Don't Call Me Kitten! (4 page)

As she peered
thoughtfully at her reflection in the mirror she knew what men
would see in her. A tall platinum blonde with high cheek bones and
piercing corn flower blue eyes. Eyes that had belonged to some long
forgotten Viking ancestor no doubt. The northmen were known to have
used the inland river systems a thousand years ago, raiding deep
into Russian territory, eventually setting up trade routes. Her
height deterred some men but not enough. Her weekly allowance
hadn’t been enough to put weight on, not that her metabolism would
have allowed it anyway. Working out with her friend Levi and
running, as she loved to do, she had failed to bulk out. The irony
was that most women would be glad of what she saw staring back at
her in the mirror, the spitting image of some ancient warrior
queen. If she’d been born into a different life, in a different
place, she might have made it as a screen star but at this moment
all that beauty spelled her doom. Or at least a certain amount of
deflowering. Ugh! She’d sworn on her father’s grave never to let a
man dominate her as he had her mother. The thought of selling her
body, necessary as it was to her and her sister’s continued
existence, was repellent to her. Giving herself to any man was on
the absolute bottom of her personal bucket list. Was there no way
she could avoid becoming a saleable commodity?

A faint bird
call caught her attention, she looked around but realised it was
coming from the mirror. Her phantom friend was back. She’d never
told anyone, not even her sister, of this oddity in her life. A
logical, skeptical science student who sees birds in mirrors. Yeah,
right! They’d have carted her away for sure and then where would
her sister be. She’d first seen the bird the night her parents had
died. It had come to her many times since. In every other way she
thought of herself as sane. She had no way of explaining what she
saw. Yet the bird had come to be a kind of friend. She wasn’t even
a hundred percent sure what species it was. Studying what she could
find in quiet moments at the uni library she’d decided it was some
kind of vulture. Some would say it was an omen of death but she
wasn’t superstitious and anyway it had appeared at times when
nothing dramatic was happening in her life.

“Hello old
friend. What do you think?”

The bird’s now
familiar cry was at best uninformative. She couldn't very well be
blamed for not speaking bird. But the sudden image that flashed
through her mind was an answer. Was the thought from the bird.
Nah! Couldn’t be.
She laughed at herself for even thinking
it however briefly. Instead she steeled herself and went to the
kitchen for a knife and some salt. The idea had merit.

Rattling
around in the cupboards attracted her inquisitive sister’s
attention.

“What you up
to?”

Helena didn’t
want her sister getting in the way of what she was about to do. “Go
back to your homework sis. I’m just getting ready for my meeting
with Petrov.” She hurried back to her room before she got caught up
in a discussion she didn’t want. She didn’t want to frighten her
sister. Time enough for tears later.

Once again in
front of her mirror she raised the knife to her cheekbone.
You
know why you must do this Helena. Do it!
She ordered herself.
She took a deep breath, then quickly made a slash across her cheek.
Fuck it hurt but it wasn’t deep enough. Raising the knife to the
cut she started to run it back along the cut.

Anya appeared
at their bedroom doorway. “What the hell are you doing.” The
frantic voice of her sister pulled her away from her task.

“I’m saving
myself Anya. This is my choice. I’m taking what little control I
have over my future, a future that does not include me becoming
some damned whore. Now pass me that salt.”

Tears streamed
down Anya’s shocked face as she took in what her sister had just
done. “But...the salt will make it scar worse.”

“Exactly.”

Eduard Petrov
took one look at Helena, at the red raw slashed that now marred her
face, then turned to his second in command. “Shoot her Sergei,
she’s of no further use to us. Maybe her sister will make us more
on the slave market.”

Helena
screamed inside herself.
My god what have I done
.
Frantically she cased the room with her eyes looking for a way out
of this debacle she’d brought on herself. All because she’d been
too proud to submit to what the fates had decreed.

Sergei took
his gun from his holster, shaking his head sadly. “Sorry
Kitten.”

But as he took
aim Helena snapped her body to the side, taking hold of Sergei’s
arm with one hand she used her other to knock the gun away from
her, forcing it back on itself, efficiently breaking his trigger
finger in the process. She easily took the gun from his busted hand
and while he was still stunned by the pain she used the hand she
still had on his arm to pull him forward and down towards the
floor, using her weight to aid momentum. She kneed him in the
kidneys, using her body mass to hold him to the floor, before
turning the gun back on Petrov. “I am more valuable to you alive Mr
Petrov. I’m worth more to you as muscle than I ever would have been
as a whore. Just keep your hands off my sister.”

“Well well!
And where did you learn that little maneuver? Not in genetics class
I’ll wager.” He walked calmly towards her until he was almost
within touching distance. “Now either shoot me or give me the gun
and we’ll talk.”

Helena thought
giving him the gun might be the stupidest thing she’d ever done but
at this point her options were limited. She either trusted him or
became a murderer, with the whole of the Russian Mafia after her
for ever more. She handed him the gun.

He took it and
emptied the chamber of six bullets. They were odd shaped bullets to
Helena’s eyes.

Petrov
answered her unspoken question. “This is a double action Nagant
M1895 Revolver. It takes seven proprietary rimmed cartridges, 7.62
calibre. It’s been around a long time and as you can see it is
still in use. Now I’ve left one bullet in there.” He casually
turned the chamber a few times then cocked it. Then handed the gun
back to her. “Lets have a game you and I. If you are brave enough
to play and fortunate enough to live then we’ll talk. You have my
word that if this shot kills me Sergei will release you and your
sister from all your debts and no harm will come to you. Right
Sergei?”

A grunt from
the man on the floor beneath her well aimed knee was barely
discernible as a “Yes.”

“I have no use
for someone who isn’t prepared to pull a trigger so you’d better
pull it now before I change my mind, call my other guards, have you
fucked then dumped in the river to rot in the bottom sludge with
your father. I know a cartel who’d happily break your sister,
making her their depraved little whore. You wouldn’t like that
would you Kotitsya?”

Fuck
.
She might have been a closet atheist but at that moment she prayed
like crazy that if there really was a god she or he would forgive
her. She pulled the trigger but nothing happened. Before she had
time to think about it Petrov had wrenched the gun from her hand
and was turning the chamber again.

He gave the
chamber a few turns. “Now my turn.” He held the gun to her head.
“What do you feel now Helena? All consuming fear? Are you pissing
in your pants?”

But Helena was
remembering what Levi had told her about fear. Fear is always in
the future. At this moment she was alive. The next she might be
dead but she wouldn’t know about it then. Instead she returned
Petrov’s steady stare and held her calm. He pulled the trigger.

Petrov
continued to stare at her. “Impressive.”

Game over,
whatever game he had been playing Helena wasn’t sure. Maybe the man
go his jollies from facing death, but he was getting up now and
returning to his desk as if nothing of import had happened.

“You might let
poor Sergei up. Although I’m sure he’s getting a hard on from you
holding him down like that. He’s a masochist and likes to be
dominated.”

“Ugh!” Helena
spat her disgust and got up from the guard, watching him warily,
sure that he’d take his revenge.

Sergei
struggled to his feet, cradling his gun hand. Ashen faced but with
a tented fly he returned to his post by the door, staring at Helena
like he’d just fallen in love.

Helena
swallowed the bile that rose in her throat.

Back behind
his desk Petrov was obviously amused by the look of horror on her
face. An evil smile etched his face. He leaned forward ever so
slightly, one elbow on the desk, resting his chin in his hand. “Now
tell me. Where did you learn to be such an Amazon?”

Helena
straightened herself, this discussion was better had standing up.
Her above average height, at times, gave her a measure of
confidence and she needed that in spadefuls right at the moment. “A
friend in class, an Israeli, he’s since gone back to his country.”
She hoped she carried the lie. She didn’t want the Mafia turning up
on Levi’s doorstep. “It’s called Krav Maga. He used to teach me in
the University gym in our longer lunch breaks.”

Petrov smirked
knowingly “He was your boyfriend.”

Helena
laughed. “I have no interest in getting shackled to some man. Even
if we’d both wanted more than our friendship offered we couldn’t
have gotten involved like that. He was full blood Ashkenazi, his
family would never have allowed it.” She carefully avoided using
his name and kept her references in the past tense. Petrov didn’t
need to know that Levi was still teaching her, at least until he
really did go back to Israel next month now that he’d finished his
scholarship. It had only been his close family ties that had drawn
him to study in Russia in the first place, despite the ever present
hatred his people faced from the general population who saw them as
Zionists. The more extreme parts of the popular media painted them
as crazed fascists bent on sucking the monetary lifeblood out of
the country. They were a convenient scapegoat, distracting the
masses from the opportunists, bankers and global cartels who were
the ones really milking the economy. If the fear of fascists didn’t
whip the public into a frenzy then the media shifted their focus to
other minority groups; homosexuals, Muslims, Catholics,
atheists...whatever worked on the day. It was fear of hate crimes
that had led to the development of Levi’s martial art. The
brainchild of a Slovakian-Israeli martial artist, Imi Lichtenfeld,
in the 1930s, it had quickly become a way to protect his people,
ironically from the very fascists they were accused of being. Based
on the most effective techniques from the Eastern martial arts and
combined with practical street survival skills it was even now used
by many of the world’s elite military forces.

If Petrov was
disgusted by who she associated with he didn’t show it. He merely
looked thoughtful. “So, what do you propose Helena, being my very
personal body guard. I might like that?”

Helena,
couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the not so subtle sexual
invitation. Self-preservation should have schooled her facial
expressions better but she’d never been very good at that.”

Petrov
frowned. “No? I’m wounded Helena. Of course I could force you but
I’ve always preferred my women to come to me willingly.”

About an hour
later Helena left Petrov’s office, exhausted from both the
adrenalin overload and the delicate tightrope of a negotiation that
had followed. A run would help to calm her nerves before returning
home to break all the news to Anya. She stretched the run out for a
couple of miles before heading towards Sokolniki park where her
attention was suddenly drawn to an ancient birch tree and a patch
of dry ground beneath it. Just out of sight of the evening joggers
pounding Sokolniki’s complex network of alley ways but not in the
danger zone where muggers might prowl she could take a moment to
digest the evening’s events. She was alive. Sighing she let the
relief wash through her.

She could now
look to some future, working weekdays as a geneticist. She’d accept
the research post the university had offered her. Friday and
Saturday nights she’d work variously as a bouncer, barman and
something Petrov had called a dungeon monitor at one of his sex
clubs. She wouldn’t be required to prostitute herself. Instead she
would be there to protect his assets, the girls who worked at a
club called the Red Thorn. She would also be his eyes and ears.
Each Sunday morning she would report to him, disclosing any useful
gossip, overheard conversations that might give Petrov power over
some of the club’s more influential clients. When he needed she’d
also work behind the scenes at Mafia run events, essentially in the
same capacity. In essence she was his spy. To pay off the bulk of
her debt she’d had to sign over the deed to the house to Petrov but
he would let her live there for a modest rent. She and her sister
would be protected. They were still assets, however minor, in
Petrov’s vast empire and Petrov protected his assets.

Anya could
continue her schooling and Petrov would give her two years after
she finished her degree to ‘have a life’. Helena had had to argue
hard to get that little bonus. After that time Petrov would sell
her sister as a Russian mail order bride but she would get some say
in the country she went to and a choice of who she agreed to marry.
If she refused to marry anyone then she’d have to become a
part-time prostitute for Petrov. It wasn’t much of a reprieve but
it was something. If her sister agreed to the mail-order bride
option at least it would get her out of the country, maybe to
somewhere she could find a better future. Helena didn’t like the
thought of losing her sister but it was better than seeing her
simply disappear one night, lost forever in the modern day sex
slave market that few acknowledged as existing.