Chapter 4

"Sit," Jessica ordered her colleague on Sunday. Clients were few and far between that night and Alexei wasn't coming today: it was his eldest kid's birthday. From what she had understood, her boss had two kids: Sasha, a teenage boy and Natasha, a baby girl. Obviously, Camille was on her own.

She had felt Jessica's stare on her all night long yesterday. Today had not been better. She had barely managed to wait for the bar to get at its quieter before she started hounding her. The young waitress obeyed and sat on a stool, uneasy. She felt like her mom had caught her red handed in the proverbial cookie jar.

"Now tell me what the fuck was it that I saw last night?" She was aggressive, almost nasty. Yep, lecture from hell incoming. Camille opened her mouth but didn't even get a chance to call for her lawyer. "What the fuck are you doing Cami? Are you mental?"

"I'm-" she started.

"Seriously, what did I tell you?! Stay invisible with those guys! IN-VI-SIBLE! If this is your version of doing it, I can't wait to see you flirt with someone!"

"I didn't do it on purpose!" The girl tried to defend herself. Afterall, it was true. She hadn't meant to do anything special. She didn't even hit on him, at all. Well, except maybe for that one time through Alex's phone. But come on!

Jessica calmed down. Somehow, it got worse anyway.

"Are you trying to tell me he is forcing himself on you?" she sounded a little worried and a lot skeptical. Obviously, it wasn't one of the many flaws she knew Vladimir for. Camille tucked this information in a corner of her mind. Getting to know Vladimir was like solving a puzzle. She hoped she would get some clarity come Tuesday night.

"Of course not!" Camille rushed to say. "I... guess I like him, that's all."

At that, Jessica let out an indignant huff and put both hands on her narrow hips.

"Like him?" She repeated, aghast. "You saw him what? Three times? In passing?"

"Kinda. Yeah." The girl looked down again. She was making herself look like a teenager with a stupid crush. It wasn't it. What it was, she didn't know... As Jessica kept huffing and puffing, she felt complied to be blunter, if only to get the older woman off her back. She looked around, checking that no one was eavesdropping, and got closer to her colleague. "Alright, alright", she half-whispered. "Maybe I just want to fuck him."

She almost burst out laughing at the scandalized face Jessica was pulling. The woman was a puritan at heart. She had had one husband, her high school's sweetheart and that was it. Camille had had many high school sweethearts...

"Just once or twice," she kept forging on. "To, you know, let some tension loose. It's been a while. And I'm sure he's only looking for that too."

Well, that wasn't exactly true. She actually did get along fine with him and, if come Wednesday morning, he had disappeared from her bed, she would miss him. She had never been clingy like that but she supposed having so few human contacts, hot and sweaty or otherwise, for so many months made you cherish the few you manage to have. She was conflicted about this date. On one hand, if nothing came out of it, or just a little wild ride, she would be glad, still not forgetting what he was and aware nothing long term would be possible, not even friendship.

But on the other hand… Well, on the other hand, she did feel like they had some kind of connection. She didn't believe in all the soulmates crap, and even if she had at some point, she knew she had already lost hers, but still, she was feeling… something. She was fascinated by him. Like a moth to a flame, she wanted to get close to him, knowing perfectly well that, if she got too close, she'd get burnt, and yet kept flying forward anyway. Her actual frame of mind, where she'd let the wind carry her wherever it'd blow, not caring about consequences as she felt like she had nothing left to lose anyway, wasn't helping.

She knew that. Even Jessica, who didn't know anything about her past life, could feel it too. That was why, despite her nosiness and her judgmental attitude, Camille felt grateful for her lecture. Jess knew she was a sad, confused shell of a human being and she cared. However, broken or not, the young girl wasn't about to let anyone decide anything about her life for her. She never had been the type and never would be.

When she had come home last night, Vladimir's number added to her – very small – contact list, she had laid down in her bed and thought about it, while the sun had been coming up in the sky. As she had always done before deciding something, she had weighed the good and the bad.

Good: She felt attracted to him, to this connection she thought they shared. He was nice, could be a gentleman when he wanted to but was also very straightforward. Which was, she was sure, a lovely combination in bed. Another good point for him, by the way. He was hot. That was important too right now.

Bad: He was a Russian mobster, with tattoos and scars to prove it, with a gun in a hostler under his jacket. Alex had warned her about him. And Jessica too. So basically, half the people she knew thought it was a bad idea.

Halfway between good and bad: She had always felt good when doing bad things. It made her feel alive. And God knew she needed that right now.

"Helloooo?" Jessica called, waving a manicured hand in front of her young coworker's eyes. "It's creepy to see you drift in your own little world right after saying something crass like this. What were you thinking about?"

At this, Camille put on her best devilish smirk.

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

The older women visibly shivered.

"Ew! Gross!" And then, she went on, muttering about French girls and their depraved behaviors. Camille had to refrain from laughing out loud as she heard some more grumblings, something about French kiss not being called French for no reason.

After that, the girl let some minutes pass, checking on the few customers they had, before approaching Jessica again. This time, they talk about Jess' life. How tough it was to pay the rent, the price of real estate having skyrocketed after the aliens destroyed half of Manhattan, even if, luckily, Hell's Kitchen had been mostly spared. Camille wasn't in New-York City at the time. From her TV in France, she had watched, as shocked as everyone else, while aliens had fallen from the sky and almost destroyed the city, despite a God of Thunder and other oddities trying to stop them. It had been surreal. And everyone was still trying to process what had happened, even months later.

Apparently, Jessica's daughter, Betsy, had found herself a sweetheart. Jess was worried about it. She said he was brilliant, but he seemed a little simple-minded too, and, apparently, if only because of the sheer size of the guy, she was worried Betsy would get in trouble.

"What it is with you girls and dangerous boys? Have I missed the memo informing women that clean bankers with nice suits were not good enough anymore?"

Camille smiled. They were back to square one, it seemed.

"Well," she played along, "you've got to admit there is a certain appeal to a bad man being bad with everyone but you. The thrill of danger. The ego boost of being the only one with a special treatment. That's what romance books are made of now. The days of white knights in shining armors are gone," she said in an exaggeratingly serious voice. "The time for dark knights in battered and bloody armors has come."

Jessica huffed, clearly not getting it. Camille laughed, asking about her colleague's husband instead. It was a sure way to get her going for a while.

On Monday, as Camille was enjoying a long cool shower after a good run – days were getting hotter and she was sweating like a pig, as unwomanly as it was – she let her mind wander to the next day. A question had been hounding her for the past hour. It was a shallow one but a valid one anyway.

What should she wear for her date?

Vladimir hadn't told her where he planned to take her. If she got her fanciest dress out of her closet, and he ended up taking her to a bar, she would look ridiculous. Same thing applied if she wore jeans to a fancy restaurant.

As she got out of the shower, trying to dry her hair as best as she could with a towel – they were getting longer, almost grazing her buttocks, she would have to ask Jess for a good hairdresser – she decided to stop acting like a teenager and grabbed her phone. Before she could overthink it, she started typing.

"Hi Vladimir, sorry to bother you. I just wanted to know where you were taking me tomorrow night?"

She pressed send and put her phone in a corner, focusing on her make-up and searching for a white shirt that wasn't too warm but already ironed. She had never been the kind to wait behind a phone for hours. She wouldn't start now. Nope. She was just checking the time to be sure not to be late. When she went out to work, two hours later, he still hadn't answered. Her mother had called however, asking her if everything was good on her end. And then, she had started to talk, and talk, and talk, up until Camille had to stop her, explaining that, at this rate, she would be late for work.

Her mum didn't know she worked in a bar. And hopefully, as she still struggled with time zones, she will never realize her daughter wasn't exactly having office hours. It was for the best, she wouldn't understand. Not that she had anything against bartending jobs, per se. The only motto her mother had about school and work was "work hard at school so you can do whatever job you like", and that included every job in the world. Except maybe prostitution. Even then, it was a big maybe. Her mum was unjudging like that. It's just that it was so different from what Camille did before that she would see it as another sign that her daughter was in pain. Which wasn't necessarily untrue.

Anyway, Camille got to work in a hurry, almost late, which wasn't like her and got her a raised eyebrow from Jessica. Apart from that, everything went on as usual. There were enough patrons that she didn't feel the time passing by and soon enough, Jess had gone home and Camille was alone with her boss. After checking that everything was in order, he went straight to his office. He seemed worried. She didn't know why.

Now that she thought about it, even her customers had seemed worried for the past weeks. Curious, she tried to investigate. Sergei, a regular, was sitting at the counter, reading the New-York's Bulletin absentmindedly. He was waiting for one of the cab drivers, as he usually did on Monday.

"So, Sergei," she tried to be natural, "what's on the news today?"

The man, with his black hair and rough features, wasn't handsome by any stretch of the imagination, but he was… common, let's say. Common enough that it wasn't hard to talk to him. Even if he sported the mother of all black eyes on his face, which wasn't even unusual for him. Just like any russian she knew; he was all dressed in dark clothes. She had stopped to wonder about it months ago. As he looked up from his paper, she smiled.

"Hey Cami," he greeted, "You know: same old, same old. Aliens, secret organizations, organized crime rotting Hell's Kitchen to its core." Camille almost choked on her Diet Coke. He dared to talk about it as if he wasn't part of the aforementioned rot… Mobsters… Innocent even when proven guilty, it seemed.

"Well, people are worried. I couldn't help but notice the patrons were more and more agitated these last few weeks?" She tried. As expected, he stared at her, trying to gauge the innocence in her question. She kept a neutral, affable face, and it worked.

"Things are starting to change in the Kitchen," he explained, "Veles taxis – it's the company who's employing most of your customers – has concurrence. Guys are worried they're gonna lose their jobs." Get killed by the rival gang, more like. But she got the idea. And she was concerned. Her customers might be gang members but they were her gang members. Them, she knew. If they got dismantled, Alexei might lose customers. Her, in turn, might actually lose her job. If not, they might get new customers, and she had no guarantee those ones would be as respectful of barmaids as the ones she had now.

"What do you think about it? Do you work there too?"

The man shrugged. He handed her his glass for a refill and, as she handed it back, he thanked her.

"I'm a logistic manager there, so yes. And I think that's bullshit. Vladimir and Anatoly ain't gonna let anything happen to their company."

Ah…

"So," she tried very hard to look innocent, "Vladimir, and Anatoly, are Veles Taxi's bosses?"

She failed miserably. Sergei gave her a knowing smile, his eyes glinting with amusement.

"You go on a date with him and you don't even know his job? Not very serious of you, girl."

She stuck out her tongue at him and he snorted in return. He was clearly mocking her now, but it wasn't in a mean way, more like a friend who would to try to embarrass her. She wasn't the kind to get embarrassed though.

"It'll give us more things to talk about." She shrugged. She had guessed who he was in the "taxi company" but she hadn't known exactly. Now, she was pretty sure there was no one above Anatoly and his brother in the Russian mafia in New York. She didn't want to dwell on that. "How do you know I have a date?"

Yes, she was fishing for intel. Let the girl who wouldn't have done it throw the first stone at her. The smile on Sergei's face grew wider, not unlike the Cheshire cat's.

"We had a Velez Taxi's meeting planned tomorrow night. Vladimir came barging in yesterday, telling us he had some plans for Tuesday and ordering the meeting to be advanced to ten in the morning, forcing us all to wake at the crack of dawn for it." 10am wasn't the crack of dawn by anyone's standards but Sergei's, she thought, amused. "Suffice to say, nobody was happy, but hey, boss's orders." He shrugged. "Anatoly wouldn't have it, however. So he pestered his brother up until he spilled the beans."

"Anatoly is Vladimir's brother?" Camille asked with rounded eyes. How come nobody had told her that before?!

At this, Sergei just burst out laughing, his smoker voice derailing with hilarity.

"You don't know anything about him, do you?" He asked, his eyes tearing up in mirth. She frowned and crossed her arms, sticking out her tong again, before turning her back to him, and emptying the dishwasher.

"Alright, alright," the damn man tried to regain his seriousness. To no avail. She could still hear the laughter in his voice as he went on. "You're a good, smart girl Cami. I'm sure you know a lot of stuff about him. Like how his baby-blue eyes are so dreamy." He couldn't even finish his sentence without bursting out in laughter again.

"Fuck you!" she bit back as she threw her dirtiest, wettest towel at his face. He took it off, put it on the counter and kept laughing.

Asshole.

She was about to keep not being very nice to one of her prized customers, making some of Alex's hair turn grey, when her phone vibrated in her pocket. She fished it out and, as she saw who had texted her – there wasn't a long list of suspects to begin with – she had to keep her hand from shaking in anticipation, even if her heart wasn't so easy to ignore. Her pride wouldn't allow it. Especially with Sergei still mocking her from the other side of the counter.

Despite her better judgment, she couldn't afford to wait until the end of her shift to check it out. She knew she wouldn't be able to focus otherwise. It turned out she had been right to do so, as the text was no help at all.

"Hello Camille. What a nosy girl you are."

And this was it. She smiled a little, picturing his flirty smirk as he had written it. She still needed an answer though.

"Come on, Vladimir," she texted. "A little help here? A girl can't go on a date without at least knowing what to wear."

As she sent it, a groaned resonated next to her. She arched an eyebrow at Sergei. He was bent on the counter, his forehead against the wooden surface of it.

"Please, please, tell me it's not him." His voice was somewhat muffled but she managed to grasp his meaning, despite the music.

"Why?" she asked, perplexed. What business of him was it?

Sergei looked up, his smirk back into place.

"Because you've got that damned insufferable dreamy smile on your face." And he was back to incontrollable laughter.

She grabbed back the dirty towel just to throw it back at him. This time, he dodged.