pain as he ripped her hand free from where it was holding pressure on her wound.
She was smaller than he had thought. He was a tall man at one point nine meters, but she barely came to his mid chest. The dress made her look younger still. It was so out of place in the fashionable, lounge bar: a simple frock with a pattern of roses on it. It was loose on her and without embellishment except for where it nipped in a the waist. It looked like a fifties era house dress more than anything else. If he had to guess he would have said she probably had worn similar things when she went to piano recitals as a little girl.
He pulled back her hand from the wound in her arm. She yielded it slowly, like a child hesitating to show an adult their skinned knee. There was still blood trickling from it but nothing more than a slow, venous ooze. She wouldn't lose much from it in the few minutes it would take him to carry her down the stairs.
From the duffel over his back, he produced a pair of zip-tie handcuffs and slipped them over her thin wrists.
She looked up at him. “You're not... not going to kill me.”
He was impressed again. So few people could get those words out, in his experience.
“No solnyshko, I'm not.”
“Thank you.”
She thanked him for sparing her life, rather than protesting that he was abducting her.
Manners. His mother would have liked her.
“You are welcome.”
He took out next a small silk sack, densely woven to prevent any light from getting in but light weight and breathable, so as not to suffocate the victim even if a long trip in confined conditions were necessary. “I don't have to tell you not to try to take it off, do I?”
She shook her head. “No, sir.”
Sir. Fuck. She was going to say that an awful lot to him. He'd make sure of it.
He slid his hands down the sides of her body, starting just under her breasts and trailing down. She stiffened at the handling, tensing at the touch. Relax, sunshine, that part comes later.
“I'm only looking for a weapon, so be a good girl and part your legs.” He murmured. He could see the flesh at the back of her neck prickle as his breath moved across it.
She did as she was told, letting him run his hands over each leg in turn. He didn't find a weapon (he hadn't expected one) but he did find she had stashed her phone in a pocket at her waist. The heat between her legs was intriguing but he didn't let himself linger very long.
He was hard enough already, and he needed to move.
The dress she wore wasn't just modest, it was also the wrong size. She'd used pins to bring it in slightly so it would still fit. He took out one and used it to open the compartment that held the sim card in her phone. He pocketed both.
He checked his smart watch, opening an encrypted GPS app, and was pleased to see that Daniel was almost at the rendez-vous. He bent and lifted her over one shoulder. She was lighter than the duffle bag of hundred euro notes. She squirmed involuntarily. It must have been disconcerting to be lifted in the dark of the hood, unaware of of how high she would be lifted. No way to tell when or if he would put her down. But she settled when he smacked one thigh. “Lie still.”
He could feel her heart pounding a frantic tattoo against his shoulder. But she obeyed. Not relaxing, but certainly not struggling.
He went out through the now deserted kitchen and down the fire escape. Daniel pulled up the car just as Alexi reached the cobblestones. He opened the door, putting the girl in first and climbing in after her.
“Ah, I see you've brought a party favor. How cute.” Daniel said from the driver's seat in Russian. “Thought I confess she would be a lot cuter if she weren't bleeding all over the fucking car.”
“Worried about your deposit back from the rental?”
“Just a pain in the ass to find a place to burn the thing in Paris.”
“There's a football game on tonight. Algeria versus Germany. Where can't you burn it?”
“Still, bad manners. And Lev won't like it.”
Alexi snorted but said nothing.
No, Lev would not like it. The business with Gustavo had been complicated. He wouldn't welcome any additional nuances. But Daniel wouldn't tell him, and certainly Alexi himself had no intention of ever letting his boss meet the little blond thing currently huddled against the far car window.
He pulled her phone from his jacket pocket-- an iPhone several generations out of date in a lacquer case with a pattern of dreamy flowers painted on. It had a slot for credit cards and ID at the back. He thumbed out the contents of the slot and examined it: a Texas drivers license, a titre de sejour and a carte bancaire from BNP Parisbas.
He opened the door and slipped the carte bancaire out onto the road. Best case scenario someone would find it and empty her account, giving the police of Paris a false lead she might still be in the city. If not, it removed the possibility of her having access to money if she were to attempt escape.
The other documents he examined more closely. Kathryn Hughes was from Houston, Texas (or at least a middle-class suburb of it a quick search on his phone told him). Alexi fought not to roll his eyes at the misspelling of Catherine. She was eighteen (would be nineteen in another seven months). She was five foot three and her weight was listed as one-hundred and fifteen pounds. She must have lost weight recently, because there was no way she was more than fifty kilograms and she looked markedly thinner than the smiling girl in the ID.
The titre de sejour listed her occupation as student and based on how well she played and the address noted he guessed she probably was enrolled at the Conservatoire de Paris.
So she was talented, not exactly poor (her parents had had enough to take her to piano lessons and afford the Conservatoire), and raised well enough that 'thank you' and calling strangers 'sir' was ingrained deeply enough she still felt the need to use them with a kidnapper. But she was in dire enough straights that she had found herself playing piano for money in glass case of a bar with known mob connections.
A mystery to be unraveled.
But in the meantime, she was still bleeding, he reminded himself.
He turned and leaned over the seat, taking out a slim case in the trunk of the sedan. He flipped it open onto the seat and drew out some sterile gauze and iodine. He opened one package of the gauze and soaked it in iodine, the other he left open on the seat beside it. He took Kathryn Hughes by her slim hips and slid her to the middle of the seat. She flinched at the touch but didn't resist as he put one knee across her still-tied hands. The last thing he needed was her panicking and lifting her blindfold.
“This is going to hurt, solnyshko.” He told her as he doused his hands in a disinfectant from the medical supplies.
“Solnyshko?” He ignored Daniel's mocking voice from the front seat.
The bullet had gone through and through, that he could tell with a glance. But there was always the possibility that some of it had been left behind, where it could fester. He'd seen men die from retained fragments, and it was not a good death.
She gasped when he probed the wound with his fingers, a little whimpering sound that made his cock throb. When he had satisfied himself that the wound was free of debris, he cleaned it with iodine thoroughly. She was crying by the end, but he couldn't take off the hood to enjoy her tears yet.
He was gentler with the bandage and she held her arm out obediently so that he could wind the clean gauze around it with enough pressure that it would slow the bleeding. Iodine and blood had run down the side of her ribs, ruining the dress and the seat below.
Daniel would indeed have to burn the car.
He shifted off of her, releasing her again. He cleaned his hands the disinfectant and wiped them free of her blood on more clean gauze.
He spoke with Daniel, enjoying the slight trembling of the girl beside him, as they drove out of the city.
Thirty minutes outside of Paris, Daniel pulled through the gate of a small, quiet airstrip. The lights in the hangars were all off save one but the light poured out of it, almost dazzling after the long way on the dark country roads. Daniel pulled the car up to the hanger and got out.
Alexi opened his door and then came around to open the one on the other side. He lifted the girl down out of the car and caught her easily when she stumbled. The little bird was shivering. Possibly it was from fear, but the night air was cold and the she was barefoot in a dress was still wet from the blood and iodine. He shrugged off his suit jacket and draped it over her shoulders.
Part of him would have liked to have picked her up to spare her feet the cold pavement but that would have given the wrong impression. To Daniel, to the flight crew, to her. Possibly even to Alexi himself. So instead he took her by the upper arm, guiding her with a firm grip.
Inside the hangar was a scene of startling normality. The flight attendant and pilot stood, uniformed, at the bottom of the air stairs with polite, professional smiles.
“Welcome sir, how good of you to patronize our services once again.” The pilot said.
The stewardess made no move to assist him with the bag slung over his shoulder. Nor did she look at the girl standing beside him, barefoot, blood-soaked and with a silk hood over her head. Unless he offered it to her, she would not consider implying she might take anything that he deemed worthy of carrying aboard.
“You can turn on the engines. I'm ready to leave immediately. ”
“Very good, sir.”
Both of them went up the stairs, knowing a dismissal when they heard it.
He turned to Daniel and they clasped arms, each giving each other a clap on the back. He'd known Daniel since his army days, back before his first tattoos. He was, perhaps, the closest thing Alexi had to a friend, or a brother.
“I'll need a fake passport for her waiting at the airport. And some suitable clothes.” He handed Daniel the driver's license and titre de sejour. “Galina can take her height from that but tell her she's a stone lighter at least.”
“A Russian passport?”
Alexi shook his head. “No, no one will believe a Russian. She'll raise less suspicion as an American than one masquerading as a Russian. Make her Catherine Rex though, and spell fucking Catherine correctly.”
Daniel raised his eyebrows. Alexi usually used his middle name as his surname when he traveled. “And will Mrs. Rex require anything else?” He asked in a teasing tone.
“No.”
“Let me know if you have any trouble getting out of France.” Alexi told him.
“With you gone, what will be left to get me into trouble?”
He boarded the plane. He took the girl to the back and sat her down in one of the bench seats at a table by a window, taking the one across from her for himself. He put the duffel bag of money on the seat beside him. He was glad to see her arm had stopped bleeding. He didn't want to leave a trace of her behind. That the pilot and stewardess had seen worse than a girl with a gunshot wound and a sack over her head, Alexi had no doubt. But it was sloppy, and he had already made one indulgent choice this evening. The rest he would have to be careful with.
When they were in the air the flight attendant brought a meal: a bottle of very nice Stoli Elit, Dom Perignon, little dishes of Imperial Caviar, raw onions, sour cream, smoked salmon, belinis, pelmeni, and little delicate pirozhki and and a pot of strong espresso. When she'd laid it out on the table between them she smiled at Alexi. “Will you be needing anything else, sir?”
“Keep the partition closed from now on. I'll call if we need anything but otherwise I don't want to be disturbed.”
“Of course, sir.”
When they were alone he reached forward and slid the sack over Kathryn's head. Her hair was a mess and she had indeed been crying. She should have looked a mess—she did look a mess—but also lovely. Disheveled, sweet and afraid. Her cheeks were cracked and raw from the salt of the tears, lips pinker and slightly puffy. He adjusted himself to make his trousers a bit more comfortable. Jesus, he couldn't wait to see her cry. If she looked like this afterward, even better. Fuck but his cock was going to look good balanced on her tongue with tears in her eyes.
She trembled, but me his gaze.
Her eyes widened when he took a switchblade from his pocket, flicking it open, “your hands, solnyshko.”
He cut off the zip ties, letting them fall to the floor and kicking them away.
He poured her two fingers of the Stoli and from his pocket he took the vial of pills he had taken from the medical kit in Daniel's car. He shook out one, broke it in half and put it next to the tumbler of clear alcohol. She looked at the pill and shook her head, biting her lip.
There was no use frightening her quite yet. Making her hysterical wouldn't help get him the information he wanted from her, nor would it make fucking her particularly satisfying. He took the vial from his pocket and put it on the table so she could see the label.
“Oxycodone, five milligrams. It's a narcotic. I've given you a half dose to see how you do. I'll give you another if it's not enough. But that,” he pointed to her arm, “is really going to hurt in a moment when the adrenaline begins to fade.”
She hesitated still.
“It's not a question, Kathryn.”
Her head jerked up at the sound of her name, meeting his gaze with startled, frightened eyes.
“Your driver's license.” He explained.
She would be able to work that out if she was thinking properly, if her mind wasn't clouded by pain and fear. Giving her the information now would make a small connection between him and information in her mind. Make her more likely to trust what he said in the future, to look to him for answers.
“Now we both know each other's names.” He mused. “But no stalling. As I said, it wasn't a question. If I have to tell you again, there will be consequences.”
Her fingers trembled as she reached out and took the pill, swallowing it down with the vodka. She winced a bit as the liquid burned down her throat but didn't cough or splutter.
“Kate.” She said, her voice hoarse from the tears.
She'd spoken so low he almost didn't hear her. But she repeated herself, “Kate. Most people call me Kate.”
Most people. Not, “I like to be called Kate” or “my name is Kate.” Most people call me Kate. It was an interesting distinction. He wasn't quite sure yet, what it meant that she introduced herself with a name she didn't like.
“Is there anyone who will miss you tonight, wonder where you've gone?”
“My roommate, Charlotte.”
She shouldn't have told him that. She would have been better off letting her roommate raise the alarm. She wasn't thinking, or perhaps it was more fair to say that she didn't know what to think. She hadn't been trained for this, had no conception of how to form a strategy in this situation.
He took out his phone and connected to the plane's wifi, opening a VPN that could make the call appear from a different location and number. He routed it through a cell tower near Roissy and took the girl's phone out of his own pocket to put in the number as the outgoing one. To her roommate it would appear to come from the girl herself, to any law enforcement who might trace the call later, it would appear to have come from the airport.
He took her hand and used the thumb to unlock the security on the phone, found the roommate in her contacts (Charlotte Blanchet, with colocataire written in the space for company) and punched in the number. He put the phone on the table between them. “Tell her you're at Roissy, you're flying out tonight back to Houston. You've had a family emergency and you don't know when you'll be back.”
He dialed the number on speaker.
She was a terrible liar. She stuttered and fumbled, almost shaking as she spoke the words. But probably the room mate wouldn't notice over the phone or chalk it up to emotions related to the family emergency. Her French was a pleasant surprise however. She spoke with an accent of course, and the sweet lilt in her voice carried through, making it sound almost musical.
She told her roommate that her mother had a pneumonia and she had to take an emergency flight out, she apologized for not calling sooner, and said she wasn't sure that she would be able to call when she arrived in the states since it would be a different cell network. That lie was clever, a way to reassure the girl long past what she might otherwise.
Again, he got the sense she didn't realize she was hurting herself with the additional lie. She didn't think like he did. She thought to reassure her roommate, to take some of the stress off of the situation for the other woman. She didn't think of what it would mean for her. In her own self interest, she should want the girl to worry early, to report her missing. Even in the circumstances she found herself in, she didn't want to upset anyone.
But at the end she said something he hadn't expected. “Occupe-toi de mes orchid, s'il te plait.” Take care of my orchids for me.
It sounded like something some idiot CIA handler would have invented as a code phrase for distress. And there was no discounting that the girl really had no business being in the club to begin with. He thought he'd met enough government agents to recognize when he was dealing with them. And certainly she did not seem like someone with any training. But he had been surprised before. He had a bullet wound and the memory of a collapsed lung to prove it.
When she had ended the call he took her hand and again used it to unlock the security. He opened her photos app and began to scroll through. The photos were what he expected: a few pictures of her at major tourist destinations, smiling blandly into the camera and pictures and pictures of sheet music and pianos.
“What are you doing?” She asked.
The movement of his hands was unmistakable, she knew he was looking through her photos. That was not the question. “Looking for orchids.”
She frowned. “You speak French?”
“My mother was French.”
“Are you French then?”
He smiled. “No, Russian.”
He didn't know why he offered the information. He had no reason to. No reason not to of course either. She knew his name and that would be enough to identify him to anyone who was enough of a threat to him for him to care. But still, it was out of character.
More out of character still was that, after he had found the orchids (loving photos of well tended white blooms on a window sill), he kept scrolling. He hesitated on a photo of her outside of Sacré-Coeur. She was standing on the steps and must have asked someone else to take the photo because she was alone. He didn't know why but he had the distinct impression that she'd gone to the site by herself. He understood less why that made him angry.
She should know better than to hand her phone to a stranger at Sacré-Coeur. The steps that led up to it were infamous for pick pockets and barkers, almost impassable during the months of June and July. The white jean shorts that revealed long, lovely legs she wore and the warm, yellow light short-sleeved top indicated summer. She shouldn't be out with so little on at all, certainly not by herself.
He pushed the thought aside. That the girl didn't know how to take care of herself shouldn't matter to him. Besides, she was in his custody now. He would make sure she didn't do something foolish like that again.
He disabled the phone's security so it wouldn't re-lock and then pocketed it.
“You're satisfied I own orchids, Mr. Aslanov?”
He smiled at that. Mr Aslanov. Manners indeed.
“Given all that has transpired tonight, I think you might call me Alexi.”