Page 11 of Brutal Secrets
“So where are we?” I look at the lights moving in the water. The snow gives the air a hushed quality, despite the low drone of traffic in the background.
“I’m taking you to all my favorite places: a church, a bar, and a dacha.”
I want to ask what a dacha is, but I’m stuck on the fact that the first place he’s taken me to is a church. I start to hum “Going to the Chapel of Love” by The Dixie Cups as I smile at him questioningly.
Vadim shakes his head, a smile ghosting his lips as he pulls me against his body, folding me into his winter coat and guarding me against the cold and darkness. Before us is another wedding cake of a building, its bright gold domes spearing the night sky. It’s a strange place to bring me, but I suppose I haven’t been on many dates anywhere, and never somewhere as exotic as Moscow with a man as fierce as this. Perhaps this is normal here.
“This is the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Stalin pulled it down. It was going to become a palace for the Soviets, but the Great Patriotic War got in the way.”
“Which war?”
“I think you call it the second big war.”
“Oh, World War Two.”
Vadim leans down and tightens his arms around my waist. “Are you listening to my story, my zolotaya, or are you trying to teach me English?”
I lean back and snuggle into his body as his voice drifts through the dark air.
“The Soviets ran out of money to construct this church, but when the USSR fell, the people of Moscow donated the money to rebuild it as beautiful as it ever was.”
We hold hands and walk up the steps to the bridge, the lights of the cathedral bright against the water. He gives me his coat, which is warm from the heat of his body.
“It moves me whenever I come here. I like to stop the car on this side of the river and walk over to the bar on the other side and think about the million small sacrifices that went into every brick, every gold leaf on the domes.” He looks up at the church and from this angle, his eyelashes cast shadows against his cheekbones.
“It was the late nineties when they rebuilt it. Things were tough for most people, and yet a million Moscow citizens put their hands in their pockets to resurrect it. You can knock us down, bulldoze our foundations, but we have faith that we will rise again.” He squeezes my hand.
“And that’s not a fairy tale?” I ask, gripping his fingers tighter.
“No, zolotaya, it’s a million small sacrifices. At a time when people couldn’t afford the basics, they paid to build this.” He smiles at me, leaning down to brush his lips against mine. It’s so cold and his touch is so soft that I’m surprised I can feel it all the way to my toes.
Against the bridge, the river curves away into the darkness, and my feet slide on the icy ground. Vadim steadies me, and I laugh as a group of beautiful women walks past us over the bridge. They look like a flock of birds, with short, bright dresses and long legs flashing above their towering stilettos.
“How do they do it? How do they balance on those shoes on this ice? Do they have magic powers? I can barely stay upright in my boots.” I’m wide eyed as they sashay past us.
Vadim’s deep laugh reverberates behind me. “The price to be paid for beauty. We understand these things in Russia, and we practice for them.”
A couple of them look back at Vadim, leaning into each other and giggling. It makes me want to stick my claws into him—or them. I’m not sure who I want to lash out at first, but I have to remind myself that I’m only here for another couple of days. As he says, this is not a fairy tale.
He wraps his arm around me and pulls me into the shelter of his coat as we walk across the bridge and down wooden steps into a bar.
There’s a wait as a pretty, platinum-haired woman in a white suit shakes her head at Vadim. He leans over and says something in a low voice, and her eyes widen as an older man who must be her manager appears behind her. He nods at Vadim and says something in Russian. I catch the words face control.
As we move through the door and into a curtained waiting area, warm air envelops me and I relax a little.
“What’s face control?” I ask.
Vadim laughs. “You’re pretty enough to come in, zolotaya, and I know the manager.”
The people in here wouldn’t look out of place in Nashville or Austin if we swapped out the cowboy boots for their shoes. There are no more G-strings, just the kind of beautiful people you find in any city on a Saturday night.
The muscles in my shoulders drop slowly away from my ears. I hadn’t realized how much being surrounded by glamorous half-naked Amazons was messing with my head.
Vadim leads me to a table overlooking the river. Patrons turn nervous looks our way before whispering in hushed tones amongst themselves. The maître d' nearly breaks his thin legs as he scrambles to ready our table, and I have the uneasy sense that this may be a fairy tale after all. But instead of the woodcutter, I’ve chosen to go home with the wolf.
Chapter Nine
There are a dozen different Moscows. The concert halls with cellists playing Rachmaninov, the private jets flown by billionaires, seedy clubs brimming with my friends, and a bar like this full of beautiful kids who think they can change the world. I brought Kesera here because I thought it was her kind of place, but it was probably a mistake.